THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a remarkable political turnaround, the general secretaries of the CPM and CPI paid tribute to Naxalbari leader Charu Majumdar, a decade after the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s police gunned down nine Maoists in a series of encounter killings in Kerala. The gesture marked a striking departure from the Left parties’ long-standing opposition to the ideology that gave birth to the Naxalite movement in India.
The gesture came years after the Left government had defended the police action against Maoists. The encounter killings took place during the two successive LDF governments between 2016 and 2026.
On July 28, the eve of the 54th martyrdom anniversary of Charu Majumdar, CPM general secretary M A Baby and CPI general secretary D Raja paid homage to him at the office of the CPI (ML) Liberation in New Delhi.
Majumdar, along with several other leaders, broke away from the CPM following ideological and political differences over the party’s line. He led the Naxalbari uprising in 1967,mobilising peasants in what became the starting point of the Naxalite movement in India. He later founded the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969.
The CPM has consistently rejected Majumdar’s ideology and the Naxalite doctrine of armed struggle based on Mao Zedong’s revolutionary thought and guerrilla warfare. The CPI,too,had opposed the Naxalbari movement.
Speaking to the TNIE, Baby said the leaders had paid homage to Majumdar as it was his martyrdom anniversary. Asked whether the CPM’s participation reflected a change in the party’s opposition to Majumdar’s ideology and the Naxalbari movement, Baby said: “Every party has changed over the years. If the CPI (ML) was formed after breaking away from the CPM, we ourselves were formed after breaking away from the CPI in 1964.”
He, however, maintained that the CPM had not accepted Majumdar’s ideology or his slogan, “Chairman Mao is our chairman too”.