HYDERABAD: In a rare interview, CPI (Maoist) general secretary Muppala Lakshman alias Ganapathy has admitted his party’s dwindling stock across the country and conceded that their movement was facing a difficult situation.
In the interview, given to the Maoist Information Bulletin (MIB) on the occasion of the party’s 10th anniversary celebrations — a copy of which is with Express — Ganapathy said the party had lost a number of leaders at all levels from the central committee to the village level and felt the biggest challenge before them was to retain and protect the remaining.
For this, he said, the Maoists must adopt secret and appropriate methods of functioning, rectify mistakes and firmly implement lessons learnt besides grooming a new leadership and raising awareness about the need for a strong party. Ganapathy listed five main challenges facing the party, the biggest of which is its weakening hold in rural plains.
“This is one of the difficult situations the party is facing today. It is a challenge before us to revive and expand the movement in areas where our party has been present for long but weakened over time. Similarly, we also need to expand the movement to newer areas and open new battlefronts in order to broaden the arena of the People’s War,’’ he said.
To a query on their reduced guerilla warfare after the merger of the party with the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), he replied the central committee, in 2013, had assessed that the movement was ‘facing a very difficult situation.’
“The deceleration that occurred need not be seen only as the result of enemy repression, but is also a fallout of our weaknesses. To come out of this situation, we have identified mistakes and weaknesses and taken up bolshevisation of the party, the PLGA and mass organisations,’’ he explained, adding that their vast experience will help the party in the long run.
Tough Times for Maoists, Need to...
On the party’s lack of presence in plains and urban areas, Ganapathy said the revolutionary movement has acquired vast experience in working in such areas. “The experiences gained will help us draw appropriate lessons and rebuild the movement. We must learn from mass upsurges of Kalinganagar, Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, Narayanapatna and Telangana separate statehood movement, all of which have had a positive impact on the toiling masses of rural and urban areas,” he said.
He pointed out that it would take some time to complete the bolshevisation of the party and “then, we can assess how successful it has been in remoulding our party into a Bolshevised party.’’ On the argument that the movement isn’t relevant to the country, Ganapathy said it was true that the movement was relatively stronger in vast forest areas of central and eastern India but sounded optimistic about the future of the party.
Ganapathy, interestingly, blamed some individuals within the party, PLGA and mass organisations who are ‘kneeling before the enemy’ for the reverses in recent years. He felt revisionism of Prachanda-Bhattarai clique and their betrayal of the cause of the Nepali people and the world socialist revolution caused serious damage to the international communist movement.
On Operation Green Hunt, Ganapathy said the enemy was concentrating on decimating Maoist strongholds in the third phase. “By bringing quantitative and qualitative changes to its offensive, the enemy seeks to destroy the party, the army and the emerging organs of new democratic power, so as to reinstate the old and decadent political system in its place,” he observed.