college authorities unambiguously expressed their inability. Some of the teachers started taking classes at their residences and Sandip and Arati chalked out their own study plans. Some student leaders were arrested but communist students of all the colleges in Calcutta and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) backed the striking students and the strike continued indefinitely. Virtually no classes could be held for the entire session and the students had to appear at the university examination without attending any classes.
In spite of all these hazards both Sandip and Arati secured first class in B. A. and got admitted to M. A. class. Sandip shifted to the P. G. Hostel at Rani Swarnamoyee Road. Unlike the under graduate hostel, this new hostel had more freedom as the super did not reside in the hostel premises.
In the mean time State Assembly Elections were held and the Congress party was defeated and the United Front (UF) Government came to power in West Bengal. The CPI-M was an important constituent of the U. F. Government and after coming to power they went back on their promises to the students and directed them to immediately call off the strike unconditionally but the adamant Students’ Union ignored the directive and severed connection with the party. Then like a bolt from the blue the Naxalbari uprising overwhelmed the UF government. It was led by a section of the CPI-M but they severed connection with the party while the police ministry controlled by the latter took ruthless action to repress the uprising. The revolutionists formed a new party called Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) and the striking students joined the new party. At the very beginning, the Naxalite Kanai Chatterjee differed with the CPI-ML Supremo Charu Majumdar (CM) and formed a Naxalite faction called Maoist Communist Center (MCC). Soon there were other splits. Tarimala Nagi Reddy, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, Satyanarayan Singh, Nagbhusan Patnaik, Vinod Mishra etc. formed their own factions. These factions went on splitting up into sub-factions and there were eventually dozens of extremist factions. But CM’s CPI-ML became the dominant faction and soon unleashed havoc in entire West Bengal and other parts of India.
The P. G. hostel was a den of the Naxalite students. Sandip was at first skeptical about the Naxalite movement but he liked the Naxalite boys in the hostel for their dedication and amiable behavior, but he always showed disinterest whenever they tried to discuss politics with him. One day while Sandip was taking tea from Balaram’s canteen, Tridib, a Naxalite, handed him a made-easy Bengali book on Marxism but Sandip declined to read it. He said, “You better give me the original works.” Tridib replied, “I don’t have any such books. Better I’ll introduce you to Bechuda who reads the originals. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
“Yes.” Sandip said, “I know Bechuda, your bespectacled leader who always wears a brown khaddar punjabi and a white pajama.”
“So tomorrow afternoon I’ll take you from your room to Bechuda’s mess.”
“O.K., I’ll be ready.
At the mess at Creek Row, Sandip talked with Bechu for hours and he was highly impressed by the fiery arguments of the latter. Bechu too was impressed at Sandip’s willingness to read the originals which very few Naxalite boys read and very few of those who read understand. Bechu introduced Sandip to a footpath bookstall owner at College Street and Sandip bought three books of Engels which were then available at the stall and these books published from Moscow were very cheap. For the next few days he read Frederick Engels’ ‘Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’, ‘Dialectics of Nature’ and ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’. The books were pleasant reading and impressed him deeply and he resolved to read all the Marxian literature. Gradually he bought and read all the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) and a few books by Anwar Hojja and Lin Piao (Lin Biao) and the diary of Ernesto Che Guevara. He occasionally discussed these books with Bechu who was astonished at Sandip’s tenacity and quest of knowledge. He himself had read only a few books and opted for having Marxian lessons from Sandip. These books brought about a thorough change in the thought process of Sandip. It dawned on him that his careerism in a world replete with human sufferings is but narrow selfishness and he resolved to give up his self-centered pursuits and offer himself to the service of suffering mankind and his proposal to join the Naxalites made Bechu highly elated. He introduced Sandip to higher party leaders who readily inducted him to their party.
He joined the fellow Naxalites in processions, pasting of the party’s mouthpiece Deshabrati on a board at roadside and writing on the walls of the city Slogans of Mao like:
‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’
‘Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers’
‘A single spark can start a prairie fire’
Slogans of Lin like:
‘We want to tell the US imperialists once again that if they impose war on us, the vast ocean of several hundred million Chinese people would submerge their few million aggressor troops’
Slogans of CM like:
‘China’s chairman is our chairman and China’s path is our path’
This and most other violent slogans of CM and ones relating to murder of the landlords and other ‘class enemies’ that included the members of other political parties and other Naxalite factions, beheading of the statues of distinguished personalities, burning of educational institutions etc. were dubbed eccentric by the other Naxalite factions. Sandip was most impressed by the slogan of CM:
“Make the Decade of the Seventies the Decade of Liberation” and the gospel of Mao for the youths:
“The world is yours as well as ours but in the ultimate analysis it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life like the sun of eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you.”
Sandip wrote an article.
“If any thoughtful person observes with insight the global human scenario, he cannot but be bewildered by the striking contrast in the juxtaposition of dazzling riches and loathsome poverty, posh dwellings houses and stinking slums, and the fine blending of gorgeously attired patricians and bare bodied, semi-naked or shabbily dressed commoners; the merriment in the well lighted cosmopolis and the abject miseries of the gloomy hinterlands; the scintillating opulence and suffocating indigence in eternal contrast and he might even be overwhelmed by the sudden zooming in of the ghastly reality (as though in a Hitchcock horror film), the inner story of our glorious civilization, the haunting shadows of poverty, deprivation and oppression lurking behind the hallmarks of human civilization – the lofty Pyramids, the invincible Chinese Wall, the exquisite Tajmahal, the magnificent architectures and technological marvels.
The Marxian theory of the historical process of development of human civilization gives an excellent account of the genesis of poverty, inequality, ruthless oppression and exploitation of one group of men by the other and the despicable deprivation of the majority of global population. Marx divides the process of the development of human society till his time into four stages – primitive communism, slave society, feudalism and capitalism. He predicts that capitalism would be replaced by socialism, which after a long tortuous process would ultimately dissolve into Communism – the classless, stateless blissful society.
At the first stage, during primitive communism, poverty in the modern sense did not exist (in the modern sense poverty is meaningful only when its opposite, viz. opulence exists). It was simply limitation of amenities applicable to all members of a clan, because of limited knowledge to explore natural resources to meet human requirements. These clan societies were characterized by equality.
Man-Nature conflict gradually led to improvement in methods of production – man gradually having more and more command over Nature with his increasing scientific knowledge. With the acceleration if this process, by increasing the intensity of social division of labor, surplus over and above consumption requirements started emerging and at the same time, human values pertaining to fellow feeling and equality started degenerating into slavery – oppression of o
ne class of people by another.
With the mergence of money, the most convenient medium of exchange and the parasitic merchant class, the process of property ownership and accumulation of wealth by a few and the consequent poverty and inequality were further crystallized.
Continued material progress, made possible by man’s increasing command over Nature, ultimately paved the way for the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in the capitalistic or bourgeois society. Capitalism enhanced the pace of materialistic development but at the same time it facilitated more ruthless exploitation of the labor class turning them into proletariats.
As regards the cause of oppression, exploitation and inequality along with material progress, Marx and Engels held class society and the institution of private property responsible and considered the existing State Machinery to be the protector of private property perpetuating the consequent maladies. So they insisted on overthrowing it with the help of the weapon of ‘class struggle’, and replacing it by the Socialist State ruled by and protecting the interests of the proletariats and all the oppressed classes.
Even after establishment of the Socialist State, class struggle would continue and pave the way for gradual