Charu Majumdar and Naxalbari (contd-2)

Born	1918 Siliguri, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died	July 28, 1972 Calcutta, West Bengal, India

Charu Majumdar (Bengali: চারু মজুমদার; 1918–1972) was a communist revolutionary from India. Charu Majumdar's life is a story of "riches to rags". Born in a progressive landlord family in Siliguri in 1918,he was a student of Pabna Edward College.  He also authored the historic accounts of the 1968 Naxalbari uprising and his writings have become the ideology which guides red revolutionaries even today.

He was born in 1918 in Siliguri. His father was a freedom fighter. He was  inspired with the ideology of Socialism and joined in the Peasants moement. Majumdar dropped out of college in 1938. In 1946, he joined theTebhaga movement. He was briefly imprisoned in 1962.

Dropping out of college in 1937-38 he joined the Indian National Congress and tried to organise bidi workers. He was arrested in 1942 and was in jail for two years. He later crossed over to the Communist Party of India (CPI) to work in its peasant front. He remained underground for six years  for an arrest-warrant forced him to go underground for the first time as a Left activist. Although the CPI was banned at the outbreak of World War II, he continued CPI activities among peasants and was made a member of the CPI Jalpaiguri district committee in 1942. The promotion emboldened him to organise a 'seizure of crops' campaign in Jalpaiguri during the Great Famine of 1943, more or less successfully. In 1946, he joined the Tebhaga movement and embarked on a proletariat militant struggle in North Bengal. The stir shaped his vision of a revolutionary struggle. Later he worked among tea garden workers in Darjeeling. He was again arrested in 1942 and in  1949 when CPI was declared illegal.

The CPI was banned in 1948 and he spent the next three years in jail. In January 1954 he married Lila Mazumdar Sengupta, a fellow CPI member from Jalpaiguri. The couple moved to Siliguri, which was the centre of Majumdar's activities for a few years. His ailing father and unmarried sister lived there in abject poverty.He was arrested during the struggle against the tea-garden owner in Keshtopur teagarden of Naxalbari area. He was jailed for four months.After release he was influenced by the ideology of Mao-se-dung.

During the mid 1960s Majumdar organized a leftist faction in Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in northern Bengal. In 1967, a militant peasant uprising took place inNaxalbari, led by the Majumdar group. He was arrested in 1965 during India-China conflict. This group would later become known as the Naxalites, and eight articles written by him at this time—known as the Historic Eight Documents—have been seen as providing their ideological foundation: arguing that revolution must take the path of armed struggle on the pattern of the Chinese revolution. The same year, Majumdar broke away and formed the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries which in 1969 founded the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist)—with Majumdar as its General Secretary and declared its appearence on 1st May, 1969. This party was known as Naxalite because of its movement against the landowners of Naxalbari. This was an attempt to occupy state machinery by peasants movement. and in 1969-1971 this party became the most powerful , organised and militant left party in West Bengal and adjacent provinces.
  He was captured from his hide-out on July 16, 1972. He died at 4 am on July 28, 1972 in the same lock-up, the CPI (ML) records say. He died by heart attack as Govt. sources said. 

"Even the dead body was not given to his family. Police, accompanied with immediate family members carried the body to crematorium... The whole area was cordoned off and no other relatives were allowed in as his body was consigned to flames," CPI (ML) records say . Though the radical Leftist movement has seen many ideological splits since late 70s, Naxalism continues to inspire a number of Leftist groups across the country.