Page "Communist Party of India (Marxist)" Paragraph 23

At this point the party stood at crossroads.

There were radical sections of the party who were wary of the increasing parliamentary focus of the party leadership, especially after the electoral victories in West Bengal and Kerala.

Developments in China also affected the situation inside the party.

In West Bengal two separate internal dissident tendencies emerged, which both could be identified as supporting the Chinese line.

In 1967 a peasant uprising broke out in Naxalbari, in northern West Bengal.

The insurgency was led by hardline district-level CPI ( M ) leaders Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal.

The hardliners within CPI ( M ) saw the Naxalbari uprising as the spark that would ignite the Indian revolution.

The Communist Party of China hailed the Naxalbari movement, causing an abrupt break in CPI ( M )- CPC relations.

The Naxalbari movement was violently repressed by the West Bengal government, of which CPI ( M ) was a major partner.

Within the party, the hardliners rallied around an All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries.

Following the 1968 Burdwan plenum of CPI ( M ) ( held on April 5 – 12, 1968 ), the AICCCR separated themselves from CPI ( M ).

This split divided the party throughout the country.

But notably in West Bengal, which was the centre of the violent radicalist stream, no prominent leading figure left the party.

The party and the Naxalites ( as the rebels were called ) were soon to get into a bloody feud.