Red Salute to the Immortal Martyrs of the People's War!
Every revolution is nurtured by the blood of martyrs. The New
Democratic revolution in Nepal is no exception to this. Though hundreds of
martyrs have laid down their lives in the altar of this revolution since
the inception of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1949, a new wave of heroic
sacrifice & martyrdom was unleashed after the initiation of the people's
war in the country on February 13, 1996 (i.e. 1 Falgun 2052 B.S.) under the
leadership of CPN (Maoist). Within three months of this qualitative leap
in the revolutionary process and the communist movement in Nepal, more than
two and a half dozen revolutionary fighters have attained martyrdom while
facing the repressive armed apparatus of the reactionary state. And the number
in the list of martyrs continues to grow every passing day. We, therefore,
pay our revolutionary homage and red salute to the immortal martyrs of the
people's war and resolve to march forward along the revolutionary path charted
by them
The indiscriminate killing in fake encounters, mass scale arrests,
inhuman torture in police custody, widespread arson and looting of properties
of the people resorted to by the reactionary state after the initiation of
the people's war knows no bounds. It is difficult to ascertain the exact
number of those martyred, as dozens of young fighters arrested by the police
in different parts of the country are reported missing. Of the two and a
half dozen confirmed to have been killed by the police in fake encounters
or indiscriminate shooting at the masses in the first three months (i.e.
till mid-May), most have been local activists of different class and mass
organisations, some were Party members and some belonged to the general masses.
Among the Party members were Com. Chop Bahadur Dangi (Rolpa), Com. Gehendra
Giri (Rolpa), Com. Lahar Singh Pun (Rolpa), Com. Jayadhan Thapa (Rolpa) Com.
Jokh Bahadur Pun (Rukum) and Com. Masta Bahadur Bista (Rukum). We pay our
special revolutionary tributes to our fallen comrades !
February 13 marked a watershed in the history of the communist
movement as well as the history of the entire social development in Nepal
The historic initiation of the people's war on this day not only dealt a
fatal blow to the basically revisionist and reformist past of the Party and
marked a great qualitative leap in the forms of both organization and struggle,
but also ushered in a new era of democratic revolution in all spheres of
the society - i.e. economic, political, social and cultural through violent
means With the clarion call of 'it is right to rebel', the Party on that
day led the masses all over the country to rebel against the reactionary
state and direct their ire against the ruling feudal, comprador and bureaucratic
capitalist classes so as to smash the existing semi-feudal and semi-colonial
state and build a people's New Democratic state. In a preplanned clandestine
move, selected targets of police out-posts, state-owned agricultural development
bank office, factory of a multi-national company, brewery of a comprador
bourgeois and premises of a local feudal-usurer were systematically attacked
and properties seized thereof as a symbol of rebellion and to herald the
initiation of the people's war on that day. Together with these, hundreds
of thousands of revolutionary leaflets and posters were distributed throughout
the country to spread the political message of the historic rebellion among
the general masses of the people the same day. The reactionaries were caught
totally unaware of all this and they were just appalled and dumbfounded at
first. Only after several days did they seem to have realised the severe
tremors in their 'heaven' of class exploitation and plunder, and they let
loose their brute state force against the revolutionaries and the masses
in a state of mad frenzy. Thus the precious blood shed by our valiant martyrs
was the inevitable price the revolutionary process had to pay to make a historic
rupture and break-through in the destabilisation of the old state and with
the old form of our organisation and struggle.
The initiation of the people's war on February 13 was the result
of the objective necessity of Nepalese society, since long in crisis, and
the conscious subjective preparations of the Maoist communist revolutionaries.
The present Nepalese state created about two hundred years ago and presided
over by a small clique of moribund feudal, comprador and bureaucratic capitalist
classes is beset with such irreconcilable contradictions that all reformist
efforts to introduce patchworks in the politico-cultural superstructure as
well as the economic base have failed to check its gradual slide towards
total collapse. Consequently, the country has now slid down to the position
of the second poorest country in the world; economic inequality with the
richest 10 percent gobbling up 46.5 percent of the national income is one
of the gravest in the world; 71 percent of the population is forced to live
below the absolute poverty line, 90 percent of the population lives in rural
areas in primitive conditions and 81 percent of the workforce is engaged
in backward agriculture; 10 percent of the labour force is fully unemployed
and another 60 percent is under-employed; nearly about one third of the total
labour force is forced to emigrate to India and other countries for petty
menial jobs and some for mercenary services in Indian and British armies;
domination of foreign imperialist and expansionist powers in all spheres
is ever increasing with more than two-thirds of the so-called development
budget of the country relying on foreign loans; and so on and so forth. In
other words, the objective conditions of the country demands beyond any doubt
a total restructuring of the existing semi-feudal and semi-colonial relations
and state and their replacement by New Democratic relations and state. But
the subjective preparations by the Communist revolutionaries for this purpose
was lagging far behind all these years. The Communist movement, long plagued
with revisionism and reformism, almost from the outset lacked among other
things a correct Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideological orientation and a
revolutionary political line of bringing about New Democratic revolution
through protracted people's war till the decade of the 1980s. Only at the
Unity Congress held in December 1991 of the reconstituted C. P.N. (Unity
Centre), which was later rechristened as C.P.N. (Maoist), was this ideological
and political question finally sorted out with the adoption of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the ideological guide of the Party and the path
of protracted people's war with the strategy of encircling the city from
the countryside and in which guerilla war will have a strategic role as the
only path of New Democratic revolution in the country. After a fierce and
victorious two-line struggle for nearly two and a half years against a rightist
liquidationist clique opposing this ideological orientation and political
line, which was finally expelled from the Party in May 1994, the Party ultimately
decided at the historic third plenum held in March 1995 to go ahead with
the initiation of the people's war and chalked out the strategy and tactics
of the people's war in the country keeping in mind the specificities of Nepal.
A year of general preparations since then and the intense preparations since
the CC meeting of September 1995 had preceded the ultimate initiation of
the people's war on February 13, 1996. Thus, February 13 marks a historic
and decisive victory of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line over
the various brands of revisionism and neo-revisionism plaguing the Nepalese
communist movement for long, and in that sense, the supreme sacrifice made
by the heroic martyrs in this phase of the revolution deserves a permanent
place in the annals of proletarian revolution.
As the Party has unequivocally declared in the "Plan for the
Historic Initiation of the People's War", this people's war is aimed at creating
a New Democratic state, then marching towards socialism and then finally
towards communism through a continuous series of cultural revolutions under
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and thus it is an integral part and
parcel of world proletarian revolution. Hence once it is started, it will
follow the objective law of development of people's war through its different
strategic stages and take different twists and turns, but it will never stop
until it has attained its final goal, i.e. a classless society of universal
communism, as so brilliantly espoused by Mao in his theory of continuing
the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus many many
more of our proletarian class brothers and sisters will have to make the
supreme sacrifice of their lives to keep this fire of revolution burning
till all remnants of class society are burnt to ashes and we reach the goal
of communism, because, as Mao again so aptly said, either none will reach
or all of us will reach the goal of communism.
The proletarian revolution has both immense challenges and
opportunities in the present day world. Whereas world imperialism, with U.S.
imperialism currently at the forefront is, on the one hand, dreaming of crushing
all the proletarian class and national liberation movements with the might
of its vast overt and covert war arsenals, on the other hand, it is beset
with irreconcilable contradictions within itself and is falling into newer
and deeper crisis everyday. However mighty it may appear at the surface,
it is ultimately a paper tiger, because the system of global exploitation
and oppression it is based upon cannot be reproduced indefinitely and it
has to collapse someday. Against this, the proletarian class in general and
those in the oppressed countries in particular are gradually recovering after
their last loss in China and, particularly with the decade of 1980s, they
are rising in the offensive against imperialism and domestic reaction in
different parts of the world with the invincible weapon of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in their hands. The Maoist communist revolutionaries
from Peru and Philippines to India (Andhra Pradesh and Bihar) are posing
a formidable challenge to world imperialism and all reactionaries and lighting
the path of proletarian revolution The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
(RIM) is preparing a good ground for the ultimate coming together of genuine
communist revolutionaries the world over. It is in this context that the
initiation of the people's war in Nepal marks the opening of a new front
against world imperialism and reaction, and this front in the land of world
famous Gorkha warriors and highest mountain peaks (Himalayas) should hammer
additional nails into the coffin of imperialism and reaction. We definitely
are in a long arduous warpath, as the enemy is formidable, but we are in
for inevitable victory, for our cause is righteous and just. The best homage
to our martyrs, therefore, would be the persistent pursuit of the path of
proletarian revolution until final victory is achieved, and that, we resolve
with all determination and courage, we will.
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