Charu Majumdar: Difference between revisions

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'''Charu Majumdar''' (May 15, 1919 – July 28, 1972), popularly <small>known as Comrade CM, was</small> a communist revolutionary from [[India]]. Born in a progressive landlord family in Siliguri in 1918, he later formed the militant [[Naxalite]] cause. He also authored the historic accounts of the 1967 [[Naxalbari uprising]] and his writings have become the ideology which guides the Naxal movement.<ref>{{cite web

After dropping out of college in 1937–38, Majumdar joined the then banned [[Communist Party of India]] (CPI) to work in its peasant front. Soon an arrest warrant forced him to go underground for the first time as a leftist 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 organize a 'seizure of crops' campaign in Jalpaiguri during the [[Famine in India|Great Famine of 1943]], more or less successfully. In 1946, he joined the [[Tebhaga movement]] in the Jalpaiguri region 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]].

The CPI was banned in 1948 and he spent the next three years in jail. In January 1952 he married Lila Mazumdar Sengupta, a fellow CPI member from Jalpaiguri. The couple moved to Siliguri, which was the center of Majumdar's activities for a few years. His ailing father and unmarried sister lived there in abject poverty.{{citation needed|date=December 2017}} He was briefly imprisoned in 1962.

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 in [[Naxalbari]], led by his comrade-in-arms [[Kanu Sanyal]]. This group would later become known as the [[Naxalite]]s, 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. He was captured at his hideout on 16 July 1972 at 3 am by officer Ranjit Guha Niyogi (alias Runu Guha Niyogi) and his team. He died of a massive heart attack at 4 am on 28 July 1972 – aged 53 – in the same lock-up, the CPI (ML) records say.  

The radical leftist movement in India has seen many ideological splits since Majumdar's death.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kujur|first=Rajat|date=2009|title=Naxal conflict in 2008: an assessment|url=http://www.ipcs.org/issue_briefs/issue_brief_pdf/848082154RP15-Kujur-Naxal.pdf|journal=Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies}}</ref>