The Historic Eight Documents are a set of eight monographs authored by the Indian Maoist revolutionary Charu Majumdar that outline the ideological principles on which the Naxalite militant communist movement in India was based.[1][2] They laid down the idea that the Indian State was a bourgeois institution and that the main Indian communist parties had embraced revisionism by agreeing to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India.[2] They urged a Maoist protracted people's war to overthrow the Indian State.[3] They denounced the Soviet Union both for being revisionist, as well as for supporting the Indian State.[2]
Composition
edit- 28 January 1965 (1st document) - Our Tasks in the Present Situation
- 1965 (2nd document) - Make the People's Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against Revisionism
- 9 April 1965 (3rd document) - What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India?
- 1965 (4th document) - Carry on the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism
- 1965 (5th document) - What Possibility The Year 1965 is Indicating?
- 8 December 1966 (6th document) - The Main Task Today is the Struggle to Build Up the True Revolutionary Party Through Uncompromising Struggle Against Revisionism
- 1966 (7th document) - Take this Opportunity to Build armed partisan struggle by fighting against revisionism
- April 1967 (8th document) - Carry Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism
Impact and commentary
editBoth communist and non-communist sources describe these monographs as a significant inspiring factor for the Naxalbari uprising in 1967.[4][5]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "History of Naxalism". Hindustan Times. 3 January 2007. Archived from the original on 20 January 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2008. Snippet:Communist leader Charu Majumdar wrote various articles based on Marx-Lenin-Mao thought during the period, which later came to be known as 'Historic Eight Documents' and formed the basis of Naxalite movement.
- ^ a b c "The Indian Journal of Political Science, Volume 51", Indian Political Science Association, 1990. Snippet: ... The basic argument of these Historic Eight Documents may be summed up: (1) the Indian revolution must take the path of armed struggle, (2) it should be organized on the pattern of the Chinese revolution and not of the Soviet revolution, and (3) the armed struggle in India should assume the form of Mao Tse-Tung's "people's war" and not of Che Guevara's "Guerrilla War" ...
- ^ Marius Damas, "Approaching Naxalbari", Radical Impression, 1991, ISBN 81-85459-01-0. Snippet: ... The documents are historic in the sense that a sharp departure from parliamentary cretinism began to take place and revolutionary politics was resolutely put forward combatting revisionism which was well entrenched in the communist movement in India ...
- ^ "Towards a New Phase of Spring Thunder: Evaluation of the CPI(ML) in Its Historical Background", Central Reorganization Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist), 1982. Snippet: ... That is why these articles and speeches are called 'historic eight documents' in view of the historic role they played in the development of Naxalbari ...
- ^ "30 Evergreen Books: Prime Page Turners". India Today. 3 July 2006. Retrieved 26 October 2008. Snippet:These "historic eight documents" inspired an entire generation of educated Bengali students to take up arms and be part of the Naxal movement in 1967.