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Red Flag Flying on the Roof of the World

Inside the Revolution in Nepal: Interview with Comrade Prachanda

(This text is reproduced from the Revolutionary Worker #1043, February 20, 2000, on the occasion of fifth anniversary of the People's War)
 

Li Onesto, Revolutionary Worker: There are revolutionary people all over theworld who want to hear about the People's War in Nepal. So it would be of great interest if you could give a basic picture of the objective situation and what the material basis in Nepal is for initiating People's War. Why does the party think it is possible to wage protracted People's War, to organize the masses through armed struggle? Why is this the correct strategy given the situation in Nepal? And why does the party feel it is possible to win with this strategy?
 

Comrade Prachanda: First of all, I want to explain this question in ideological terms. Nepal is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. And MLM (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) says that in oppressed countries like this, semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, in general, a revolutionary objective situation prevails. This is the ideological basis from where we started to study the concrete situation, because the main thing is ideological clarity. And through the course of class struggle, mass movements, mass struggle, and mainly the ideological struggle inside the communist movement, we came to the conclusion that a situation prevails for initiating the People's War.
 

We see that Nepal is a small and poor country. More than 85 percent of the population lives in the rural areas, and the people are very poor-they are very oppressed. The feudal relations-the feudal forms of exploitation-are very severe in the rural areas. Industrial development is very poor, and the kinds of industrial bases that are there are all in the hands of a comprador bourgeois class-mainly the Indian expansionist bourgeoisie. Therefore, there are sharp class distinctions, and people have been struggling for reforms, for independence, and for the livelihood of the people, for a long time. There has been continuous mass struggle. But due to the lack of revolutionary leadership, due to revisionism in the communist movement, due to a crisis of leadership: every time when there has been mass struggle, this leadership has been able to confuse the masses, to make compromises with the ruling classes and to get some concessions for this revisionist group.

I want to mention that in 1815 there was a big struggle with British India. Nepalese people fought heroically against British India but ultimately they did not succeed-they failed. This was armed struggle, this war with British India, and people participated in this war in different ways. Different kinds of guerrilla warfare were used. And, in that war, the British ruling class saw that the Nepalese people were very heroic and brave-and that they fought heroically against British India. For more than one year they fought and fought, and in many places they defeated the British army. Hundreds and hundreds of masses, including women and old men, all fought in that war. But the Nepalese ruling class, mainly the monarchy, the king, surrendered to India.

There was a negotiation in Sugali, and they made a compromise. And after that, more Nepalese territory was taken by India. Before this, geographically, Nepal was more or less three times larger. But all this land was taken by India with the Sugali Treaty. From that very point Nepal became a semi-colonial country, and when the British left India, Nepal became a semi-colony of Indian expansionism. After that, there came the Rana government clique, and the great comrade Karl Marx called this Jang Bahadur Rana a British puppet and dog. People suffered very much from different kinds of oppression and exploitation, and from that point, Nepal changed to a semi-feudal country.

In 1949 when the Nepalese Communist Party was established, it was a great and far-reaching historical event. That party was established when the great Chinese revolution had been won and socialism was developing in the USSR.
 

RW:Was the victory of the Chinese revolution a big factor in the establishment of the Communist Party in Nepal?

Prachanda: Yes, a very big factor. And there was also, at the time, a very big armed struggle of the peasants in India. This was the surrounding larger revolutionary situation at the time when the Communist Party in Nepal was established. The party started to work among the basic peasant masses, and for three or four years, there was a big peasant movement-a kind of revolutionary upsurge. But, at the same time, the leadership of the party changed and took a revisionist stand. And the leadership of the movement, the general secretary at the time, appealed to the king, saying we will do all our work peacefully, therefore please regard our party like this. And the party leadership totally went revisionist. After that there were so many mass struggles, mass movements. But every time, this revisionist clique confused people, made compromises with the ruling class, and betrayed the masses. Every time they betrayed the masses. And at the same time there was also ideological struggle going on inside the movement.

Then, when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was initiated in China under the leadership of great comrade Mao, it directly impacted on the revolution in Nepal. There were so many materials from the Chinese Cultural Revolution that came to Nepal. This Cultural Revolution inspired mainly the younger generation of communists and the masses. And at the same time young people in the communist movement were also inspired by the Naxalite Movement in India. This inspired young people in the Jhapa District and provoked a kind of rebellion against the revisionist leadership; and there was a process of reconstitution of the party. At the same time the Fourth Party Congress was held, and it also put the question of armed struggle on the agenda. But a fully developed political line was still not clear-of how to reorganize a new kind of party and explain to the masses the need to rebel. There was a big ideological and political debate for 10 years after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and all our leadership team is a product of that ideological struggle.

And at the same time, inside our party, there was a big two-line struggle, first with this Lama clique, because a rightist tendency was there. We fought vigorously with that line. Later on we fought with this Dumdum line, M.B. Singh's line, because it was eclecticism and rightism and very much muddle-headed. Individually M.B. Singh was established as a leader, but his line was totally revisionist, and it was so confusing, covered with eclectic words. We fought with that line, and, when we fought with that line, we developed the correct line which is now leading the people and the People's War. We came to an understanding from that struggle with Dumdum (M.B. Singh), and we defined our ideology as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

RW: What year is this now you're talking about?

Prachand: It was 1986, I think, when we finalized Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as our ideology. At the time, only the Communist Party of Peru had said this, and we had some documents from the PCP. But on that question, already for four or five years, there had been some discussion about: Why Mao-Tsetung Thought? Why not Maoism? That kind of discussion had been going on inside our party. We had a debate for one year to change this terminology and then the whole party adopted Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as our ideology. It was not only a change of terminology, it was our understanding of Mao's contribution. We also defined the People's War and our military line, our political line. And this is our ideological, political, subjective basis. At the same time, class struggle was developing, and, in the circumstances of that class struggle and the two-line struggle, we were able to see the objective and subjective situation to initiate the People's War.

On your question about the relationship between objective and subjective factors, I want to say that in oppressed countries, according to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, a revolutionary objective situation generally prevails in one or another part of the country. The developing process of this country is uneven. Therefore, in any part of the country there is the possibility of initiating armed struggle and then sustaining and developing the struggle. In general, as a whole, you can say that an objective revolutionary situation prevails. In oppressed countries, the question is the subjective preparation-the main question, the principal factor is subjective. And subjective means the communist party, the revolutionary communist party, armed with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We can also say, in this way, that the main question in these types of countries is how to fight against revisionism and build a new type of party armed with MLM. This is the principal question in these countries.

In imperialist countries this is not the case. In the imperialist countries, the principal question is not the subjective factor. The principal factor deciding tactics and line is objective. Objectively the imperialist countries suck the blood of the oppressed countries and control them. Therefore, the main question for revolutionaries in those imperialist countries is to continuously expose the whole system and build the party and make continuous preparation and consciously try to make the objective situation a revolutionary one-and when a revolutionary objective situation develops, at that time, deal a big blow. We think this kind of line should be applied there.

But the strategy is different in semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries like Nepal, where more than 80 to 85 percent of the population live in the rural areas, whose developing process is uneven, where the modern workers, proletarian workers, are very limited. Some people say a revolutionary objective situation does not prevail in these types of countries. Just like in our country, the revisionists always say the objective situation is not there, and they also say the subjective situation is not there to start the armed struggle. They always say this, and we condemn this line. This is not a fact. In these types of countries the question is subjective preparation. It was in this way that we looked at the conditions for initiating People's War.
 

And at the time of initiation, we tried to figure out the whole history of Nepal. What is the cultural standard, the cultural level of the masses, what are the economic conditions, what are the social relations, what are the forces, what is the class analysis? We did all these things before this last final preparation. And at that time we found some specific characteristics of the situation in Nepal. Although Nepal is a small country, we think, in another sense it is not a small country. Geographically when you look at the whole country of India you can travel in one or two days to every part and corner. But in Nepal you have to walk up and down for many days-I know you understand this. It is more remote than America.
 

RW: Yes, I direct experience with this!

P: Therefore, while Nepal is a small country, the mountainous region is very favorable for guerrilla warfare, for People's War. And we also saw that because there has been a centralized reactionary government for more than 200 years there has also been a tendency for the masses to resist throughout all of Nepal. The centralized government has its guns and control everywhere-controlled from Kathmandu. And in the long process of resistance and struggle, the Nepalese masses have developed a kind of situation where-from east to west, from north to south-everywhere there is mass, class struggle. So we saw a situation in which if we call for a program of resistance, of mass movement, then all of Nepal will engage in that movement.

We also looked at the fact that we are surrounded on three sides by this big Indian country. On the east, the west, the south, there is India. And on the north side, there is China. On the north side it is very difficult to come and go. The Himalayan Range is there. There are some places where people can go to and from Tibet, but in general it is not like it is with India. We also analyzed this situation.

We also found that Nepal is again a big country because there are so many nationalities. The population is only 20 million, but there are, more or less, 20 to 25 different oppressed nationalities. There are different languages, there are different religions. And this is also a particularity of the Nepalese situation. We studied all these questions and how to solve the nationality question. We fundamentally depart from all the revisionist and bourgeois parties. We uphold the right of self-determination for the oppressed nationalities, and, for now, in our concrete situation, we say that autonomy should be the program. We express this and explain this as a specific situation in our movement.

And in the Terai region-again you can say Nepal is "big" because you can see that in the southern part from east to west there is plains land, Terai land, which is more or less 300 meters from sea level. It is a big plain, a big agrarian area, with big forests. There is also the mountainous region, where there are big mountains-this is where you traveled, so you know exactly about this. And the majority of the population live in these mountainous areas and the big Himalayan Range, which is very cold. In this way you can also say Nepal is a big country, not a small country. We studied these geographical conditions.

And we also studied our subjective organizational situation. We were in the Eastern Region, we were in the Central and Middle Region, and we were also in the Western Region. The West is historically, geographically, and culturally the basin of the revolution. It is the main point for the revolution-the people here are more oppressed by the ruling classes, and the government in Kathmandu is very far from there.

RW: What is the material basis for the revolution being more advanced in the West? Is the question of the oppressed nationalities a big factor?
 

Prachand: Yes, and one thing is that economically the ruling class always neglects the development of the West.

RW: Why?
 

Prachand: Because they think that to invest there will not be profitable. This is one factor we can see. And the other is that there are mainly oppressed nationalities there in the West and the ruling class is hegemonistic, chauvinistic-upper caste chauvinistic. Therefore they neglect and oppress these nationalities.

And the other thing is that in the time of making this country, before 1800, in the last part of the 18th century, at that time, this part of the country was not totally captured by the central government. There was a kind of compromise. With the Gorkha empire, this part of the country was captured later on. First they took the east side, later on they went on the west side. The main point here is not first or later. The main point is that those areas were not totally captured. The local authorities had some power and the central authorities had some power. In this way these areas had some kind of autonomy at that time.

So the masses of the Western Region were not so much in the control of the ruling government. And they did not care what the government did and didn't do. This is another historical fact about the West. And in western Nepal there are the Mongolian ethnic groups-you saw how all our comrades there look Chinese. These nationalities are so sincere and such brave fighters-historically they have had this kind of culture. And upper caste chauvinism and feudal ties do not prevail in these nationalities.
 

RW: You're saying feudal traditions are weaker among these oppressed nationalities?
 

Prachand: Yes, weaker. Really. When you went to the Middle Region or the Eastern Region

you saw that feudal traditions are very strong.
 

RW: But when I was in Rolpa and Rukum I didn't see any temples.
 

P: Yes, in Rolpa and Rukum there are not too many temples, and in the family background in these nationalities, there is a kind of democracy, a primitive democracy. Even male domination in these places is weaker-it is not like in the dominating castes. And at the same time, our party has a long history of working in these areas, like in Thabang and Rolpa.
 

RW:And the revisionists in these areas are weaker?
 

Prachand: Very weak. And there has been a continuation of consistent revolutionary leadership there. The revisionist influence in that area has always been weak, and the revolutionary tendency has prevailed. There are all these factors. Geographically, there are no transportation facilities, there is no electricity, and communication is also very weak for the ruling classes. All these factors led us to the conclusion that the West is the main region for the People's War. But we also saw that we cannot initiate the People's War only in the western part, because the ruling class is very powerful. They have a powerful army, powerful communication system, and all these things. Therefore if we initiated armed struggle only in the western part, then the government would centralize all their forces and crush us.
 

Subjectively we also saw a favorable situation for developing mass movements all over the country. And we had organization throughout the whole country. Therefore we finalized that we should initiate People's War from different parts of the country. We should centralize in mainly three areas-East, Middle, West-and the capital. Cities should also be another point, not for armed clashes, but for propaganda and such things. And one other area where we should concentrate work is in India, because more than seven million Nepalese live in India. Therefore India should be the other point where we should make efforts to resist the ruling classes. In this way we made a plan. These are the specificities we saw in Nepal. We did not see the exact same situation and plan for initiating the armed struggle as in the Philippines, Peru, Turkey, and other countries where there is some kind of People's War. There are more similarities with the PCP in Peru, but not exactly. They initiated from one election booth, they attacked one election booth. But we initiated from different parts of the country-with thousands of actions in the first plan. When we studied in detail the historical, geographical, and cultural situation in Nepal, we came to the conclusion that we should initiate the People's War in this way.
 

More than 72 percent of the Nepalese people live below the poverty line. This is a grave situation. We have always explained to the people that nothing can be achieved from this multi-party system-that it is fake, it is imperialist, it is feudal. Therefore after three, four years, the masses saw that, "Yeah, what the Maoists have been saying is really correct." These kinds of sentiments prevailed. Just before the initiation we organized so many big mass demonstrations and mass meetings. Thousands and thousands of masses participated. We had already declared we are going to initiate the People's War. But the ruling class didn't believe it and thought, "These people are talking, only talking."
 

RW: In some of your writings you've talked about how the party had to make a big rupture-ideologically, politically and militarily-in order to initiate the People's War. This is a very big question for parties around the world, and it is a dividing line between revisionism and MLM-the question of actually carrying out the necessary ideological, political and organizational changes in the party, to initiate the armed struggle. So could you talk about the kind of ruptures your party had to make to initiate the People's War?
 

Prachand: These are very serious, important questions you have raised. The question of rupture is a question of making a breakthrough. First of all there is the question of understanding our ideology, which means Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. How does Maoism explain or define this rupture, this developing process? Some people see a process of evolution, a process of continuous development, an evolutionary process. But Marxism-Leninism-Maoism teaches that this is not the case, this is not the scientific case, scientific analysis. The real process of development is breaking with continuation and making a rupture. Everything in nature, in human history and society, in human thinking-the process of development-is the process of breaking with continuation. We came to grasp this question very seriously before the initiation.
 

RW: You're talking about making a leap.
 

Prachand: Yes, making a leap. At one point in our party, for every comrade, on the lip of every comrade was the question of leap, leap-we have to make a leap. We made this question of making a leap very sharp, that we have to make the leap. The revisionist parties and revisionist leaders always teach the people the question of reform, reform, reform. And reform is reformism, is revisionism. But the question of making leaps is revolutionary.
 

We condemn all the revisionist cliques as vulgar evolutionarism. We are revolutionary, and revolution means breaking with continuation and the question of making leaps. Before the initiation, we had a big debate on these questions. When we changed our terminology from "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought" to "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism," at that point, we had a big debate inside the party on this question of leap. And we came to an understanding. Mao said in the theory of knowledge that there is a two-stage theory-the stage of sense or perception and the stage of logical conclusion. We tried to educate the whole party in Mao's theory of knowledge, this two-stage theory. And this gave us a new understanding of MLM. Before that, there was some kind of thinking that MLM meant different kinds of reforms and gradualism. But when we defined this question in this new way, then new feelings, new confidence, a new situation developed inside the party. There was a struggle with rightist tendencies at that time, and we fought, mainly with rightists, revisionism.
 

Then, when the plan for initiation was drawn up, there was another debate over questions of how to initiate People's War. Our party was so much influenced by rightist tendencies. At the same time, we had indirectly participated in the elections, and we had 11 members in the parliament, nine in the lower house and two in the upper house. And that also had a big influence inside our party circles-the rightist influence was there.
 

That was a big challenge for our party, how to make a leap. The party was so much encircled by rightist revisionism, petty bourgeois tendencies, all these things. And many people were working openly. Although I want to mention and give more stress to the fact that our main leadership team was not working openly at that time. There were our MPs (members in the parliament) who were public. But our main PBMs (polit-bureau members) and comrades and main regional leaders and main district leaders were not open, they were underground. There was parliamentary work but the main party organizational mechanism was underground at that time-you should note this.
 

So in making the plan for initiation there was great debate over how to go to the armed struggle because many people were influenced by "peaceful" struggle, work in the parliament, rightist and petty bourgeois feelings, and a long tradition of the reformist movement. Then we said that the only process must be a big push, big leap. Not gradual change. There was some thinking from different people in the party that first we should do some actions without declaring the People's War, and then see what happens. This kind of thinking was also there among some people. And we discussed, is this the process? And we said-no, this is not revolutionary, this is also reformism. It is a conspiratorial approach. And armed struggle is not a conspiracy, People's War is not a conspiracy-it is open, politically open and declared openly. This conspiracy theory will not work, and it is also not revolutionary. Doing one action then saying, "OK, let's see what will happen." Then doing another action... No, nothing will work like this.
 

There was also some thinking that we could start armed struggle in different parts of the

country but not say we had initiated the war-and then later on, when we see how the situation develops, we could declare People's War. This kind of logic was also there. And some sections wanted to initiate the war but wanted to still participate in the parliamentary system in an independent way. They argued that some people should still be in the parliament, that it would "help." Later, some of these types of people didn't exactly degenerate but politically retreated after the initiation. They had the logic that, "OK, we will initiate People's War, but in the main region, in Rolpa, Rukum, four MPs should be in parliament because we can win there and this will give strength to the People's War." That kind of logic was also there. And we condemned all this logic and, said, no, this is not Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
 

RW: This period you're talking about is 1995, the year of preparation before the initiation?

Prachand: Yes, mainly 1995. We condemned all this logic, saying this is not Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, this is not according to the objective and subjective situation of Nepal. Our view was, we should declare freely and frankly that we have initiated the People's War and that this is the only alternative left for the people, for their emancipation, for their independence from the brutal imperialists. We should distribute leaflets all over the country. We should put posters up all over the country. We should carry out actions all over the country. And we should launch a great debate all over the country. There was some doubt about this line, some thinking that it may be "ultra left" or "adventuristic." That kind of doubt was there. Such people did not openly voice that line, but only doubted. When there was a discussion they unanimously agreed, but there were these tendencies.
 

Only one month after the initiation there was a big national debate about the question of People's War. Every newspaper, every radio, everybody in the country was asking: what is this People's War, what is this Maoist party? In one push, the party was established in a big and national way and it was in the center of debate-after only one month.
 

We had a polit-bureau meeting, and we synthesized the experience of this one month. It was a big transformation process for the whole party-for the whole of our mass organization-because it was not a gradual change. It was a big question of life-and-death struggle and everything was shaken. We concluded that this process of initiation had been correct, that the party's first plan of initiation had proven to be correct and really shaken the country. Then the enemy started to massacre the people. Arresting, raping, killing, looting-they started all these things. And then we drew up the Second Plan, immediately, one month after initiation.
 

RW:Before you go on to talk about the Second Plan, in terms of all the ideological struggle that went on during the period of preparation, what role did the international communist movement play?
 

Prachand: Yes, really, I have to mention this. In the whole process of this final preparation...there was consistent international involvement. First and foremost, there was the RIM Committee (Revolutionary Internationalist Movement). There was important ideological and political exchange. From the RIM Committee, we got the experience of the PCP (Communist Party of Peru), the two-line struggle there, and also the experience in Turkey, the experience in Iran, and the experience in the Philippines. We learned from the experience in Bangladesh and from some experience in Sri Lanka. And there was a South Asian conference that we participated in. At the same time we were also having direct and continuous debate with the Indian communists, mainly the People's War (PW) and Maoist Communist Center (MCC) groups. And this helped in one way or another. It helped us to understand the whole process of People's War.
 

Therefore, what I want to say here is that one of the specific things about our People's War, the initiation of our People's War, is that there was international involvement right from the beginning. Right from the time of preparation, up to the time of initiation, and after the initiation, there was international involvement. Help, debate and discussion was there. It was a big benefit for us. It was a big help for the Nepalese masses. Theoretically we are clear, and every time we insist, that the Nepalese revolution is part of the world revolution and the Nepalese people's army is a detachment of the whole international proletarian army. This is clear. But during preparation for the initiation and after the initiation we came to understand this, not only in a theoretical sense, but came to see the practical implications of this proletarian internationalism, what practical role it played. We made the point to the RIM Committee that when the People's War in Nepal faces setbacks, then it will not only be a question for the CPN (Maoist), but will directly be a question for the RIM as a whole.
 

People's War, Maoist Communist Center and others in the revolutionary struggle in India have been involved in this process in one way or another. We understood right from the beginning that we should try to involve more and more sections of revolutionary masses in the process of our initiation. Therefore, beforehand, we made some investigation of the Bihar in India. We went to Andhra Pradesh to look at the struggle there and we tried to understand the practical situation and practical problems of armed struggle.
 

Mainly, the debate and discussion in the RIM was very helpful. And after the initiation, with this debate, this big result, thousands and thousands of Indian masses came to understand the People's War in Nepal. And our People's War also helped the whole international movement-because there had been a big setback with the People's War in Peru [with the capture of the PCP's leader, Chairman Gonzalo and the emergence of a right opportunist line]. At a South Asian conference, I told other parties that in this situation the question of helping Peru was not only a question of giving the revolutionaries support, but that we have to initiate People's War in our own countries. That would be the big help. And after the initiation of the People's War in Nepal it has been proven-we helped the PCP, we helped the RIM as a whole, we helped the whole revolutionary masses. And we also took help from all over the world.
 

Yesterday I saw a note in your journal from your trip, and, really, I am very impressed. You noted there that in Nepal, during only three years of People's War, there have been very big advances. You saw this yourself and noted it there. But you also observed that a very crucial point is coming up. Right now things are at a crucial point. The enemy's involvement against the People's War is going to get much bigger, and this will be a big challenge. We were really impressed that you made this type of conclusion. You understand this kind of situation is developing and the challenge this presents. And you also emphasized in your notes that the whole international community should be alert to this situation and should play a role in talking about and helping to develop the People's War and opposing the government's reactionary moves.
 

From this point of view we also think international relations and the importance of the People's War in Nepal has been developed. And we think your tour itself is also a vital point in this. It is not merely a case of "you came here and left." It has historical implications, and it is a very big and good initiative. Your trip in Nepal, your project in Nepal, will be a very big initiative for proletarian revolution-for opposing the reactionary ruling classes and for helping the masses of Nepal. It will be a very big initiative. It is not completed-there should be a continuous process with it now.
  From your experiences we have come to understand more deeply that these kinds of projects should be done in a continuous and planned and organized way. And now the RIM will learn from your experience in Nepal after the success of your trip. There have been so many physical hardships you've fought, but you've succeeded. And therefore, internationally, we also want to mention this project and this whole trip.