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Social Conditions and Tactics 
A report based on preliminary social investigation conducted by survey teams during August-October 2001 in the Perspective Area. (Draft) State Committee CPI (ML) (Peoples’ War) Karnataka 3 August 2002
Contents
I SOCIAL CONDITIONS
II TACTICS
Appendix: I: Special Social Groups 53 Appendix: II: Standing Orders 54 Appendix III: Excerpts from a Resolution on Right Opportunism in the State Committee 55 Appendix IV: A Sample of Right Opportunist Views of Some Comrades During the February Plenum. 56 Select Bibliography 58 List of Tables: Table 1: TSA: Basic Statistics from Select Villages 11 Table 2: BSA: Basic Statistics from Select Villages 13 Table 3: NSA: Basic Statistics from Select Villages 14 Table 4: Villages Adjoining BSA and NSA: Basic Statistics from Select Villages 15 Table 5: Class-Land Relations for All Four Areas 16 Table 6: TSA: Caste Composition from Select Villages 20 Table 7: Decline in Areca Rates 22 Table 8: Decline in Coffee, Cardamom, Pepper and Murugana Huli Rates 23 Table 9: Decline in Wage Rates 23 Table 10: Elementary Information on Temples and Mathas 32 Table 11: Nature and Status of Mass Organisations 44
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 1. Methodology In July 2001, the SC initiated the process of conducting social investigation in the Perspective Area. It held a five-day long education programme for DCMs and ACMs in the PA entitled Political Education for Conducting Preparations to Undertake People’s War in Malnad. In particular, it focused on the study of Mao Tse-tung’s Oppose Book Worship. The education programme also relied on Mao’s Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society. Basing itself on the Strategy and Tactics adopted in the IX Congress of the party and the Perspective for Agrarian Work finalized in 1987 by the KN SC, the discussions also focused on theoretical aspects that hinged around the question of semifeudalism. Discussion was initiated on the concrete question of the variations in semifeudalism in Karnataka and the specific manifestations of semifeudalism in Malnad in the context of the penetration of cbb capital to pockets of South Malnad and the trend of imperialist globalisation. Based on the SC Resolution of May 2001, questions were prepared for collecting data on the following aspects: "In areas of semifeudal agriculture: Two categories to be made.
b. Adivasi area. } There are some additional aspects for the adivasi area.
Aspects concerning the economy # Apply class analysis. # Study class relations. List out names and holdings of big landlords of each village. # Forms of semifeudal exploitation: Wage labour, bonded and semi-bonded labour, tenancy, usury. # Caste and property relations. Specific strengths of each caste. # Paddy, area, coffee: Specific role of each crop in the household economy. Marketing and market structure. Relations with merchants. # Migration: Seasonal out migration as labour hands Distant outmigration . Nature of employment. Role of remmitances from outside. # Mechanisation. # Nature of expenditure: Main heads. # Relative percentage of classes in each village. #Impact of land reforms, tenancy abolition. # Contradiction and collusion with forest department. Encroachment and eviction. # Investigate how the land question is the central question. Aspects concerning politics and ideology # Politicians. Political leanings. Clout. Among the different classes and strata. # Hindu communalism. Advocates. Zealous votaries. Relations with non-communal groups. # Influence of feudal and bourgeois ideologies. Media and false consciousness. # Patriarchy. Among the different classes. # Literacy/education. # Religion. # Listing of weapons with peasantry and landlords. # Identify all the notorious and big landlords. # Organisations: rrs, small coffee growers, campco. # Ruling class doles and reforms. # Smuggler syndicates.
# Specifically trace dependence on forest. For food (hunting, remnants of food-gathering, medicine, fuel, etc). # Minor forest produce: Is it a minor or a major part of their economy? Role of LAMPS. Relations with forest department. Relationship with contractors. # Establish the economic basis of the demand for adivasi autonomy. # Study the adivasi superstructure: Particularly: The clans, mother right and its remnants. Belief/religion. Relations with Kigga, Sringeri, Dharmasthala, Kalasa, Hornadu. # Specific manifestations of patriarchy. # Bourgeois political organisations/institutions. # Role of NF. #Memories of adivasi struggles. # Adivasi response to land reforms." Four investigation teams were made for the PA. The area of each team was planned so that it coincided with the LGS area of each squad in the coming days. Each team was headed by an ACM. DCMs participated in the process with the teams. The teams selected three villages each for in depth study, while they planned to make a general study of at least 12 villages that fell within their area. Each of these three villages marked out for in depth study were: 1. Those that fell within the NP area and had an absolute adivasi population. 2. Those that fell within the NP and had a mixture of adivasi and non-adivasi population. 3. Those that came outside the NP but under the control of landlords carrying out semifeudal exploitation. Our 1987 Perspective states that while in North Malnad semifeudal conditions prevail (Point 57) and "land hunger is acute", (Point 29), in the South Malnad, "in the sphere of coffee, capitalist agriculture coexists with semifeudal agriculture"(Point 37). In other words, while semifeudalism preponderates in the Malnad as a whole, in parts of the South Malnad, where coffee is grown, capitalist agriculture coexists with semifeudal agriculture. In the coffee estates owned by the cbb, the relations of production are between labour and capital. In the coffee estates owned by landlords, the relations of production are semifeudal. The investigation teams did not go to those plantations owned by the cbb. In fact such cbb areas fall outside the perview of the proposed LGS areas. However, the investigation teams collected data from villages where coffee was grown by the landlords who carried out semifeudal exploitation. Comrades held extensive discussions with a cross section of the people, often running late into the night. In some villages they spoke to each and every individual. A lot of notes were made. Discussions also took place in the squads on the data that was collected. Each team drafted a report which was discussed with DCMs and ACMs in April 2002. The process of social investigation helped each of the teams get a deeper understanding of social reality and the specific conditions in which they had to work. It was the first such exercise conducted by the Karnataka party. It has helped us in applying the Maoist slogan of learning from the people. And, it is bound to aid us in improving our tactics in our political struggle against feudalism and imperialism. The SC presents this document as a summing up of the preliminary social investigation undertaken by our teams. On the basis of the social investigation and in keeping with the line of the party, the SC has also drawn up a second part in this document entitled Tactics. The SC hopes that Socotac will be studied by all PMs and discussed in their respective party forums so that the Karnataka party can develop and implement a unified political understanding for accomplishing its central task of conducting people’s war in Malnad.
2. Introduction The task of social investigation was undertaken, and this document is today being prepared and discussed, in the context of a two-line debate within the Karnataka party. The debate is centred on the question of implementing the enriched line of the party and advancing along the path of people’s war or in succumbing to right opportunism and thereby liquidating the movement. The struggle with right opportunism is focused here on the evaluation of concrete social conditions in Karnataka, in the Malnad and in the Perspective Area. In the Indian communist movement protracted people’s war has been negated from various different angles. One important source for the negation of protracted peoples’ war has rested on a denial of the semifeudal character of the country. The consequences of wrong analysis of social conditions can be serious. It has a direct bearing on the direction of the revolutionary movement. Today there is a deep-rooted right opportunist perception of things in the Karnataka party. Right opportunism in the Karnataka party has different sources and many manifestations. In the sphere of social analysis, it denies the semifeudal nature of social relations in Malnad. It presumes that semifeudalism exists only in certain "pockets" in Malnad. It considers "imperialism as the principal contradiction" in Malnad as a whole. It evaluates that the enemy is relatively "strong" in the Malnad and not "weak" when compared to the North Maidan as a region. It says that while semifeudalism has been transformed, it is expressed in the superstructural "caste form" in Mudigere and Sakleshpura area. It presumes that a "middle peasant economy dominates" the North Malnad and that landlords are either nominal there or are nonexistent. The sum and substance of these arguments is that social relations have been transformed from that of semifeudalism to capitalist relations, and the principal contradiction has been shifted from that of semifeudalism to that with imperialism in the Malnad. The Maoist theory of protracted peoples’ war is closely bound up with the question of semifeudalism. Semifeudalism provides the social material for area-wise seizure of political power. Hence any rejection of the prevalence of semifeudalism tantamounts to a rejection of the establishment of base areas. And the conquest of bases lies at the heart of Mao’s theory of protracted peoples’war. This is the relationship between social analysis and strategy and tactics. Within the Karnataka party, comrades putting forth some of the incorrect arguments listed above, tend to also develop wrong views about the tactics and strategy of protracted peoples’ war. The essence of these arguments is to withdraw or postpone the formation of squads, to build a legal movement in the urban centers and mobilize people even more in anti-imperialist mass struggles over a "wide area" since the Perspective Area is "very small" or "highly developed" with a "strong enemy" making it impossible for our sustenance. While there is no apparent denial of the strategy of protracted peoples’ war, since most of the arguments touch upon tactical matters, the essence of these arguments has strategic implications. It revives the stages theory that has been put forward since the time of Naxalbari, first by CPR-TN-DV and later by Jana Shakthi, among others. The stages theory is a right opportunist theory and our party, since the time of Com CM, has continuously fought against it. As recently as in February this year the erstwhile West Bengal Secretary, Com Manik, brought up his right opportunist line for which he reinvoked the stages theory. The principal debate in the ML movement on the question of protracted peoples’ war has hinged around recurrent versions of the stages theory. Hence the stages theory has proved to be resilient. And it has been the most important manifestation of right opportunism on the question of strategy and tactics. This document on social conditions and tactics is prepared in the context of the emergence of a right opportunist political line (ROL) in the Karnataka party. The right opportunist view not only makes an incorrect evaluation of social conditions in Malnad, but it also desires to hold back preparations for the conduct of peoples’ war in the Perspective Area by basing on the enriched political and military line of the party at the IX Congress and under the guidance of the CC. The ROL has shown up in the KN SC. It persists in the SC and resides in the KN leadership in the form of a SC minority. It also manifests in a few leading cadres of the KN party. The Letter issued by the SC to all PMs on 21 July 2002 entitled Conduct Two-Line Struggle to Reaffirm the Party Line introduces the different aspects of the ROL and the need for conducting a two-line struggle to rescue the party from it and reestablish the commanding position of the party’s line. The SC minority insists that it neither had nor does it presently have either right opportunism or a line. It says that it agrees with the Socotac. But there is a condition it places to this "agreement". It agrees to this document minus its "polemical part". And just what does the polemic do? It points at how the arguments of these comrades inside and outside the SC make up the ROL. Mao Tsetung says that "…the line is the key-link" (cited in Bidding Farewell to Agrarian Revolution—The Essence of Manik’s Paper, p 22). He also says that the "…ideological and political line decides everything." (ibid, p 23) For a communist party, line is the essence of analysis. To negate the essence and agree with the appearance: that is precisely what the minority’s "agreement" with Socotac while at the same time disagreeing with the polemics really means. A fair part of the erroneous arguments this document answers have come up in the SC. The SC resolution of December 2002 is excerpted in Appendix III in order that comrades may understand the manifestation of the ROL in the SC and how it in fact expressed itself as "the danger of a right deviation and the stage theory" despite attempts by minority comrades to shrug off their association with the ROL. (See Appendix III) Yet if the stages theory is not a line, then what else should one call it? If comrades in the minority still want to hold out an elusive argument, if they still want to contend that real differences in line are only part of the make-believe virtual world of a SC majority and that real differences in line were only innocent suggestions, it smacks of the "indefiniteness, diffuseness, elusiveness" of opportunism that Lenin talked of. (cited in, Rally Around the Party’s General Political Line! Fight Back Com Manik’s Attempts to Liquidate the Party!, p 25) Elusiveness is the precise nature of opportunism in the SC minority. They contradict the most essential part of a resolution which had been unanimously passed in the December SC meeting and which mentioned in clear cut terms that their arguments contained the danger of the stage theory. Hence when they say that they agree with the Socotac but not with its polemics, it must be viewed as only another of their attempts to be elusive. This document seeks to answer the wrong perception of some comrades in the party. The purpose of social analysis is to concretize our line. We have to draw up correct tactics thereby enriching it in theory. And by implementing these tactics, we have to enrich it through practice. To separate the polemical part from the analysis would amount to discarding the kernel and keeping the husk. The history of MLM, our ideology, is a history of struggle and debate. Let our comrades show up one instance from our teachers where the intruding polemical nuisance was relegated to some neutral appendix. The SC calls upon all party members to study the analysis of social conditions and uphold the correct tactics that we have proposed in this document. It calls upon them to reject the right opportunist conceptions of some comrades. The SC appeals to all PMs to advance in the direction of undertaking people’s war in Karnataka in order to implement the slogan of the February Plenum: "Complete preparations to build a guerrilla zone with the perspective of establishing a base area in Malnad".
3. The Perspective Area The Western Ghats, with an average width of about 100 kms, runs from North to South for about 2,200 kms. It runs parallel to the West Coast. It passes through Kerala, TN, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. At its northern extremity in Gujarat, it makes a junction with the Vindya and Satpura ranges. The Western Ghats traverses a length of about 700 kms in Karnataka. The longest part, the widest and deepest forests of the Western Ghats are located in Karnataka. At its maximum, the Western Ghats is about 200 kms wide in Karnataka. The Western Ghats that runs through Karnataka is called as the Malnad. The Western Ghats has its strategic significance for peoples’ war in India owing to the forest and mountainous terrain. The population of Malnad is about one-tenth of that of the entire state. It runs as a divider between the Karavali and the Maidan regions. It covers an area of about 50,000 sq kms or roughly one-fourth of the total area of Karnataka. It is contiguous with the remaining three regions of Karnataka--—the North Maidan, the South Maidan and the Karavali. It passes through 10 of Karnataka’s 27 districts viz, Belgaum, Uttara Kannada, Dharwad, Shimoga, Udupi, Chickmagalur, Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Mysore and Chamarajanagara. It bridges the Kannada nationality with the Tulu and Kodava nationalities. While its terrain is of strategic value for ppw in India, the above mentioned additional factors enhance its strategic significance. It would not be an exaggeration, owing to all these factors, to call the Malnad as the strategic midrib of peoples’ war in Karnataka. The Malnad may be further divided into two. The North Malnad is composed of the districts of Belgaum, Uttara Kannada, Dharwad, Shimoga and a part of Udupi. The South Malnad is composed of a part of Udupi, Chikmagalur, Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Mysore and Chamarajanagara. The Perspective Area falls in the central part of Malnad. It covers the northern part of the South Malnad and the southern part of North Malnad. It includes parts (and not all) of the forested areas of Udupi, Shimoga, Chikmagalur and Dakshina Kannada districts. It covers an area of about 10,000 sq kms in eight taluks. By deploying adequate squads, organizing the masses in class struggle and conducting guerrilla warfare here, the Perspective Area will gradually emerge as a Guerrilla Zone. Hence the Perspective Area is that area which we plan to develop as a Guerrilla Zone. Today we have initiated our work in one part of the Perspective Area. We are currently working in parts of five taluks. Our present work is divided among 4 areas. Each of the four areas have to be expanded in the coming days so that 4 LGSs can cover a total area 80 kms N-S by 40 kms E-W or 3,200 sq kms . In other words each LGS must operate in an optimum area of 800 sq kms. Within the PA, there is currently one DC. Our work at present covers the entire NP area. The NP is shared by three squads. The NP covers 602 sq kms. It currently serves as the core for our activity. But our work is not confined to the NP. It extends beyond it. Today about two-thirds of our influence would be among adivasis (inside and outside the NP). The population in any forest area is sparse. This is true of the PA also. However, the population covered by each squad must be enhanced. Today the population that has been covered stands from 2,500 to 3,000 forch squad. However, this is inadequate. It must reach a level of 10,000 for each LGS area of T, B and N in the coming days. In areas that fall outside these three squad areas but within the Perspective area, the density of population is relatively higher. Here the average population covered in each LGS area can reach up to 25,000. Taking the Perspective Area as a whole, including the towns and the large villages having urban characteristics, a rough estimate of the population of the Perspective Area could be about 5 lakhs. To accomplish the transformation of the Perspective Area into a GZ we must organize the people in class struggle, build mass organizations, set up party cells, form militia, establish SGSs and conduct guerrilla warfare in about a dozen LGS areas.
4. The Economy Table 1TSABasic Statistics From
Select Villages
Table 1 (Continued)
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