APPEAL OF THE C.P.N. (MAOIST) TO THE PEOPLE
March Along the Path of People's War to Smash the Reactionary State and Establish a New Democratic State!
Dear masses of the people,
Today the Nepalese society is in a state of grave crisis, whether
economically, politically, culturally or otherwise. Where has the present state
that has been harping about development and construction for the last fifty
years landed Nepal economically? It has landed Nepal to the position of second
poorest country in the world after Ethiopia. This state that does not
manufacture even a needle in the name of self-reliant and national economy, has
handed over the whole economy of the country to a dozen families of the foreign
compradors and bureaucratic capitalists. Whereas these handful of plunderers
have become billionaires, the real masters of this country and the national
property, the toiling masses of Nepal, are forced to eke out a meager existence
of deprivation and poverty. The sons and daughters of Nepalese peasants and
workers reeling under unemployment and poverty are compelled to lead a miserable
life of dishonor and neglect in India and different parts of the world to earn
their daily bread After piling a massive foreign debt burden even on the future
generations of the Nepalese people, the feudal and comprador and bureaucratic
capitalist rulers are making merry on it. In the name of privatization and
liberalization under the guidance and for the benefit of the foreign
capitalists, the process of mortgaging the whole country to the comprador and
bureaucratic capitalists is in full swing now.
The burden of this economic degradation has been basically borne by the
peasantry which constitutes 90% of the population. That every new government
formed under this state structure pushes and will push the country economically
into a further state of bankruptcy has been verified historically.
To maintain the hegemony of one religion (i.e. Hinduism), language (i.e.
Nepalese), and nationality (i.e. Khas), this state has for centuries exercised
discrimination, exploitation and oppression against other religions, languages
and nationalities and has conspired to fragment the forces of national unity
that is vital for proper development and security of the country. On the
contrary, it has been prostrating before the foreign imperialists and
expansionists and repeatedly mortgaging Nepal's national honor and sovereignty
to them. The present state has been shamelessly permitting the foreign
plunderers to grab the natural water resources of Nepal and to trample upon our
motherland. If this process is allowed to continue for some more time to come,
it is no doubt to the patriotic, conscious and self-esteemed Nepalese that the
very existence of Nepal will be in jeopardy.
The present state has declared war against the development of the national
culture of the Nepalese people by flooding (the country) with the corrupt,
licentious and distorted imperialist culture. The feudal and imperialist forces
are doing their utmost to replace the democratic cultural values and ideals with
Freudian, nihilist and anarchic values. This is a sequel to the conspiracy of
the reactionary classes to corrupt the people culturally and preserve their own
heaven of plunder. These corrupt cultural values are no less responsible for the
burgeoning of drug-trafficking, smuggling, thievery, black marketeering,
looting, murder and rape in the society today.
Within this moribund state structure, a coalition government of Panchas (i.e.
royalists) and Nepali Congress, defamed in the Nepalese history for their
anti-national and genocidal deeds, has been ruling right now. This (government)
has forced not only the peasants and workers of Nepal but also the people of
different categories and professions to live in a state of scarcity, injustice
and terror. Whereas this state has been treating women as second class citizens
for long, now it has intensified rape, trafficking and the process of
commoditisation through advertisements, against them. The whole educational
system is tuned to produce slaves for this state and there is rampant anarchy in
it. Thus, be they workers, or peasants, or women, or teachers, or students, or
small traders, or lower ranking civil servants, or doctors, or professors, or
people of different classes including the national bourgeoisie, all are victims
of this state of feudals and comprador and bureaucratic capitalists. Except for
radical change in all spheres, any possibility of reform has now become a mere
chimera.
Reactionary ruling classes, ever swearing by democracy, have been repeatedly
using their guns against the political activists or the ordinary masses that
hold political beliefs counter to the interests of the rulers. This state which
regards itself as the custodian of 'democracy' has been surviving on the blood
of innumerable sons and daughters of mother Nepal ranging from the infant to the
aged, when the people have professed and spoken in favour of nationalism,
democracy and livelihood. Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese people fighting for
justice have been subjected to inhuman physical torture, confinement in jails
and mental torture. Not only during the party less panchayat (i.e. absolute
monarchy ) period but even in the present monarchical parliamentary period, the
fascist genocidal and repressive acts have been on the increase rather than
decrease. This is a bitter truth experienced by the Nepalese people in their
real life. This process has now developed into an armed repression campaign
against the innocent people favouring truth and justice. The recent armed
operation and state terror let loose in Western Nepal and in different parts of
the country has testified beyond doubt that the ruling classes have openly
embarked upon an unjust war against the people. The heinous game of the
reactionary state of enrolling the sons and daughters of the poor peasants and
workers in the police and the army as mercenaries and forcing them to use arms
against their own wretched parents, brothers and sisters, is now crystal clear.
With the passage of time those in the police and the army will also come to know
the realities. There is no alternative for the people other than to raise the
banner of just war against this unjust war.
How did we reach this stage of critical condition of nationalism, democracy
and livelihood and a situation of open warfare of the state against the people ?
What is clear on the basis of historical and scientific materialism is that the
seeds of this state of affairs were sown in the Nepalese history long time back.
With the advent of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, as in
almost all the oppressed nations, in Nepal, too, a semi-feudal and semi-colonial
socioeconomic structure based on the alliance of feudalism and imperialism was
raised. The process of feudalism prostrating before imperialism and Imperialism
plundering the masses while protecting feudalism, was started. In Nepal, this
process was initiated in the concrete form after the conclusion of the Sugauli
Treaty of 1815-16 with British India. The inevitable consequence of this process
was that it obstructed the development of national capitalism and instead opened
the path of development of bureaucratic capital in the interest of both
landlords and imperialism. This long historical period has been in fact the
period of the process of birth, rise and demise of the same bureaucratic
capital.
In Nepalese society, the 104 years period of Rana autocracy (i.e. from
1846-1950) existed under the same formation and the later partyless panchayat
autocracy (i.e. from 1960-1990) and the current so-called monarchical
multi-party system (i.e. from 1990 onwards, ) also continued and continues under
the same dispensation. As a result of the struggle of the Nepalese people
against this (socio-economic) structure, principally, and due to the changes in
the international political situation, secondarily, the names of the system and
the government have been changing, sometimes liberal and at other times
conservative, to make a redistribution of the spoils of power. But the basic
structure of the state has remained unchanged. The political developments of
1951, 1960, 1979 and 1990 can be understood only in this way. If we view the
history from 1951 onwards alone, what is amply evident is that within the womb
of petty reforms carried out within the reactionary state there has been
sprouting ever greater crisis for the country and the people.
Nepalese people have been constantly struggling against this state of
affairs. In the process of such struggles, Nepalese people have been a victim of
not only the repeated repression and intrigues of the reactionaries but also of
the betrayal and treachery of the reformists. Today the biggest traitors of the
people have been those so-called communists, the revisionists, who have gone
after crumbs of reactionary state power by licking the boots of feudalism and
imperialism. The Nepalese people and the Nepalese history will never forgive
those traitors who have sat on the chairs of the reactionaries by betraying the
people's faith in radical change and the Communist Party and by stepping on the
blood of thousands of martyrs. Again if somebody talks of limiting oneself to
the reformist struggle within the reactionary state, that will be merely another
process of treachery. This has now become a historically verified truth.
The other aspect which should not be forgotten at this point is that the
negative recurrence of the reactionary repression and intrigue and the reformist
betrayal and treachery have given rise to the positive conditions of enhancing
the political consciousness of the general masses of the people and of attaining
by the people for their liberation the sole revolutionary ideology of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, amidst the people's class struggle and a long and
intense ideological struggle against such reformism. Today, the
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party guided by this almighty revolutionary ideology has
developed like a beautiful and blossoming flower, through the long struggle of
the labouring masses of Nepal and irrigated by the blood of thousands of
martyrs. Whereas all kinds of reactionaries and revisionists are madly after it
to nip it in the bud, the revolutionary masses, are taking care of its
preservation and development.
Dear Masses of the People,
What is clear from the above historical and current facts is that the present
crisis-ridden condition of the country is the result of the development of
contradictions between the exploitation and oppression of the people by the
state power of the feudal, comprador and bureaucratic capitalist classes, on the
one hand, and the relentless struggle carried out by the people against it, on
the other. To defend their moribund and crisis-ridden reactionary state,
feudalism and imperialism have openly imposed on the Nepalese people an unjust
war. It the Nepalese people cannot raise the banner of a just people's war
against this unjust war and become victorious in it, the Nepalese people and the
Nepalese nation will be doomed to a prolonged darkness.
Conscious of one's duty towards this historical necessity, the Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist), the proletarian party of the sons and daughters of the
masses of the people, has resolved to initiate the process of forcibly smashing
this reactionary state and establishing a New Democratic state. This resolve of
ours is based on the feeling of service and devotion towards the people, on the
commitment to the almighty ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to free humanity
forever from the yoke of class exploitation, and on the study of history of the
Nepalese society in that light. What we are fully conscious about is that this
war for breaking the shackles of slavery since thousands of years and
establishing a New Democratic state would be quite uphill, full of twists and
turns and of a protracted nature. But this and this alone is the path of
people's liberation and a great and bright future. This path will unfold by
making uses of all forms of struggle in keeping with the historical stage of
development of Nepal and principally, as we have been saying all along,
according to the strategy of encircling the city from the countryside, with
agrarian revolution as the axis and from the midst of and in conjunction with
the rural class struggle. This process of people's war in the context of the
present balance of forces will move forward through the process of people's
guerilla war within the stage of strategic defence. What we are confident about
is that the masses of the people of all classes and categories will extend
active support and help to this revolutionary process and it will be vigorous.
Besides this, what we are also conscious and confident about, is that this
struggle will get support and help from the communist revolutionaries and
struggling masses the world over and this will in turn assist all those
revolutionaries. Because this struggle of ours will be a part and parcel of the
world proletarian revolution undertaken with a view to end the exploitation and
oppression of man by the man and to end for ever the war itself. In this context
we would like to make a special mention of the ongoing people's revolution in
Peru based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM) and revolutionary movements the world over based on the same.
Finally, we appeal to the workers, peasants, women, students, teachers,
intellectuals and the masses of the people of all categories and trades to march
along the process of people's war for establishing a people's New Democratic
state and to extend to it all forms of support and help.
It is right to rebel!
Long live the people's war!
Down with the reactionary state!
Long live the new democratic revolution!
Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
With revolutionary greetings,
Central Committee,
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Historic leaflet distributed in hundreds of thousands all over
the country along with the great initiation of the people's war on February 13,
1996