A Leftist’s Transition to the Right

Asis Ranjan Sengupta

The demise of Azizul Haque, veteran former revolutionary, marked the end of the last cult figure of Naxalbari movement, after Nisith Bhattacharya and Mahadev Mukherjee. Bhattacharya and Haque, upheld the red flag of Maoist line as practised by Lin Biao and Charu Mazumdar. After the martyrdom of Saroj Datta and Charu Majumdar, the ML party was in doldrums, aimless, desperate for revival, till both Bhattacharya and Haque were rounded up by police in 1982, and the second Central Committee dismantled.

Uncompromising, fearless, dedicated, life-long revolutionary, as he was, in thought and practice, his life is a model before the youth of today and generations to come, no doubt.

But with that, it must be added that in the last one decade of his days, he became a mouth piece of a counter revolutionary, electioneering and parliamentary party like CPI(M). In truth CPM used him for their purpose of pro-corporate agenda. Why a highly acclaimed theoretician like Azizul fell from his height is a wonder. He openly supported Governmental repression in Lalgarh, Jangal Mahal, Singur and condemned the armed tribal activists. He was quite justified in pointing out the shortcomings and senseless killings by misguided activists, but in doing so, he fell in the trap of glorifying the counter-revolutionary and reactionary activism of CPM, which by that time had become a communist party merely by sign board, desperately clinging to power by any means.

CPM proved itself a counter-revolutionary party from the very days of Naxalbari in 1967. Whenever and wherever there was real mass upsurge, CPM’s private army recruited from among the local toughs, would be set against revolutionaries, and the consequent casualties were cited as glorious as against the image of organisers and leaders of masses, to incite and mobilise public opinion antagonising common folk. People observed this strategy in Baranagar, Barasat, Jadavpur, Gopiballavpur and North Bengal in the seventies. Not that Haque was not aware of their real character, he himself acknowledged that he suffered immense torture and betrayal by them, but still in a recorded speech sponsored by a CPM platform (video available in you tube), he tabled a new thesis of the rise of anti-CPM rightist or left forces as the rise of ultra- right politicians in Romania, who overthrew the tyrannical, autocratic, corrupt regime of Ceausescu, who led a self- proclaimed communist dispensation, backed by the then Soviet Russia, a social-imperialist country, that had colonised the East European countries with stooge governments. The bankruptcy of so- called socialist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary etc. created the situation for civil wars and uprising of rightist forces, that ultimately led to the dissolution of Soviet Russia.

Same reality was happening in West Bengal; 34 years of rule or misrule, had helped build up public disapproval, rising to anger and mass uprising in Singur and Nandigram, and made the fall of pseudo-leftist rule here, and like many other places in the world, the true leftist or progressive forces failed to seize the opportunity and rightist elements, whatever toxic they might be, filled the vacuum, by corporate support.

But surprisingly, Haque sahab failed to comprehend the reality and strangely came out in support of a discredited force.

By that time, due to physical limitations inflicted by brutal torture in his Jail days (record 18 years,), he had started seeing realities through ears, not eyes. That is why he was impressed by economic development by left rule. Haque sahab was observing realities as shown to him by his new found love, that was CPM rulers.

That, like many others, is a shock, to this writer also. Finally, he failed to retain his ideological height and fell from tower to ditch, without, for sure, any lure of material benefit from his opportunist mentors. Other original leaders like AsimChatterji, Santosh Rana and KanuSanyal were disillusioned with the path and outcome, and failure of Naxalbari dreams. They resorted to their own paths of mass movement. A number of communist groups of the seventies were frustrated and abandoned active politics, went into oblivion, but very few, and none of the stature of Haque, openly joined the political party he once criticised as revisionist, quite justifiably in the sixties.
Physically maimed, he was spending his last years on a walking stick, and ideologically he was in need of a support of counter-revolution ideology.

So, Azizul Haque was long dead, Long Live Azizul Haque!

[AsisRanjanSengupta, senguptaasisranjan129@gmail.com]

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Vol 58, No. 20, Nov 9 - 15, 2025