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Home Publications IDSA Comment

IDSA COMMENT
The Maoist Global Web
P. V. Ramana
April 29, 2016

Naxalites of the Communist Party of India Maoist, CPI (Maoist), Maoists in short,
have reportedly formed a global web of linkages. the CPI (Maoist) party [has]
close links with foreign [M]aoist organisations in [The] Philippines, Turkey, etc.,
said the Minister of State for Home Affairs in reply to Question No. 248 in the Lok

Sabha on April 26, 2016. The Minister also said that the Maoists are not getting
backing from [any] foreign agency / country.
The external linkages of the Maoists are, indeed, wide. They stretch from Latin
America to South East Asia. These linkages have, essentially, given them visibility
and propaganda, and very occasionally weapons.
According to an internal document of the Maoists, they have, or had, linkages with
21 fraternal groups abroad. Some of these include: Shining Path (Peru),
Revolutionary Communist Party (USA), Maoist Communist Party (Italy), MarxistLeninist Party (Germany), Revolutionary Communist Party (Colombia), TKP-ML
(Turkey) and Communist Party of Philippines.
Way back in March 2001, Oken of TKP-ML of Turkey and Chandra Prasad Gajurel
alias Gaurav of the present day Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
attended the Congress of the Maoists, in the latters earlier avatar as the
Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (Peoples War), or PWG as they were
then popularly known.
Moreover, a well-known authority on the Maoists, K. Srinivas Reddy, told this
author that, in 1996, Bert de Belder, an important leader of the Workers Party of
Belgium (WPB), toured North Telangana, then the flagship guerrilla zone of the
Maoists, and wrote articles in the European media praising the Maoist movement
there as the best peoples movement he saw anywhere in the world.
In May 1996, Kobad Ghandy alias Rajan, Central Committee Member of the CPI
(Maoist) and head of the Central Propaganda Bureau, who is presently under
detention in Tihar Central Jail, New Delhi, participated in the annual International
Communism Seminar hosted by the WPB and presented a paper entitled Armed
Struggle in India: Our Experiences. Ghandy also visited Canada and the United
Kingdom for close to two months in 2005. He is believed to have visited Vancouver,
Toronto, London, Birmingham and Bradford, and is said to have distributed 400
CDs containing two Maoist propaganda films Blazing Trail and Bhoomkal and
a few documents of the outfit. The objective of the visit was to build support. The
result was hardly encouraging.
Further, in 2004, the Maoists had organised a conference of like-minded
organisations known as Mumbai Resistance 2004 (MR 2004). Besides Indian
groups, a total of 24 international outfits participated in MR 2004. Participants at

the event and in the massive public rally were mobilised from Balaghat, Gondia and
Gadchiroli districts, all relatively close to Mumbai, and where the Maoists claim to
have established a guerrilla zone of domination.
The Maoists are also said to have been associated with the founding of the
International Association of Peoples Lawyers in 2000 in The Netherlands and the
International League of Peoples Struggle, which too was founded, and is
headquartered in, The Netherlands.
The Maoists have also been the founding members of the Coordination Committee
of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) that was founded
in June 2001, and which is, perhaps, defunct now. As the Minister noted in his
reply to Question No. 248 mentioned earlier, The Maoist parties of South Asian
countries are members of this conglomerate. The Minister also said that [i]nputs
indicate that some senior cadres of the Communist Part of The Philippines
imparted training to the cadres of CPI (Maoist) in 2005 and 2011.
The Maoists have also had non-fraternal linkages which were entirely opportunistic
and meant to procure weapons or receive training. As one senior Intelligence
officer told this researcher, during 1989-90, renegade cadres of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) trained the then PWG in fabricating landmines,
something which they mastered later on with chilling lethality and stunning
accuracy . Besides, on December 10, 1991, as a then Member of Parliament,
Bandaru Dattatreya, the present Union Minister for Labour, said in the Lok Sabha
that the then PWG had procured 60 AKs and 20 Sten guns from the LTTE.
All these external linkages have served one important purpose for the Maoists. It
has given them visibility and propaganda in different parts of the world. Thus, they
have been able to mobilise international political support from fraternal groups.
Moreover, these linkages have only very occasionally brought in money and
weapons. Nevertheless, it is important for all Indian Missions abroad to closely
monitor these international groups to counter the propaganda campaign that they
unleash from time to time and refute their false claims. Finally, it would also be
useful to probe whether these linkages would, in future, help in establishing an
arms supply chain.
Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
IDSA or of the Government of India.

Keywords:
Maoist
Naxal
CPI

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