– Indra Mohan Sigdel
Standing Committee Member of Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal
1) What was the event in your life which attracted you to the communist movement?
A seemingly simple but important question. I went to the Gaon Farkodaya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Dhor Phirdi, in 1969 to study at the secondary level. At that time, the Prithvi Highway was being constructed across the school with the aid of the Chinese government. I had heard that there is a communist system in China, where no class discrimination and inequality exist among the people. We used to go to the Chinese camp and road construction site during the holidays. As I heard before, there was no such discrimination and inequality among the Chinese people there. It was not an easy task to distinguish who was an engineer, who was a contractor, and who was a laborer. Everyone does their work; everyone respects the other. Everyone wears the same dress, and there is no separate kitchen for the officers. Everyone does their work together. There is no discrimination between the rich and the poor. I felt that if the political system in our country were like this, then our country also would prosper. There are other reasons too, but I think that particular environment turned me towards the communist movement.
2) You have teaching experience also. When did you become a teacher? Did you also participate in the teachers’ movement?
I joined the teaching profession three times. Firstly, after passing S. L. C. for about ten months in 1972; secondly, after passing the certificate level for about a year in 1975; and thirdly, after passing the graduation level in 1982 for about 6 years. In total, I spent about eight years in the teaching profession. The school, where I taught all three times, was Shree Siddhartha Secondary School in my village, Kihun.
I participated in the teachers’ movement and was arrested several times. However, I did not remain in the leadership of any level of the teachers’ organization.
3) When did you obtain the membership of the Communist Party?
I do not know when my candidacy for party membership was approved. But it was on September 4, 1972, that I applied for party membership. My friend Ashok Lamsal, who was teaching at the same school, had also applied for party membership on the same day. The teacher who filled out the membership form for us was Chandra Kumar Wagle, working at the same school. He had filled out our membership form for the Communist Party of Nepal led by Comrade Pushpalal. Thus, my entry into the communist movement was through the then Pushpalal group.
I worked in contact with the party for about nine months while living in the village. I lost my party contact after May 1973 when I went to Kathmandu to study. In 1974, when I returned to the village and started teaching for one year, I had no contact with the party. In 1976, I went to Calcutta to study for a Bachelor in Civil Engineering. After graduating from Calcutta, I returned to Nepal in 1981. In the somewhat open political environment, it was easier for me to participate in the political programmes. My political affinity turned towards the then Fourth Congress. Around the end of 1981, after returning to the village and joining the teaching profession, I joined the Tanahun District Committee of the CPN (Fourth Congress) as a part-time activist. Thus, it was only after about nine years of my membership in the Communist Party that I got a concrete responsibility in the party.
4) How do you remember the party’s Third National Conference held in Gorakhpur in 1983?
The Third National Conference of the party, held in Gorakhpur in 1983, was the first national-level program I have yet attended. I had participated in that program as an observer. I had been there to listen to the debates of the central-level leaders eagerly, be ideologically and politically trained from it, and physically see the party leaders. It was a great opportunity for me to participate in a program at that level. I felt that I benefited a lot politically from that conference.
However, three things at that conference somehow did not make me happy. One, I did not like the decision to invite Mohan Bikram Singh, who was under party disciplinary action, to the conference. Two, at that time, the party had a position that both internal and external contradiction was at once the principal contradiction of the then Nepalese society. I did not think that the analysis was correct. I believed that the analysis of the minority comrades that internal contradiction was the main contradiction when there is no direct attack by an external enemy was correct. Three, the then issues of the two-line struggle in the conference could be discussed and debated within the same party and unitedly go ahead. However, that did not happen. The party split. I thought that the split was not necessary; it was wrong.
A comrade from Bhaktapur, crying and bursting with tears, naively said that the reason for the revolution not to get accomplished yet in Nepal seems to be the disunity among leaders. This scene is still fresh in my memory. After acquiring direct experience of how open and sharp the party’s two-line struggle is, I returned to my place with revolutionary energy from the Gorakhpur conference.
5) What do you have to say when you remember the Fifth Congress of the CPN (Mashal)?
About a year and a half after the Gorakhpur Conference, the Fifth Congress of the CPN (Mashal) was organized in Mangsir, in 1984. I was a participant in this Congress too. I think my status in that Congress was also an observer. Becoming a representative or an observer was not a big deal for me. I considered participating in the Congress as a great opportunity for me.
Why did the party activity in the past not develop? It was the central question of debate in this Congress. Two documents were presented focusing on this issue. The document presented by the minority along with Mohan Bikram stated that the main reason was the centrist weakness of the majority leaders, while the document presented by the majority, including Comrade Kiran, stated that it was the mistake of the main leadership that hindered the party from advancing. And he added the minority has accused us of centrist weakness to cover up its mistakes. Ideological and political questions were certainly connected to the background of these two documents, but they had not come to the surface openly. The debate focused more on the review of the past, i.e., centrist weakness or cover up of mistake, than on the ideological and political line. In this sense, the Congress essentially became like a review meeting.
The Congress also debated the military line of the Nepalese revolution. But it could not draw a concrete outline of this. This Congress formally decided to withdraw the tactic adopted by the Fourth Congress—the Government of the Patriotic and Democratic Forces—and placed the tactic of “Transfer Power to the People” as its new tactic. However, this tactic also remained abstract. The Congress could not chalk out a concrete method and plan to transfer power to the people. The inability to develop a two-line struggle centring on ideological and political issues was the limitation of the Fifth Congress. Nevertheless, the party split based on petty issues. The split was neither natural nor necessary for a party, because there was no fundamental difference in the ideological and political line.
The ideological and political weakness of Mohan Bikram Singh was exposed by the document titled Anarchist Individualism: A Nepalese Dimension of Right Opportunism, adopted later by the expanded meeting of the then CPN (Mashal) in 1985. Had the questions raised in that document been debated in the Fifth Congress, perhaps the party would not have split right from the Congress. Even if it had split, that split would have been on ideological and political grounds. The basis of the split was mainly emotional, so the split was wrong.
6) What was your organizational responsibility in the CPN (Unity Center) formed in 1990?
My responsibility was as a secretariat member in the Tanahun District Committee when the erstwhile CPN (Mashal), CPN (Fourth Congress), the Proletarian Workers’ Organization, and the rebel (Mashal) united to form the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Center). Later, in the district conference held in October 1991, I was elected as the secretary of the Tanahun District Committee.
7) Where was your working area during the historic People’s War? Is there any important and unforgettable event during the People’s War?
At the beginning of the People’s War, my responsibility was in Tanahun District. The plans for initiating the People’s War in Tanahun District were chalked out under my leadership. I worked in the Tanahun district for about a year and a half during the continuation of the People’s War. After August 1997, the party assigned me to the international field to work under the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). After this, I spent about 9 years outside Nepal. I returned to the country only in 2006. I used to go to various countries to propagate the People’s War of Nepal and participate in ideological and political discussions. It helped me a lot to gain knowledge of the international communist movement. On the other hand, I did not have the opportunity to acquire firsthand experience of the ground reality of the turbulent eight years of the People’s War apart from learning from the experiences of my comrades while participating in some national-level programs held within the country.
When the People’s War was approaching its peak, our entire family of five members was active as full-time activists. In 1998, my wife joined me in the international responsibility. My daughter was in the People’s Liberation Army, and my sons were active in the Student Front in Nepal. In 2005, the party helped me plan a family gathering in Chunwang, where a CC meeting was to be held. Accordingly, the five of us met in Chunwang. We lived together throughout the meeting period. After the meeting was concluded, a group of about 15 people, including the five of us, four other leaders, and the PLA comrades deployed for security, set out to return to their respective places of work. After two days of walking, we took shelter in a village in Rolpa. We had planned to take our lunch early in the morning and walk ahead. When some comrades were eating and some had already eaten, we received information that a group of about 50 military soldiers was approaching our village within 5 minutes of walking distance. As guided by the security commander, we descended toward the creek, climbed up in the forest, and stayed on the hilltop. When we looked from there, the army had surrounded the village.
At that moment, three helicopters arrived and landed on three sides of the hill where we were staying. We did not have the military strength to fight and defeat the force that had arrived in three helicopters and 50 military soldiers chasing us. There was no chance of fleeing away from there. We had no other option but to spend time looking at each other. All of the comrades staying there seemed mentally prepared to attain martyrdom in the new democratic revolution of Nepal.
We spent almost the whole day on that hill. We received information that all three helicopters and the army that surrounded the village had returned. Why those helicopters had landed there and why they returned was not known. After a while, the commander told us a plan not to go ahead but to return and take shelter in another village. Accordingly, we went to another village, rested for two days, and walked ahead on the third day. This incident that occurred during the people’s war is still fresh in my mind.
8) What was the main reason to rebel from the UCPN (Maoist)?
The people’s war was developing rapidly in Nepal. Even the imperialists had accepted that the Maoists have captured 80 percent of the rural areas in Nepal. The Nepalese People’s War was becoming a serious ideological and political challenge for the imperialists and a centre of hope and confidence for the world proletariat, including the entire oppressed people. In this situation, both the possibilities and challenges before the revolution had increased. An article titled “Revolution in Nepal: A Better World’s in Birth!” was published in the international magazine A World to Win. The Nepalese People’s War had become an international issue.
In such a context, where both the possibilities and challenges before the revolution had increased, the party leadership must have taken initiative to further develop the ideological and political line and advance the revolution. However, the leadership did not dare to do so but followed the path of class and national capitulation and betrayal. After the main leadership of the party, which had entered the city with the line of waging armed people’s insurrection and seizing central power, decided to liquidate revolution into parliamentarism, rebellion was the only option left to protect the revolution, revolutionary ideology, and politics. Thus, the formation of the CPN-Maoist by rebelling from the UCPN (Maoist) was a correct and mandatory decision in defense of the revolution and revolutionary principles.
9) What would you say in brief about the ideological and political line adopted by the National Unity Congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal?
The political line of a party is the sum of programs, strategies, tactics, and plans adopted to resolve the contradictions existing in the given society. It depends on the socio-economic condition of the country. Our country is in a neo-colonial condition with semi-feudal and semi-colonial characteristics. The principal contradiction of Nepalese society is the contradiction between the comprador, bureaucratic bourgeoisie and feudal class state power and the oppressed class, gender, caste, and people of the oppressed region, and this contradiction is resolved by the new democratic revolution. However, the new democracy is a transitional stage before socialism. Therefore, the recently concluded National Unity Congress of our party has said that scientific socialism after crossing the step of the new democratic revolution is the political line of the Nepalese revolution.
In today’s era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the use of violence is mandatory to complete the revolution. The party has decided the mass struggle, resistance struggle, and armed people’s insurrection to be the military line of the revolution. This sequence of struggle is the overall military line of our party to cross the step of the new democratic revolution and then attain scientific socialism and communism.
10) What is the Marxist perspective on science and technology? How to use the science and technology that has been developing in the recent period in favour of the communist movement?
Science is a collection of laws that describe facts based on the systematic study, observation, experiment, and measurement of the physical world. The application of those laws of science in practice to facilitate human labour is called technology. Accordingly, technology contains science, but technology itself is not a science, but only the application of science. This is how the Marxists view science and technology.
Natural science, particularly physics, has been confirming the truth of Marxist dialectics. Therefore, reactionaries always attempt to misinterpret the laws of physics and misuse them to suit their interests. After the discovery of the electron, they attacked materialist philosophy by saying that matter itself disappeared. Lenin not only refuted this but also proved that the discovery of the electron further confirmed the truth of dialectical materialism. In the latest stage, the development of quantum mechanics has proved the laws of dialectics correct. But reactionaries are misinterpreting this. We communists must focus on studying how the development of physical science has enriched Marxism, and we must defeat the reactionaries’ efforts to misinterpret the development of science and serve their interests.
In the latest period, there has been unprecedented development in the field of technology. Goods have started to be produced in the market without direct human labour. Opportunists of various shades are attacking Marxism by saying that technology has become the main productive force, the proletariat has been disappearing, and Marx’s theory of surplus value has failed. We must enrich Marxism by refuting this kind of non-Marxist arguments.
The use of technology is mandatory in a revolution. How, when, and where to use technology depends on the given situation of the country. This is not something that can be determined in advance and cannot be said right now. Technology should be used not only to upgrade the quality of weapons but also to surprise the enemy, reduce his fighting capacity, and make ineffective the information and communication mechanism and financial and military sectors. The role of weapons in the revolution is important, but ultimately it is the man who is decisive, not the weapons. This is the Marxist outlook on technology.
11) The revolutionary stream of the communist movement in Nepal has weakened. What do you think should be done to strengthen it?
At present, the communist movement is weak all over the world, mainly due to the dominance of right revisionism. In this situation, to strengthen the world communist movement, including Nepal, special emphasis should be placed on three main issues. First, a ruthless struggle against all forms of revisionism and mainly right revisionism; second, the development of a revolutionary ideological and political line based on the concrete analysis of the concrete condition; and third, honest implementation of that line in revolutionary practice. We have developed a revolutionary line in the last Unity National Congress. In order to strengthen the communist movement in Nepal, we must free ourselves from the influence of all shades of revisionism and firmly implement the adopted line. By connecting theory to practice and testing theory in the hallmark of practice, that is, through the process of dialectical unity between theory and practice, can the revolutionary movement consolidate and advance.
12) The Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal has launched a campaign named Campaign to Expand Public Relations. What is the nature and objective of the campaign?
Three teams will be mobilized in this campaign. The first is the central team, the second is the bureau-level team, and the third is the district-level team. The objective of this campaign is to mobilize the entire party ranks, propagate the party’s ideological and political line, expose revisionism, expand relations among the people, build organizations across the country, and consolidate the existing organizations. In one sentence, this campaign is for the preparation of revolution.
13) Is there anything else to add at the end?
I would like to heartily thank the Hank family for providing me an opportunity to reach our party opinion to the people through your weekly paper Hank. Thank you.
Chaitra 4, 2081
