SUMMARY
The CPI-ML-VM (Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist-Vinod Mishra; alternatively CPI-ML Liberation, or CPI-ML) was an armed left-wing group active in India. The primary objective of the group was to overthrow the Indian government and to set up a Marxist-Leninist regime.
The CPI-ML-VM resulted from a process that sought to reorganize and revive the severely fragmented Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML). The first steps towards creating the group were taken in 1974, when a faction that would materialize as the CPI-ML-VM splintered from the original CPI-ML. The group was influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology, and was considered to be part of India’s left-wing “Naxalite” movement, which comprised various armed left-wing guerillas. The primary focus of the CPI-ML-VM’s agenda was the rights of India’s peasants, and the main goal of the group was to set up a functioning political front. The group also claimed to be the legitimate successor to the original CPI-ML, and often referred to itself by that name. While the group recognized that democratic politics was one way of achieving revolutionary change, it did not abandon the idea that maintaining a “people’s army”, and thus maintaining the potential to conduct and armed struggle, was a central instrument. The primary stronghold of the group was Bihar state.
Between 1982 and 1994, the group utilized the Indian People’s Front (IPF), a public front, to participate in the public political process. The CPI-ML-VM was then itself recognized by the Indian Election Commission in 1995, and has repeatedly participated in the electoral process since. However, the CPI-ML-VM’s willingness to participate in constitutional politics meant that the group was marginalized within the wider Naxalite movement, and it lost influence to actors like PWG. Presently, the group continues to exist as a minor political party.
Vinod Mishra served as the Secretary General of the CPI-ML-VM from 1976 until his death in 1998; Dipankar Bhattacharya then replaced him. It was under the leadership of Mishra that the group eventually consolidated itself as a unified, primarily political, actor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The group also had a central committee and a Politburo that formulated and executed the group’s policies and actions.
In 1981, an attempt was made to unite the various splinter groups of the original CPI-ML; however, this only led to a further polarization between the more Leninist-leaning CPI-ML-VM and the anarchist CPI-ML-People’s War faction (see PWG). Unlike the People’s War faction, the CPI-ML-VM also considered a democratic front as a viable strategy for change.
