The Birth of the New Man – Charu Majumdar
We hereby share the text from Charu Majumdar found in Chhatrafauj.
Dear Comrade,
I had your letter. Comrades Gurudas, Shashi and Sudeb were your fellow workers. It is not possible for me to feel the anguish that you must be feeling. Comrade, the path of revolution is, indeed, crimson with the blood of martyrs. Price has to be paid for the liberation of the people. Every attack on us is painful and this pain gives rise to the strong resolve to make greater sacrifices and to the most intense hatred for the enemy. When those two are wedded to Mao Tse-tung Thought, the new man is born. The oppressed people of India, crores of poor and landless peasants of our country, are looking forward to the birth of the new man. When the poor and landless peasantry will beget the new man, the people of India will then wipe off all their tears and break into laughter. What a flood of life will then sweep through the whole of India! Our country will blaze up like a bright star and illumine the entire world. It is through the self-sacrifice of countless men that the India of our dreams will become real. Each such death is heavier than a mountain, for they grew up much greater than what we are. That is why their deaths will create innumerable lives. That is why the dust of this road has to be washed with tears and the road made firm with blood.
Did we commit any mistake? Who can say that no mistake will be committed? But this is not the day of repentance, this is the day when one should blaze up like a flame of fire, this is the day when the blood debt should be repaid in blood. For thousands of years the poor and landless peasants of our country have shed their blood and sacrificed their lives to build up this country: it is through their sacrifice that our society, culture, wealth, riches, tradition – all these have been built up. The burden of that debt rests on our shoulders. It is our task to repay that debt. But we must correct the mistakes, if we have committed any. Without correcting them we shall be unable to sharpen the edge of our attack. It seems to me that our mistake there arises from the old political deviation, that is, the division between the tribals and non-tribals. The class enemies could unite only by exploiting that advantage. If they hadn’t this advan-tage, each of them would have been busy saving his own skin and they would never come forward to help one another.
Out of every martyrdom arises new life. I shall live to hear the wonderful news of the rich harvest of new life the martyrdom of these three heroes will yield.
July 6, 1970
