.The prevalence of the Indian Communist Party came as a surprise; Keep The Red Flag Flying Here blaring from any available loudspeaker; hammer and sickle on many a surface, even in the trees.
In Alappuzha I'd come across a canal-side, make-shift Communist Party recruitment centre and asked the officials on duty (ie. asleep) what they believed in, Marxism or Maoism? But neither spoke English and I later found out that in 2004 the two competing strains of communist ideology amalgamated into an all-encompassing Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine. It's an active movement and sporadic violent incidents have led the State Armed Police Force to deploy 200,000 personnel in counter-Maoism operations along the Red corridor: a long, wide strip of land, running from India's northern border with Nepal down to Tamil Nadu on India's southern tip, an area home to the poorest parts of the country where the Communists receive a lot of support.
Today it has a membership of 1,065,406 but at the last general election the party discovered that it shares the same opinions with only 2% of the Indian electorate. Pitiful, but they keep on banging the drum and flying the red flag in a valiant attempt to turn people away from money-worship and greed. Good luck with that comrade Vinod!
In Alappuzha I'd come across a canal-side, make-shift Communist Party recruitment centre and asked the officials on duty (ie. asleep) what they believed in, Marxism or Maoism? But neither spoke English and I later found out that in 2004 the two competing strains of communist ideology amalgamated into an all-encompassing Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine. It's an active movement and sporadic violent incidents have led the State Armed Police Force to deploy 200,000 personnel in counter-Maoism operations along the Red corridor: a long, wide strip of land, running from India's northern border with Nepal down to Tamil Nadu on India's southern tip, an area home to the poorest parts of the country where the Communists receive a lot of support.
Today it has a membership of 1,065,406 but at the last general election the party discovered that it shares the same opinions with only 2% of the Indian electorate. Pitiful, but they keep on banging the drum and flying the red flag in a valiant attempt to turn people away from money-worship and greed. Good luck with that comrade Vinod!