Historic Eight Documents

The Historic Eight Documents are a set of eight monographs authored by the Indian Maoist revolutionary Charu Majumdar that outline the ideological principles on which the Naxalite militant communist movement in India was based.^[1][2] They laid down the idea that the Indian State was a bourgeois institution and that the main Indian communist parties had embraced revisionism by agreeing to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India.^[2] They urged a Maoist protracted people's war to overthrow the Indian State.^[3] They denounced the Soviet Union both for being revisionist, as well as for supporting the Indian State.^[2]

Composition

• 28 January 1965 (1st document) - Our Tasks in the Present Situation
• 1965 (2nd document) - Make the People's Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against Revisionism
• 9 April 1965 (3rd document) - What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India?
• 1965 (4th document) - Carry on the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism
• 1965 (5th document) - What Possibility The Year 1965 is Indicating?
• 8 December 1966 (6th document) - The Main Task Today is the Struggle to Build Up the True Revolutionary Party Through Uncompromising Struggle Against Revisionism
• 1966 (7th document) - Take this Opportunity to Build armed partisan struggle by fighting against revisionism
• April 1967 (8th document) - Carry Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism

Impact and commentary

Both communist and non-communist sources describe these monographs as a significant inspiring factor for the Naxalbari uprising in 1967.^[4][5]

See also

• Naxalite
• Parliamentary cretinism