The Ceylonese Ambassador to China reported to his government a conversation he had with Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai concerning the rebellion. He stated that “the Chinese Prime Minister was highly worried and concerned about the developments in Ceylon, especially with regard to suspicions that Chinese arms were being smuggled in.”
The Ambassador added, “The Chinese Prime Minister had also said that the Ché Guevara movement was a new movement which China disapproved of. He had described it as a counter-revolutionary movement aimed at deceiving the masses and disrupting the Government. China, he said, disapproved of the theories of Ché Guevara.”[658]
About a year after the JVP revolt, the pro-Chinese party in Ceylon suffered a severe split. While Sanmugathasan was out of the country, Watson Fernando, Secretary-General of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, called a meeting of some members of the party’s Central Committee, which declared Sanmugathasan expelled from the party. However, on his return home in September 1972, Sanmugathasan summoned the party’s Politburo, which proceeded to expel Fernando and two of his followers.
The two resulting parties took the names Communist Party of Sri Lanka (Marxist-Leninist) or CPSL(M-L), for the Fernando group and Ceylon Communist Party (CCP), for the Sanmugathasan-led organization. The latter maintained control of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation, which expelled from its ranks the Ceylon Plantation Workers’ Union and the Ceylon Harbor Socialist Workers’ Union, which were controlled by the Fernando forces.
At least one point at issue in this split was the attitude that should be assumed toward the United Front government of Mrs. Bandaranaike. The CPSL(M-L) expressed its willingness to support “progressive” actions of the regime, while the CCP remained unalterably opposed to Mrs. Bandaranaike’s administration and concentrated much of its attention on campaigns for freeing those people who were still in jail as the result of failure of the 1971 insurrection.[659]
Both Maoist groups sought the endorsement of the Chinese, and sent messages to the Chinese party on the occasion of its 10th Congress.[660] Both parties also sent messages of condolence following the death of Mao Tse-tung.[661] Apparently the CPSL(M-L) supported the successors of Mao. Thus, in 1978, it expressed praise for Chairman Hua Kuo-feng’s trip to Europe and called on the Vietnamese government to “cease its hostilities against China and invasion of Kampuchea.” In 1980, it condemned Soviet “aggression” against Afghanistan, which it said was “part of the USSR’s ‘goal of global hegemonism.’”[662]
In contrast, the Communist Party of Ceylon, which in 1991 became the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist), took a lead in rallying the orthodox Maoists and supporters of the Gang of Four, and in denouncing the post-Mao regime in China. On the occasion of the death of Nagalingam Sanmugathasan in February 1993, the Central Organizing Committee of the party said that he “played an important role in exposing Chinese revisionism, along with that of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labor. He played a vital role in rallying and uniting the genuine Maoist parties and organizations of the world in order to accomplish the decisive task of rebuilding the International Communist movement based on the defence and application of Marxism-LeninismMaoism.”[663] The party was a founding member of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.[664]
Maoism in Egypt
The original Communist Party of Egypt went out of existence in 1924. When the movement revived, it was divided into several rival factions.[665] After World War II, efforts were made to unite the three factions that then existed. However, it was not until 1957 that the merger of two of the three groups—the Egyptian Communist Party (ECP) and the Egyptian Unified Communist Party (EUCP)—took place. That united group provided “loyal opposition” to the regime of,m President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Not included in the unification was the Egyptian Communist Party of Workers and Peasants, also known as the Tali’a Leading figures in that group played significant roles in the Nasser regime in the 1950s.[666]
In 1964 and 1965, the two existing Communist factions dissolved to join the ranks of Nasser’s Arab Socialist Union. A U.S. State Department source reported in 1968 that “There appears to have been some opposition to dissolution on the part of the smaller Communist fragments.”[667]
Tariq Y. Ismael and Rifa El-Said wrote concerning those who objected to the liquidation of the Egyptian Communist groups into Nasser’s party: “Al Tayyar al Thawri was composed of a group of old-guard communists who had rejected dissolution of the party. … They believe that because of the special influence of Mohammed Abbas Fahmi and Tahir al Badri, a commitment to Stalinism was clear. This was manifested in the rejection of the ‘Moderate’ Soviet positions such as détente, the Cuban missile crisis of 1961 [sic] and the Soviet position vis-à-vis Nasser and the Palestinian issue. They criticized Soviet theories regarding states of the Third World, the noncapitalist road to development, and the new democracies. Their strongest criticism was directed at the position taken by international communism in general, the Arab communists, and particularly toward the Palestinian issue and Israel. They also condemned the moderate position of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They expressed complete support for the Chinese position both theoretically and practically.”[668]
The Al-Tayyar group soon split into three factions, the most important of which continued to use the group’s name and to be led by Mohammed Abbas Fahmi and Tahir al-Badri. After Nasser’s death, “a new Al Tayyar group began to emerge whose basic ideology was that Egyptian communists are tools in the hands of the Soviets. Soviet policies are reformist and reject the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was a grave mistake to support the reforms of Nasser, his nationalizations, and even his anti-imperialist positions because they were only band-aid solutions to reform the capitalist society and prolong its life.”
However, in spite of these apparently militant beliefs, the Al-Tayyar group strongly supported the regime of Anwar el-Sadat “because of the belief that he was building a democratic society in which revolutionary forces could function… and because he opposed Nasser and the Soviet Union.” However, “confusion over its ideological position caused the membership to decline radically.”
The group continued its decline, particularly after the Camp David accords between Egypt and the Israel. One of its two principal leaders, Mohammed Abbas Fahmi, died, and Tahir al-Badri became the principal figure in Al-Tayyar. After the death of Sadat, the group supported President Hosni Mubarak and was able to put out a legal publication.[669] It apparently never developed any close association with the Chinese party or government.
Indian Maoism
In India the Sino-Soviet split resulted in the emergence of three different parties in the 1960s. The traditional Communist Party of India (CPI) remained loyal to Moscow. In 1964, a dissident group broke away to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), which, after toying with alignment with the Chinese, ended up “independent” of both Moscow and Peking. As a consequence, in the later 1960s, various groups broke away from the CPM; some of them joined to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPML), and all of them pledged their loyalty to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.
659
Mukund G. Untawale, in
662
Barbara Reid, in
665
Walter Z. Laqueur, “The Left Wing in Egypt,”
667
668
Tariq Ismael and Rifa El-Said,