In February this year, the Central Committee of our Party had taken a historical initiative of organizing a Communist School to study the development of the communist movement in our country, where it stands today, and why 80 years after the founding of the Communist Party of India, revolution in our country is still marking time. The aim of the School was to equip party comrades with the ideas necessary to contribute effectively to the task of restoration of communist unity, by clearly understanding the strategy and tactics of the different parties in the Indian communist movement.

The Maharashtra Regional Committee of the CGPI used the material prepared by the CC to equip the comrades and supporters in the Region with a clear understanding of these vital issues by organizing a communist school in the region. The school was held on May 10 and 11, 2008. It coincided with the 151^st anniversary of the Great Ghadar of 1857, which continues to inspire generations of revolutionaries and patriots of our country and its neighbours.

The Regional Secretary welcomed the comrades and explained why it was so vital to study and equip ourselves with the wherewithal to defeat our enemies and build socialism in our land. She explained that the touchstone of a communist party is whether it is aiming to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the end of the School there would be exams, she declared. Not with paper, pen and marks, but exams that we face every day of our lives, when we go among the people, discuss with other communists, defend and implement the party line – when we have to think on our feet. Marxism-Leninism and the theory of the Indian Revolution that our Party is developing are the most important of all the sciences, because they have a bearing on the lives and well-being of all the people of our country.

The school included sessions on the various social systems from primitive to modern communism, and on the origin, history and line of various parties in the communist movement.

Many of the young comrades, who have lately come around the Party, were impressed with the treasury of knowledge and wisdom that has been gathered by the Party, and with the necessity of actively engaging in individual study and study circles.