22 SOCIAL SCIENTIST there are many groups and factions in the movement, a large number of Naxalites, despite maintaining a broad sympathetic attitude towards the movement, are opposed to joining one group or another. In fact the dominant trend among the Naxalites is opposed to the hasty formation of a highly centralised party organization without first engaging in full and open discussions on various^ ideological and organizational issues among them. Some would even argue that groupism and factionalism is inevitable* in this particular phase in the history of their movement. The classification of various factions into some broad groupings is not easy, given the shifts in political position, movement of individuals from one group to another, mergers and splits—all of which have dogged the movement almost from the very first day of its existence. Broadly speaking, a minority of the groups still adhere to the preaching of Mazumdar, while the great majority of them are opposed to it. The pro-CM Naxalites are again divided into the following three groups: pro-Lin Piao, the group led by Mahadev Mukherjee and supported among others by a body called North Bengal-Bihar regional committee oftheGPI(ML); anti-Lin Piao, the group which is now conducting a mini-revolt in Bhojpur district in Bihar; and the COC(ML) group led by Suniti Kumar Ghosh, and Appalasuri, which has a large following among the Naxalites of Srikakulam. The largest anti-GM group is of-course the one led by Satyanarayan Singh, which is called by the name of its parent body CPI(ML), and in this postscript we have provided a good deal of detail about its position on a wide range of issues. The second largest is perhaps the UCGRI(ML), the Andhra-based group, popularly known as the Nagi Reddy group, which was the first to defect from Mazumdar's organization, which never joined the GPI(ML), and which now seems to feel with a great deal of justification, that its ideological stand against Mazumdar has been vindicated by the history of the movement. This group is now led by D Venkateswara Rao, a leading figure of the ^Telengana uprising* of 1946-51. A long way behind these two is the Unity Committee led by Khokan Mazumdar, a Naxalite from North Bengal who was closely associated with Gharu Mazumdar, and Kaushik Banerjee, about whom very little is known. Many other groups—Maoist Communist Centre, and GPIML (Bolshevik) among them—exist, most of which are centered around one or two prominent individuals. And a point we made earlier, a vast number of Naxalites do not belong to any of these groups, despite their sympathy for the movement. Although several attempts have been made in the past to unite the Naxalites, and several committees to unify, coordinate or consult were formed, none of these could be sustained for long; and the ^dialogue' among them, while beginning in the friendliest of spirit soon degenerated into mutual accusations of ^revisionism', ^trotskyism', ^opportunism', and so on. Debates on ideological and political issues have often become very subjective — based on the assessment of the