1967 Conference
It should be mentioned that although the bulk of the leadership as well as the common members of the GMP were tribals, the GMP was not an exclusively tribal organization at this time (Biren Dutta, for example was a Bengali). After the end of the armed struggle, an intense debate surged within the CPI concerning the future role of the GMP. Some considered that the GMP, whose membership was overwhelmingly agrarian, should be integrated into the peasant mass organization of the party, AIKS, and that tribal and Bengali peasants should fight together since their class interests were the same. Other, such as Deb, considered that the tribals were not merely peasants but also constituted a separate sub-national entity and that the GMP should be a tribal organization articulating the sub-nationalist consciousness of the tribal community.
In the beginning of the 1960s CPI suffered a severe internal division. The party was split into two camps on issues such as the relationship to the Congress party and the Sino-Soviet polemic. In 1964 the split was a fact, as two separate party congresses were held, one by CPI and the other by Communist Party of India (Marxist). The split also came to divide the Tripura unit of the CPI, with the CPI(M) soon having outmanovered the CPI in Tripura. Initially both factions agreed that the GMP ought to stay intact and that it would be spared from the split for the sake of unity of the mass organization movement, but soon competition over control over the organization started. At the GMP conference of 1967 the split had also reached the GMP, ending in the victory for the CPI(M) and its leader within the GMP, Deb, who were able to gather the support of the broad majority of the organization. At the same conference the GMP was re-christened as the Upajati (i.e., Tribal) Ganamukti Parishad. Subsequently, non-tribals were no longer able to obtain GMP membership. Thus Deb’s thesis that tribals constituted as separate subnationalist entity and needed a mass organization of their own had been implemented in the organizational practice.
Following the 1967 conference CPI formed its own Ganamukti Parishad, led by Aghore Debbarma. It has not played any major political role since its foundation.
Read more about this topic: Ganamukti Parishad
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—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)