Of the many proletarian revolutionaries who have laid down their lives to
fuel the fire of people's war raging in the Himalayas for the past one year,
Com. Tirtha Gautam perhaps stands the tallest as an outstanding proletarian
revolutionary and a heroic guerrilla fighter. Not only because he is the
highest-ranking Party leader to have attained martyrdom in the process so
far, but because of his qualities as a genuine Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
revolutionary and his rare sense of courage and sacrifice. He met the envious
death of a great hero while valiantly commanding the people's guerrilla fighters
during the first successful raid of a police outpost after the historic
initiation of the people's war at Bethan (Ramechhap) on January 3, 1997.
Determined to prove it is people or the human factor that is decisive in
war and not the weapons, he commanded the guerrilla squads equipped with
low-tech weapons but with high revolutionary morale to mount a daring attack
on the enemy with high-tech weapons but a low morale and he proved the Maoist
military theory correct on that historic day but at the cost of his own life.
Through his heroic death he not only inspired the guerrilla fighters to win
the battle on that day but helped to raise the people's war in the country
to a new height.
Com. Tirtha Gautam was member of one of the Sub-Regional Bureaus to the C.P.N.
(Maoist) in the Eastern Region, Secretary of Kavre-Ramechhap District Organising
Committee and the Military Commander of the same district. Barely in his
thirties he had more than a decade of revolutionary communist life and was
a full-time Party functionary since the last seven years. His high
ideological-political level was reflected in his constant siding with the
revolutionary faction during long years of inner-struggle with the Right
liquidationist opportunists in the Party. Similarly, he either led or was
associated with ail the leading guerrilla actions in the Sub-Region since
the time of preparation and initiation of the people's war. Born in a
lower-middle class peasant family at Chauri village in Kavre district in
eastern Nepal he worked as a school teacher before assuming the role of a
full-time revolutionary.
Immortal martyr Com. Tirtha Gautam is a beacon to all proletarian revolutionaries in Nepal and elsewhere. The Party is proud of the great hero and pays special red salute and revolutionary homage to this outstanding Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary!