Hardial Bains

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Hardial Bains (August 15, 1939 – August 24, 1997) was the founder and leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) until his death.

Born in India into a communist family in the Punjab, Bains became a member of the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He was dismayed by the revisionism of Nikita Khrushchev following the death of Stalin, and he broke with the CPI when it supported Khrushchev's criticisms of Stalin.

In 1961, he founded the Internationalists, an anti-revisionist organisation that supported Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China in the Sino-Soviet split. This organisation (in Canada) ultimately became the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) (CPC-ML), of which Bains was the founding leader.

Bains was a leader of the anti-revisionist movement internationally, and assisted in establishing Marxist-Leninist parties around the world, such as the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist), and the Communist Ghadar Party of India. Bains was also responsible for the founding of the Hindustani Ghadar Party (Organisation of Indian Marxist-Leninists Abroad). He held a leading influence in the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA in the 1970s. (This party was dissolved in 1993.)

Many of these parties originally held a "Maoist" position in the 1960s and 1970s, and Bains was often identified as a Maoist. More precisely, they were Marxist-Leninist, and held that "Mao Zedong Thought" was a development of Marxist-Leninist theory.

However, following Mao's death in 1976, they would later reject Mao Zedong Thought, particularly through the experience of the Sino-Albanian split. Following the leadership of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labour, Bains' anti-revisionism deepened in the sense of opposition both to the European revisionism (Khruschev, Tito and Eurocommunism) and to the Chinese revisionism.

A memorial was erected in the honour of Bains and other CPC-ML "fallen comrades" in Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery.

Bains wrote several books, including Necessity for Change!, Modern Communism, Visiting Cuba, If You Love Your Class and Thinking About the Sixties, as well as many more articles, pamphlets and speeches.

Sandra L. Smith, his widow, is the current leader of the CPC-ML.