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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. He emigrated to Canada in the late 1950s to pursue his studies, and ultimately became a university professor.
In 1961, he founded the Internationalists, an anti-revisionist party that supported Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet split. This party 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. During his "revolutionary" period, Bains travelled the world establishing Marxist-Leninist, or more precisely Maoist, parties, 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.)
Bains' personal politics became the driving force behind the CPC-ML, its ideological trajectory following his own: in the 1960s and 1970s, he and the party were Maoist; in 1978, following Mao's 1976 death, Bains became a supporter of the views of Enver Hoxha (an admirer of Stalin) and the Albanian Party of Labour.
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, and If You Love Your Class; as well as many more articles, pamphlets and speeches.
Sandra L. Smith, his widow, is the current leader of the CPC-ML.
See also: Stalinism
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