Ek revolutionary ki mauth…

I took some time to write about Kanu Sanyal, one of the fathers of what is arguably the only genuine revolutionary insurrection in post-independence India. I took some time to write about his death not only because it was a suicide but also because writing about the death of a revolutionary means bringing in his life as well…

Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house, at the same place that saw the break of the Spring Thunder in 1967. The end seemed almost poetic, but then you need a Neruda for to make poetry. All that the old warrior had was a few columns in newspapers, one of whom actually described it his death as the “death of a top Naxal leader”, as if he was still in the neo-Naxalite movement…

In the end, all he had become was a blurry myth and a sad present, repudiated by those who carry his legacy and casually ignored by those who once feared him…the fate of all great men who did not die in the blaze of glory and whom history passed by in search of fresher and more photogenic heroes…

His death came a few days before the Naxalites massacred 76 CRPF jawans in an ambush, the biggest attack by them to date. The government and the Naxals have declared open war, in which for now, the government seems to be on the backfoot.

So, at a time that the Naxalites have become, officially, the biggest threat that this country has ever faced (J&K terrorism pales by comparison), with them having a presence in a quarter of the country, with their tentacles reaching out into urban centres as well, you would expect the symbol of the Naxalite movement to be satisfied. At least, the last thing you would expect him to do is to go hang himself…

But then you got to ask yourself – was he a Naxalite anymore? Maybe in his last moments he would have muttered to himself paraphrasing Marx who once famously said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”…maybe he was aware that no matter what he did, the media and the society would fail to spot the difference between what he believed in and what the Naxalites today believe in.

The Naxalism that arose from the simple need to fight for dignity slowly became a movement in which violence, not justice (which is an abstract term anyway) became the priority for maintaining momentum. It became a movement in which poor must remain poor in order for having a raison d'etre for the movement.

If an insurrection goes on for too long, it begins to look like what it intends to supplant. Maybe that's what Kanu Sanyal saw and realized.

When Naxals make pacts with dodgy politicians and when they start to blow up schools, when Naxals become the tipping factors in elections by way of fear, when they begin to claim glorious victory by killing CRPF men who have been pushed to be cannon fodder, maybe he realized that it was a war for its own means – a never ending war in which the people to be killed will be the ones whom he wanted to give a different life all those years ago…

Maybe the end came for him much before the noose tightened. Maybe at the end he had had enough of the power that flows out of the barrel of the gun…

Maybe its time to mourn him as we mourn those great visionaries who dreamt big and tried to live upto that dream, no matter how much the rug was pulled under them.

That takes courage…so does preparing a rope for yourself…

RIP Kanuda…

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Totalitarianism by any name is still…

Tehelka published a an interview that was taken with a Naxal commander from the forests of Bijapur…

It makes for chilling reading…

With anyone following the developments in Pakistan, the words spoken by the ‘commander’ seem to have a chilling reflection of the words spoken by the Taliban across the border – the same self-serving statements about representing the people and of a fight against a corrupt and immoral system without any scope of looking within themselves; the same confidence of final victory no matter what the cost; no scope of negotiation or compromise; and the constant harping on the ‘people’, as if the ‘people’ are one single homogenous constituent.

What was most fascinating was a lack of understanding of how an economy operates best. The solution for unemployment is not always local self-sufficiency. On the contrary. Either this is deliberate or stems from a lack of awareness, both of which makes them very dangerous…

Also the fact that democracy has no place in their ideology places makes them ideologically and practically Luddites. They still seem to believe in the ‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’. The collapse of communist police states and the transformation of China seems to have passed them by.

Reading through the interview, one gets the feeling that the Naxalite movement has developed a vested interest in keeping people poor and in distress so that the state of constant warfare remains – permanent power will continue to flow through their barrel.

Very Orwellian…but who said that Orwell did not draw from the world as he saw it…

What makes these thoughts of Naxalites very important is that these guerrillas control almost 20% of the country and are spreading their networks across India. For the poor, its a seductive ideology since they are empowered and their anger can be channelled through a gun. Its naturally a socio-economic problem that has been neglected by the political and economic elites all these years.

But as things stand now, even if the government wants to make changes, the Naxals will not allow them. The poor must remain poor in order for them to remain relevant.

Caught in the cross-fire as usual again are the very people these rebels are claiming to fight for. And all they get at the end of the day is a gun and some meaningless slogans…

 

 

 

But one thing is for certain – whether its a religious struggle or a  class struggle, the roads lead to the same thing – dreary totalitarianism, something that our comrade forgot.

 

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Our local Thermopylae…but did you notice?

On 14th April, a news piece came that told about an incident that should be told and retold as an example of why inspite of everything being stacked against us, India’s democracy still pulls through…

The first lines reported in the article, written by an obviously moved reporter, suffices as the best introduction to this soon to be forgotten heroic incident…

“ For 10 hours, a band of 22 CISF jawans battled more than 200 heavily armed Maoists, without backup or reinforcements, and saved the lives of 150 Nalco staff who were held hostage by the guerrillas in Orissa's Damanjodi since Sunday night.”

Read the rest of the article  (or here) here before reading further

A few reflections will bring out why remembering this is so important to us…

We don’t even know who or what CISF are. But then, even if it is replaced by CRPF, our awareness grows a notch but its still not something we can relate to. These men guard some of our most prized assets – infrastructure and their human capital yet they have never been proper security forces in our eyes. They are usually relegated to the status of mere guards. They do not have the dashing that has been marketed as the image of the armed forces.

We reserve all our adulations for the Indian army. They deserve all of it – they are one of the special reasons that this country still stands. But here I believe that this adulation on our part has a large part of self-interest as an ingredient. Because we feel that we are threatened more by what may come across the borders, we tend to put the ones who keep them at bay, on a pedestal.

Naxalism is a malaise that is eating away our innards. The alarm has been raised but we don't have seem to have ingested the danger enough. That is why we don't seem to appreciate the sacrifice made by the  men fighting the enemy inside the gates…

These men showed almost foolish showed bravery when they could have surrendered or run. They instead stayed and saved lives. This, when the insurgents were superior in arms and overwhelmingly so in numbers.

Because we cant relate our safety to the actions of these men, because their heroism seems remote to us – because of all this, we will soon forget what they did for us. Soon, their stories will be drowned in more newsworthy buzz – elections and IPL…(by elections i mean the circus, not the people who have been killed by the Maoists – they are similar unsung heroes)

But for the moment, let us realize that the much vaunted democracy that we boast around the world is not due to the politician on the dais but is due to poorly armed, outnumbered industrial guards defying terrorism in some forgotten corner of the country…

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