Satyam became the leader of the CPI(M-L)-CM—for Charu Majumdar—in Warangal. Their slogan was “Come one, come all. Join the struggle in Srikakulam!”
As they waited for word from the West Bengal comrades, Satyam’s house was filled with feverish activity: writing propaganda, mimeographing leaflets, translating Mao. Satyam never tired, never longed for rest. He and his followers didn’t wait for Naxalbari to come to them. Warangal was their Naxalbari.
In the meantime, representatives of the Andhra people were traveling to Calcutta, the base of Satyam’s new party, to show support and seek direction. But they were not returning. The courier Dushyant was shot. Tejeswara Rao was arrested. All except Panchadi, who had managed to meet Charu Majumdar.
Two days later a courier informed Satyam that he, along with Seetharamayya and his eighteen-year-old son, Chandu, were invited to a secret meeting. Calcutta was too dangerous, so a meeting was being set up in Andhra. A top leader of Naxalbari was making the trip to talk to them. The identity of that top leader was withheld.
“We will send a courier to tell you the time and place.” They were to wait for instructions and in the meantime not leave Khazipet. So Seetharamayya left his old parents to fend off the murderous Telangana reddys by themselves and came to Khazipet to wait.
Satyam gathered his wife and children. “I am leaving you. You must go away. Go back to Krishna district. Go to your grandfather’s. I don’t know what you will do, but you must leave. My time has come.”
In marrying Satyam, Maniamma had counted herself lucky. When she saw the railway workers, teachers, and engineering and medical students coming to their house to talk with her husband, looking up to him, she was proud. She liked living amid all this important activity. Several of the students, Chandu among them, spent all their time at Satyam’s house. They ate there, slept there, and Maniamma looked after them. She thought, “This man, what happiness is he getting from his teacher job? All his happiness comes from his party work. Twenty-four hours a day, the same preoccupation.”
Poor Maniamma, a nearly illiterate girl from a remote speck of a village of half-naked untouchables, never thought that some people in this world were not satisfied to have decent, comfortable family lives. However much her husband had explained his ideas, his passions, to her, she had never expected this day would come. Poor Maniamma, how could she protest now? She had agreed to all his conditions before marrying him.
Now that armed struggle was around the corner, many people who previously couldn’t wait to join lost their nerve. The president of the Naxalbari Solidarity Committee, Dr. Venkateswara Rao, bought a ticket for America and left. Scores of others with wealthy parents followed him.
Karuna and her husband, Ramesh, who once couldn’t wait for the armed struggle to start, suddenly longed to get as far away from it as possible. They both went to work as doctors in a hospital in faraway Bastar.
“Array, what happened?”
“We are too sensitive. We cannot bear to watch our comrades killed by police.”
Karuna’s father, Seetharamayya, would be making the trip with them.
Satyam was not pleased. “What about the meeting?”
“I have to accompany my daughter. They cannot carry all the luggage themselves. They don’t know Hindi. They need my help.” Seetharamayya, upon getting the news of the secret meeting, had gone to Rajeswara Rao, the leader of the old revisionist party, and begged him to use his influence with Indira Gandhi to help his daughter and son-in-law get positions elsewhere.
Seetharamayya gave Satyam his Bastar address and told him to send a telegram as soon as he got the meeting details. “I will start right away.”
“How you will start right away? It is at least two days’ journey to Bastar.”
Seetharamayya departed, and as soon as he had gone, the courier from Srikakulam arrived. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.
Satyam told him they had to send a telegram to Seetharamayya.
“No telegrams. We want no trace.”
Caution was necessary. By then the Communist government in Calcutta had launched a full-scale attack on the Naxalites. The streets of the city were wet with the blood of young students, most of whom came from privileged and even aristocratic families. Their families’ social status could not save their lives.
“What is the agenda of the meeting?” Satyam asked.
Don’t ask.
Who is going to be at the meeting?
Don’t ask.
Where is the meeting?
Don’t ask.
When is the meeting?
Don’t ask.
Who are you?
Don’t ask.
They went.
The delegates were taken to a room. At exactly four o’clock, they were taken to another house. There they saw all the delegates from all the districts in the state who had been invited to the meeting along with Satyam. Panchadi and his wife, Nirmala, were there. So were Y. Koteswara Rao and others from Satyam’s old circle at Andhra University. Nineteen people in all.
After it fell dark, five cars arrived at the doorstep. Each car seated four passengers plus the driver. The drivers were all Naxalite supporters from Vijayawada.
Before they got in, someone came up to Satyam, limping with a stick, with smiles all over his handsome face. It was Satyam’s brother-in-arms, his bosom friend Rama Rao. He said in English, “Everything is set.”
This was the dream they had shared for fifteen years.
A man who looked to be a hundred years old joined the meeting. A man so frail he couldn’t breathe without effort. He was—could it be? It was none other than Comrade CM, as he was known in party circles: Charu Majumdar.
Satyam was delighted. “Array, Charu Saru himself!”
“Yes, it’s him you’re meeting,” Rama Rao confirmed, unable to conceal his pride.
CM, a Bengali, didn’t speak Telugu. He said the word hello to everyone in English.
The delegates all got into the cars and drove a long, long way into Guntur district. Five cars going one after the other in the middle of the night at high speed. Anyone who caught sight of them would wonder what was going on.
Sometime after daybreak, the drivers stopped at the side of the road. From there the delegates would have to continue on foot.
Panchadi lifted CM up and carried the old man on his shoulders. The summer sun was strong. Panchadi had a big towel that he used every so often to wipe himself and the older comrade. Each time he wrung it out, large quantities of sweat poured out. But he wouldn’t let anyone else carry Comrade CM. Panchadi could not trust anyone but himself to ensure the old man’s safety.
“Array, how can you carry him so far? You’ll get exhausted.”
“Once you want to do revolution, how can carrying our leader be a burden?”
They all laughed.
They walked until they came to a hill. Steps led up to a bilam, a natural passage in the rock. Inside the bilam was a pool fed by a little stream where they bathed and refreshed themselves. They saw a temple in front of them.
A month ago an important man from the neighboring village (a supporter of the Naxalites) informed the priest of this temple that the fame of the bilam had suddenly grown and spread far and wide. He knew of a party of several devotees from different states who were planning to visit it soon. “They want to come and worship and stay several days, cooking and sleeping and talking among themselves inside the bilam.”
The priest was so happy. It had been a long time since his neglected temple had attracted visitors from such faraway places.
The delegates approached the sanctuary bearing coconuts as offerings to the god. To make the delegates look like genuine devotees, six had been told to bring their wives. A large group of single men descending on a temple would raise eyebrows. They broke their coconuts in front of the image of the god and then sat down to start the meeting.
First, Comrade CM gave a report on the struggle in Bengal. Then Satyam reported on the RCP faction fi
ght in Warangal. They discussed their plans for the future struggle in Srikakulam and the rest of the state. They elected a state committee.
All of this was accomplished in three days. With CM in poor health, they couldn’t take any more time. CM spoke little. In four words he would reveal a great truth. They all listened to him keenly and never questioned him. They had no experience of revolution and wanted to learn. This man had led the Naxalbari uprising two and half years earlier. Whatever he spoke, it was a word from the scriptures.
At the meeting it was unanimously decided to launch the Srikakulam armed struggle immediately. They all vowed to support the revolt by any means necessary.
Panchadi was elected secretary of the Srikakulam Struggle Committee. He argued that every single supporter from every village, town, and city should move at once to Srikakulam.
Satyam disagreed. “We have to initiate struggle in every district. That way we spread the enemy thin. We must make the army run here and there madly in every direction. Haven’t we all read this in books on strategy?”
Satyam’s argument was approved. A resolution was passed to inaugurate the armed struggle by simultaneously taking an action against one or two landlords—robbing them of money or arms or burning the debt papers that kept the peasants at their mercy—in every district in the state of Andhra.
They discussed whether to grant membership to Seetharamayya. One after another delegate spoke out in opposition. Seetharamayya’s son Chandu was the most vehement. “No, sir, my father is not a trustworthy man. He says one thing and does something else. He betrayed our family. We cannot have in our party a man who lies.” Chandu became emotional, shed tears. Others also said, “Communists of all kinds have rejected him. There is no reason for us to take him now.”
CM was bewildered. “Who is this man?”
“He couldn’t make it to the meeting.”
Satyam alone insisted, “We must have Seetharamayya. He is the only one among us with Telangana experience. Without him, we will be lost.”
Chandu shouted, “He is a liar!” That Chandu’s father had lied to the party before he was expelled about his relations with Anasooyamma was well known.
Satyam tried to calm Chandu. “Yes, he lied and that was wrong, but the fact is we need him. All our rivals are now setting up camps in the forests, organizing men, training them, collecting funds, getting ready to launch their own actions. They all have experience as guerrillas. Which of us has that? Only Seetharamayya. Only he can lead our struggle. I can’t do it, you can’t do it. You must understand the situation. We don’t even know what it is to live underground. What do people living underground even look like? Should we wear false mustaches, false beards? Wear a wig? A turban? These very fundamental things we don’t know. In any case, he repents his mistakes, he is begging us to give him a chance to serve the people.”
Chandu refused to give way. “You tell me one thousand things, but I’m not convinced. He ruined my family, he is going to ruin the party.”
As moralistic as Satyam could be, in this case he felt the others had no decency or culture for condemning Seetharamayya over personal matters. “Anasooyamma and Seetharamayya have been together like wife and husband for ten years. Koteswaramma has settled as a single woman. She is no longer complaining. Why bring it up now?”
Panchadi began to see Satyam’s argument. To Panchadi, all that mattered was Srikakulam. To defend Srikakulam, they needed to create unrest in Telangana. To create unrest in Telangana, they would need a man like Seetharamayya.
CM resolved the whole debate quite simply, speaking in English in his drawling manner: “Yesss. The real problem eees, the revisionist leaders, CPI, CPI(M), RCP, expelled Seetharamayya from their parties. And we revolutionaries invite him. Fineeesh.”
After the meeting, Panchadi again carried CM on his shoulders for the return trip. The older comrade was only fifty-one, but he was shockingly thin and in poor health.
By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, the one who was carried also needed to rest. CM went off a little way alone to stand in the shade of a tree. Satyam thought, “He must be communicating with the Chinese party by some invisible wireless device to inform them that the meeting was a success.” Satyam cautioned the others, “The man will be away for a bit. Don’t disturb him.”
They all shared these exaggerated impressions. They surmised that this man was acting under the very guidance of Chairman Mao and according to his plan. That behind Charu Majumdar there was a huge machine. And that this movement they were forming would enjoy unlimited political, material, and military support. “We may not have anything now, but wait four days, we’ll get everything.”
*
FULL OF NERVOUS ENERGY, SATYAM returned to Khazipet. As he climbed off the train, he saw the familiar faces of his friends and supporters among the railway workers and others who worked there. One of them, a tea vendor, waved and called out, “Hey, saar, come get your chai!”
“How are you, brother? How is the family?”
“Saar, we don’t see you these days anymore,” complained the tea vendor.
As Satyam reached for the cup, a dozen police fell on him and dragged him away.
Satyam’s revolutionary future was cut short before it had even begun. For the resolutions passed in the cave he could be charged with sedition and hanged. Shackled to the wire grill inside a police van, he was transported to the Central Jail in Warangal.
The police in Warangal had finally figured out that the invisible hand behind the Separate Telangana Agitation in Warangal was one K. G. Satyamurthy, a teacher at St. Gabriel. Their informer, the vendor, fingered him getting off a train at Khazipet station.
When Satyam found he was being booked for leading the Telangana agitation and not for his part in a conspiracy to violently overthrow the state, he let out a sigh of immense relief.
Those who had been jailed for the Telangana agitation were called détenus; they were not ordinary prisoners, they were political prisoners. It was prestigious because the agitation had been called for by a Congress leader, a member of the Legislative Assembly.
In jail, Satyam was surprised to see the luxury in which the détenus were living. They were given a 150-rupee allowance per day. Since they had to spend it or lose it, they bought cigarettes, snacks, sweets, fruits, ice cream. Each of them was given expensive bedding, mosquito nets, and bathroom sandals.
The leaders welcomed Satyam. “So you were the one behind the agitation!”
A few weeks later, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ordered the release of the Telangana détenus. Each détenu was given a certificate saying, “It is hereby certified that so-and-so is a political sufferer,” which could be profitable in the future. They were allowed to take with them the expensive things given to them in jail. Satyam refused both the certificate and the luxury items.
People thronged to greet the leaders outside the jail. Satyam had to attend to the business of Srikakulam upon his release. He had already sent instructions to Carey, who arrived on a motorcycle. Satyam hopped on behind him.
Satyam knew the police had been watching him in prison. They could see he was not like the other détenus. He was the only Andhra, the only one who wasn’t a member of the Congress Party, who didn’t hold political office or have a criminal record in Warangal. He knew the police would try to follow him to see where he would go, who he would meet, and what he would do.
Avoiding the main streets, weaving through the narrow back lanes, the motorcycle arrived at the less-used entrance of Warangal railway station. Carey’s wife, Premalatha, stepped out of a dark corner and handed Satyam a ticket to Vizag and some cash.
Carey and Premalatha did everything exactly as instructed. Satyam slipped into the station. The platform was crowded with people pushing each other to squeeze onto the train. Police were everywhere. He got on the train. But inside the train, too, he saw them walking up and down, pushing people aside, looking for him. He got out and waited.
When th
e train stirred, he jumped into a bogie and immediately jumped out on the other side. A freight train was on the adjacent track. He walked quickly toward it. The motorman, who admired Satyam, saw him through the corner of his eye. With his sight still trained directly in front of him, he slowed the train. Satyam jumped on and the train picked up speed.
That would always be the way the man who could not run escaped. Satyam, born with high-arched feet, was never able to run. Not at the age of eleven when the golla boy chased him through the buffalo-grazing fields for wearing knickers instead of a loincloth, and not now.
*
SATYAM ARRIVED IN VIZAG JUST in time to attend the meeting at which the decision to launch the armed revolt was taken. A resolution was passed that comrades in each district should carry out an action to loot the class enemy and expropriate funds for use in the struggle. A date was set for a status meeting where each section was to report on the results of its action. Later in the evening a public meeting was held. Ten thousand people attended, mainly tribals organized by Panchadi and his friends in Srikakulam.
Immediately after, Satyam rushed back to Khazipet, where Seetharamayya was waiting, upset that he hadn’t been informed of the meeting. “Why did I have to find out about it from the papers?”
Satyam and Seetharamayya organized a squad to carry out their action. Youth from the villages surrounding Warangal and Jangaon joined along with mill workers and railway workers and a couple of engineering students.
Unfortunately, the squad hadn’t managed to launch the action by the time Satyam had to set off for the status meeting. Seetharamayya said he would stay behind with the squad and make sure the action was accomplished before the end of the meeting, which was scheduled to go on for three days. “You go ahead and we will send you a telegram when the job is done.”
On the third day of the meeting, Satyam was still waiting anxiously for news. The Srikakulam cadre were not pleased. “What is this, comrades? How can we make a revolution like this?”
Ants Among Elephants Page 28
