But things went a little haywire. The group that was supposed to join them didn't turn up. As they waited, one of Rao's workers happened to spot them. Another senior Maoist leader who was a part of that group remembers how the young comrade frog-jumped at the worker and prevented him from raising an alarm. But by then the other workers had seen them as well. In haste, the men exploded the bomb they were carrying at the entrance and fled from there.
Though the bomb did not kill anyone on the spot, Pithambar Rao died a few days later. Of a heart attack
But the group was not yet done. It returned a few months later, this time well prepared. The group had acquired a muzzle-loading gun as well. On the evening of 7 November, the group, disguised as shepherds, pretended to be drunk and initiated a fake brawl among themselves. As the onlookers gathered, one of them shouted: 'Let us go to the Zamindar!'
At the main gate of Rao's mansion they spotted Rao's two sons. Both of them were killed at once along with a police constable. Besides them, a couple of workers and the son of the village head were also killed. The group then left and went to a nearby village where one of Rao's clerks known for his inhuman attitude towards the poor lived. He was found at his house and his throat was slit. The group then raided the house of another landlord and burnt down all the land deal agreements he had with the villagers. Then they went looking for another of Rao's workers who had also played a role in Kishta Goud's arrest. He was fired at but he managed to flee. Later, he surrendered in front of the party leaders and apologised.
This incident is known in the history of the Maoist movement as the Tappalpur raid and it led to the exodus of scores of landlords from Adilabad, Karimnagar and other neighbouring districts. The poor had risen and the Maoists were now leading them.
The young comrade who frog-jumped at Rao's worker that September night in Tappalpur was Nalla Adi Reddy, more popularly known as Comrade Shyam. He was later killed on 2 December 1999 in Bangalore with two other senior Maoist leaders, Santosh Reddy alias Mahesh and Seelam Naresh alias Murali. Their local guide in Bangalore who had offered them shelter had connived with the police to drug them, after which they were killed. The bespectacled comrade who accompanied the group in Tappalpur was also a Velama, Mupalla Laxman Rao, the man we know now as Ganapathi—the supreme commander of the CPI (Maoist).
The situation in the neighbouring Karimnagar district was no different. There was rampant exploitation of the landless poor and in the feudal set-up formed by the landlords, they suffered a lot. But after the student rebels under the 'Go to the Village' campaign began visiting these areas, they brought with them political awareness. People who were not even allowed to wear slippers in front of the landlords were getting organised under the Maoist leadership.
The first shock to the feudal landlords was administered by a Dalit labourer, Lakshmi Rajam. In Andhra, around the time of Dussehra, it was a ritual that a play called Dakamma be performed in the area where the landlords lived. In the village the segregation was complete. Wealthy Velama landlords stayed in the village while the Dalits stayed around the periphery so that they would have no contact with the landlords most of the time. Buoyed by the stories of revolution, Rajam organised this play in the Dalit area in 1977. It was around this time that the Dalits and other landless people began to assert themselves and took over tracts of government land either illegally occupied by the landlords or just left unexploited. The first Dalit to occupy such land was a man called Poshetty. Both Lakshmi Rajam and Poshetty were killed by the angry landlords.
But by then it was too late. By June 1978, the heat had become unbearable for the landlords. The student rebels had sowed a seed of rebellion among the peasants. The Maoist leadership decided to concentrate on the wage issues of agricultural labourers, the abolition of free labour which the landlords forced the Dalits to do, and taking possession of land. Agricultural labourers called various strikes.
There was a sea of landless poor who now wanted a share of the land. All these people, interestingly, made applications addressed to one Mukku Subba Reddy, the secretary of the CPI (ML) saying that they had occupied such and such an area of land and that a patta be issued to them. A senior Maoist rebel, who is now a Central Committee member of the CPI (Maoist) recalls7 how one of the comrades in-charge, Sai Prabhakar got two full gunny bags of such applications.
On 7 September 1978, over one lakh agricultural labourers and other poor people from 150 villages took out a march to Jagtial town. Hidden in their houses, the landlords watched this development. By the next day a number of them were so shaken by this spectacle that they fled to the cities. The same day, the district collector of the area issued a letter which said that land reforms in Karimnagar should be implemented on a war footing.
Due to the Jagtial march, a rare phenomenon took place, perhaps the only one of its kind till now in the history of India. The poor working class decided to socially boycott those landlords who would not surrender the land they illegally occupied. So for such landlords, washermen, barbers, cattle feeders and domestic servants refused to lend their services. This was the social boycott of the poor in reverse. The same boycott was later extended to the policemen who camped in the area to aid the rich landlords. The boycott was a huge success. Excepting six landlords, everyone else fell in line.
Some of the landlords later retaliated with the help of the police. Village after village was raided by a joint force of police and goons of the landlords. Mass beating and torture took place. In Jagtial taluka alone, 4,000 villagers are said to have been implicated in false cases. Some of them were jailed and many brutally tortured. By end October 1978, Jagtial was declared a disturbed area.
But the men who led and supervised the Jagtial march were a contented lot. The shackles had been broken. That evening in Jagtial, as the poor masses took to the streets, two men would look into each other's eyes and then hug each other. One of them was Ganapathi and the other his friend who would later become his trusted lieutenant: Mallojula Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji.
By 1979, the party had a substantial number of both 'overground' and underground cadres. The latter carried out a number of operations, mainly killing landlords in the North Telangana area. Also, by this time the members of RSU and RYL had begun working among thousands of coal miners in the area. In a very short time they were able to radicalise the miners who were frustrated by hardships. The management was forced to accept some of the miners' demands.
But KS, as Seetharamaiah had come to be known, was still not happy with the shape the movement was taking. In 1979, KS declared that the Maoist movement had not yet taken the shape of armed struggle. He said that all this while the party had only been carrying out isolated squad actions which could not be termed as 'armed struggle'. Many party members were disheartened and took it as a signal to end all such actions. Some quipped sarcastically that KS wanted Kondapalli toys (wooden toys made in that area) to fight war.
The same year, KS made a historical amendment in Charu Mazumdar's policy of class annihilation. He was speaking on the death of Chinnalu, a former mess worker of the Kakati Medical College. Inspired by the students to whom he served food, Chinnalu had left his job and joined the RYL, rising to become a very popular leader in Warangal district. He was murdered by CPM goons and a breakaway faction of the Maoists who thought KS had broken away from the line of armed struggle. Varavara Rao remembers8 that speech very well: 'He (KS) said that we will avenge Chinnalu's death but that does not mean that we will kill those who killed him. He said unlike Charu Mazumdar's line we will not go looking for the class enemy, annihilate him, and then organise. We will organise and if the class enemy comes in our way, then we will annihilate him. He gave the example of a farmer. A farmer, he said, while working to prepare a field for harvest removes the thorny bushes, ploughs the land. If a harmless snake comes his way, he will just throw it away. And if it is a poisonous snake, then he will kill it.'
It was a statement that seemed like a contradiction of what the CPI (Maois
t) is doing currently by, say, attacking a group of CRPF personnel. 'If they [the CRPF] are in Chhattisgarh, that means they are there for obstructing our work. Otherwise what work do they have in the jungle?' counters a senior Maoist leader.
In a recent interview with me in November 2010, Maoist supreme commander Ganapathi addressed this issue. He said: 'Only when the government forces come to attack us carrying guns do we attack them in self-defence. Our repeated appeal to the lower-level personnel in the police and paramilitary forces is—please do not betray your own class, don't serve the exploiting class, don't attack the people and revolutionaries on your own, consciously, in a revengeful manner, join hands with the masses and turn your guns against the real enemies and not on your brothers and sisters. What you are doing is not service to the people but service to the exploiting classes. So stop serving the exploiting classes like slaves. Don't just think of your livelihood, please think about people, think about the country.'
Ganapathi's remarks apart, it is a fact that in many Maoist-affected areas, the security forces are a demoralised lot. But still, operations are on against Maoists in the entire Red zone. The state forces hit Maoists wherever they can, and the Maoists hit back whenever they get a chance. It is a bloody war out there.
7Interview to the author in Dandakaranya.
8Interview to the author.
IV
HELLO, BASTAR
A strong base of operations must always be preserved and continuously strengthened during the course of the war. Within this territory, the indoctrination of local residents should take place.
—Che Guevara
Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their Hues, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.
—Victor Hugo
You could say the idea of Dandakaranya as a rear base for Maoist rebels germinated over a dinner table.
Every summer, or whenever their jobs permitted, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah's daughter and his son-in-law— both were doctors at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences—would visit Bastar in Madhya Pradesh (it is now in Chhattisgarh) and adjoining areas and treat poor tribals for free. The couple had been witness to the wretched lives the tribals were forced to live. The government just didn't care. For New Delhi, this area didn't exist.
One evening, the couple paid a visit to KS. Over curd and rice, perhaps, they got talking to KS about their experiences in Bastar. Shortly afterwards, a document was circulated among the revolutionaries, which talked about combining four districts of Andhra Pradesh—Karimnagar, Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam into a guerilla zone. The districts are connected to each other through dense forest area. The document said that in order to take the movement towards a guerilla zone, the cadre would have to focus on building the party deep amongst the masses. It also stressed on the formation of village-level party cells that could be built with part-timers. And, of course, mass organisations needed to be built as well. The cadre organised itself into similar formations of Central Organiser plus two bodyguards, all of them armed. Each CO group was to be allocated a fixed number of villages, about 15 to 20.
This is where KS's dinner-time conversation with his daughter and son-in-law came into the picture. The document said that once the party initiated work among the masses, the state forces would be on the alert. In order to escape what it called 'state repression', the document said that it would become necessary to build up 'a rear' in the forests. It was obvious that KS had begun to think of setting up a rear base. It was KS who then proposed that the rear base should be set up on the other side of the Godavari river—that is in the Dandakaranya forests, of which Bastar formed the largest portion. Given this reality, the document pointed out that it was necessary to immediately make proper arrangements for such an eventuality.
On 22 April 1980, Lenin's birth anniversary, Seetharamaiah announced the formation of the CPI–ML (People's War), a new party that would carry forward the line of armed struggle. It was more popularly called the People's War Group (PWG). It was formed after the Andhra State Committee of the CPI-ML came together with the Tamil Nadu unit.
Meanwhile, the thirst for land among landless peasants and tribals was at its peak in Andhra Pradesh. It was Indira Gandhi, say veteran Maoist ideologues, who first created this thirst among the landless in the state. Just before the 1978 assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Indira Gandhi arrived late one night in Jagtial in Karim Nagar to address an election rally. People had been waiting for her since late afternoon. It was almost midnight when she finally arrived and went straight on to address the people who had gathered there. Referring to her famous 20-point socioeconomic development programme, she blamed her political detractors for her inability to distribute land. As a parting shot, she said: 'If this (distribution of land) does not happen, a bloody revolution will take place.'
The Congress won the elections, but as it happens with most promises, the party did nothing towards alleviating the lot of the poor. Meanwhile, the Maoists had been doing their work, forcibly occupying land in hundreds of villages and distributing it among the poor.
In North Telangana, the Maoist cadre began work among the women and children working in tendu leaf collection. In the entire Dandakaranya forest area, comprising Bastar, the Gadchiroli region in Maharashtra, and in North Telangana, the condition of the tribals was pathetic. They were exploited badly by contractors, forest officials and other government servants. Those who collected bamboo sticks (for paper production) and tendu leaf (used in making beedi) were paid a pittance for their hard labour. For a bundle of 100 tendu leaves an Adivasi would be paid five paise. Similarly, one rupee would be paid for 120 sticks of bamboo. The Adivasi had no say in matters of rate. It was fixed by the contractor in consultation with the village headman.
More often than not, the poor Adivasi worked on an empty stomach. An Adivasi would usually leave a handful of rice or jowar with a little water in an earthen pitcher and then drink that gruel the next morning. The jungle where he worked was infested with snakes, bears, leopards and other wild animals. The sexual exploitation of Adivasi women was rampant. In Gadchiroli's Alapalli village, for example, one tehsildar would just walk into a girl's school, select a girl at his will, drag her into an empty classroom and rape her. In Gadchiroli itself, a forest officer collected one lakh rupees in just three months from impoverished tribals in return for letting them into the forest on which they depended for daily sustenance. The ignorant Adivasis would be fleeced by businessmen who visited from nearby towns. In exchange for a kilo of salt, the Adivasi would be made to part with a kilo of dry fruits or eight kilos of jowar.
The forest officers would not allow Adivasis to clear a portion of jungle and practise agriculture there. Citing archaic forest laws, they would not even allow them to collect firewood or other forest produce, or even thin sticks of bamboo for making brooms. At various places, just before the harvest, forest officials would arrive on tractors and threaten to destroy the crop, and the Adivasi's only recourse would be to pay a bribe or part with a major share of the produce. In their own turn, the government agencies would destroy thousands of acres of land for procuring precious wood like the sagwan or by leasing forest land to mining companies. Thousands of villagers were rendered homeless to make national parks for animals. For the State, the Adivasis counted for less than animals.
In Central-West Bastar, spread over 4,000 sq km, lies the area of Abujhmaad. The combined population of the 236 villages in this region was not more than 12,000. About 76 varieties of forest produce are found here. The mahua flowers and the tamarind collected throughout Dandakaranya is of premium quality. The Adivasis use mahua for making alcohol and as a food item as well. The businessmen to whom they would sell it used it for extracting oil, making soap and for other purposes. For a kilo of tamarind an Adivasi was paid less than a rupee. The same was sold in the international markets for 400 rupees. Hundreds of thousands of Adivasis continued to live in the Dark Ages.
&
nbsp; From these jungles, the then Madhya Pradesh government alone earned a revenue of 250 crore rupees annually. A number of businessmen and traders had bribed their way into buying large tracts of government land and turned it into agricultural farms. There, they employed the landless tribals as labourers, paying them a pittance for their labour. Often an Adivasi caught in the forest area collecting firewood or forest produce would be threatened with dire consequences and then coerced into sending his womenfolk or his cattle to the forest officials. The other set of people who held the Adivasis to ransom were the vadde—the local witch doctors. For Adivasis who had never seen a doctor, the vadde was a personification of God himself. In connivance with businessmen, and because he was feared by the whole village, the vadde often turned into an exploiter himself, usurping land and other resources.
It is under these circumstances that the Maoist guerillas entered the forest area. It was in June 1980 that seven squads of five to seven members each entered the forests. Four squads entered the jungles of North Telangana—one each in Adilabad, Khammam, Karimnagar and Warangal. Two of them entered Bastar and one went to Gadchiroli.
The Gadchiroli squad was led by a young Dalit, 23-year-old Peddi Shankar. Peddi Shankar's father worked in the Sringareni coal mines where the Naxals had made inroads among the miners. After high school, Shankar had worked as a bus conductor. Throughout this area, the Radical Students Union and the Radical Youth League had been trying to garner support among the youth. It was then that Peddi Shankar came in contact with the Maoist activists, and in a short time, he turned into a staunch radical.
Hello Bastar Page 4
