She further writes about how some mentally unbalanced patients and children who had been abandoned or were lost were made to stay in the prison. She writes about an 11-year-old girl Satya who was separated from her father at a railway station in Bihar and was sent to jail for 'safe keeping' … 'Unfortunately that was the end of it. Nobody bothered to trace her family or do anything about sending her home. When one of the Christian wardresses offered to look after her, the Assistant Jailers and the Clerk of the Court warned Satya against it: Christians ate beef and she would lose caste. Instead, she was left to grow up in jail.'
She describes the unrest in the country due to shortage of food. In January 1974, protests against food shortage turned violent in Gujarat leading to the death of 40 people, Tyler says. She writes about how a warder, who had just returned from Dhanbad (in then undivided Bihar) told her about police wearing gas masks to tackle people who were in a state of revolt due to food shortages.
'On Republic Day, 26 January, the President V.V. Giri, appealed to the nation for discipline. I wondered what they were to discipline—their hunger pangs, may be? Their crying children? Their wrath against a government that offered them speeches instead of food?' she asks.
Defending the actions of her Naxalite husband and others, she writes:
'Amalendu's crime, Kalpana's crime, is the crime of all those who cannot remain unmoved and inactive in an India where a child crawls in the dust with a begging bowl; where a poor girl can be sold as a rich man's plaything; where an old woman must half-starve herself in order to buy social acceptance from the powers-that-be in her village; where countless people die of sheer neglect; where many are hungry while food is hoarded for profit; where usurers and tricksters extort the fruits of labour from those who do the work; where the honest suffer whilst the villainous prosper; where justice is the exception and injustice the rule; and where the total physical and mental energy of millions of people is spent on the struggle for mere survival.'
In Bihar and later in Jharkhand (carved out of Bihar), it was the MCC that kept the Naxal movement alive along with another Naxal faction called the CPI-ML (Party Unity) or simply Party Unity. But as compared to the PWG, the MCC was considered to be a less disciplined party. In caste-ridden Bihar, the MCC organised massacres of upper-caste men to counter massacres done by upper-caste militant organisations like the Ranvir Sena (formed in 1994 by the upper-caste Bhumihar community). It would also brutally punish 'class enemies' by ordering that they be shortened by six inches—which meant beheading. According to testimonies from Jharkhand, a squad of MCC would assemble on the outskirts of an upper-caste village. And then in the dead of night, the village would be attacked. Although the MCC maintained that it killed only men, in some actions women and children would also become victims. On the other hand, the Ranvir Sena would not spare even children and women during their attacks. In an interview12 in 1999, Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh said that his party would kill every Dalit irrespective of age or gender because they provided shelter to MCC squads. Upon being asked why the Ranvir Sena would not spare children and women, he said that Hanuman set the whole of Lanka afire, killing all demons including those in wombs.
But brutal killings apart, the Naxalite groups in Bihar (and Jharkhand) did change a few things. It gave the landless and lower castes a sense of empowerment. It gave them a face, a voice. It was not a done thing now to sexually exploit women of Dalits. Under the patronage of the MCC, a Dalit landless family would just put a red flag on a piece of land belonging to the government or an absentee landlord and then work on it. Though the Naxalite groups boycotted elections, it was difficult for the goons of an upper-caste political candidate to prevent the lower castes from casting their vote. As scholar Bela Bhatia writes in one of her essays13 on the Naxalite movement in Central Bihar: '… their (labourers') perception of poverty as a matter of "fate" (naseeb) has changed; now they often see it as a matter of injustice.'
It is this sense of injustice that turned Ram Pravesh Baitha into a Naxalite. In April 2010, a young Naxal commander, Sandesh Kushwaha took revenge for the killing of his father by killing 57-year-old Badan Mahto and his son in Bihar's Rohtas district. It is believed that in a property dispute, Mahto had been instrumental in killing Kushwaha's father. After his father's death, a young Kushwaha approached a local Naxal commander who asked him to join them and avenge his father's killing. He did that, and at the age of 18, led a squad of about a hundred Maoists to attack Mahto's house and kill him along with his son. Before leaving, they blew up the house with dynamite.
It was not a Bollywood film. It was the everyday reality of Bihar. As an MCC slogan said: Apni satta, apna kanoon. Our power, our law.
*Revolutionary poets.
11Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1977.
12The Times of India, 13 June 1999.
13'The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar', Economic & Political Weekly, 9 April 2005.
VI
ANDHRA TO ABUJHMAAD
I remain a song dedicated to the revolution; this thirst will end only with my life.
—Cherabandaraju,
revolutionary poet
An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
—-James Baldwin
In the mid '80s, the People's War Group decided to take direct action against the police. The place chosen for this once again happened to be Jagtial in Andhra Pradesh's Karimnagar district. In the July of 1985, a policeman was killed by a Maoist squad. In these areas, the police would collude with right-wing student activists like the ones from the BJP's Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), identify students and activists who were sympathetic to the Maoist cause, and eliminate them. But side by side, the Maoist recruitment was on as well, through joint campaigns by the Radical Students Union, Radical Youth League and Jana Natya Mandali. Cultural parties would travel all over, urging youth that 'real men' cared about 'revolution'. Hundreds of youth left their studies, and joined the Maoist movement.
In institute after institute across Andhra Pradesh, particularly in Telangana, former students who became senior leaders in the Maoist movement, would inspire other students to follow in their path. (The Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam calls this a 'strong-tie' phenomenon, essentially meaning that those who join a movement like the Maoist movement have close ties with those already inside. For example, friends.) Maoist ideologues like the legendary balladeer Gaddar would travel from one village to another, talking about hunger, deprivation, marginalisation, caste bias, and sing songs on 'martyrs' like Peddi Shankar. The Maoist campaign was so successful that it would prompt a chief minister to declare: Aata, maata, paata bandh (ban on cultural performances, speeches and songs). It was ironical that a man who rode on an anti-Congress wave in the state to form a party and then win elections after calling Naxalites 'Desh Bhaktalu' (patriots) in 1982 would now clamp down even on cultural performances. Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, or NTR in short, was a very popular actor of Telugu cinema and had founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1982 to counter the Congress government in the state.
Travelling thousands of kilometres across the state in a van driven by his son, NTR campaigned against the Congress. It was also the year when Kondapalli Seetharamaiah was arrested by the police from the Begumpet railway station in Hyderabad. A year later in 1983, NTR rode to power after an impressive victory in the state elections. During this time, the PWG tried to consolidate its position further, entrenching itself deeper in its areas of influence in the state. But soon enough, it was clear that police action against Naxalites would continue in the same fashion.
In KS's absence, his close friend and deputy KG. Satyamurthy took over the reigns of the People's War Group. But he was a poet and lacked leadership skills. The cadres were confused and didn't know from whom to seek guidance. A veteran Maoist leader remembers that time. We would ask him (Satyamurthy) what to do, and instead of displaying some sense of vision, he would break into long sess
ions of poetry,' he says.14
Finally, it was decided that KS had to be freed from prison. On 4 January 1984, KS made good his escape from the Osmania Hospital in Hyderabad after killing a duty constable. The same year, NTR had gone to America, and in his absence, with the aid of the governor, the Congress managed to topple his government on Independence Day. This time KS supported him and wrote about his 'unconstitutional exit' in the party's mouthpiece Kranti. This made the young blood in the party very angry. The Warangal secretary of the Maoists, Pulanjaya alias Sagar is believed to have been so furious about what KS wrote that he asked his men to burn the entire bundle of the magazine.
NTR came back to power only after a month. After the People's War Group began targeting state symbols like the police, the NTR government went full-swing against them. A special task force was created to tackle the Naxalites. In some of the worst-affected areas, a number of armed outposts came up. A number of youth were picked up on suspicion and put into jail or killed in staged encounters. In 1987, six IAS officers were kidnapped by the PWG, and a demand for the release of some of their comrades was put forward. A journalist who interviewed KS at the time was told that if need be the PWG would even kidnap Rajiv Gandhi (who was then prime minister). The government bowed this time, but afterwards, NTR toughened his stance once again against the Naxalites.
By the late '80s, KS had completely lost his grip over the party's affairs. He had aged and had begun to sound incoherent. Later, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The party brought him to their base in Bastar. Because of what he meant to the party, he was kept in good humour, and the senior leaders, as a mark of respect for him, would sometimes seek his advice. Ganapathi now took over the reigns of the party. Afterwards, he passed a directive about KS: 'We should take his advice when we hardly need it.'
Unfortunately, the Maoists have been used by political parties to further their own interest. In recent times, it has happened in Bihar, in Jharkhand, and in West Bengal as well. In Andhra Pradesh also, political parties would use them for electoral benefits and once they assumed power, the same party, now in charge of the government, would crush them.
In December 1989, the Congress returned to power in the state. Dr M. Chenna Reddy rose to power after doing what NTR did in 1982-83: calling Naxalites patriotic. After he assumed charge, the ban on the PWG was lifted in December 1989. A number of jailed Naxalites were set free. A massive rally called by the Naxalite group in Warangal district was attended by over one million of people.
This was the time when a splinter group of Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) established contact with the PWG. Some of the cadres were trained by the LTTE rebels in guerilla warfare. And the Naxalites began to develop their expertise in an area they use effectively against the police and politicians till date: explosives. From here, the whole dynamics of the war between the state and the Naxalites changed. The Naxal guerillas could now attack the state machinery from a safe distance inflicting heavy casualties, while minimising the losses on their side.
In 1992, KS was arrested by the police from his ancestral village Jonnapadu in Andhra's Krishna district. The party he had founded had ousted him. He was released a few years later due to his failing health. He died in his granddaughter's house on 12 April 2002, at the age of 87.
A handful of people attended his funeral.
In the '90s, the relationship between the Maoists and the Andhra Pradesh government followed more or less the same pattern: just before elections, a particular political party would warm up to the Maoists and then after coming to power, lift the ban on the PWG. After Chenna Reddy came N. Janardhan Reddy, followed once again by NTR. In 1995, NTR was replaced by his ambitious son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu who staged a coup within the party to become the chief minister. In July 1996, Naidu reimposed the ban on PWG making it into the Maoist hit list. In 1998, the Maoists made a bid on his life by placing the deadly claymore mines in a bullock cart on his route in Karimnagar where Naidu was supposed to address an election rally. The explosive was detected by a police advance party before Naidu passed through. Five years later, in October 2003, however, Naidu came much closer to death when the Maoists targeted his convoy enroute to Tirupati. The impact of the blast triggered off by Maoists using a camera flashbulb was so powerful that Naidu's car was hurled into the air. Naidu was seriously injured and suffered a fracture in his collar bone. His escape could only be attributed to some divine miracle that he acknowledged himself after gaining consciousness later. 'If you look at the blast site, it is difficult to believe that I survived. I am alive today due to the good wishes of the people and due to the blessings of Lord Venkateswara,' he said.15 The mastermind of the attack on Naidu, senior Maoist leader Sande Rajamouli was later killed by the police in 2007 in an alleged fake encounter. He was a Central Committee Member of the CPI (Maoist) and also a member of its military commission. He carried a reward of 15 lakh rupees on his head. He was married to another senior Maoist guerilla Padmakka who was killed in an encounter in 2002.
But apart from the political dilly-dallying, at least one serious effort had been made in 1989 to annihilate the Maoists. It was senior police officer K.S. Vyas who founded the Greyhound force, an elite police force trained in jungle warfare to conduct surgical operations against the Maoists. Their training pattern was to be similar to NSG commandos and these few thousand men would get 60 per cent more salary than normal pay. Four years later, in 1993, the Maoists managed to kill Vyas in Hyderabad while he was on his morning jog. In a strange twist, the main accused in the Vyas murder case, Maoist hit man Nayeemuddin later turned into a renegade, helping the police eliminate several Maoist leaders as well as some of their sympathisers. He was arrested in 2000 for the murder of a civil liberties activist and later acquitted in 2003 for lack of evidence. In 2007 he made good his escape from a court hearing in the Vyas murder case. He is now somewhere in Hyderabad with his hit squad, allegedly enjoying full police protection.
While the Greyhounds were quite successful in their operations against Maoists, the fact remains that there were a number of human rights violations as well, including fake encounters and custodial deaths. According to the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), there have been 1,800 encounter deaths in the state between 1997 and 2007. The police tried to build anti-Maoist militias not only in Andhra Pradesh but in other states as well. In the '90s, a group called Kranthi Sena was forged together in Andhra with the active support of the police. In Maharashtra another such group called Shanti Sena was formed that succeeded in killing a number of senior Maoist guerillas. In Jharkhand, the anti-Maoist group called NASUS (Nagrik Suraksha Samiti) enjoyed the patronage of the police and several politicians. In at least two incidents, the group managed to entrap and poison to death several Maoist guerillas. In retaliation, the Maoists killed politician and Member of Parliament Sunil Mahto near Jamshedpur on 4 March 2007 and NASUS leader Dhanai Kisku on 5 January 2010. In Chhattisgarh, the anti-Maoist militia took the shape of Salwa Judum.
In 1994, from inside the jail, several arrested Maoist leaders launched an indefinite hunger strike to press the government that they be treated as political prisoners and that the conditions within the jail be improved. After a long struggle, the government finally accepted most of the demands. As a result, in Andhra jails at least, the Maoists enjoy a number of facilities including meeting with visitors outside barracks.
In 1998, the PWG merged with a smaller Maoist group, CPI-ML (Party Unity), active mostly in Bihar. On 2 December 2000, the Maoists announced the formation of the People's Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) on the first death anniversary of three senior party leaders Nalla Adi Reddy (Shyam), Santosh Reddy (Mahesh) and Seelam Naresh (Murali). This is the frontal force of the Maoists which carries out attacks against the police personnel and others.
In May 2004, Congress swept to power in Andhra, defeating Chandrababu Naidu's TDP. It was during Naidu's regime that the Maoists were almost eliminated from the state. After
taking over from Naidu, the Congress chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy kept the pressure on over the Maoists but also initiated peace talks with them. On 8 June 2004, the state home minister K. Jana Reddy invited the Maoists for talks. Eight days later, the government announced a three-month ceasefire. On 11 October 2004, 11 Maoist leaders came overground to hold talks with the Andhra government. The group was led by senior Maoist leader Akkiraju Haragopal known more by his party name Ramakrishna. All of them wore battle fatigues. When Ramakrishna was advised to wear something 'civilian' he replied that he carried nothing else to wear. The Maoist leaders were put up as state guests at a government guest house. A large crowd had come to witness the spectacle. Maoist sources say that on the first day itself, many senior bureaucrats and police officers secretly came to meet Ramakrishna for redressal of various personal problems in the Maoist area of influence.
On 14 October, Ramakrishna announced that the People's War Group had merged with MCC on 21 September to form the CPI (Maoist). Initially, the talks held a lot of promise, said civil servant S.R. Sankaran, who acted as the chief mediator (he passed away on 7 October 2010). But it was clear very soon that the talks would not be successful. Both the Maoists and the government refused to budge even an inch from their positions. The Maoists refused to accede to the government's condition of laying down arms before their demands would be considered. The Maoists said they didn't want anything for themselves and that they only wanted the government to solve the people's problems. On the last day of the talks, land reforms were discussed. The Maoists said that the government was not following its own laws on land redistribution. The government said that it would soon constitute a committee to look into the issue of land reforms. But in two month's time it was all over. Hostilities broke out again. The Maoists attacked a police party on 15 December 2004 in Visakhapatnam. The state retaliated by killing several rebels in January.
Hello Bastar Page 6
