CRPF jawans report that during encounters they mostly
hear orders in Telugu.
Representational image
The Indian adivasi (tribal) homelands have been troubled
much before the advent of Naxalism or Maoism, as some prefer it. The Naxalite
leadership, which is mostly non-adivasi, has however managed to superimpose its
ideological orientation on the long-prevalent disaffection of tribal people.
While the Maoists have managed to exploit the tribal unrest over their
exploitation and the destruction of their traditional homelands, it would be
wrong for the Indian State to tar the adivasi unrest as Naxalism. When the
troubles first erupted in the predominantly tribal village of Naxalbari and
began spreading to other areas in West Bengal, a popular slogan then was
“China’s Chairman is our Chairman”. It may not have fired the minds of rural
masses, but it caught on in university campuses all over the country. Many
students of Delhi’s elite St Stephen’s College even went underground to fight
for the revolution. Arvind Narain Das ran for president of the college union on
a Naxalite platform in 1968 and won. Several others later on became top civil
servants. In recent days, Dr Rajiv Kumar has been appointed vice-chairman of the
Niti Aayog. But they soon, like their compatriots from Kolkata’s elite
Presidency College, discovered that “revolution was not a dinner party or even a
seminar”.
If the Stephanians soon came back after discovering they
didn’t have it in them to stay the hard course nor an appetite to spill blood,
others, more often than not far less privileged, showed they had in them the
“right stuff” and the reasons for taking recourse to armed action and the
violent overthrow of the State. The Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal in 1967
inspired several young Communists in the remote hilly and forested district of
Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and they gradually turned to the politics of
agrarian revolution. The Srikakulam CPI sent Nagabhushan Patnaik and Chowdhury
Tejeswara Rao to Calcutta in October 1968 to hold talks with Charu Mazumdar. On
their return, the newly-formed Srikakulam district coordination committee
convened a secret meeting where it was resolved that an armed struggle should be
launched immediately. Guerilla squads were formed in the plains and hills of
Srikakulam, with the objective of overthrowing the government and establishing a
“people's democratic dictatorship led by the proletariat”.
The guerilla movement took off with the forcible
harvesting of crops from the lands of rich landlords. On November 25, 1968
something more significant happened in the hill tracts of Parvatipuram. Around
250 tribal people armed with bows and arrows, and spears, led by legendary
peasant organizer Vempatapu Sathyanarayana and Nagabhushan Patnaik, raided the
house of a landlord and took possession of rice and other foodgrains he had
hoarded. They also seized documents, promissory notes and other records that
bound tribal peasants to the landlord, who was also a moneylender. Several such
actions followed in Srikakulam and the movement gained much popularity. However,
by the mid 1970s, under the cover of the Emergency, the Srikakulam movement was
crushed, with over 300 activists killed in “encounters”. But the fires of
revolution are apparently not so easily doused down.
The CPI (ML) only regrouped and spread to other parts of
the then composite Andhra Pradesh where we have seen periodic recrudescence. The
Naxalites made several dramatic strikes in the thickly-forested districts of
Telangana like Adilabad, Karimnagar and Warangal during the Emergency. On
November 7, a Naxalite squad led by Kondapalli Sitaramiah, later founder of the
People’s War Group, and Muppalla Laxman Rao alias Ganapathy, now CPI(ML) general
secretary, again attacked the home of Pitamber Rao, a wealthy and powerful
Velama landlord with strong Congress connections, and killed his sons G.V.
Subhash and Sampat Rao. (Subhash was my classmate at Nizam College in Hyderabad
and captained the cricket, basketball and hockey teams).
The Tappalpur raid, despite the presence of a police
picket in the village, captured the imagination of the educated youth and
Communist cadres all over the state. Soon after the Naxalite leaders involved in
the raid were able to form the “Coordination Committee” which was later
rechristened as People’s War Group. The PWG merged with Bihar’s Maoist Communist
Centre (MCC) to become CPI (Maoist) in October 2004. In 1978, the newly-formed
Congress (I) swept the elections to the state Assembly, defeating the Janata
Party led in the state by S. Jaipal Reddy and the ruling Congress faction led by
the incumbent chief minister J, Vengala Rao. The Indira wave saw the induction
of Dr M. Channa Reddy as chief minister. The new CM held out an olive branch to
Naxalites, and initiated talks, but soon it was clear the Naxals’ only intention
was to use the ceasefire to regroup and reorganise. The lull allowed them to
expand their cells at Osmania and Andhra Universities. Many idealistic youth
joined the movement, and unlike the upper class lads from St Stephen’s and
Presidency, these young people stayed the course and many even lost their lives.
The intelligence wing of the Andhra police also reported the setting up of bases
in towns like Davangere in Karnataka and Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu.
The Naxalites had greater success in the tribal areas of
the neighboring states, where the depredations of outsiders, whether forest and
excise contractors or government officials, had resulted in widespread
discontent among tribal people. The cruel exploitation of adivasis and eviction
of large numbers from their traditional homelands without compensation even by
the state- owned NMDC and other companies added grist to the mill. The PWG’s
support base welled. Medical students from Andhra Medical College, Guntur, and
engineering students from the Regional Engineering College at Warangal now
joined the Osmania University recruits. Like all such revolutionary movements,
the cachet that went with being a revolutionary began to also attract lumpen
elements, the type that would have otherwise joined the Youth Congress or youth
wings of other major parties. Since then the Naxalites have gone from strength
to strength.
Even mainstream political parties have found it
expedient to seek Naxalite support from time to time for narrow political
advantage, by pandering to them and offering them concessions on coming to
power. It is also believed that often support was purchased with cash. Several
companies with large investments in forest-based industries also began to pay
for protection. Companies often do this and we have evidence of how even one of
India’s largest business houses was paying off Ulfa terrorists in Assam.
Extortion is commonplace now in Naxal areas.
In the run-up to the 1983 Andhra Assembly elections, actor N.T. Rama, leading his recently-formed Telugu Desam, dramatically declared himself an ally of Naxalites. He even campaigned using the theme that they were “true patriots, who have been misunderstood by the ruling classes”.
In the run-up to the 1983 Andhra Assembly elections, actor N.T. Rama, leading his recently-formed Telugu Desam, dramatically declared himself an ally of Naxalites. He even campaigned using the theme that they were “true patriots, who have been misunderstood by the ruling classes”.
Ahead of the 2004 elections, the Andhra Congress, headed
by Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, pledged to hold discussions with rebels if its
candidates were elected. The party’s pledge was a tacit agreement that while
talks or negotiations were ongoing, the officials would halt counter-insurgency
operations, thereby providing a recovery period for insurgents. The rebels
effectively used the suspension of counter-insurgency operations and resulting
ceasefire to recruit and consolidate their position by moving openly among the
people. The ceasefire lasted just six months, till December 16 that year. Soon
after the Andhra police resumed operations with renewed vigour against them, and
many prominent Naxalite leaders were killed in “encounters”.
The relentless pressure forced most Andhra Naxal cadres
to migrate to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Orissa. It is in the dense jungles
here that the Telangana Maoists found favorable new battlegrounds and the long
suffering tribals willing, if not shelter, to look away. A majority of top
Maoist leaders, who steer this war against India from the jungles of
Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and
Jharkhand, hails from Telangana. CR PF jawans report that during encounters they
mostly hear orders in Telugu. The RSS-BJP leadership has focused its attention
on Jawaharlal Nehru University which it presumes is the nursery of Naxalites in
the country. They couldn’t be more wrong. The real nursery of Naxalites is
Karimnagar district in Telangana. Karimnagar is one of the more backward
districts but is dominated by rich and powerful Velama landlords.
The CM, Kalvakuntla Chandrashekhara Rao, is a Velama.
Ironically, so is Naxal supremo Muppalla Lakshmana Rao, alias Ganapathy Capt.
James Forsyth (1838-71), one of the early chroniclers of the adivasis in his
book The Highlands of Central India, translates one of the often sung Pardhan
songs of the Gonds. The words still have relevance:
“And the Gods were greatly troubled
in their heavenly courts and councils
Sat no Gods of
Gonds among them.
Gods of other nations sat there
Eighteen threshing-floors of Brahmins
Sixteen scores of Telinganas
But no Gods of Gonds appeared there
From the Glens of Seven Mountains
From the twelve hills of the valleys.
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