Naxalbari revisited

Kanu Sanyal , Photo Courtesy: sayou.wordpress.com

Saibal Gupta,TNN | Apr 25, 2015: As one approaches Naxalbari, half an hour's drive from Siliguri, it is difficult not to feel overawed with a deep sense of history. This place lent more than just its name to a peasants' uprising that changed the course of the country's contemporary history and much of its present. As far as first impressions go, there's little to suggest even a hint of the violence and bloodshed that crops up in one's mind every time Naxalbari is mentioned. At the base of cloud-kissed hills, women pick the summer flush of tea leaves, which will be processed in local factories before travelling around the world. It's hard to believe that this idyllic setting was the backdrop of a violent revolution, the incubator of India's epic class war that was responsible for, by most estimates, more than 10,000 deaths between just 1967 and 1975.

Dreaming of a revolution Though todays' Naxalbari and its people barely evoke a revolutionary past, the memories are still fresh among a group of handful radical Maoist revolutionaries who, in their youth, dreamt of breaking down all class differences in society. "My wife and I drove all the way from London to Kolkata only to become a part of the Naxalbari movement," says Bhaskar Nandy, the man who was in charge of the movement in Assam, sitting in a half-lit cubicle-sized apartment room in south Kolkata. "The Naxalite movement was perhaps the only proper political movement in the country since Independence which, if successful, could have changed the country's history and economics." Nandy, after obtaining a chemical engineering degree from London University, went to the US to pursue his post-graduation in sociology from Columbia University. "We had a book — 'On Contradiction' — by Mao Zedong in the syllabus. After this, the more I read about Maoism, the more I felt that only it could bring about the change required in the country," Nandy says. Egged on by this dream, Nandy and his wife travelled all the way from London to Kolkata via Europe, Central Asia, China and Pakistan. Five decades later, he is still nostalgic about his first meeting with Charu Majumdar. "When I came to Kolkata in 1965 after 10 years, the Naxalbari movement was yet to catch up in the city. I was desperate, and so discussed the issue with many people. Finally, one day, a famous playwright told me of Charu Majumdar, was carrying out a similar kind peasants' movement in north Bengal." Nandy came to Jalpaiguri and joined the movement. One day a youth leader told him that Majumdar wanted to meet him. "It was a lifetime experience. I was taken through lanes and bylanes into a small dark room. The frail man with huge spectacles was sitting on a wooden chair under a dim bulb. Today I don't remember exactly what he told me, but it changed the course of my life," says the 78-year-old Nandy.

Seeds of a struggle In a span of seven years (between 1965 to 1972), thousands of youths tossed their academic ambition and financial security to become a part of the peasant uprising in Naxalbari. And on March 3, 1967, the seeds of struggle began to sprout. A group of peasants surrounded a plot of land in Naxalbari, marked the boundaries with red flags, and began harvesting the crop. The first clash was on May 23, when a sharecropper, Bigul Kisan, entered the land with plough in hand, and was beaten up by armed agents of a local jotedar (landlord). This was followed by violent clashes and the forcible seizure of land and confiscation of foodgrain by armed units of the Kisan Committee. On May 24, inspector Sonam Wangdi led police to Barajharu to arrest the peasant leaders. The peasants, in an effort to hold on to their land, showered a rain of arrows on the cops, and Wangdi was killed. The next day, the peasants called a meeting at Prasadjote in Naxalbari. Jyoti Basu, the then home minister in the United Front government, gave the orders and the police went absolutely berserk, killing nine women and children. "Police on that day fired unprovoked on a group of people who had gathered peacefully for a meeting," says Khokon Majumdar, a close associate of Charu Majumdar. "Most of them were helpless women and children. The small ground was covered from all sides so that people could not flee. I was one of the organizers of the meeting but I couldn't save even a single person." "Police started raiding all the villages and we could not stay at home," says Mujibar Rahman, another associate of Charu Majumdar. "We camped on the fields and stayed there. We ate only once — at night — when the women could manage to sneak in food to us. We could not even light a match, smoke or speak for fear of being traced. This went on for years."

The movement spreads In the months following the Prasadjote firing, angry peasants attacked and killed jotedars and forcibly occupied land. They were led by leaders like Kanu Sanyal. The government initiated all the measures they could to crush the movement. Basu approved the massive police action, called Operation Crossbow, the same day — July 5, 1967 — that the Chinese 'People's Daily' hailed the Naxalbari uprising as "Spring thunder over India". When in areas like Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansidewa, peasants snatched firearms and ammunition from the jotedars, established people's courts and passed judgments, far away in the city, the cream of India's youth and students joined the first communist revolution of the country. Displaying death-defying courage, withstanding a rain of bullets and inhuman torture, facing the hardships of rural life, thousands of youth integrated with the landless and poor peasants and gave a call for revolution. In Kolkata, the university campuses were turning into hotbeds of revolutionary politics. 

During 1967-'70, the prestigious Presidency College and Hindu Hostel had become the nerve centre for Maoist politics. "More than 200 students from Presidency and Calcutta University left their academic careers and went with me to different areas of undivided Midnapore to consolidate the peasants of the area," says Ashim Chatterjee, the only surviving central committee member of CPI(ML). "The condition of the farmers was pathetic and we wanted to unite them against the jotedars. In a span of one year, we killed more than 170 jotedars and attacked police stations and looted arms." Santosh Rana, a state committee member of CPI(ML) and a close associate of Charu Majumdar, says: "I was pursuing a PhD in physics when I came to know about Charu Majumdar and the Naxalbari movement. I abandoned my PhD and went to Gopiballavpur, my home village, and joined the movement." Disguised as a teacher, Rana taught at a local school by day. At night, he walked for hours to reach hard-to-reach villages to organize meetings. 
"The bonded labourers — the Haloas and the Kamins — worked like slaves in the land owned by the Mohantos and the Goswamis, but couldn't muster enough courage to fight against them," says the 72-year-old Rana. "There were several occasions when I walked three or four days at a stretch to reach a village. The peasants gave us shelter, food and saved us from the police. We were safe in their hands. We used to sleep in the morning and started walking after it got dark." Despite the hardships, when Khokon Majumdar speaks about their days of hiding in the darkness of the forests and the mountain ridges, his eyes shine with joy. The octogenarian, who suffered a cerebral stroke a year back, says: "It was in the mid-70s that I, Kanu Sanyal, Khodon Mullick, Dipak Biswas and some others were hiding in the Deomuni forest. There was orders to shoot at sight against all of us. We couldn't come out of the forest even at night, because police used to move with huge searchlights. For three days, we had nothing to eat or drink but the yellowing water from a rivulet. Kanu Sanyal had requested Charu Majumdar to take us out of the forest, and Majumdar came in a broken jeep and parked it by the side of the road between Deomuni and Kestopur. Once the police vehicle was out of sight, we rushed to the jeep that took us straight to Sonarpur crossing, Bagdogra and Bidhannagar. We went to a local comrade's hut, who boiled rice and garlic in a huge container. We ate all the stuff and I believe that was the best lunch I ever had."

Ideology & romanticism Naxalbari was a euphoria — an ideological romanticism that inspired the youth to move ahead, with life in their sleeves. Sitting in his low-thatched house at Chotopotajoth, a hamlet 40km from Siliguri, Nimu Singh, the army commander of CPI(ML), recalls how, through sheer luck, he got saved after he broke jail in Nepal. "One morning, while I was resting in a shelter along with three comrades, I noticed the police coming. Someone might have tipped them off, since I carried an award of Rs 1.5 lakh, dead or alive. I somehow managed to flee and crossed the border to reach Nepal, but I was caught there and brought to Nokhu jail, a notorious jail designed only for political and dangerous prisoners," Singh says. "I and a few other Nepalese Maoists planned to dig an escape tunnel. We had one iron rod and a khunti (a food spatula) but after a month of backbreaking work, we managed to dig a 26-foot-long tunnel. One night, we fled after snapping off the jail's electricity connections. We crossed mountains and walked for seven days with almost no food or water to finally reach Raxaul, a place bordering Nepal and Bihar, with two comrades. I went to a salon to trim my hair, asking the others to wait. While the barber was working on my hair, the police arrested my other comrades. I rushed out but they were not found. It was just luck," Singh laughs.

End of the fight But why did Naxalism fail? Was it government repression, political blunders, or was it sabotage? The question has been doing the rounds since the movement ceased to exist. By 1969-'70, the government had pressed into service not only the reserve police forces, but also the paramilitary and even the Army. By 1971, most of the Naxalbari-type uprisings had been crushed. Then, the government turned its fury on the revolutionary youth of Kolkata. In this period, over 10,000 Maoists and their sympathisers were killed and most of the leadership decimated. Important leaders including Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal, Sushital Roy Chowdhury, Ashim Chatterjee, Dipak Biswas and Suniti Ghosh were arrested. Two central committee members — Saroj Datta and Appu — just 'disappeared'. Sushital Roy Choudhary died of a heart attack. On July 28, 1972, Charu Majumdar died in police lock-up. Even the dead body was not handed over to the family. The entire rank and file of the Naxals were wiped out, leaving numerous youths rudderless. 

During 1971-'72, hundreds of Kolkata's youth were systematically shot dead, allegedly by Congress-led vigilante squads. In August 1971, alleged hoodlums from Congress joined hands with CPM cadre to massacre hundreds of Maoists in Baranagar and Howrah. The most infamous was the Cossipore-Baranagar massacre. Armed goons conducted house-to-house searches, raping women, burning houses and beating up any youth with known Maoist leanings. Young boys were murdered, elderly people were doused with kerosene and burnt to death. Two important Maoist leaders of the area — Panchu Gopal Dey and Karuna Sarkar — were killed in brutal fashion. Dey's limbs were cut off, one by one, and then he was stoned to death. Sarkar was caught by the goons and "CPI(ML)" carved on her chest. Other places where similar massacres took place were Ratan Babu Ghat, Kashiwar Chatterjee Lane, Baral Para Lane, Kutighat Road, Atul Krishna-Bose Lane, Maharaja Navalakumar Road, Lal Maidan, Bholanath Street, Jainarayan Banerjee Lane, Kashinath Datta Road and Vidyatan Sarani.

Way of the gun Nandy, who was given charge of Assam, believes guns shouldn't dominate a revolution. "When I went to Assam, I knew nothing. I was only told about one Kali Mukherjee, who was a welder. I searched for him for three days and found him at last in a railway yard. He took me to one Kanai Dutta," Nandy says. Dutta stayed in a small town — Abhayaypuri — at the foothills of the Garo hills. "In two years, Dutta and I built a strong force of nearly 20,000 peasants. I looted a huge amount of the autumn crop and distributed it among the peasants. I snatched 4,000 bighas of land and all these were done without a single drop of blood being shed," he adds. "In March of 1969, Charu Majumdar called me. He told me that I was doing economic reform, but nothing had been done to acquire state power. When I asked him what I would have to do to grab state power, he directed me to kill people. Today, there is no harm in saying that the more I went into 'Khatam (annihilation)' politics, the more I got alienated from people. In 1970, I was arrested from Haflong station. The people who so far shielded us informed the police," 

Nandy says. "The party withdrew its participation from all fronts. There was no trade union, no students' movement, no cultural wing — only killing people. This could not continue. Then the party broke into hundreds of factions and nothing worked according to plan. The obvious result? One of the best political movements was nipped in the bud." "In any movement, there will be traitors but only mass support can blunt them. People will protect us," says Rana. "In 1968, I got bitten by a snake. I was taken to a black magician, who tied up the portion with some herbs. My leg started to swell. I couldn't go to a doctor because I carried an award of Rs 1 lakh, dead or alive. During this period, hundreds of people used to come and meet me, but police had no clue. When I finally went to jail in 1970, the SDO said the administration received news about the snakebite six months after it happened. There were so many visitors, but no one tipped the administration off. The Khatam theory was an aberration that alienated us from the people. There can be clashes, deaths, everything... but that should be consequential, not deliberate."

'Maoists not Naxals' Chatterjee doesn't have any regrets, though. The septuagenarian leader says, "In the Naxal movement, a lot of youths were killed but even those who are still alive consider that period a glorious part of their life". When asked about the Maoist movement and whether it is an extension of the Naxalbari thought, Rana protests. "Maoists are not Naxals — they are painted to be such. Their movement has a geographical, social and historical limitation. They cannot come out of the jungle and the tribals. To give a tribal a gun and encash his anguish and kill people is not revolution." Guns cannot rule people but ideology can, and that is what Naxalbari taught us.