[Reader-list] since many of us don't read the Biblio

[mahmood farooqui]

{This is the debut novel of C.P. Surendran, a Resident Editor with The
Times of India. The novel is set in Wayanad and its Naxalite movement
of 70s. The following is a review I've done when Biblio asked to do
one. It is a critique on the way he portrayed Naxalite politics. Was
wondering if you are interested to read it. Vinod}

An Iron Harvest
C.P. Surendran

Reviewed by

Vinod K. José


As the Naxalite movement grew in strength by the 1970s, it was common
for college campuses to be frequently raided by the Police. Anyone
could be picked up on suspicion regardless of whether they had
anything to do with the movement or not. One day, Rajan, a young
engineering student at the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode,
was not only arrested but went missing in police custody. What exactly
happened to Rajan, one still doesn't know. But all we know is that he
died in police custody. It is widely believed that Rajan was brutally
tortured by the police, killed and the body disposed off. Rajan's
disappearance became the much talked about issue among the Malayali
public at the time with Rajan's father, Echara Warrier, approaching
the court with a habeas corpus writ petition. The court observed that
the Government of Kerala had lied in its affidavit. This led to the
resignation of Kerala Chief Minister and Congress leader, K.
Karunakaran, who was the home minister at the time of the incident.
However, with none of the politicians and policemen responsible for
the murder punished even after 30 years, justice continues to be
denied.

Eventhough justice is still denied the custodial death of Rajan and
the Naxalite movement continues to inspire Malayalam literary
imagination. Numerous short stories, novels and plays have been
written on it. Film makers have made internationally acclaimed films
(For example Piravi, by Shaji N. Karun). In regular intervals, reports
from investigations on how police disposed Rajan's body, testimonials
by retired constables who have confessed that Varghese, one of the
prominent leaders of Naxalite movement in Wayanad, was shot in a fake
encounter, surfaces in the Malayalam newspapers. It is the same
Rajan's story and the Naxalite movement that has inspired
C.P.Surendran, a journalist, poet in writing his debut novel, An Iron
Harvest, the book under review.

John, the main protagonist of the novel is described as the 'young Che
Guevara like leader of the Maoist organization Red Earth'. John, a
student in the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, joined Red
Earth and has led a guerrilla squad in many of its operations.
Varkichayan, expelled from a mainstream communist party, is the main
leader of Red Earth. Alongside the story of Red Earth, there is
another story that enfolds. This is on the disappearance of a
classmate of John, Abe, who according to the author is 'a political
innocent', from police custody. It is believed that Abe was tortured
and killed in police custody, and the body was then disposed off by
the crime branch police, Raman, who heads the counter-Naxalite
operations during the Emergency. Abe's father, Sebastian, knocked on
many doors for justice, but in vein. Raman, being a close associate of
the Home Minister, Shankaran Marar, was given protection from all his
adversaries. During an attack on the police station, John and his men
are caught. Raman takes John to a forest and shoots him and even gets
a promotion for that. But, when the National Emergency is over,
Sebastian approaches the court, and gets Marar and Raman convicted for
his son's murder. Justice is delayed, but delivered finally. And the
novel ends.

In an interview to Deccan Herald, the author, C. P. Surendran echoing
the middle class concerns on the movement which inspired him to write
the novel says, 'An Iron Harvest comes from my friends in school and
college who died for what was perhaps never there. Call it revolution,
if you will. What was all that pain and courage for? Now I sleep in an
air-conditioned room and flowers bloom over their graves. What is the
value of heroism?' It is the deep middle class cynicism and
individualism embedded in the above statement that prevents the likes
of C. P. Surendran from going beyond the usual rhetoric that is often
aired and making a more rational analysis of the Naxalite movement for
what it was. When an author begins with the premise that the movement
was an effort in vain, then one can expect where the novel would be
heading. Besides, in Wayanad, where much of the plot in the novel
enfolds, it was because of those on whose graves flowers bloom today
that minimum wages began to be implemented; feudal lords stopped
harassing the adivasis and tenants; practices like Vallikettal,
whereby adivasis would be auctioned in wholesale at Valliyurkavu
temple to work as slaves in the farms of landlords, came to an end;
Kerala Scheduled Tribes Act that promised 'to restore all alienated
land for adivasis' got passed. Naxalites fell short of achieving their
goal, but if it had not been for them, issues such as the agrarian
crisis in Wayanad (manifested in the alarming rate of farmers'
suicides), alienation of land from the adivasis (the 2003 police
firing on adivasis inside Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary), large scale
deforestation (the felling of trees in Wayanad by the Birlas since
1960s for their newsprint factory and the subsequent environment
movement) etc. would have remained in oblivion. 'What was all that
pain and courage for? Now I sleep in an air-conditioned room and
flowers bloom over their graves'. May be the likes of C. P. Surendran
would always pretend not to know what all that pain and courage was
for. For the air-conditioned room has a way of quarantining one from
the messy reality of the world.

When a novelist claims that his work "is based on a true incident"—a
claim that gives legitimacy to the book—one expects him to portray the
period and its reality with some objectivity. But, in respect to the
plot, the characterization and the many details on the period, An Iron
Harvest proves to be contrary. His characterization leaves an
impression that Naxalites were just some trigger-happy men, who drank
and doped all the time, and who were brought together by mere personal
affinities than any common understanding of politics. Nair is a dope
supplier who runs his business in a pan shack at a busy street in
Kozhikode. One day, during a protest that turned violent against
government, he is knocked unconscious. Varkichayan, a Naxalite leader,
saves him and takes him to a hospital. As a gratitude to Varkichayan,
Nair becomes a Naxalite! Such is the callousness of the
characterization that is done. If one is to read the biographies of
people who were once part of the Naxalite movement (Eg. Ormakurippukal
by Ajita) or talk to an elder in Wayanad, it becomes amply clear that
Naxalites like Kisan Thomman, Sukumaran, Kunjaman, Joseph, Sankaran
Master, Thettamala Krishnankutty, Maran, Choman Mooppan et al. were
people with tremendous understanding of what they were doing and why
they were doing it. They were farmers, union leaders, adivasis, school
teachers or those who broke away from the mainstream communist
parties, each of whom had a distinct history of political engagement.
But, in An Iron Harvest, the author makes sure that none of these
Naxalites are brought alive in the characters of Heston, Rajan, Mani
and others.

>From a novel telling Naxalite stories, one would at least expect the
author to provide the readers with some accurate portrayal of how a
guerilla squad carries out an operation. This is also lacking in this
novel. The author seems to have done very little research on this
matter and leaves much of it to his imagination. For example, this is
how a decision is taken among the characters to attack a police
station:

'I think we should conduct a raid,' John said.
… 'We have to decide which police station to raid,' Nair said.
'Pulpally of course,' Heston said.
'It is too far away…,' John said….
'Tirunelli is more accessible to us,' John said.

And so, they attack Tirunelli station. But why do they attack? Do they
attack out of boredom? Do they really target a police station
according to how accessible it is to them? Why does the author remain
silent about the politics behind such operations? Is it because, it
would make it easier for him to parrot what the mainstream media and
the intellectual class in our country today, are saying about the
'mindless violence' of the Naxalites?

In 1968, close to a thousand poor farmers, mostly from Meenachil taluk
in Kottayam district migrated to Pulpally Panchayat in Wayanad. When
they started cultivation, the Pulpally devaswam (temple authority),
claimed ownership over 27,000 acres of their land and asked them to
vacate from those land. The Forest department initiated the process of
eviction. Farmers resisted, and subsequently the Malabar Special
Police (MSP) was called in (MSP was a colonial armed police force
started by the British to crush the Mappila resistance and the
numerous smaller resistances in Malabar. Post independence, MSP came
under Kerala government. After the Naxalite movement, they conjoined
MSP with Kerala Armed Police). MSP, camped in Pulpally Sitadevi
temple, began to harass the farmers who continued cultivation. A
memorandum from these farmers reached a group of Naxalites. They
organized a couple of meetings with the farmers and decided to attack
the MSP camp in Pulpally. According to the testimonials of the locals,
this was how the 'Pulpally station attack' happened. It is in the
light of this real incident that the author writes about the
'Tirunelli station attack'. There is however a difference. As far as
the author is concerned the attack was just the outcome of the
decision made by a bored group of six guerrillas who one fine day felt
like attacking a police station and thereby, choosing the most
'accessible' police station in the vicinity. Whereas Pulpally station
attack was done by a group of approximately hundred men and women, who
were to be evicted from the land they lived. Of course, this kind of
fact would not make it into a novel that completely misses out on the
politics behind the Naxalite movement. To the credit of the Naxalites,
the farmers finally got their land back in Pulpally.

It is also important to take note of the role that the author assigns
to women in his novel. Convicted in the 'Pulpally station attack',
Ajita, a woman Naxalite leader, spent nine years in jail. Her mother
Mandakini, a Gujarati and a former headmistress in a school in
Kozhikode, had also joined the Naxalite movement. There were many
other women who sympathized and conspired with the movement. However,
the author portrays the Naxalite movement as a purely male affair,
devoid of any participation of women. At the same time, the only woman
who gets some amount of attention in the novel is Janaky, a childhood
friend and a former lover of John. Janaky gets married to Raghu, who
works in Dubai, and has a one year old child, Mohan, who suffers from
progressive atrophy of the heart. She returns to Kerala and John goes
to meet her after he receives a letter from her. After years of
separation, the warmth between them lingers, leading to a clumsy,
frantic lovemaking. Later in the day a conversation starts between
them. Janaky tries to convince John who, in her words, has changed
from 'my lover to the rebel of lost causes', about the worthlessness
of his politics. John disagrees and tries to convince Janaky about the
relevance of his politics. Getting nowhere, the conversation ends
bitterly with Janaky grieving 'sometimes I feel bitter that you
preferred politics to me. Guns to my roses'. The author gives the
impression that women after all are not interested in 'politics',
especially the one that is armed with 'guns', which also explains for
the absence of any women Naxalites in the novel. Instead, he confines
women to a world of 'roses', away from 'politics'. As a result, he
reinforces the existing gender stereotypes.

The author's research on the differences between Naxalite politics and
the politics of mainstream communist parties are also poor. When the
senior most leader of Red Earth, Varkichayan discusses politics with
John, which by the way is the only instance in the novel where a top
leader discusses politics with anyone, a distorted representation of
the issues raised by the Naxalites in Wayanad is given. On the
fundamental limitation of their movement, John says: '…And the
fundamental limitation is that the mainstream communist parties have
corrupted the worker's ideology to the point that he thinks that
things will change through the ballot box. He is not entirely in the
wrong either. The Land Reforms Act that the Communist ministry brought
into effect gives him hope in parliamentary politics…As far as I'm
concerned if we are able to unionize the workers in the plantation and
ensure them a reasonable deal in terms of wages, that in itself is a
big achievement. Revolution perhaps can wait.'
'Fair enough,' Varkichayan wheezed.

To be fair to the Naxalites in Wayanad of the 70s, Land Reforms Act
was the first thing that they attacked. Their numerous pamphlets
talked of how land reforms failed to change the land ownership
pattern, and how it provided loopholes for meeting the interests of
the rich plantation owners. One such 'exemption' in the Kerala Land
Reforms Act 1969, which was a boon for the rich farmers, stated,
'ceiling is lifted in the, case of rubber, tea and coffee plantations,
private forests and patently non-agricultural lands and lands
belonging to religious and educational institutions'. The Naxalite
movement, which was more active in the agricultural hill areas of
Kerala, 'exposed land reforms', convincing their constituency of poor
farmers, agriculture laborers and adivasis of the need to take to a
revolutionary path. The slogan of the mainstream communist parties,
'land to the tiller', and the electoral promise they made regarding
redistribution of land in favor of the landless poor, were misnomers
at least for the peasants in plantation districts like Wayanad.

The National Sample Survey (37th round) has some interesting data on
the land distribution in Kerala. Even after the land reforms, while
76.3 per cent of the Kerala population, owning merely 00.00—00.99
acres of land per household, hold merely 21 per cent of the total land
in Kerala, 9.3 per cent of the population own a whopping 54.2 per cent
of the land. It is quite clear from this that the land reforms in
Kerala happened at a superficial level. When the main protagonist in
the novel, John, is portrayed as convincing his leader Varkichayan, on
the efficacies of Land Reforms, and opts not to raise the issues of
land distribution in Red Earth's campaign, the plot moves far from the
reality of the period, and the issues raised by the movement. And to
one's surprise, the main leader, Varkichayan without a debate, seems
to approve of John's line of argument.

The real life story of Rajan and his father Echara Warrier is a story
wrought with injustice and anyone who has followed the case would
agree on that. Like many other court cases where political bigwigs and
senior police officers are involved, nobody ever got punished for the
murder and even Rajan's dead body remained undelivered to his family.
A few months ago, Echara Warrier too passed away. Despite all this,
the author would like to make it a success story in the novel.
Sebastian, father of Abe, who approaches court soon after the
Emergency, manages to sent Marar, and Raman to jail, thus 'restoring
honor to his son'. According to a reviewer of An Iron Harvest in a
newspaper, 'Sebastian nearly drowns in despair, but in the end emerges
a winner, redeemed by what he so irrevocably has lost'. Is this act of
twisting a story of injustice into a matter of celebration justified?

The author rightly knows what the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of
the book is. Hence, he has identified it and tailored it around the
context of a 'Maoist revolutionary organization', something that is
exotic and sellable these days. Sadly, it is one of those works which
has failed to objectively analyze Maoist politics, but one that
reaffirms many of the earlier middle class prejudices.

The blurb in the opening page of the book introducing C.P. Surendran
declares him to be 'one of the most important poets of India.' Whether
that is an exaggeration or not, his debut novel definitely would not
make him 'one of the most important novelists of India.' The novelist
fails to portray the spirit of the real life story, distorts facts,
and gives an image makeover, perhaps, a consequence of writing it
'from the comforts he gets from his AC room', as he said, and
forgetting to be truthful to his 'friends graves', and their stories.

*************
Vinod K. José is the reporter in Delhi for Radio Pacifica Network, an
American newscast. Vinod is from Wayanad, Kerala. He can be contacted
at vinodkjose at gmail.com