[Reader-list] Indian 'Republic Killing Its Own Children' --

[asit das]

Indian 'Republic Killing Its Own Children' --
Kishenji Fought for a Better World
by Bernard D'Mello

India's Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, West Bengal Chief Minister (also
in charge of the province's home affairs) Mamata Banerjee, Union Home
Secretary R K Singh, and the top bosses of the security forces involved in
the operation have all been bent on establishing one point: that the
alleged encounter in the Burishol forest in West Midnapore district, 10 km
from the West Bengal-Jharkhand border, in which Mallojula Koteswara Rao,
popularly known by his *nom de guerre* Kishenji, a member of the politburo
of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)], was supposedly
killed was "real".  Frankly, given the complicity of the media bosses and
the journalistic profession (the latter, at the higher levels) with
official mendacity, we must admit that the circumstances of his death are
as yet unknown.  A press statement from Abhay, spokesperson of the Central
Committee of the Party, dated 25 November 2011, unambiguously states that
Kishenji was killed "after capturing him alive in a well planned
conspiracy".1 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_edn1>

The renowned radical Telugu poet Varavara Rao, who accompanied Kishenji's
niece Deepika to bring the body back to Kishenji's hometown of Peddapalli
in Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, is reported to have said: "In the
last 43 years, I have seen so many bodies killed in so-called encounters
but have not seen a body like this one. . .  There is no place on the body
where there is no
injury."2<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_edn2>
Indeed, according to CDRO (Coordination of Democratic Rights'
Organisations) activists who saw the body before the commencement of the
postmortem, "on the back side of the head, part of [the] skull [and] brain
[was] missing"; the right eye had come out of the socket; the lower jaw was
"missing"; there were four stab wounds on the face; knife injuries were
observed on the throat; there were hand fractures and two bullet injuries
under one of the arms; "one-third of the left hand index finger was
removed"; there were signs of enrooted bullets through the lungs; the right
knee was hacked; the foot of the left leg was "totally burnt"; in all,
"there were more than 30 bayonet-like cut injuries on the front of the
body".  And, while there were "bullet, sharp cuts and burn injuries",
"surprisingly" there were "no injury marks on his [Kishenji's] shirt and
pant corresponding to [those on] his body parts".  (The postmortem report
is yet to be handed over to Kishenji's relatives.)

A press release ("Killing the Talks and Faking an Encounter", Kolkata, 2
December 2011) by the CDRO -- based on the observations of a CDRO
fact-finding team who visited the spot in Burishol forest where the alleged
encounter took place on 24 November -- states that "the extent of the
damage caused to the body against the rather undisturbed surrounding of the
spot where the body lay raises our suspicion about the official version".
 Indeed, "right next to where his [Kishenji's] body lay on the ground is a
termite hill" that "remains undamaged by all the alleged exchange of fire".
 Indeed, even nearby, "not a single termite hill was damaged and [there
was] no visible sign of burn or fire due to heavy rifle and mortar firing!"
 Clearly, the veracity of the official story must be seriously doubted
(actually, there are now versions of it that are contradicting each other!)
and it is high time that an independent judicial inquiry headed by a
sitting or retired Supreme Court or High Court judge into the circumstances
surrounding Kishenji's death is constituted at the earliest.

*You Couldn't Have Remained Unmoved by His Spirit*

The Indian public knew Kishenji from the media's cameras that showed his
cotton-clothed back with a scarf around his head, a gun draped over his
shoulder.  Those who loved him were the ones who were to lose the most from
the private expropriation and exploitation of
*jal-jangal-zameen*(water-forests-land), part of the natural resource
base of India's eastern
and central states, by multinationals, Indian and foreign.  Those who
detested him -- and considered him and his party, the CPI (Maoist), the
biggest internal security threat for the power elite and the ruling classes
-- had, in the name of peace, declared war -- "Operation Green Hunt" -- on
the very people who backed him.

Born in 1954 in Peddapally town (in Karimnagar district, north Telangana),
Kishenji was raised by his father Venkataiah (a "freedom fighter", he
called him) and his progressive mother Madhuramma.  Inspired by the
Naxalbari and Srikakulam
movements,3<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_edn3>he
became an active member of the Andhra State unit of the Communist
Party
of India (Marxist-Leninist) [CPI (ML)] in 1974 and played a prominent part
in the peasant struggles in Sircilla and Jagtial taluks of his home
district of Karimnagar that were declared 'disturbed areas" in October
1978.  It was in the course of the struggle in Jagtial that both Mupalla
Laxman Rao ("Ganapathy"), the present General Secretary of the CPI
(Maoist), and Kishenji came to the fore in the Andhra Pradesh unit of the
Party because of their excellent organising abilities.  Indeed, it was in
Karimnagar and Adilabad districts of north Telangana that the first seeds
of the fresh tactical line called "Road to Revolution" -- formulated by
Kondapalli Sitaramaiah and his close comrades after a thorough, critical
review of the strategy and tactics of the CPI (ML) since 1967 -- began to
sprout in the peasant movement there, soon after the Emergency was lifted.
 Thus, the CPI (ML) (People's War) [CPI (ML) (PW)], formed on 22 April
1980, was, so to say, the result of the actions of peasants, workers, and
revolutionary intellectuals at the base.

The immediate aim was to build guerrilla zones in north Telangana and
Dandakaranya (as per the Party's "Perspective for a Guerrilla Zone") by the
early 1990s, and in this, Kishenji played no small part.  Under the
leadership of the CPI (ML) (PW), a section of the workers, the poor
peasants and landless labourers, *dalits, *the backward castes, and *
adivasis* (indigenous people), stood up, with a voice of their own, the
courage to speak out against oppression and exploitation and resist
political domination.  Kishenji was a member of the Andhra Pradesh State
Committee of the Party when he was transferred to Dandakaranya in 1986 to
expand and strengthen the movement there, parts of which emerged as a
guerrilla zone where the Party and its mass organisations exercised power
as long as the guerrillas had the upper hand over the state's forces, the
zone reverting to the state when the guerrillas were forced to retreat.  In
such a context, and now in the midst of Operation Green Hunt, the Party,
the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), the mass organisations and
the Area Revolutionary People's Committees are still not able to assure the
tribal peasants a modicum of security by preventing the Indian big
bourgeoisie and the transnational corporations from destroying the
adivasis' human and natural environment.  Indeed, such security seems a
long way off, and the Party still has to work towards removing
jal-jangal-zameen, labour and money from regulation by the market forces of
neo-liberal globalisation.  Besides *physical* security, there is also the
question of assuring the habitability of the natural environment as well as
the security of the tribal peasantry in their *socio-cultural* environment.
 Without the formation of base areas, all this will remain a far cry.

>From the mid-1990s, Kishenji, now a member of the Central Committee of the
Party, worked to bring unity among the revolutionary forces (those who had
safeguarded the essential legacy of Naxalbari in the post-Emergency period)
and to revive the Naxalite movement in West Bengal.  In the Jangalmahal
area of West Bengal, it was Kishenji and his close comrades, the late
Sasadhar Mahato (killed by the security forces in an encounter in March
this year) among them, who undertook -- what Ho Chi Minh would have called
-- the long, patient organisational work which precedes the firing of the
first shots.  The unity of the CPI (ML) (PW) with the CPI (ML) (Party
Unity) in August 1998 and later, in September 2004, of the CPI (ML) (PW)
with the Maoist Communist Centre of India to form the CPI (Maoist) alarmed
the Indian ruling classes; the revival of the movement in West Bengal in
November 2008 unnerved the reformist CPI (M)-led government there.

Now in his mid-50s, Kishenji showed that he can still rough it out like a
young guerrilla, inspiring his junior colleagues, those in the springtime
of their lives.  The energy and conviction with which he was imbued in the
struggle for a better world led him to live a simple life, almost like that
of an ascetic.  The source of this morality came from, we think, the spirit
and passion with which he went about the vocation of organising the class
struggle.  He lived what he advocated -- that all comrades must care for
each other, love and help each other, that the basic attitude of the
"officers" in the PLGA should be one of sharing weal and woe with the
"soldier"-guerrillas; the relationship with the latter had to be one of
mutual respect; and respect for the human dignity of the "prisoners of war"
once they had surrendered their arms had to be part of the guerrillas'
ingrained attitude.  (The fair treatment of the former Sankrail police
station Officer-in-Charge Atindranath Dutta, who was taken hostage by the
Maoists in October 2009, might bear the latter out.)  Kishenji built good
relations with the people -- he was always concerned about them and helped
them overcome many of their difficulties -- all through his long march from
Jagtial to Jangalmahal.  The PLGA had to become one with the people so that
the latter see the guerrillas as their own.

*Revival of the Combative Spirit of Naxalbari in West Bengal *

This brings us to the Lalgarh movement, which was led by Kishenji on behalf
of the CPI (Maoist).  The West Bengal government had handed over some 4500
acres of forest land to the Sajjan Jindal business group at Salboni in the
district of West Midnapore even as the government's land reform programme
of allotting *pattas* (formal rights) for cultivable forest land and forest
land under cultivation to poor tribal peasants was kept in cold storage.
 The reign of terror let loose on the adivasis -- in the wake of the
detonation of a landmine that narrowly missed the cavalcade of the then
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee on 2 November 2008 on
the way from after a foundation stone-laying ceremony at the site of the
Jindal project -- was actively resisted, for, with Maoist backing led by
Kishenji, their dignity could no longer be crushed.  By mid-November,
the *Pulishi
Atyachar-er Birudhhe Janasadharan-er* Committee (People's Committee against
Police Atrocities, the PCAPA) was formed to lead the mass struggle in
Lalgarh and the adjoining areas.

>From December 2008 to June 2009, as long as Maoist politics was in command,
what was really heartening were the direct forms of people's democracy in
practice: each village now had a gram (village) committee with five women
and five men on it; two persons, a man and a woman from each village, were
a part of the central coordinating committee; the manner of taking and
ratifying decisions was utterly democratic; officials were made to sit on
the ground on handwoven mats on equal terms to negotiate with the
committees.  And, with the meagre resources at its command, the PCAPA-led
mass movement was able to run health posts with doctors from Kolkata coming
in once a week, construct and repair embankments, dig ponds, set up tube
wells, teach the local language in some schools, a lot of all this through *
shramdaan* (voluntary
labour).4<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_edn4>

Spring, it seemed, was truly in the air.  As long as it lasted, for seven
months the PCAPA and the CPI (Maoist), led by Kishenji, together seemed to
have struck an astute balance between political mobilisation, armed
actions, and social welfare/"development" activity.  But when they
destroyed the "White House", a symbol of the "ancient regime", the palatial
house of Anuj Pandey, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] zonal
secretary, at Dharampur on 14 June 2009, that was the last straw.  The
Joint Forces (JF) of the central and state governments moved in like an
occupation army, with the CPI (M) *harmads* acting as their local
collaborators.  The Maoist tactics of successfully combining mass political
mobilisation and armed struggle suffered a setback.  Moreover, Kishenji
erred in handling the contradictions between the CPI (M), then the ruling
party, and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by Mamata Banerjee, then the
main opposition party.  And, his aggressive sectarian and ultra-left
adventurist tactics cost the Party and the mass movement dearly, for these
acts brought on state repression a multiple of what it would have otherwise
been.  The contradictions between the Maoist revolutionaries and the
social-democratic CPI (M) at the local level need not have been escalated
to the point of becoming intensely antagonistic.  And, some of the
(excessive) killings -- were the Maoists really annihilating
*class*enemies?  Ultimately, it was the Trinamool Congress who took
advantage of
the situation to defeat the CPI (M) candidates in the area in the assembly
elections in April-May this year.

As part of her promise of ushering in *parivartan* (change), Mamata
Banerjee pledged the withdrawal of the JF that, for the *adivasis*, has
been an occupying force since mid-June 2009, the unconditional release of
all political prisoners, especially the hundreds of *adivasis* arrested and
dumped into jail in the course of the JF operations, and a dialogue with
the Maoists; but, on assuming power, she has now reneged on all of these
pledges.  Instead, the recruitment of some 10,000 special police
*havildars*(constables), on the lines of the Salwa Judum in
Chhattisgarh, is on the
anvil.  And, the TMC's own *Bhairav Bahini* has been assisting the JF just
like the CPI (M)'s harmads did as collaborators of that occupational force.
 Indeed, many of the harmads have shifted allegiance to the TMC's Bhairav
Bahini.  A "development package" with "surrender" sops, the re-deployment
of the JF with the Commando Battalions for Resolute Action, the so-called
COBRA, at its core, the stepping up of training of the state's armed police
in jungle warfare, a strengthening of the Naxalite section of the
Intelligence Bureau on the lines of the Special Intelligence Bureau of
Andhra Pradesh (APSIB), and the state's Counter Insurgency Force along the
lines of the Greyhounds, all these are seen to have yielded results -- a
mood of triumphalism now prevails after the "hunting" down of Kishenji.

Now, while much of the credit for the revival of the Maoist movement in the
Jangalmahal area of West Bengal must go to Kishenji and his close comrades,
like the late Sasadhar Mahato, they will have to bear much of the
responsibility for the present setback there too.

*'Encounters Are Murders'*

"Encountering" (extra-judicial killing) of Maoist leaders is not new;
neither is the main component of the Indian state's counterinsurgency
strategy of killing the top leadership of the revolutionary movement in
order to wipe out the Party.  Vempatapu Satyanarayana (popularly known as
'Gappa Guru') and Adibhatla Kailasham -- school teachers who organised the
Girijan peasants of Srikakulam since 1955, launched an armed struggle in
1967-68, and joined the CPI (ML) in 1969 -- were "encountered" by the
police in July 1970.  Subbrao Panigrahi -- known for
*Jamukulakatha*(theatrical rendering of songs in a folk idiom) -- who
played a major role
in extending the Srikakulam movement into the province of Orissa, was
captured and murdered by the police in December 1969.  Indeed, one recalls
with horror the encounter killings in Andhra Pradesh prior to and during
the dark days of the Emergency period, a few of which were investigated in
detail by the committee (set up by Jayaprakash Narayan, as president of the
Citizens for Democracy) headed by V M Tarkunde, due mainly to the
painstaking work done by K G Kannabiran as member-secretary and a group of
committed civil liberties activists.

More recently, and again, much of it related to tragic happenings in Andhra
Pradesh, at the core of the target of the counterinsurgency operation was
the Party leadership -- to be *physically eliminated*.  We list here the
killing, in cold blood, of some members of the core of the leadership of
the Andhra Pradesh unit or the Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist), among
the most outstanding the Party had nurtured and developed over the years.

   - Settiraju Papaiah (alias Somanna), a member of the Special Zonal
   Committee of north Telangana, was abducted by the APSIB in Bangalore (the
   capital of the province of Karnataka) on 29 June 2006, brutally tortured,
   and killed on 1 July; and his body was thrown in the forests of Warangal in
   Andhra Pradesh.


   - Burra Chinnayya, alias Madhav, state secretary of the Party, and seven
   of his comrades were killed on 23 July 2006 when the Greyhounds and a
   special police force of a battalion size attacked the headquarters of the
   AP State Committee in the Nallamala forests.  The attackers had precise
   information; it is said that they even knew the exact tent of which Madhav
   was an occupant.


   - Raghaulu -- a member of the A P State Committee of the Party who came
   from a poor peasant family and grew up as a cattle-herd boy -- and eight of
   his comrades were killed on 8 November 2006 in a forest area in Cuddapah
   district.


   - Chandramouli, a Central Committee member of the Party and a member of
   its Central Military Commission, and his wife Karuna, a barefoot doctor,
   were cold-bloodedly murdered in the Eastern Ghats on the Andhra-Orissa
   border on 29 December 2006, when they were on their way to the Party
   Congress.


   - Patel Sudhakar Reddy (alias Suryam, Vikas), a Central Committee
   member, and his comrade Venkatayya were picked up in Nasik (in the province
   of Maharashtra) on 23 May 2007, airlifted to Warangal, brutally tortured,
   and murdered the next day; and their bodies were thrown in the Lavvala
   forests there.

So Kishenji's killing is very much part and parcel of the established
criminal practice of state terrorism.

Can this utter contempt for the law go unchallenged?  These state-sponsored
terrorists have to be stripped of their impunity and brought to justice.
 Early this year, a bench of justices Aftab Alam and R M Lodha of the
Supreme Court said, responding to two public interest litigations related
to the fake encounter in which Cherukuri Rajkumar ("Azad"), CPI (Maoist)
politburo member and party spokesperson, and journalist Hemchandra Pandey
were shot dead in Adilabad district on the night of 1-2 July 2010 by the
Andhra Pradesh police after being picked up at or near Nagpur: "We cannot
allow the republic killing its own children".  Like the Azad fake encounter
case, the Kishenji one too seems to be part of the genre where "impunity
breeds contempt for the law".  Such scorn for the legal code is by now
ingrained in the wielders of repressive power -- recidivists in the
coercive apparatus of the Indian state.  Kishenji's elimination is really
vendetta killing by such recidivists, for he, above all, combated state
terror to the very end.

*Raise the Red Flag, Sing the Internationale*

No doubt, as the Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist) puts it, "the
martyrdom of comrade Koteswara Rao is a great loss to the Indian
revolutionary movement", but it is that very movement -- with all the ups
and downs, blunders and triumphs -- that still holds out hope for a better
world.  The unprecedented deployment of police on 27 November in Kishenji's
hometown of Peddapalli couldn't deter the thousands upon thousands of
mourners, a multitude, who came to pay homage to the memory of the Maoist
revolutionary on the day of his funeral.  His mother Madhuramma, now in her
mid-80s, was inconsolable; she hadn't seen her son for more than three
decades, and now, it was his dead body.  The anguish Madhuramma felt must
have been unbearable.  The day after her son was killed, she put it
poignantly:5 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_edn5>

My son believed in something and he was murdered for that.  I want to know
how and who are the people behind his killing.  I will go to the Calcutta
High Court and, if necessary, to the Supreme Court to find out why they
killed him like that. . . .  I have not seen my son for 37 years.  Now I
cannot bear to see his body.  I waited all these years to see him once
before I die.  I hope I die before his body arrives, I cannot live anymore.

Meanwhile, the songs that the balladeer Gaddar rendered brought tears to
the eyes of those who had gathered there.  Madhuramma was not alone, for
there were thousands of saddened admirers of the son she had raised, who
had gathered to form the multitude.  Kishenji's memory, his life, his work
belongs to those who want to create a better world.  Cries of "*Amar
rahe *Kishenji",
"*Johar Amarajeevi* Kishenji" and "Comrade Kishenji, *Lal Salaam*" filled
the air -- his heritage truly belongs to the poor peasants, the workers,
the revolutionary intellectuals.  No doubt, Kishenji will hold an important
place in Maoist revolutionary history for he truly brought to bear on his
practice the Maoist adage that "revolutionary war . . . can be waged only
by mobilizing the masses and relying on them".



1 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_ednref1>  <
www.bannedthought.net/India/CPI-Maoist-Docs/Statements-2011/111125-CC-KishenjiMartyrdom-Eng.doc
>

2 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_ednref2>  Shiv
Sahay Singh, "Kishenji's Body Handed Over to
Niece"<http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2662217.ece>(
*The Hindu*, 27 November 2011).

3 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_ednref3>
Sumanta Banerjee's
*In the Wake of Naxalbari
<http://books.google.com/books?id=SXgeAAAAMAAJ>*(Kolkata: Sahitya
Samsad, 2008) -- first published by the Calcutta
publisher Subarnarekha in 1980, and then by Zed Press, London in 1984 under
the title *India's Simmering Revolution: The Naxalite
Uprising<http://books.google.com/books?id=IRgeAAAAMAAJ>
* -- is an authentic and moving account of the Naxalbari (chapter 4) and
Srikakulam (chapter 5) movements.

4 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_ednref4>  For a
"blow-by-blow" account of the Lalgarh movement, see Sanhati's Lalgarh
Movement Archives at <sanhati.com/front-page/1083/>.

5 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/dmello031211.html#_ednref5>   "Not
Seen Son for 37 Yrs . . . Can't Bear to See His Body: Kishenji's
Mother"<http://www.indianexpress.com/news/not-seen-son-for-37-yrs...-cant-bear-to-see-his-body-kishenjis-mother/880936/>(
*Indian Express*, 27 November 2011).
------------------------------
Bernard D'Mello is deputy editor, *Economic & Political
Weekly<http://beta.epw.in/home/>
*, and a member of the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights,
Mumbai.  He thanks Gautam Navlakha -- conversations over the phone with
Gautam helped for bring a semblance of clarity to the thoughts expressed
over here.
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