Arundhati Roy on Maoism and Democracy in India

This is a 5-part series where writer/activist Arundhati Roy speaks on “Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency”

Revolution in India: Interview with CPI-Maoist Leader Ganapathi

The following interview with Communist Party of India (Maoist) leader Ganapathi (Mupalla Laxman Rao) is from Open Magazine, by Rahul Pandita, October 17, 2009:

“We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government”

Somewhere in the impregnable jungles of Dandakaranya, the supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) spoke to Open on issues ranging from the Government’s proposed anti-Naxal offensive to Islamist Jihadist movements

The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) talks to Open in his first-ever interview.

At first sight, Mupalla Laxman Rao, who is about to turn 60, looks like a school teacher. In fact, he was one in the early 1970s in Andhra Pradesh’s Karimnagar district. In 2009, however, the bespectacled, soft-spoken figure is India’s Most Wanted Man. He runs one of the world’s largest Left insurgencies—a man known in Home Ministry dossiers as Ganapathi; a man whose writ runs large through 15 states. The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) is a science graduate and holds a B Ed degree as well. He still conducts classes, but now they are on guerilla warfare for other senior Maoists. He replaced the founder of the People’s War Group, Kondapalli Seetharaamiah, as the party’s general-secretary in 1991. Ganapathi is known to change his location frequently, and intelligence reports say he has been spotted in cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata and Kochi. After months of attempts, Ganapathi agreed to give his first-ever interview. Somewhere in the impregnable jungles of Dandakaranya, he spoke to RAHUL PANDITA on issues ranging from the Government’s proposed anti-Naxal offensive to Islamist Jihadist movements.

Report on Investigation of Anti-Displacement Movement in India

The following is from MR Zine:

India’s Combative Anti-Displacement Movement

by David Pugh

I recently spent three weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India.  As a guest of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (People’s Movement against Displacement and for Development), I traveled across central and eastern India visiting the sites of proposed industrial and mining projects, Special Economic Zones, and real estate developments.  I spoke with hundreds of villagers who are threatened with displacement and with many dedicated activists who are helping to organize the people’s resistance.

Celebrate the Birth Centenary of Comrade Amulya Sen

The Marxist-Leninist recieved the following from the Com. Amulya Sen Birth Centenary Celebration Committee. It is interesting in its discussion of some of the history of the movement in India. The Indian revolution is composed of a number of ML parties and organizations operating throughout the country, with some conducting armed struggle. The Indian revolution is growing and revolutionaries in the U.S. should support it.    

Celebrate Birth Centenary of Comrade Amulya Sen

Comrades and Friends,

This year, 2008 is the birth centenary of Com. Amulya Sen, the freedom fighter and the communist revolutionary of India.

Com. Sen was born in 1908 in Sonarang village of Bikrampur of Dhaka district in present Bangladesh. He completed his formal education after obtaining gold medal in B.Sc. and 1st class in B.T examinations from the University of Dhaka. However, leaving a comfortable and peaceful life, in his youth Com. Sen rushed to the revolutionary armed struggle against British imperialism with a dream of an independent India, and took the membership of ‘Anushilan Samity’.

Revolution in India

The following article is from Himal Southasian. It is written from the perspective of an Indian NGO and pro-Indian government think tank, the Institute for Conflict Management. The article is interesting, and my posting it here is for informational purposes only. This is absolutely not an endorsement of the views expressed within, and it should be understood that such an article may contain misinformation.

The riot of red flags

By: Ajai Sahni

The strategies and tactics of the Naxalites are there for all to see, but the Indian establishment is yet to understand this agenda of ‘protracted warfare’.

India’s Naxalite movement – to which contemporary Indian Maoists directly trace their lineage – emerged as a wildfire insurrection in 1967 in the Naxalbari area of North Bengal. After a few years of dramatic violence, however, that movement was comprehensively suppressed by 1973, with the entire top leadership of what was then the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), either jailed or dead. What little remained of its splintered survivor organisations was destroyed during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency of 1975. It was with the formation in 1980 of the People’s War Group (PWG) – under the leadership of Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, an erstwhile Central Organising Committee member of the CPI (ML), in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh – and the reorganisation of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Bihar in the mid-1980s, that the movement resurfaced in some strength.

Documentary about People’s War in India

Here is an interesting two-part documentary about the communist people’s war in India. Of particular interest is the discussion of the dreadful Salwa Judum death squads.

Video: Interview with Dr. Baburam Bhattarai of CPN (Maoist)

This is reposted here from Revolution in South Asia.

Apparently this video, in which Bhattarai discusses proletarian internationalism, New Democracy, the peace process following the decade-long people’s war, and so on, is from shortly before the Constituent Assembly elections which the Maoists won by a landslide.