Arundhati Roy: Walking with the Comrades

Arundhati Roy interviews guerrilla fighters of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

The following article is an important and valuable firsthand account of the people’s war being carried out by the revolutionaries in India and is by the well known Indian progressive intellectual and activist Arundhati Roy. Roy travelled into Central India’s Dandkaranya Forests to meet with the Maoists. This article was posted on dawn.com: 

Arundhati Roy finds a quiet moment to herself during a punishing visit to the forest where she became the first journalist/writer to break the taboo of of interviewing Maoist guerrillas in their lair.

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them. 

I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”

People’s War in India: Interview with Comrade Anand of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

This article was published in Maoist Information Bulletin 13, dated December 7, 2009, which is available on Banned Thought:

Interview with Comrade Katakam Sudarshan,  Secretary, Central Regional Bureau, CPI(Maoist)

We are publishing below parts of an interview by our MIB correspondent with comrade Katakam Sudarshan aka Anand, Polit Bureau member and the secretary of Central regional Bureau, CPI(Maoist). He is incharge of one of the two major regions under the CPI(Maoist) where people’s war is raging with great intensity. For almost three decades he has been in the field leading the struggle of the oppressed in the flaming fields of North Telangana to the adivasi-inhabited regions of Dandakaranya. A few years ago, he lost his life-partner, fiery, vocal and highly talented comrade Sadhana, when she was the secretary of Adilabad district in North Telangana.

Short and soft-spoken, comrade Anand answered all the questions very patiently in his native tongue of Telugu. The questions were mainly related to the stand of the CPI(Maoist) regarding the proposal of talks by Union Home Minister Chidambaram, on the question of violence, and the other issues related to the Centre’s war against the Maoists and adivasis.

Blazing Trail: Video on the History and Development of the Naxalite Movement in India

India: War Against the People and the Historic Lalgarh Movement

This article by Amit Bhattacharyya, a professor of history at Jadavpur University in Kolkata was posted by Democratic Students Union on December 31, 2009.

War Against the People and the Historic Lalgarh Movement

-Amit Bhattacharyya 

The Indian ruling classes and the central government they have set up to serve them have very recently declared one of the most unjust and brutal wars against the people which is quite unprecedented in the history of our country. Such a massive mobilization of armed forces, paramilitary forces, police forces and air forces totalling around 1 lakh personnel, along with US-Israel military assistance of various types only highlights the magnitude of the war.

They have identified the Maoists as the ‘greatest threat to the internal security of the country since independence’ i.e, the security of the Indian ruling classes. The entire forested region in central and eastern India have been divided into seven Operating Areas, which they want to ‘clear’ within the next five years of all resistance, including that by the Maoists and other Naxalite organizations. A massive amount of money to the tune of Rs.7300 crore has already been earmarked for meeting the cost of this war. 

Arundhati Roy on Operation Green Hunt

Activist and writer Arundhati Roy shares her thoughts on the importance of the Naxalite uprising, Indian democracy. Speech given at a Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee panel opposing Operation Green Hunt, Nov. 23, 2009

India’s Operation Green Hunt: A Looming Crime

The following article is from A World To Win News Service. It should be mentioned that when the article mentions CPI(M), they are refering to the Maoist Party, the CPI (Maoist), not to the CPI (Marxist), which is the organization typically designated by that acronym:

14 December 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Maoist or Red Corridor stretches from West Bengal in India’s northeast through the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra in the west. It includes many forest areas including the Dandakaranya forest. Its millions of adivasis (Hindi for original settler, an umbrella term for ethnic and tribal groups who were among the original inhabitants of the subcontinent) were pushed into forest regions by waves of invaders and generally excluded from “mainstream” Hindu society. They have a long history of rebellion and militant uprisings against British colonial rule, from the Santal revolt of 1855-57 to numerous smaller uprisings and have been a major base for communist organising.

India: Democracy and Ban Cannot Go Together

The following article, by Professor Amit Bhattacharyya, was forwarded to The Marxist-Leninist by a comrade. It is originally from the website Banned Thought (PDF)

Democracy and Ban cannot go together

By Amit Bhattacharyya, Professor of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata

[Late November 2009]

In the recent days, two important developments took place in the national scene—both of which have far-reaching implications. One, of course, is the battle for Lalgarh. The second—that has some bearing on the Lalgarh movement also–is the banning of the CPI (Maoist) after it was tagged to the long list of what the central government described as ‘terrorist organizations’. It implies that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008 (UAPA) would henceforth be applied to the members of the Maoist party or people sympathetic to their cause.

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.