Maoists in India: writings & interviews

142 Pages·2010·1.141 MB·English

by  Azad

100/- $-6

Maoists in India
Writings & Interviews
By Azad
Published by
Friends of Azad, 2010
[email protected]
For informations
P Varavara Rao,
203, Lakshmi Apartments,
Nalgonda X Roads,
Malakpet, Hyderabad,
India – 500036
Cover design
Ramanajeevi
Printed
Charita Impressions
Hyderabad
Table of Contents
In Honour of Our Friend
A Brief Biography
Azad’s Writings and Interveiws
1. Maoists in India October 2006 1
2. On the ‘Comprehensive
Peace Agreement’ in Nepal December 2006 15
3. Interview on the
Developments in Nepal May 2008 18
4. On V Prabhakaran May 2009 32
5. On Patel Sudhakar Reddy
& Venkataiah May 2009 35
6. On the Election Boycott
Tactic of the Maoists September 2009 37
7. Interview on the Governments’
Military Offensive October 2009 47
8. On Talks October 2009 76
9. On K. Balagopal October 2009 79
10. On Telangana December 2009 81
11. On Sakhamuri Appa Rao
& Kondal Reddy March 2010 84
12. On Dantewada Guerilla Attack April 2010 87
13. Interview to The Hindu April 2010 91
14. Letter to Swami Agnivesh May 2010 117
15. On Jnaneswari Express Tragedy May 2010 121
16. On Bhopal Verdict June 2010 124
17. A Last Note to A Neo-Colonialist July 2010 127
Blank
In Honour of Our Friend
We, the friends of Cherukuri Rajkumar (Azad), present this bouquet of
his writings and interviews collected from popular newspapers and
websites, to all those who are interested to know the ideas of the Maoist
politics in India in general and Azad’s articulation of the politics in
particular. Azad has been our friend for more than thirty years and as
much time, two thirds of his short life of 56 years, he spent developing,
exploring, elucidating and debating these ideas. A voracious reader
and prolific writer that he was, the writings collected here might be
less than a tenth of his literary output. Much of his writing was
anonymous or under different pseudonyms in clandestine journals and
documents and we leave it for future research to prepare his collected
works, most probably with active support from the party for which he
was a spokesperson, member of Central Committee and Politbureau at
the time of his brutal killing by police on July 2, 2010 in Adilabad forests
of Andhra Pradesh.
His death brought back his memories to us and we, from different walks
of life, began cherishing his recollections more after his death. Indeed
he began living amongst us more vigorously after his death, justifying
the saying “a tyrant dies and his rule is over, a martyr dies and his rule
begins”. Azad’s writings, statements, opinions, letters and his
expositions of the revolutionary movement that is spreading leaps and
bounds are reverberating in the present more vociferously. During the
last three months after his cold-blooded killing by the police his name
is more visible in the news than when he was alive.
We, as friends of Azad, thought it was our duty to propagate his ideas,
his personality and his thoughts and writings. Even as we understand
that his party would be in a better position to undertake that effort, we
also wanted to add our bit to the task. Within one week of his death, we
brought out a small collection of obituary articles written by prominent
journalists and civil libertarians in Telugu. We were overwhelmed by
the international response against his killing and brought out another
slim volume of statements of solidarity and condolence issued by
various parties, oraganisations and individuals across the world.
This book, in that process, is our third attempt to propagate Azad’s
ideas. All these articles and interviews appeared in popular newspapers
like Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu, Mainstream, People’s
March, etc. and available on the net. We gratefully acknowledge all the
publications and websites.
We distributed our earlier publications to all those people we knew
but we thought this book should be available to all those whom we
may not know, but really want the book. We would like to remind all
those that given the kind of repression prevailing in India now it would
be difficult to identify ourselves. Hence we requested revolutionary
writer Varavara Rao, who was an emissary of the CPI (Maoist) when
the latter had peace negotiations with the government of Andhra
Pradesh, to lend his address to the book. We are thankful to him for
accepting our request.
Our friend Azad lives here in his words. In his eloquence. In his turn of
phrase. In his penchant for truth. In his meticulous approach. In his
incisive analysis. In his steadfast practice. In his supreme sacrifice. Azad
continues to inspire.
Friends of Azad
September 20, 2010
A Brief Biography
Cherukuri Rajkumar (Comrade Azad) was born into a middle
class family of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh on 18 May 1954. His
father Cherukuri Lakshmaiah Chowdary, an ex-service man, and
mother Karuna shifted to Hyderabad to run a small restaurant and thus
he had his primary education in Hyderabad and secondary education
at Sainik School, Korukonda in Vizianagaram district. He did his
graduation in chemical engineering at Regional Engineering College
(REC), Warangal and post graduation in ore dressing at Andhra
University, Visakhapatnam.
Students of REC were in the forefront in forming Andhra Pradesh
Radical Students Union (RSU) in October 1974 and Rajkumar was part
of that group. He was arrested in 1975 under Emergency and spent a
few months in jail. Radical Students Union was revived after Emergency
and Rajkumar became its state president in 1978. He was re-elected
twice to that position.
In 1980 he chose to become whole timer and began his
underground life and there was no looking back. For the next 30 years,
he worked in different areas like Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Kerala,
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Dandakaranya, giving theoretical, political
and organisational inputs to struggles in all these places. He guided
party units and committees in all these states as well as South-western
Regional Bureau. Though he was part of a collective decision-making
body of the party, his personal contribution in terms of vision, expertise
in several fields and a sharp insight into different developing themes
helped the movement quite a bit. He was a voracious reader and a
prolific writer. Given the nature of his clandestine activity he wrote
under different pseudonyms, and more often credited his writings to
collective, but one could easily identify his style in numerous writings
in Voice of the Vanguard, People’s March, People’s Truth, Maoist
Information Bulletin, etc.
In 2002, the government of Andhra Pradesh initiated for talks
with the then CPI (ML) Peoples War to bring about peace. It was
Rajkumar who guided the efforts of peace negotiations on the part of
the revolutionary party and he wrote a number of statements, gave
interviews to newspapers clarifying the party’s position. In 2004, the
talks moved a little forward between the representatives of CPI (Maoist)
and CPI (ML) Janasakthi on one hand and the representatives of the
government on the other. Between May 2004 and January 2005, it was
again Rajkumar who guided and prepared a lot of statements and
documents for the talks. Again beginning with 2007 when the Prime
Minister described the Maoist movement as the biggest internal threat,
Rajkumar consistently exposed the real intentions of mining mafia
behind the onslaught, including Operation Green Hunt. Through
various writings and interviews in several media, he elaborated the
party’s positions on various issues including the peace process. A
number of statements given by him, an 18-page interview along with
audio sent to press in October 2009, his 12,262-word interview given to
the Hindu in April 2010 and his letter of May 31, 2010 in response to
Home Minister P Chidambaram’s letter of May 10 to Swami Agnivesh
are crystal clear expositions of the position of the CPI (Maoist).
Maoists in India The special issue (July 22, 2006)
devoted to the Maoists in India
reflects recognition of the growing
importance that the Maoist-led movement
plays in the polity and the economy of the
country. However, what was disconcerting
was that an issue devoted to the Maoists did
not have a single article by the Maoists
themselves. The majority of the essays
appeared preoccupied with the question of
violence and not with the horrifying
conditions of the masses and finding a way
out for them. Though the EPW has chosen a
wide spectrum of views, it would have been
more constructive if the articles were linked
more to the question of the alleviation of the
horrifying conditions of the masses,
particularly in this period of globalisation
when the situation has worsened. The issue
of violence should have been seen in this
context. In this reply, we will first very briefly
present our understanding of the Indian
social order, then discuss our own goals as
the framework from which to view the points
made by the writers, and subsequently take
up some of the main issues on which we
differ. We shall assign importance to those
arguments that are really disturbing the well-
wishers of the movement.
Semi-Colonial, Semi-Feudal Order
Our beloved country, so rich in natural
wealth, human power and ingenuity, has
been reduced to a condition that is, in some
respects, worse than most of the countries of
sub-Saharan Africa. In these nearly 60 years
of so-called independence the situation has
A Rejoinder
not significantly improved compared to what
Published in Economic prevailed in the last years of the British Raj –
and Political Weekly at least for the general masses. In the
October 14, 2006 Nehruvian period, the model of development
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Maoists in India (cid:1)