Lalgarh and the legend of Kishanji : tales from India's Maoist movement

305 Pages·2016·4.401 MB·English

by  Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

LALGARH AND
THE LEGEND OF
KISHANJI
Tales from India’s Maoist
Movement
SNIGDHENDU BHATTACHARYA
To
the people of Lalgarh,
.
the creators of this history
Sometimes, reality is too complex
for oral communication.
But legend embodies it in a form
which enables it to spread
all over the world.
—Jean-Luc Godard,
Alphaville
CONTENTS
Introduction
I By the People
‘Kishanji Is Here. He Wants To Meet You.’
In the Liberated Land
e Groundwork
Singur – Nandigram – Lalgarh
Rise of a Storm
‘People’s Rule’
2 Towards a Revolution
e Rage of the Hammer
Civil War Begins
e Guerrilla with a Mobile Phone
Rebels, Reporters and the Police
e ‘Prisoner Swap’
War Intensi�es
Silence in the Time of Celebrations
e Copenhagen Connection
A Deadly Attack
3 The War
Rules of the War
e Massacre
A Walk
e Night Shelter
e People’s Court
e Raid
e Reverse Tide
e ‘Recapture’
4 The Confusion
Enemy’s Enemy
CPM’s Endgame
Jnaneshwari: As it happened
e Election Equations
Mamata’s Jangalmahal
5 The Death
e Death
e Change
e Post-Mortem
6 RevolutionIndia@2016
Notes
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Photographic Inserts
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
AUTHOR’S NOTE
L
algarh was the result of a long history of state neglect and Maoist
mobilization. Bengal’s particular engagement with Maoist movements too has
had a bearing on how the story unfolded. For background reading on how
Lalgarh came to be, go to www.legendofkishanji.wixsite.com/lalgarh, where we
have uploaded appendixes to the text.
Appendix I: ‘Tashkent to Lalgarh via China and Naxalbari’ – the story of
the revival of the Naxalite movement in Bengal, seen in the context of the
complex history of communist movement in India.
Appendix II: ‘Maoism in India – a timeline of the genesis and
spread’;‘Lalgarh – a timeline, 1992-2011’ and ‘CPI (Maoist) central committee
members, 2004–16’.
Apart from the appendixes, we have also uploaded more photographs on the
Maoist uprising in Lalgarh.
INTRODUCTION
M
eeting Maoist commander Kishanji in a ‘liberated Lalgarh’ in 2009, and the
experiences I encountered thereafter, became a turning point in my life as a
journalist. It deeply in�uenced my understanding of not only Maoist politics
but also the ways in which people react.
e meteoric rise and fall of the Lalgarh1 movement within a span of only
three years left an indelible mark on several lives, including mine. Lalgarh was
far from being just another Maoist-led movement. It was a new kind of
Naxalism2 – one that combined mass movement with armed struggle.
ousands of people hit the streets protesting against police atrocities and
venting their anger at the leaders of the ruling party, the Communist Party of
India (Marxist) commonly referred to as CPM3, for their corruption and
suppression of voices of dissent. ey blocked roads and gheraoed camps of
security forces. e police were either locked inside their stations or forced to
�ee their camps. Panchayat offices were shut down. Hundreds joined hands to
implement Maoist-guided local development initiatives. At night, members of
armed militia stood guard in every village, often venturing out to mount
attacks on CPM party offices and police camps.
Enthused by the developments in Lalgarh, the Maoist leadership called for
‘creating thousands of Lalgarhs across the country’.
I was lucky to be privy to many of the inner workings of the Maoists, even
at the height of the con�ict with the Harmad Bahini4 and the security forces.
Most police officers, understandably, considered me pro-Maoist, if not their
agent. But my office consistently stood by me, even in the most trying times.
In the three years between 2008 and 2011, I saw war, loss, justice, and the
denial of it.
I witnessed a people’s court where Maoist militia leaders were about to
execute a ‘Harmad’ without the consensus of the villagers. I got picked up by
paramilitary forces from a village, saw them pick up all the adult males of an
entire village on the suspicion that some of them were Maoists. I spent nights
at a villager’s home that was razed to the ground a few days after I left. I spoke
to Kishanji on the phone for hours, often every day, and often argued with
him.
I heard hapless villagers curse the CPM and the police, but when the
movement degenerated and was headed for a fall, I saw the same people feeling
helpless because a section of the Maoist militia was metamorphosing into a
‘new CPM’. e very people who welcomed the Maoists with open arms, gave
them food and shelter, started fearing the new leadership.
By the time the insurgency �zzled out after the alleged fake encounter
killing of Kishanji on 24 November 2011, the Lalgarh experiment had become
one of the bloodiest Naxalite uprisings in India.
A total of 355 civilians died at the hands of the Maoists within the
jurisdiction of �fteen police stations in and around Lalgarh between November
2008 and November 2011, as did �fty-three security personnel. On the other
hand, roughly eighty Maoists and their supporters died at the hands of the
security forces and the CPM’s Harmad Bahini. is is in addition to the deaths
of 148 passengers in the Jnaneshwari Express tragedy – the result of a horri�c,
multi-agency conspiracy and a fallout of the movement itself. e list is,
however, far from complete. ere are at least three dozen more civilians, both
from the CPM and the Maoist camps, who remain missing even today.
At its height the Lalgarh movement had shed more blood than all other
Maoist-insurgency-affected states put together. In 2010 the Maoists killed 478
civilians in nine states, of whom 180 were killed in and around Lalgarh (the
Jangalmahal area) alone. In 2009 that number stood at 391, of which 134 were
in Jangalmahal.
And, �nally, the Lalgarh movement ended miserably, with delinquent
guerrillas betraying their leader, Kishanji, to the security forces. ese guerrillas
were inducted into the police force and awarded a lump sum, as per the
rehabilitation policy of the state government.
What gave this entire chapter its unique character was the charismatic albeit
elusive persona of one of its central �gures – Kishanji. A member of the Maoist
party’s politburo and central military commission, he was also the
spokesperson of the party’s eastern regional bureau comprising Bihar,