Naxalism or Maosim

I suspect Binayak Sen knows much more than we do. Fortunately or otherwise I do not  know enough to sit in judgment of this doctor’s actions. I am happy his deeds/misdeeds have started a much needed National debate on Maoists (Naxalites).

I recall my close shave with Naxalism.

I did 11 years at school.  I never tried to reason why the Anglo Indian Board did not have 10 or 12 years of schooling as did all other boards in the late 1960s. In the event that extra year in my school in Kannur, on the west coast in North Malabar in North Kerala, exposed me to Naxalism from close quarters.

On 22nd November 1968, a group of about 300 armed guerrillas made an unsuccessful attempt to attack the Thalassery police station.  (Thalassery is a town 10 miles from Kannur. This police station is bang on the main road from Kannur leading to my then home in Calicut. I was a boarder in Kannur.) The members of the unsuccessful group fled and went into hiding.  But within 48 hours, another group of revolutionaries, armed with country-made guns and bombs, attacked the police station at Pulpally (about 30 miles or so from Thalassery) in Wyanad. One police wireless operator was killed and many policemen including the sub-Inspector of police got injured in the attack.

The stunning specialty in that attack was its leader, a 19 year old woman, Ajitha. For good measure, before withdrawing from the scene of mayhem, she left her right palm impression in blood on the inner wall of the police station. Another notable fact was the assailants did not carry a single regulation weapon.

In 1968 these were unprecedented incidents which did create turmoil in the already restless populace in the Malabar.  That was my first exposure to the Naxalite movement. Ajitha was captured in 1969 in Wynad. As a revolutionary and later political prisoner this young woman's name has been recorded for posterity in her state.

The Naxalite movement never really took off in Kerala.

The notion then among a large section of the public in Malabar was that a Naxalite is one who likes his/her country more than the rest of us, and is hence more concerned than the rest of us when people suffer. Then the economy of Kerala, which then had not started getting remittances from the Middle East, was tottering.

During her time in prison, mostly under solitary confinement, Ajitha’s feminist sensibilities were slowly coming to the fore.  Ajitha served close to 8 years before being released by the state. She became a neighbour of my school mate, Sunderesan, in Calicut where I met her for about 10 minutes in 1979.  She seemed a soft spoken and normal human being. Ajitha, married and later got involved in activities for social uplift of women in Kerala.

A successor to the failed Naxalite movement in Kerala was the ‘Wynad Samskarika Vedi (Wynad Cultural Forum)' which blossomed to Janakiya Samskarika Vedi (Democratic Cultural Forum). The forum positioned itself as a movement involved in establishing its own cultural sphere of thoughts and ethics against the prevailing (thought to be) bourgeois ethos. Aligned to the left, it failed to clearly separate the cultural push from the political assaults. Consequently this movement also petered out. During my many holidays in my town in the 70s and 80s I had met a few of these activists who staged street plays professing their cause. 

I feel I saw the Naxalite movement in its purest form. It was not surprising then, given our state of the economy at that time and remnants of a feudal system ( my family has lost some leased out farmlands in central Kerala to the land reforms act of the Left Government of the state in the mid 60s) still in vogue a large section of the people probably were Naxal sympathizers. In Kerala the proximity of the common man to then Naxalites like Ajitha helped both sides to see reason before the situation worsened.

In my own pursuit of life, I lost track of this movement largely because it had failed in my state – and I thought if it had failed in Kerala it cannot succeed anywhere. I am probably right and wrong. Wrong because the movement by another name (Maoists) seems to be creating ripples in many parts of our country; right because the proponents fight for a debauched cause and by seeking external help the movement has become anti National.

Incidentally, Wynad, the cradle of the failed naxalite movement in Kerala is now a relatively new and prosperous district which is also a much sought after holiday destination both by domestic and international tourists.