Seven Years Gone: Remembering Anuradha Ghandy

Anuradha Ghandy: The Rebel

She was born into privilege and could easily have chosen the easy life. But Anuradha Ghandy chose guns over roses to fight for the dispossessed.

On a muggy April evening in 2008, somewhere in Mumbai, a doctor was trying desperately to get in touch with his patient. The patient happened to be a woman in her early 50s, who had come that morning with high fever. The doctor had advised a few blood tests, and, as he saw the reports, he started making frantic calls to the phone number the patient had scribbled in her nearly illegible handwriting. The number, he soon realised, did not exist. He was restless. The reports indicated the presence of two deadly strains of malaria in the woman’s bloodstream—she had to be admitted to a hospital without delay. Time was racing by and there was no trace of her.

By the time the woman contacted the doctor again, a few days had passed. The doctor wanted her placed under intensive care immediately. But it was too late.

India: 10 Years Ago, the CPI(Maoist) Was Founded

[In 2004, the two largest revolutionary Maoist organizations in India merged to found the Communist Party of India (Maoist), after a long period of summation and struggle for unity on basic questions of ideology, politics, and revolutionary strategy.  At the time of the founding, they issued a series of documents.  The following document, “HOLD HIGH THE BRIGHT RED BANNER OF MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM” details much of the history leading up to this merger, what unity was developed, and the place this historic merger plays in the history not only of the Revolution in India, but the responsibility the new Party has taken toward the international communist movement and Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism worldwide.  The document, while a summary, is nonetheless quite long, but well worth reviewing.  The CPI(Maoist) has taken a leading role in the world revolution, and continues to do so today.  —  Frontlines ed].

Central Committee (P) CPI(Maoist), 21 September, 2004:  “….The present document – Hold High the Bright Red Banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism – is the synthesis of all the positive points in the documents of the two erstwhile parties, as well as their experiences in the course of waging the people’s war, fighting against revisionism, and right and left opportunist trends in the Indian and international communist movement, and building a stable and consistent revolutionary movement in various parts of our country…..”

INTRODUCTION

During the uproarious decade of 60s that shook the entire world, the genuine communist revolutionaries in India too began their struggle against the entrenched revisionists inspired by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. The Great Debate, initiated and carried out by the then CPC led by Mao Tse-tung against modern revisionism in the International Communist Movement, clearly marked this new beginning in the Communist Movement in India.

It is in this context that many genuine and staunch communist revolutionary forces along with many outstanding and front-ranking leaders like comrades CM and KC started emerging on the scene in the fight against revisionism. This fight was reflected in the 7th Congress of the CPM held in 1964 in the form of two diametrically opposite roads-the road of parliamentarism and the road of protracted people’s war.

Thereafter, the earth-shaking events of the GPCR further surcharged the political atmosphere in India. The clarion call of the great Naxalbari movement led by Com. CM proved to be a “Spring Thunder over India” as graphically described by CPC. It greatly unmasked the ugly face of the revisionist leadership of the CPI, CPI (M) brand. The powerful slogans like “China’s Path is Our Path” and “Mao Tsetung Thought is Our Thought” spread to the four corners of India and even other parts of the Sub-Continent. Naxalbari thus marked a qualitative rupture with age-old revisionism in the Indian communist movement and firmly established the universal truth of MLM Thought in India. From then on, MLM-Thought had become a demarcating line between revisionists and genuine revolutionaries in India. Thus “Naxalbari path, the only path” became an ever-resounding slogan. This movement further inspired and attracted a completely new generation of revolutionary communist forces from among the masses of workers, peasants, students, youth, women and intellectuals towards the ideology of MLM Thought.

The tumultuous events of the 60s starting with the Great Debate and culminating in the GPCR brought forth a new polarisation among the ML forces all over the globe. New Marxist-Leninist parties began to emerge by taking MLM Thought as their guiding ideology.

Although later the revolutionary movement suffered a setback for the time being, the bright red banner of MLM Thought and the flames of Naxalbari continue to shine in various parts of the country. In fact the seeds of MLM Thought were sown very deep in the Indian landscape.

The history of the emergence and development of our two Parties is inseparably linked with this stormy period. During the last 30 years and more of history we not only continue to uphold the shining red banner of MLM Thought, but also continue to apply it in our revolutionary practice in the concrete conditions of India. During this practice we have forged and developed a revolutionary line by analyzing and synthesizing the positive and negative experiences of our movements no doubt on the basis of MLM Thought. In this light we have achieved many remarkable successes in continuing and developing the protracted people’s war through developing agrarian revolutionary guerilla struggle in the countryside by mobilizing and relying on the peasant masses, especially the poor and landless peasants. We continued this struggle by resisting the continuous severe repression and many suppression campaigns unleashed by the reactionary ruling classes. We have succeeded in developing several guerilla zones and guerrilla army-the PLGA- directed towards establishing full-fledged PLA and Base Areas in the vast countryside of Andhra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Dandakaranya and the adjoining parts of these states. This protracted people’s war led by our two Parties is directed towards completing the New Democratic Revolution through the strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside. The content of this revolution is agrarian revolution.

During the course of this protracted people’s war and fighting against various “Left” and Right Opportunist tendencies that emerged from within or outside apart from the revisionism of CPI and CPI (M), we have learnt that any attempt to belittle the importance of MLM Thought and its concrete application to the concrete conditions will prove to be very disastrous. All these tendencies undermined the Maoist conception that in all the backward countries dominated by imperialism and feudalism the objective condition for initiating and developing protracted people’s war from the very beginning are already mature. In the very light of our bitter experience of the last 30 years achieved at the cost of heavy bloodshed along with the experiences of the International Communist Movement, our understanding regarding our ideology has deepened further.

India: New Bollywood depiction of Maoism — outlawed rebels with voice and song

[A rare cultural and commercial depiction — Bollywood, no less! — of the growing Naxalite/Maoist rebellion.  See, below, a video clip (in Hindi) of a song perrformance in the film, followed by commentary from bourgeois cultural media critic in India; an article describing Maoist reaction to the film; and an article from an Indian-Canadian publication which draws connections between indigenous conditions and rebellion in India and those in Canada. — Frontlines ed.]

CHAKRAVYUH: A re-look into Maoist agitation across the country

---

By Enkayaar, Glamsham Editorial, October 17, 2012

It may be fortuitous that just a fortnight after the death anniversary of the revolutionary Che Guvera has been celebrated around the world by his fans on 09 October, Hindi cinema would be having another look at the resistance against the state and the system through Prakash Jha’s CHAKRAVYUH. Che Guvera is one of the rallying points against the atrocities of the state as perceived by those who are living on the fringe of development.

The location chosen for setting the content of CHAKRAVYUH is the area around Chattisgarh, Orissa and parts of Andhra Pradesh that continue to be the destinations where the Naxalist movement is gaining ground on a daily basis and the writ of the state does not run at all in these areas. Revolt against the state that is gaining ground is on account of the fact that the benefits of development aimed at the common man still do not reach them in spite of 65 years of independent India.

In India: “Daughter of a Maoist”

29 October 2011

HOLDING ON TO HOPE Savera, around seven at the time, was told by the police that they would shoot her papa. All that her elder sister Ami could do was watch helplessly (Photo: IMA BABU)

Terrorised by the police, bereft of parents, evicted from school—what it means to be a 15-year-old daughter of parents ‘wanted’ by the State

by Shahina KK, Open Magazine

I first met her when she was around 10 or 11 months old. Her mother Shyna was a friend and source. At the time, Shyna was an upper division clerk in the High Court. She was also an activist trying to set up a trade union in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Kochi. As a TV reporter, I had frequent contact with Shyna. She often gave me story tips from the SEZ, to which the media didn’t have much access. Her little girl was called Ameranta. I found the name odd. Many of our common friends thought likewise. We advised Shyna to change the name. I remember telling Shyna that when the child grew up, she would dislike this name.

After 15 years, when I met the girl, she was not Ameranta but Ami. The name was changed when she started school. The repeated advice of her friends had made Shyna do it. I asked Ami whether she knew what her former name was. She said she knew and regretted not having that beautiful name. I shrank inside and did not say anything. When I returned home. I googled the name Ameranta and read the meaning. It was the ‘flower that never fades’.