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 he special issue (July 22, 2006) Tdevoted 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 Maoists in India 1 relied on the “trickle down effect”; now, in the present phase of globalisation, there is no pretence of even that.