The fall of Second Naxalbari

Vishav Bharti

This May will mark 50 years of the Naxalite movement. From losing ground in old bastions to spreading to new areas, from becoming “the gravest internal security threat” to shrinking back to hilly forest terrain, the last decade has been quite dramatic for the armed Left movement.

What started from the small village of Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967, hit the peak with Lalgarh, “a unique experiment as well as the bloodiest” during this period. Some called it the “Second Naxalbari”. For journalist Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, “Naxalbari and Lalgarh both rose like a storm and crashed like a wave within three years.” If Charu Majumdar was too late to correct the errors, so was Kishanji. Bhattacharya was among the several journalists writing the “first rough draft of history” in Lalgarh. Though Lalgarh and the Legend of Kishanji attempts to understand the Maoist movement between 2009 and 2015, it mainly revolves around “the aspirations, trials and tribulations of the people of Jangalmahal, who displayed immense grit and resilience in the face of the state’s brutal suppression of their movement.”

Bhattacharya calls it “a new kind of Naxalism — one that combined mass movement with armed struggle.” He beautifully captures how resistance against police atrocities turned a large area into a Maoist guerrilla zone. He says it was a creative application of Marxist dynamics: from organising an underground football tournament in which 48 teams of barefoot players play in the memory of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities activist Lalmohan Tudu; a mass movement is led by Izzat Bachao Committee against rapes by security forces; how Kishanji looks death in the eyes and plays chess with the largest democracy of the world over a mobile phone; going beyond just an armed movement to building an alternative system with digging irrigation canals and health centres and running schools.

In an obituary of Kishanji, political scientist Saroj Giri had called the Lalgarh movement as “…unique in the history of resistance movements in the country.”“Several forms of resistance seem to have come together in his leadership — synchronising armed fighting power of the people with open rallies, processions and demonstrations,” he had said. Well, the rise and fall of Lalgarh will be remembered for people’s bravery. Especially the story of courage of young people like Manik Mahto, who pursued the case of mass rape victims of Sonamukhi. When he was able to convince a woman to talk to a TV crew, curious journalists had wondered how he managed that. He later broke down and shared that the woman who spoke on camera was his mother. Lalgarh will be remembered for the courage of youngsters like Sashadhar Mahato, sons of the soil, the organic leaders of the movement. They started “with two rifles and three country made guns” and took the movement to unimaginable heights.

Lalgarh will also be remembered for the idea of justice that Maoists imbibed in the society. And it will again and again remind us of ex-IAS officer BD Sharma’s words that Lalgarh was just another link in “India’s unbroken chain of broken promises.”

Lalgarh will also be a mirror to Maoists. Some of the bloodiest moments of the movement came from this area; kangaroo courts by Maoists no more remained people’s courts and handed over death at the drop of a hat; here abuses were hurled openly; political opponents were silenced with bullets; people would wake up to dead bodies scattered on roads. The unease of the times will ring in the words of Bengali balladeer Bidyut Bhowmik: “Those innumerable corpses. The heaviness. My helplessness… I can’t bear it anymore.”

The work also leaves a trail of questions for the Maoists to answer. Were the 150 murders of CPM workers and leaders really necessary? Was Mamta Banerjee a lesser evil? What did the Maoists achieve by dethroning CPM? How Bengal was a repeat of Andhra of 2003, how the same mistakes were committed again and again, how no lessons were learnt...