Naxal Bari of Kerala: memoir of Ajitha by Ajitha

Author:Ajitha [Ajitha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-31T18:30:00+00:00

15

POLITICAL RESPONSES

It is worthwhile to record the responses to the Thalassery-Pulpally rebellions from various quarters within the state and the rest of the country. I got to know about most of these only after getting released on bail. All the parliamentary political parties of India opposed the rebellion, either openly or discreetly. For the ruling Congress Government at the Centre it was a dangerous forewarning. Hence, the Central Government promised all possible help to the Marxist led coalition government in Kerala. The Centre even pressed into service choppers from its Naval base at Cochin to assist the Kerala police in its combing operations to capture us, when we were wandering in the Thirunelli forests. Regressive parties like the Congress and the Jan Sangh termed us anti-national and anti-social. Congress used this opportunity to topple the Marxist-led Kerala government on allegations of aiding and abetting the Naxalites.

The political position of the parties, which claimed to be revolutionary and progressive, on our rebellion was not significantly different from that of the bourgeois parties. They applauded the revolutionary spirit of the youngsters involved in these rebellions and argued with righteous indignation that our motive should not be doubted. They proclaimed it their bounden duty to get the prodigals back to the fold. They unleashed a crusade of words against treating the young misled revolutionaries like ordinary criminals in jail. The C.P.I and Kerala Socialist Party were prominent among them. But they were absolutely sure that the path followed by the revolutionaries was wrong and that incidents like Naxalbari, which shook the very foundations of the parliamentary system, should be tackled. These proclamations of sympathy amounted to sweet nothings, yet they served two purposes for them: They hoped to drive the C.P.I. (Marxist) out of the seven-party united front. Second, they wanted comrades from our ranks to join their party in order to taken on the C.P.I (M). Their simple design was to convert the glory of Thalassery-Pulpally into votes.

But what was the response of the Marxist leadership, supposedly the most revolutionary party of them all?

The authoritative view of C.P.I. (M) was put on record by none other than its tallest leader, AK Gopalan on January 10, 1969 in the form of a short essay: 'Thalassery-Pulpally incidents — Other Parties and Us'. It says: "These attacks neither help the worker-peasant movement nor the non-Congress parties that work for workers and peasants nor the United Front government that has been their creation. The Palakkad meeting and the state committee have felt that these incidents would only help ruin the revolutionary movement and sustain and strengthen the bourgeoisie-capitalist system. The events that followed prove this right."

He wrote elsewhere: "The party doesn't believe in the display of physical power either at the level of the individual or as small groups. The Communist Party never took refuge in Gandhian non-violence to berate the use of force during worker-peasant struggles or nationalist movement in the days of the independence struggle. Yet, it had always opposed the use of force by individuals, which used to be termed as terrorism during those days.

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