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HomePageTurnerBook ExcerptsThe idea of Dandakaranya as a breeding zone of Maoists took birth...

The idea of Dandakaranya as a breeding zone of Maoists took birth at a dinner table

The thirst for land among landless peasants and tribals was at its peak in Andhra Pradesh. It was Indira Gandhi, say veteran Maoist idealogues, who created the thirst.

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You could say the idea of Dandakaranya as a rear base for Maoist rebels germinated over a dinner table.

Every summer, or whenever their jobs permitted, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah’s daughter and his son-in-law­ both were doctors at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences-would visit Bastar in Madhya Pradesh (it is now in Chhattisgarh) and adjoining areas and treat poor tribals for free. The couple had been witness to the wretched lives the tribals were forced to live. The government just didn’t care. For New Delhi, this area didn’t exist.

One evening, the couple paid a visit to KS. Over curd and rice, perhaps, they got talking to KS about their experiences in Bastar. Shortly afterwards, a document was circulated among the revolutionaries, which talked about combining four districts of Andhra Pradesh-Karimnagar, Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam into a guerilla zone. The districts are connected to each other through dense forest area. The document said that in order to take the movement towards a guerilla zone, the cadre would have to focus on building the party deep amongst the masses. It also stressed on the formation of village-level party cells that could be built with part-timers. And, of course, mass organisations needed to be built as well. The cadre organised itself into similar formations of Central Organiser plus two bodyguards, all of them armed. Each CO group was to be allocated a fixed number of villages, about 15 to 20.

This is where KS’s dinner-time conversation with his daughter and son-in-law came into the picture. The document said that once the party initiated work among the masses, the state forces would be on the alert. In order to escape what it called ‘state repression’, the document said that it would become necessary to build up ‘a rear’ in the forests. It was obvious that KS had begun to think of setting up a rear base. It was KS who then proposed that the rear base should be set up on the other side of the Godavari river-that is in the Dandakaranya forests, of which Bastar formed the largest portion. Given this reality, the document pointed out that it was necessary to immediately make proper arrangements for such an eventuality.


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On 22 April 1980, Lenin’s birth anniversary, Seetharamaiah announced the formation of the CPI-ML (People’s War), a new party that would carry forward the line of armed struggle. It was more popularly called the People’s War Group (PWG). It was formed after the Andhra State Committee of the CPI-ML came together with the Tamil Nadu unit.

Meanwhile, the thirst for land among landless peasants and tribals was at its peak in Andhra Pradesh. It was Indira Gandhi, say veteran Maoist ideologues, who first created this thirst among the landless in the state. Just before the 1978 assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Indira Gandhi arrived late one night in Jagtial in Karim N agar to address an election rally. People had been waiting for her since late afternoon. It was almost midnight when she finally arrived and went straight on to address the people who had gathered there. Referring to her famous 20-point socio­ economic development programme, she blamed her political detractors for her inability to distribute land. As a parting shot, she said: ‘If this (distribution of land) does not happen, a bloody revolution will take place.’

The Congress won the elections, but as it happens with most promises, the party did nothing towards alleviating the lot of the poor. Meanwhile, the Maoists had been doing their work, forcibly occupying land in hundreds of villages and distributing it among the poor.

In North Telangana, the Maoist cadre began work among the women and children working in tendu leaf collection. In the entire Dandakaranya forest area, comprising Bastar, the Gadchiroli region in Maharashtra, and in North Telangana, the condition of the tribals was pathetic. They were exploited badly by contractors, forest officials and other government servants. Those who collected bamboo sticks (for paper production) and tendu leaf (used in making beedi) were paid a pittance for their hard labour. For a bundle of 100 tendu leaves an Adivasi would be paid five paise. Similarly, one rupee would be paid for 120 sticks of bamboo. The Adivasi had no say in matters of rate. It was fixed by the contractor in consultation with the village headman.

More often than not, the poor Adivasi worked on an empty stomach. An Adivasi would usually leave a handful of rice or jowar with a little water in an earthen pitcher and then drink that gruel the next morning. The jungle where he worked was infested with snakes, bears, leopards and other wild animals. The sexual exploitation of Adivasi women was rampant. In Gadchiroli’s Alapalli village, for example, one tehsildar would just walk into a girl’s school, select a girl at his will, drag her into an empty classroom and rape her. In Gadchiroli itself, a forest officer collected one lakh rupees in just three months from impoverished tribals in return for letting them into the forest on which they depended for daily sustenance. The ignorant Adivasis would be fleeced by businessmen who visited from nearby towns. In exchange for a kilo of salt, the Adivasi would be made to part with a kilo of dry fruits or eight kilos of JOwar.

The forest officers would not allow Adivasis to clear a portion of jungle and practise agriculture there. Citing archaic forest laws, they would not even allow them to collect firewood or other forest produce, or even thin sticks of bamboo for making brooms. At various places, just before the harvest, forest officials would arrive on tractors and threaten to destroy the crop, and the Adivasi’s only recourse would be to pay a bribe or part with a major share of the produce. In their own turn, the government agencies would destroy thousands of acres of land for procuring precious wood like the sagwan or by leasing forest land to mining companies. Thousands of villagers were rendered homeless to make national parks for animals. For the State, the Adivasis counted for less than animals. In Central-West Bastar, spread over 4,000 sq km, lies the area of Abujhmaad. The combined population of the 236 villages in this region was not more than 12,000.

This excerpt from Rahul Pandita’s Hello Bastar has been published with permission from Penguin India.

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