Reply #3: Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh said recently before he died: [View All]

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“If I was 20 again, I would have joined the Naxalites. Writer Arundhati Roy is also counted among its supporters. In a year that is likely to see continuing economic downturn and job losses, growing discontent and lack of a suitable alternative could make Naxalism romantic and attractive once again.

In November 2005, hundreds of Naxalites stormed the small Bihar town of Jehanabad, broke open the gates of a district jail and set free over 300 of their comrades. Now, they are getting even bolder. This June, a large posse of the Greyhounds, Andhra Pradesh’s anti-Naxalite unit, was trapped and eliminated on the Andhra-Orissa border when it was, ironically, in hot pursuit of Naxalite guerrillas. Attempting to take a short cut for their combing operation, the unit took a boat to cross the Chitrakonda reservoir. The guerrillas, who had been shadowing them, caught them napping, and in the sustained firing 38 men met a watery grave. This incident caught the media’s eye for its daredevilry, but scores of such armed encounters in remote areas have gone unreported.

Naxalite guerrillas have come a long way from the days of Naxalbari when they seized land and eliminated landlords with bows and arrows in this remote West Bengal village in 1967. In 1972, soon after the death of Naxalite rebel leader Charu Mazumdar, who called for the “annihilation of class enemies”, the movement collapsed. Today, built on the support of impoverished tribals and landless labourers, the Naxalite armed rebellion has spread to 180 districts and 13 states. A parallel government in pockets has been set up along a vast swathe of forests from the Andhra-Maharashtra border, through Chhattisgarh and Orissa, to Jharkhand, Bihar and the Nepal border.

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