Brainsick Soliloquy

My first tryst with the name Charu Majumdar was when I entered the bastion of student politics, Jawaharlal Nehru University in the mid 1990s. JNU was (and I hope still is) the breeding ground of many a national political figure and nurtured parties of all hues and colours. Besides the student wings of all main national parties, there were a few others which caught my interest. More so because I had never heard about student outfits like All India Students Association (AISA) or the People’s Democratic Students Union (PDSU), both with naxal leanings, the former to CPI (ML) and the latter (if I am right) to People’s War Group (PWG). One slogan that used to be AISA’s clarion call during the union election campaign was “Che, Charu, Chandrasekhar” alluding to three martyrs of communist (Maosit?) revolutions.

Che Guevara, the legendary revolutionary, who 40 years after his death still garners immense following worldwide, even at the risk of being commercialised and “sold”. Charu Majumdar, who set India aflame with the call for revolution (around the same time as Che’s execution in far away Bolivia) in Naxalbari. Chandrasekhar, a much recent entry into the martyr’s list and with a distinct JNU connect. A former President of JNUSU and CPI(ML) leader, Chandrasekhar was done to death allegedly by RJD MP Mohd Shahabuddin’s goons in Siwan district in Bihar in 1997.

Naxalism was Maoist in ideology and envisaged violence as a necessary evil to root out class divisions that existed in (and still permeates) rural India. Many of them students, naxalites were driven perhaps by noble but highly idealistic intention of relieving rural India from the clutches of class oppression in one stroke! Alas it was not to be so. Over years, most naxalites have had to succumb to worldly obsessions and a few to custodial torture and death at the hands of the law enforcement agencies. Reformed naxalites are aplenty, of them Ajitha and Philip M Prasad are top of mind.

Even so, the movement has networked further beyond its original strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala and has reached previously uncharted territories like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and even Nepal. Isnt it intriguing how a movement with Communist (Maoist) instincts has an impact in regions where mainstream communist parties cannot imagine securing even a few hundred votes for their candidates? How would it feel to be a naxalite fighting for a cause/ideology that has been “declared dead” globally (except for may be Castro’s Cuba)? Naxalism still continues to be the mystery it has been ever since the days of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal.

While I was watching Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti, I was struck by the parallel to naxalism. Personally I felt that the story in the movie does not merit any comparison with the revolutionary uprising anchored by Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. Bhagat Singh and Azad were selfless warriors who fought for a strong cause they eventually died for. Rang De Basanti on the other hand portrays an uprising by a few rookie “mercenaries” (Were they fighting a cause they believed in? Even if it were their cause it is too flimsy and impulsive than anything else!) The movie is for the ultra-yuppie revolutionary (Is there one?) and reeks of utopian idealism similar to that fostered by the naxalite movement. Of course, I do not mean to say that the movie is outright stupid. Besides tinges of unrealistic and provocative ideals, the movie at least brings out patriotism (without making it unbearably jingoistic). My verdict: The colour of Rang De Basanti borders on communist red rather than Indian tricolours!