Krantikari Abhiwadan to Kanu Da…
'Krantikari Abhiwadan' to Kanu Sanyal… Warriors take both, life and death with same emotional balance. Kanu Da was a warrior. He lived like a warrior and died like a warrior. He himself opted his way to depart from this selfish earthy world. Nature gives you the right to live and the right to die... no need to debate on it, as there is no need to live the slithering life at all. I was in regular touch with Kanu Da, and from 1990 to 1996, I very frequently met him at Kolkata, which was then called Calcutta, during my posting there as senior staff reporter in Jansatta, the Hindi newspaper of the Indian Express group. In the Bengali and English dominated atmosphere of Calcutta press, Kanu Da always expressed his strong view that Hindi is the language of common people and language newspapers have a bigger role to play to update and educate the common man. Kanu Da had rare leadership qualities, but with complete humility. His life is a lesson for the naxalite leaders or the Left party leaders, who themselves became elite (bourgeois) but their political shop continues to run on their hollow preaching for the upliftment of common people (proletariats). Whenever Kanu Da used to come to Calcutta, he lived with one of his advocate activist friends, Mr. Ahmed, in Chowringee. I am not able to recollect the full name of Mr. Ahmed, but his one duty was to inform me on the landline phone that Kanu Da has arrived. During those days the mobile phone was not there. The old building on the main Chowringee road and its 3rd or 4th floor flat is witness to my many meetings with Kanu Da, with many plates of jhal muri shared between us. Those days too Kanu Da did not like to mix up with other newspersons and always told me to come alone, not even with the news photographer. I do remember the only instance he gave me consent to bring along a photographer... and Ashok Nath Dey clicked a few photographs of him. Very often I saw Kanu Da on Dharmatala Street moving with the crowd, and he waved out to me like a close friend. I also witnessed Kanu Da get wet, caught in light rain and trying to get shelter on the footpath… He was so simple, more than a saint really. He always fought for the cause of the common people. Kanu Da permitted me to get close to him because I wanted to publish news of the common people… and Kanu Da had volumes of exclusive news pertaining to human rights violation, rural oppression, peasant struggle, planning of the movement, cases of police atrocities and, of course, the cases of criminal atrocities of the Left on the poor peasants… Kanu Da wanted those issues be highlighted by the language media, but he always avoided being highlighted individually. Kanu Da was always perturbed to see many fractions in the naxal groups. His feeling was like a father who sees his family disintegrating before him. He started the peasant struggle from a remote village of Naxalbari… the struggle which gave worldwide fame to Naxalbari, that Naxalbari found his body hanging by a rope. Kanu Da was a district organizer of the CPM's Darjeeling unit. Like Charu Majumdar and Jangal Santhal, Kanu Da too believed that a peasant revolution was the axis of change in Indian society, the signs of which were evident from the Naxalbari uprising. Kanu Da dumped the CPM, when police opened fire on peasants demanding land to the tillers. That was on May 24, 1967. Eleven peasants were killed in the incident. The killings firmed up the peasants and the movement spread to other parts of the state. Kanu Sanyal led the movement that culminated in the formation of the CPI (M-L) on April 22, 1969. He announced the formation of the original CPI (ML) on Vladimir Lenin's birthday at a public rally in Calcutta. The history of mass struggle is witness that Kanu Sanyal was the real architect of the Naxalbari uprising. It was not a movement to grab state power, as Charu Majumdar adopted. Those were the days of the seventies when the media portrayed Kanu Sanyal a great revolutionary and compared him to Mahatma Gandhi and Jatin Das, largely because of his charisma and his public showmanship. But the leader, who got worldwide recognition as the Lenin of Naxalbari, faced severe state-sponsored oppressions and Kanu Sanyal was forced to go underground. He was arrested in August 1970, which sparked off statewide violence. Kanu Da was convicted in the Parvatipuram Naxalite Conspiracy case and sent to Visakhapatnam jail for seven years. He was released from jail in 1977, following the shift of power at the Centre and in West Bengal. Jyoti Basu, the new CPI (M) chief minister, personally intervened to ensure Sanyal's release. By the time of his release, Kanu Sanyal had publicly repudiated the original strategy of armed struggle. Since then and till his last breath, he spent his life in unifying the ultra-Lefts and the peasants… Kanu Da's life and efforts should not be seen from the angle of success or failure…he fought and fought equally with life and death. (Published in By-Line National News Weekly (Hindi and English) under – Editorial)
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