Two black cats and an iron cage, an old TV. Framed photographs of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and a cutout of sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. Black-and-white pictures of protests, arrests and camaraderie…. Amid them sits Gro Vasu, one of Kerala’s firebrand Naxal leaders of the 1960s and ’70s, in his old rented house in Kozhikode. He has a reason for each and every thing he has kept in the room. “I love pets. I had a giant squirrel which died a couple of months ago,” says Vasu, a trade union leader-turned-Naxalite, pointing at the empty iron cage. “Now I have two black cats and a toddy cat.” Being an ardent football fan, Gro bought the TV to watch the last World Cup series. “Normally I sell it off once the final gets over.”
Among the revolutionary leaders, Mao is Gro’s favourite. And to mark his special regard for the Chinese leader, Gro has garlanded his picture. “We didn’t understand Mao properly. He gave us a ‘bomb’. It was meant to be thrown at the enemy heads, but we put it in the sea,” regrets Gro. But why a notorious poacher’s picture? “Veerappan was an embodiment of anti-exploitation. He successfully defended the establishment with arms.”
Gro believes Naxalism hasn’t lost relevance. “The movement is active in many parts of India. What happened in Kerala was really unfortunate. After the 1968 Pulpally police station attack (as part of an adivasi uprising in Wayanad), an inexperienced (K) Ajitha was made the CPI(ML)’s politburo member. Many other youngsters were promoted to the top level only because of their intellectual background. For most of them, it was like trying to ride the bicycle without learning it. It led to failures in the organisational level of the party,” says Gro, who now runs a provision store from the ground floor of his house.
Gro, who started as a trade union member (of Gwalior Rayons Workers Organisation, thereby earning the sobriquet ‘Gro’) at the age of 18, underwent police torture several times. “After the Kayanna attack (1976), we were arrested and taken to the same police station we attacked. We were tortured. We could still see the remains of human flesh (of policemen) stuck on the walls during the bomb explosion. Vengeful men on duty mixed the flesh with the gruel and served it. I was unconscious for seven days, so I was spared,” Gro trails off.
For Gro, ideologies are material things. “People accept ideologies only when they get life that’s material power. Many Naxal operations in Kerala failed because they lacked this material power.”
“Myaoo….myaoo…” comes a cat call from the kitchen, as we talk. “It’s the elder one,” says Gro and runs to her. She wants food, and Gro’s fish curry is famous among his friends. “Yeah, I learnt to make fish curry from my mother. Each fish needs a different method of preparation. You can apply the same theory in revolution also.” Gro married at a very late age, and it didn’t last long. But there’s no word called regret in this man’s dictionary.
In a different pocket of Kozhikode, near the West Hill railway station, lives another ex-Naxal: Civic Chandran. The part-time playwright has a small but beautiful house built of mud-brick. “The 1970s were a time of destruction the world over. No thinking person can ignore the atrocities of those days,” says Civic, who became a Naxalite while working as a teacher in a primary school at Ambalavayal, also in nearby hilly Wayanad district. “You won’t believe, it was only when I rejoined duty after ten long years of torture that my daughter realised human beings eat at least three times a day. My wife had managed the house till then, taking tuitions. Most of the day, they survived on chaambakka (water apple) as I shuttled between police stations.”
Civic says he loves terrorism. “When the clock of history gets stuck, terror will help wind it. Only, we should understand terrorism in its full sense.” When he was first arrested in 1975, Civic was just 26. Once inside the Kannur central jail, he found it had a “wonderful library”. He utilised it well.
“Politics is an inevitable sin. I don’t regret my Naxalite past. Naxalism may have failed in Kerala, but it spawned a slew of neo-social organisations. I’m happy for that,” says Civic, “Our biggest mistake is that we haven’t read Gandhi seriously.”
A couple of districts south, in Thrissur, K Venu gushes that the houses in his locality are his creations. “I build and sell them. I enjoy it,” says Venu, one of the foremost Naxalite ideologues in the ’70s. His Prapanchavum Manushyanum (1970) was been the first science novel in Malayalam. An MSc in zoology, Venu was first arrested in 1970 in connection with the Kilimanoor and Nagaroor Naxalite attack (off Thiruvananthapuram), which he was not aware of. The attacks were actually the plan of another group in the movement. “Things changed a lot since the introduction of Land Reformation act in the state. We also realised that the Chinese-type revolution will never win in the changed set up of Kerala.”
For Venu, a meeting with Charu Mazumdar, the father of Naxalism in India, at his hideout was a special experience. “After getting down at the Howrah station, I was asked to call to a particular number, which I did. Within ten minutes, someone came and introduced himself to me. He took me to another place and then another. This continued till I met Charu. He had very sharp and attractive eyes. He was suffering from asthma when I met him. He asked me about the situation in Kerala and we talked for quite some time.”
The police did corner Venu many times, but he had miraculous escapes. “My calm face beguiled many. None thought I was a revolutionary. On many occasions, the cops couldn’t even identify me.” The Maoist-model of revolution, he says, will never succeed in a parliamentary democracy. “Kerala’s set-up didn’t suit a revolution. That’s why Naxalism failed here.”
Deeper south is capital, Thiruvananthapuram. The city today doesn’t have an American cultural center like the Gorky Bhavan. It did have one once, where a free-membership library functioned, but the plot now houses Hotel South Park. So, why did it close down? Philip M Prasad burnt an American embassy vehicle in front of the Secretariat. When I remind Philip of this act, the garrulous man just laughs and
says, “foolishness”.
“We thought we could revolutionise Kerala overnight. It was foolishness, nothing else,” he says, sitting in front of a Sathya Sai Baba portrait at his home in Neyyattinkara, the state’s southern tip. “See, nobody can escape transformation. It happened to me also. But I’ve never lost my love for Mao. True, we fought against feudalism, but see most of the art forms you see now are the creation of feudalism,” says Philip, who was arrested and jailed for five years after the Pulpally attack. “What I do today is to touch the human heart through spirituality. I don’t care what people and the politicians say.”
Philip, a veteran lawyer, then takes me to the terrace where he has a small vegetable garden. He plucks a salad cucumber, wipes the dirt off it and hands it over to me. As I eat, he enquires about his former colleagues: “How’s Venu? Did u meet Vasuvettan (Gro)?” As I bid goodbye to him, Philip accompanies me to the nearby railway crossing. “Next time you come, take the train. It is much easier.”
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