'We all murdered Kanu Sanyal'

Kanu Sanyal, one of the founders of the Naxal movement in India, committed suicide at his residence at Seftullajote village in north Bengal on Tuesday.

His close friend and fellow Naxal leader Azizul Haque tells rediff.com that even in death, the veteran leader was trying to send a message to society:

I don't believe Kanu Sanyal committed suicide. We all murdered him, the present society being his killer.

The peasants' movement across the country lost its parent today. I am dumb-founded.

My association with Kanuda dates back to the 1950s when India was witnessing the Tebhaga movement. It was a militant campaign initiated in Bengal by the Kisan Sabha (peasants' front of the Communist Party of India) in 1946.

At that time, share-cropping peasants (essentially, tenants) had to give half of their harvest to the owners of the land. The demand of the Tebhaga (sharing by thirds) movement was to reduce the share given to landlords to one third. In many areas, the agitations turned violent and landlords fled villages.

During the initial years of the Naxalite movement, it was Kanuda who taught us why it was essential for the poor and farmers to demand their rights. "Unless the poor and the needy raise their voices and take up arms, the state of India won't improve," he told us.

As a young man, his words would make my blood boil; I was ready to lay down my life for the cause.

Kanuda restricted himself to the movement in north Bengal whereas I mostly worked around southern parts of Bengal.

During an informal chat, Kanuda told me, "Once the farmers of north Bengal were losing a lot of crop as two elephants of the jotdars (middle-men between the landlords and farmers) were causing havoc. I told the farmers to kill those elephants and they followed my order. The act gave birth to a peasants' uprising".

'Afterwards, I told myself, if killing two elephants can lead to this, what will happen if we eradicated the so-called flesh-eating exploiters of the society.'

Such was Kanuda's radicalism. No wonder, he got disillusioned by the extremism we witness today.

Just as I shed tears for innocent souls like People's Committee Against Police Atrocities' leader Lalmohan Tudu and his family, he too must have cried for those who got sacrificed at the altar of the democratic process.

We did not pay Kanuda enough respect, neither did we honour his sacrifice.

How can someone like Kanuda hang himself? Did he want to send out a signal through his final act? Was he perturbed by the slaughter of innocent people in the villages in the name of Maoism and its counter-measures?

His suicide is symbolical -- perhaps Kanuda wanted to tell us that the ideals of Mao Zedong have no place in this world fraught with greed, hunger and lawlessness.

We were a part of the movement that attempted revolution through violence, but I feel what is happening today in the name of democratic process is far more cruel and gruesome.

I wish Kanuda were here -- I wish I could share my angst with him.

As told to a correspondent in Kolkata