Red Salute to Comrade Jita Kaur

 Passed away on 23 June after a battle with cancer 

All photos provided by Comrade HarBhagvan Bhikhi 

Ludhiana//Mansa: 23rd June 2020: (The Naxalbari Screen Bureau)::

Comrade Jita Kaur passed away on 23 June after a battle with cancer. She was a mass leader whose life’s work in the party spanned a wide range – from Gorakhpur in eastern UP, to Lucknow and Delhi and finally in rural Punjab – that would be unusual for anyone, and is especially remarkable for a woman.

Comrade Jita Kaur was drawn into the ML movement through her active participation in the student’s movement in Gorakhpur. She became an activist of the PSO, Gorakhpur at a time when the entire state of Uttar Pradesh was seething with student’s protests against academic anarchy and hold of anti-socials and criminals enjoying political patronage of bourgeois political parties, in the campuses. In her early days Jita was an idealist who had seen through the sham of religious ideas. Jita’s joining a revolutionary left organization had its impact on her personal life, her father Sardar Rattan Singh being a Congress leader as well as well known religious leader in Gorakhpur. As a woman, Jita continued to fight her battle in the conservative background of her home and the feudal-patriarchal milieu in this backward district of Purvanchal. After she finished her post-graduation, Jita began to take keen interest in the women’s movement, and formed the Jagrit Mahila Parishad in the District. She was an ardent activist who combined the aspirations of young middle class women with those of the most downtrodden sections of society. In the process she also became associated with the Indian People’s Front in Uttar Pradesh. As a leader of the UP IPF, Jita got involved in the struggle of people being displaced from Ramgarh Tal area in Gorakhpur. The Ramgarh Tal Pariyojana was posing a grave threat to the livelihood of the local inhabitants and to ward off their fear and insecurity, Jita left her home and began to live with the affected people. In the process she began to build a new mass-base for the IPF. Jita not only became popular as a mass leader fondly called didi, she became immensely loved by the women there and built a women’s movement there. Jita had played a major role in involving several intellectuals and women of the town in support of the people of the Tal. She contested Assembly elections in Gorakhpur on the IPF banner.

Comrade Jita began to organize women activists in the state and in the process also met and involved Ajanta Lohit in IPF work. She later became a State Committee member of the CPI (ML). Following the founding conference of AIPWA was being held in Delhi, Jita became associated with AIPWA work in Delhi and also became a State Committee member of the Party in Delhi. She built the organization from scratch and also became the National Secretary of the AIPWA. In that capacity, she visited Uttarakhand, Punjab, MP and Bihar for AIPWA programmes. She was also very active in the joint women’s movement and became popular with women’s activists from other streams. She was an active participant in the joint women’s conferences held in Patna and Calicut. The Central Office of AIPWA in Delhi was entirely managed by her in the most creative, living and economic way. Battered women, women marrying against their parents’ wish, or going for inter-religious marriages, girls thrown out of home or those fighting against patriarchal attitude of in-laws or husbands would find the AIPWA office a place of strength and succour.

In Delhi Jita organized Party work in East Delhi and North-West Delhi. With the movement in Punjab expanding, she was needed there, and she began to work in Mansa. She was a State Committee member of the Party there and also an AIPWA organizer. She streamlined the State Party Office in Mansa and encouraged many young activists and women to work as whole-timers in the Party. In this final phase of her life, just as at the first phase of her political activism in Gorakhpur, she was in her element – once again at the forefront of mass struggles of the rural poor.

She was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer in November 2006, and underwent treatment in AIIMS. Throughout her illness, she drew strength from comrades who would visit her from all over the country, and at her side in this battle with cancer at every stage were Srikant and Upali at whose house she spent much of her time as she underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. She breathed her last on the morning of 23 June.

Comrades will always remember her tireless energy, her warm and affectionate comradeship, her outspokenness. In the many memorial meetings that were held – from Gorakhpur to Lucknow, several places in Uttarakhand, to Delhi to Patna and Punjab, many women remembered her as the person who drew them into political activism.

Comrade Jita, you will always live in our hearts and continue to inspire generations of activists! 

(Courtes:cpiml.net)

Landmine blast triggered by Maoist rebels

Feb 23, 2013 14:32 Moscow Time
Rebel attack in India: 8 police officers killed

                                                                                                                                                          Photo: EPA

At least eight people, including seven policemen, were killed in a landmine blast triggered by Maoist rebels in India's eastern state of Bihar, officials said Saturday.
The insurgents targeted a convoy on patrol in the district of Gaya, some 130 kilometres south of state capital Patna, on Friday. The district is a known rebel stronghold.

"Seven policemen and a village elder travelling in the jeep were killed in the attack," Mohammed Akhtar Hussain, district deputy police chief, said.

The rebels then looted the weapons of the slain policemen, while security forces launched search operations to track them down.

Maoist militants, who claim to be fighting for the rural poor, tribal people and the landless, operate in 13 of India's 29 states.

They usually target police and government installations. Indian leaders have described the left-wing insurgency as the greatest internal threat facing India. 

Rebel attack in India: 8 police officers killed

Leftist author Dipankar Chakraborty passed away

His loss would be sorely felt in the movemental 

In the photo above - Dipankar Chakrabarty (seated on the right) at a peoples’ hearing in Singur

Dipankar Chakraborty (1941-2013)//From Sanhati
January 29, 2013
Dipankar Chakraborty, leftist author and activist, and editor of the Bengali political magazine ‘Aneek’, passed away at 10.05 PM on 27th January, at his Teghoria residence in Kolkata following a cardiac arrest. He was one of the founder members of APDR (Association for Protection of Democratic Rights). At the time of death he was one of the Vice Presidents of APDR. Aneek was launched in 1964 and has been published uninterruptedly since; except for the 19 months when Chakraborty was in jail during the Emergency. He had been a dedicated supporter of and participant in peoples’ movements in West Bengal, while not holding back from criticizing what he felt were failings of these movements. His loss would be sorely felt in the movemental and intellectual space in Bengal.
Press Release from Aneek
Dipankar Chakroborty (71), the founder-editor of the independent Left journal, ANEEK, passed away on Sunday night. A cardiac patient, he had suffered respiratory problem last evening and died on the way to hospital. He is survived by his wife, son and daughter and grandchildren.
He was born in Dhaka in 1941 and grew up in Murshidabad after the partition. Educated in Baharampur and Kolkata, Chakroborty taught economics at Krishnanath college at Baharampur. he later settled in Kolkata.
A veteran of the Left movement since the sixties, he began publishing and editing ANEEK since 1964 when ruptures in the CPI on ideo-political issues led to first split and birth of the CPI(M).
In the wake of the Naxalbari uprising three years later that had triggered the second split and birth of the CPI(ML), Chakroborty did not join the new party. But he made ANEEK an independent forum for debates on contemporary communist movement, both national and international.
Under his stewardship, ANEEK has become one of the leading left periodical in Bengal and among the few ‘little magazines’ which have survived five decades against all odds. He himself was an accomplished political commentator and had several books to his credit. Chakroborty was jailed by the S.S Roy government during the Emergency. A life-long defender of human rights, he was also one of the founders of Association for Protection of Democratic Rights and its vice-president.
He was always active in the campaigns of release of political prisoners irrespective of the creed of the ruling parties and governments since the seventies. He stood by peoples’ movements and joined protests in their support despite his failng health– from Maruti to Nonadanga.
He was also one of the founders of Peoples’ Books Society, a major publication house and a enthusiast of Little Magazine movement in Bengal.
Noted novelist and activist Mahasveta Devi who knew Chakroborty closely expressed her ‘profound shock’. ” I am deeply grieved. It’s an irreplaceable loss for the human rights movement as well as for me,” the octogenarian writer said. Poet Sankhaya Ghosh, also mourned Chakroborty’s death. ” I feel like losing a near and dear one,” he said. (Courtesy:Sanhati)

Growing connection between two outlawed groups

Banned Islamic group and Maoists said to form allianceThey may be strange ideological bedfellows, but SIMI extremists and Maoist insurgents appear to be working together, according to Indian officials.
By Chandan Das for Khabar South Asia in Jamshedpur
January 05, 2013

The banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Maoist rebels have formed an alliance in the past four years, with SIMI financially aiding the Naxalite insurrection and even helping the rebels elude capture by government forces in 2012, West Bengal Director General of Police Naparajit Mukherjee said in an interview.

At a November meeting in New Delhi between Union Home Secretary R. K. Singh and chief secretaries and directors general of police from nine Indian states affected by the Maoist insurgency, Mukherjee became the first senior security official to bring the SIMI-Maoist connection out into the open and document it.

For four years, he told Khabar South Asia, Indian security services have been tracking and trying to foil a growing connection between the two outlawed groups, which have starkly different ideologies. Islamist extremists oppose secularism and wish to impose a strict interpretation of sharia law, while Maoism is atheistic and regards religion as a reactionary force.

"I have told the Union Home Secretary that several above-board groups owing allegiance to the Maoists have teamed up with certain elements of (SIMI) and are prompting the common people to revolt against the government," Mukherjee said.

He informed Singh and other officials who attended the meeting that SIMI was aiding the Maoists in at least three of West Bengal’s districts that border Bangladesh.

"Investigations by the police and intelligence agencies have revealed that while the SIMI has been successful in establishing a strong link with the Maoists in a number of states, the nexus is the strongest in West Bengal," Singh told Khabar. “As West Bengal shares a 4,095km-long border with Bangladesh, the logistics work fine for both banned outfits in this state."

SIMI and the Maoists (CPI) -- which formed in 2004 through the merger of two ultra-leftist groups, the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre – have been working together since 2008. Indian authorities first learned about the connection following the 2010 arrest in Karnataka state of a Dubai-based operative suspected of circulating counterfeit money in Karnataka and the neighboring state of Kerala, Mukherjee said.

In 2010, according to to R. K. Meena, Director of Naxal Management for the Ministry of Home Affairs, police in New Delhi arrested a suspected Kashmir-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative for allegedly trying to arrange alliance-building meetings between SIMI and leaders of the Maoist rebel group.

"During interrogation, [he] revealed that he was sent to India to try and pass on funds to the Maoists through the SIMI," Meena told Khabar.

"A HuJI (Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami) operative … who was also arrested by the police in the same year, also pled guilty that he had come from Kashmir to hold talks with the Maoists," he added.

Around that time, Indian police and paramilitary forces launched multiple operations aimed at crushing the Maoist movement, officials said. By early 2012, security forces had cornered the Naxalites, by cutting off their supplies of food, armaments and cash and forcing them to starve in their tropical forest hideaways.

But then SIMI intervened.

"It was at this crucial juncture that the SIMI activists stepped into the picture," Meena said. "As all the dedicated routes of the Maoists were blocked by the forces, stopping the arms and even food supplies to the rebels, the SIMI activists … extended a helping hand to the Naxalites by offering their international routes to smuggle in arms and ammunition from foreign sources." (Courtesy:Khabar South Asia)

Naxalism a result of an oversight of statutes:SC

Utkarsh Anand : New Delhi, Wed Oct 03 2012,  Indian Express

Emphasising on validation of rights of tribals and forest-dwellers over the forest lands, the Supreme Court has said that Naxalism was a result of an oversight of constitutional provisions relating to administration of schedule areas and tribes of the country.

“Nobody looks at Schedules V and VI of the Constitution and the result is Naxalism. Urbanites are ruling the nation. Even several union of India counsel are oblivious of these provisions under the Constitution,” said a Bench led by Justice A K Patnaik.

The Bench made a reference to Schedules V and VI as they contain various provisions relating to administration and control of scheduled areas and scheduled tribes in several parts of the country. These provisions apply to states like Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Rajasthan and Northeastern states such as Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Essentially these Constitutional provisions, with the help of plethora of judgments by the apex court, act as a guarantee to indigenous people on the right over the land they live in and its produce.

During a recent hearing on fresh guidelines over tiger reserves, the Bench made certain queries from Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising over the Centre’s proposal to relocate indigenous people who were still living in the core areas of tiger reserves.

The ASG had informed the Bench there were around 43,000 families still residing in core areas of tiger reserves and that the plan was to gradually move them out after proper consultation with Gram Sabhas. On being asked about the legal provisions to support the argument, she also read out from the 2006 Forest Rights Act and the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act.

Asserting that all stakeholders should first ensure the legal rights of the tribals are not violated, Justice Patnaik said their rights must be settled in accordance with the provisions of the law.

“There is apparently no human-tiger conflict at least as far as these tribals are concerned. Everyone must remember that forests belong to forest-dwellers. British government considered forests of immense value and said through laws that all forests belonged to government. These people were brought down to poverty and they couldn’t earn their living. They will be arrested for consuming the forest produce; such was their law,” said Justice Patnaik.

His concerns were echoed by senior advocate Dushyanat Dave, who said forest-dwellers used to get arrested trying and collect wood or pick fruits from the forests.

The Bench, however, seemed satisfied with the promulgation of the 2006 Forest Rights Act and said this situation was sought to be reversed by the new legislation as it sought to identify their rights.

“One law can make a big difference. Zamindari abolition law is a good example how a law can reverse the situation,” said Justice Patnaik, adding it was not the state but its forest departments’ officers who did not want to give up their control over the forests.

At this, the ASG said the Centre was conscious of its duty towards protecting the rights of forest-dwellers and would relocate them after following the legal process. (Courtesy: Kracktivist)

Dipankar Bhattacharya Arrested

He was Entering Koodankulam
New Delhi, 1 October 2012
CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya along with other CPI(ML) leaders was arrested today at Radhapuram, a few kilometers away from Idinthakarai, the site of the protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Plant. CPI(ML) Politburo member S Kumaraswamy and Tamil Nadu State Secretary Balasundaram and other CPI(ML) leaders of Tamil Nadu were also arrested along with him.

At Tirunelveli town this morning, local CPI(ML) leaders were detained by police and prevented from proceeding to Idinthakarai. Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya and his team had proceeded directly to Indinthakarai from Tuticorin airport, but were stopped by a huge posse of police, at a short distance from Idinthakarai.

A Convention organised by the All India Left Coordination (AILC) at Mavalankar Hall, New Delhi yesterday had given a call for a fortnight-long Solidarity Campaign in support of the anti-nuke agitation at Koodankulam, from October 1-15. The CPI(ML) General Secretary’s visit to Koodankulam on October 1 was to kick off the solidarity fortnight. A videotaped message of Koodankulam struggle leader SP Udayakumar was also screened at the AILC Convention yesterday.

After his arrest, Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya said, “Why are citizens being prevented from meeting and interacting with the protesting people of Koodankulam? Such arrests expose the utterly draconian conduct of the Central Government and TN State Government, which are attempting to choke off the people’s protests by sheer force.” Commenting on the Koodankulam struggle, he said, “The names of places like Chernobyl and Fukushima became well-known after terrible nuclear disasters occurred there. But Koodankulam has become known the world over, for the brave agitation to prevent a disaster.”
Prabhat Kumar,
For CPI(ML) Central Committee              Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 2:28 PM
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