Articles
Talks with PWG, Maoists… Repetition of 1951 demand
Dt: 21/4/25
Talks with PWG, Maoists…
Repetition of 1951 demand
Dr T H Chowdary*
Prof G. Haragopal, Dr. Smt Rama Melkote, Js. Chandra Kumar and some “human rights’ activists have been making appeals to government of India to hold talks with leaders of Peoples War Groups, Maoists, Naxalites and such armed groups who have been waging war against the Indian State for more than the last four decades from their bases in the Dandakaranya forest spread over Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana , Jharkhand. These armed groups are led mostly by upper caste Hindu “intellectual Marxists / Maoists. The tribals in the forests are their cannon fodder. These are supported intellectually by various urban Naxalite groups in academia, journalism, arts and legal profession. Supplies required to wage war by the PWG are clandestinely arranged by different groups among the urban Naxalites.
2. Thousands of PWG’s armed men and women are killed by government’s special police forces. Thousands have surrendered. They seem to get decimated and entirely eliminated by the year 2026. They are therefore audaciously appealing for talks between them and government of India ! The PWG appeal for talks has a historic precedents.
3. In the later 1940s, the communists in Telangana took to arms against the Nizam’s rule and especially the armed gangsters Razakars raised by Kasim Razvi, the supreme leader and commander of the Majlis-Ittehadul Muslameen (MIM) ( whose successor from the late 1950s are the Owaisi’s) in support of Nizam’s independence. The communists liberated over one thousand
villages in Nalgonda and Warangal districts of Telangana. Flushed with this success, they supported the Nizam’s decision not to accede to the Indian Union. Their guerilla army could eventually defeat the independent Nizam’s police and army, convert Telangana into a communist-ruled base, like what Mao Tse Tung turned Yenan region as a communist base to eventually conquer whole of China and convert into into a communist state. Communists and Razakars ( and Nizam) thus became allies with different goals.
4. When in September 1948, Indian army liberated the Hyderabad state, the Razakars made over their arms to the communists in Telangana. The communists in Telangana not submitting first to India’s military rule followed by civilian rule, went on fighting the Indian army units and the Malabar Special Police brought to defeat and disarm them.
5. This war between communist guerrilla units and India’s police forces went on from Sept 1948 to the later half of 1951. The communist guerillas got decimated. A delegation of communist leaders consisting of Chandra Rajeswara Rao, Makinenti Basava Punnaiah, S.A Dange and Ajoy Ghosh (who replaced Com. B.T. Ranadeve as Geneal Secretary of CPI) secretly went to Moscow and met Stalin. They told Stalin about the decimation of their guerillas in Telangana and their inability to continue the war against the Indian State. Stalin advised them to give a call to the GOI for talks to end the war between Telangana’s communist Guerillas and the Indian state. The GOI ( Home Minister Kailas Nath Katju) ignored the communists. The communists unconditionally withdrew the armed struggle. As per Stalin’s advice, they formed the Popular Democratic Front (PDF) under the Presidenthip of N.M. Jaisurya ( son of Sarojini Naidu (1899-1964) . In the 1951 General Elections to Lok Sabha and Hyderabad State Assembly the PDF scored exceedingly well.
6. It is unfortunate that Telangana’s the communists with many sacrifices to achieve what they wrongly believed, are divided into many factions and one of them ,CPI is a supplicant to Telangana Congress which gifted one MLA and one MLC seat to them . At the all India level the CPI is Congress’ ally; it even supported Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule during 1975-77. (600 words)
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