Red Star over India – additional documents

Introduction

Coming back to Delhi from Dandakaranya in the ”red belt of India” feels like coming back to Xian from Yan’an in northern Shaanxi seventy years ago.

But I didn’t come back after spending four months there. I was only in the Indian jungle a little more than two weeks.

Whatever the differences between the revolutionary Chinese center in the dry loess land of northern Shaanxiof those days and the camps of the present day Indian armed revolutionary struggle in the Bastar jungle of Dandakaranya today – and whatever the outcome of the present struggle will be – it is thus important not only to give the reader personal impressions but also authorized and quotable texts from the responsible leaders of the revolutionary struggle.

During the time spent in Dandakaranya there were long formal discussions with three leading cadres; Ganapathy, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist); Murali, just out of jail. He had before the arrest and jail been member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and in charge of South West Regional Buro and Sonu, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

As we were to leave we were given authorized transcripts of these talks. The General Secretary Ganapathy noted when he gave the transcripts of these three interviews:

“– You can take this fully or partially as our official information.”

To these three official Communist Party of India (Maoist) texts from Dandakaranya I add both the ”clarification” by the Central Committee Spokesperson Azad on certain aspects to the text of the interview that the General Secretary Ganapathy gave us and a text by the General Secretary on the new form of government taking form in the Dandakaranya guerilla zone.

Three of these texts have been published in Peoples March. Voice of the Indian Revolution. Two were given as transcripts.

At the end I add texts on both the general Indian government policy of targeted elimination/killing of individual ”Naxalite leaders” and the political background to the killing in an ”encounter” on July 3rd 2010 of Azad, the representative of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) as he was coming to a discussion on a possible peace with the government.

In order to facilitate for the non-Indian reader I have written out most of the abbreviations.

Jan Myrdal

Contents:

I In Conversation with Ganapathy, General Secretary of CPI (Maoist). Jan Myrdal and Gautam Navlakha, January 2010.

II Clarifying notes by the Spokesperson of the Central Commitee Azad on the interview with General Secretary Ganapathy.

III The Dandakaranya Janathana Circars of today are the basis for the Indian People’s Democratic Federal Republic of tomorrow. Message sent by Comrade Ganapathy.

IV Interview with comrade Murali.

V Interview with comrade Sonu, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). According to press reports aka Mallojula Koteswara Rao and responsible for the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee.