Naxalism founder Sanyal kills self

HATIGHISHA(NAXALBARI): Kanu Sanyal has died. The legendary Naxalite leader committed suicide at his party office in Hatighisha near Naxalbari on Tuesday afternoon. Pushing 80, severely paralytic and nearly blind after a cerebral stroke last year, Sanyal was the last of the three legendary founder movers of the peasants’ revolution of north Bengal in the late 60s, that became infamously known throughout India as the Naxalbari movement. It was without doubt the most traumatic and turbulent period of West Bengal’s history post-Independence, which saw amidst the ensuing blood-bath, the beginning of capital outflow from the state.

Charu Majumdar and Jangal Santhal, the other two pioneering stalwarts of the movement had died long back. Sanyal lived, but lived in acute depression. Just two days ago, in an informal talk with ET, Sanyal had expressed his anguish: “Just carrying on with a body is not a life, and there is no life if I cannot be of any use to my party.” His impaired vision, paralytic body was a torment that constantly wracked him. “He was very depressed due to his inability in taking part in party programmes,” said Dipu Haldar, Darjeeling district committee member of CPI (ML) and close acquaintance of Sanyal.

With Charu Majumdar and Jangal Santhal, Sanyal had initiated the Naxalbari movement that later ran amok. Discords galore surfaced and while Sanyal, in his later years, disapproved of Majumdar’s strategy of armed struggle, there are some even now in CPI(ML) who never thought Sanyal was in the same class as Majumdar was in being a “true communist”. But for that matter, Sanyal wasn’t ever too great a votary of excessive bloodshed and he always thought the present Maoist movement was utter rubbish.

Born in Kurseong in 1931, Sanyal joined the Communist Part of India (CPI) in 1950 and became a whole-timer. He worked mainly among the tea workers in Matigara and Naxalbari. He went to China in 1967 for three months to meet Mao Zedong. This inspired him to announce the formation of the original CPI(ML) in 1969 at a public meeting in Kolkata that coincided with Lenin’s birthday.

He spent many years between 1970 and 1977 behind bars. After his release in 1977, he started living permanently at Hatighisa and formed Organising Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (OCCR). In 1985, he became the leader of Communist Organisation of India (Marxist-Leninist), a conglomeration of six Marxist Leninist factions. He formed the New CPI(ML) in 2003 and was general secretary of the organisation.