Legendary naxal leader Kanu Sanyal dead

Tuesday, March 23, 2010 New Delhi Today's Issue Home ePaper


Legendary naxal leader Kanu Sanyal dead

PTI | Siliguri

Kanu Sanyal, the legendary founder of the Naxalite movement of the 60s in West Bengal, that heralded a violent struggle and had claimed thousands of lives, died on Tuesday, apparently by committing suicide.

78-year-old Sanyal, a bachelor, was found hanging in his room at his residence in Seftullajote village, 25 km from here, Inspector General of Police (North Bengal) KL Tamta told PTI.

He was suffering from age-related ailments of which kidney and prostate problems were severe.

At the time of his death, he was General Secretary of a new CPI(Marxist-Leninist) group, formed by the merger of several splinter groups of the original party.

Along with co-Chairman Charu Mazumdar and Jungal Santhal, Sanyal formed the dreaded triad that gave birth to the Naxalbari movement, which in the later years had transformed into the even bloodier Maoists struggle but he had openly disapproved of the strategy of armed struggle after his release from jail in 1977.

The trio spearheaded the movement which began with a peasant uprising at Naxalbari, a small village, on May 25, 1967 in North Bengal.

The then Officer-in-Charge of Phansidewa police station Amarendranath Pyne was killed by an arrow shot by the Naxalites, as they came to be known, thus starting a series of killings of landowners, policemen and those associated with the establishment.

Sanyal had formally announced the formation of the originial CPI(ML) at Sahid Minar in Kolkata on April 22, 1969.

In the early days of the Naxalite movement, Sanyal wasportrayed as a "great revolutionary" in opposition to the "peaceful" cadres of the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The naxal movement, which also spread its tentacles to some other parts of India, including Andhra Pradesh, was widely believed to have secured support from the Communist regime in China to further its goals and Sanyal had no no hesitation in saying it in public. But whether actually they had received support from the Chinese was always in the realm of speculation.

As one of the key leaders behind the Naxalite insurrection through violent means, Sanyal and other top functionaries were most of the time underground.

Then came the elections in 1972 when Congress had come to power under Siddartha Shankar Ray in West Bengal.

The Congress dispensation had ruthlessly come down on the Naxalbari movement whose back was broken but the Naxalites regrouped only to become Maoists of various shades in later years and also to spread over several states.

In the wake of the failure of the Naxal uprising, Sanyal went into hiding and had claimed to have given up violent struggle after the death of Charu Mazumdar.

He was arrested in August 1970 in the famous Parvathipuram conspiracy case and was jailed in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

Sanyal was released from jail at the intervention of late Jyoti Basu, who had just taken over as Chief Minister of the Left Front government in West Bengal in 1977.

In 1985, Sanyal and his supporters along with five other groups merged to form the Communist Organisation of India (Marxist-Leninist). Years later, he was also to oppose the land acquisition in Singur for Tata's cheap car project.


(THESE NEWS SHOWS NAXAL LEADERS NEED TO RETHINK ON THEIR STEPS AND STRATEGIGES...AS EVEN THEIR FOUNDER MEMBER STARTED FEELING....VIOLENCE... WON'T LEAD THEM TOO FAR. ITS DISTRUCTIVE.(VIBHA)