Volume 5, No. 1, January 2004

On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the beloved leaders of the Indian revolution—comrades Shyam, Mahesh and Murali—who had been caught in Bangalore, tortured most brutally and killed in the Koyyur forests by the police state that you run in AP, we write this open letter to you in order to lay bare your unending lies so shamelessly repeated ad nauseum. Since you have placed Naxalism as the principal agenda for the ensuing elections in the state, the Politbureau of CPI(ML)[PW], on behalf of our entire Party that now spans across a dozen states, wants to put the record straight regarding the truth behind the lies that your fascist TDP has been propagating endlessly and trying desperately to dupe the masses.

Lie No. 1: The lie that you endlessly repeat as the reason for going for the elections nine months before schedule. On the one hand, you boast that you had implemented development programmes that had benefited the majority of the people in the state. If so, why have you jumped into early elections? If the people are impressed by your track record then will they not vote for you if elections were held as per schedule? And would it not give you more time to take up more "development measures" thereby giving you even more seats? The fact, dear Chief Minister, is that you know that your so-called development is a big hoax and that you will not secure even 40% of the seats if they are held as per schedule, as the intelligence reports so clearly indicate. This had unnerved you and your Party. Hence your clever and cunning move to go for the elections immediately by bringing the Naxal agenda to the fore.

The people of AP know your double-speak and hypocrisy right from the time you assumed power through a palace coup in 1996. That is why you are scared to the hilt to face the people on the real issues and have conspired to divert their attention by making Naxalism as the main issue and fabricating the lie that Naxalites have become a hurdle for your so-called development programmes. This is nothing but a heinous attempt to create an alibi for your failures.

Lie No. 2: You say that Naxalites are indulging in senseless violence and have no ideology or politics, that they kill anybody at will that oppose them. Goebbles would turn in his grave watching his art getting perfection in your hands!

Who, in the first place, is indulging in violence and perfecting the repressive machine day in and day out? Who has banned the CPI(ML)[People’s War] in 1996 along with several mass organisations? And why? What was the provocation for the ban? Is it not a conspiracy to prevent the cadres of our Party from going freely to the people? How shamelessly you shout from every platform, not sparing even children’s platforms, that we want to prevent you from going to the people! It is now high time you answer these questions that you desperately want to hide.

How much money have you spent in strengthening the repressive arm of the state, on building an informer network, a gang of covert agents who, like cowards, killed or gave away our heroic leaders and cadres like Shyam, Mahesh, Murali, Malkapuram Bhaskar, Bhupathi, and others? Is there any dictator in the world who orders the outright killing of all those arrested, bypassing all norms of law? Even the fascist Bush has a notorious Guantanamo Bay, but you could not even think of detention of those arrested for you have far surpassed the worst of dictators in world history. The closest parallel one can think of is Pinochet of Chile. For encouraging this orgy of brutal violence on the struggling masses of AP you announce promotions to every khaki killer; announce rewards on every person in our Party, not sparing even newly recruited squad members and village militants—a thing unheard of in any country’s history. And, as if this were not enough, you fund, train, arm and plan killings of Party activists, sympathisers and even civil liberties leaders and revolutionary intellectuals for openly expressing their views. Purushotham and Azam Ali are stark examples of the goonda raj that you have been running in AP through mafia gangsters like kathula Sammayya, Nayeem, Sammi Reddy, Haribhushan, Jadala Nagraj and a host of other lumpen elements.

When such is your criminal track record, you try to hush up the heart-rending stories of brutal violence unleashed through your GreyHounds, and other special anti-Naxal forces and fabricate the lie that we are responsible for the violence.

The people of AP know that our Party takes recourse to violence only when all other options for struggle are closed and violence is thrust upon us. Our violence is a legitimate response, a counter-violence justified by all counts, to defend ourselves and the lives of the masses from the brutal fascist onslaught that you had unleashed. How can the people forget the macabre scene of our comrade Shyam’s mutilated body after being drilled with a machine, comrade Mahesh’s leg being chopped off with a saw, and comrade Murali being burnt with lighted cigarette butts, besides the brutal third degree methods inflicted upon hundreds of our cadres and sympathisers? How can we forget the memories of the 1450 cadres and sympathisers of our Party mowed down by the police state in your eight-year-long reign of terror? Are we not justified in attempting to eliminate you for overseeing these gory killings? Or in eliminating the sadistic, khaki-clad lawless rogues who run the state at their will?

Yes, dear Chief Minister! We shall continue to eliminate the notorious khaki gangsters who de facto run the state, dictate and execute the policies without ever bothering what the law says, gangsters like Vyas’, Pardeshi Naidus, Umesh Chandras, and the like. And we will continue to eliminate Madhav Reddys, Budda Vengal Reddys, Chenchu Ramayyas, and such criminals in the TDP, BJP or whichever Party they may belong. The more you encourage the coverts and informers the more such people will become the targets of people’s wrath. This is our open declaration and we have no double-speak like you. Those who commit atrocities on women, dalits, adivasis, and innocent people will be meted out justice in the people’s courts. We are fully justified in our determination to eliminate tyrants like you. It is the demand of the vast masses languishing under your brutal rule. History will not forgive us if we did not think of, and execute, appropriate punishments to the leeches and other parasites that thrive on people’s blood.

Revolutionary violence, we reiterate, is an answer to the senseless violence of a faceless state run by bandits. The truth is as simple as that and no sleight of hand (or a bandages hand) can fool the politically mature people of AP or win their sympathy.

Lie No 3: You speak of a clean and transparent government. You pose before the media speaking against all the injustices done to the people on the earth that one can think of. You talk of a corruption-free administration. But how many thousands of crores of rupees of people’s money have you tucked away in shares, Swiss banks and real estate in benami names? You are, no doubt, cleverer than a Marcos, a Mobutu, a Suharto, or closer home, a Jayalalitha, or a Karunanidhi. It will be quite difficult to unearth the funds you pocketed from the World Bank, the TNCs, the comprador capitalists and unscrupulous contractors. You are quite shrewd and meticulous in hiding the spoils but how long can you do it? How did your mentors like Ramoji acquire the land for the film city, to name just one of many such misdeeds, and several of your kith and kin and Party leaders amass wealth? Has not the city of Hyderabad become the private property of the TDP politicians, top police bosses, bureaucrats and mafia gangsters close to your Party? How much money had flown into the pockets of the TDP politicians and your handpicked police bosses that had filled the key posts in the bureaucracy in the state through scams, commissions and underhand deals? It is time the people will force you to come out with the facts regarding the immoral acts of an immoral government.

Lie No. 4: You talk of development in the state. Whose development are you talking of? Can you deny the fact that the maximum number of suicide deaths had taken place under your ‘benevolent’ regime? Can you deny the fact that famine had stalked the vast stretches of land in AP for most part of your rule? That the granary of South India has become a wasteland due to your rapacious policies under the direction of the World Bank and the imperialists? That your government’s policy of neglecting agriculture, irrigation, and power supply to the farmers, scrapping of subsidies to farmers at the behest of the World Bank even as the governments in the US and Europe pour in huge sums to subsidise their own farmers ruined the lives of millions of peasant masses? That allowing Monsanto, Cargill, and the imperialist seed and pesticide companies to loot our peasants had laid waste to our land? That your corporate agriculture is a big fraud? That you had snatched away even the basic social welfare services from the people by introducing the so-called user charges? That you had pushed the state’s economy into a veritable debt trap with over Rs. 7000 crores of debt on the head of every person in AP including the newly-born? Can the shrewd people of AP be fooled by your cock-and-bull stories of development?

Lie No. 5: You talk of putting an end to factional violence. Is not your very rise to power and your political sustenance based mainly on bloody factional politics? Has not your TDP finished off most of its opponents in the various parts of Rayalaseema, particularly in Ananatapur? Can you name a single leader of TDP in Rayalaseema region who does not owe his/her rise to prominence without leading factional gangs and indulging in senseless and mindless violence against opponents? Is not your Party as well as the Congress(I), intimately associated with, and constantly promoted, gun culture and bomb culture in Rayalseema and Coastal districts of AP? How many killings a Kodela Shivaprasad Rao had to commit to become your Right hand? Or a Paritala Ravi had to commit to gain your confidence? Are not your politicians abusing power by supplying armed gangs with arms stored in their own houses as illustrated in the case of Kodela? On top of this you have the audacity to say publicly that persons with criminal record will not be given the ticket. Then who else will be left in your Party? It is time you come out with the facts regarding your gory record of factional violence.

The people of the state know that the people killed in the factional violence aided and abetted by the state in the four districts of Rayalaseema in a period of just two years surpasses the killings that our Party is forced to resort to in the past two decades! These are stark facts that blow up on your face.

Lie No. 6: You talk of the democratic process. But like all despots in the world you practice fascist measures while talking of democracy. You "democratically" declare awards on our heads, employ the police officials and instigate lumpen gangs to hunt and kill our Party members and sumpathisers. Your Gautam sawangs, Anuraag Sharmas, Praveen Kumars, Nalini Prabhaths, DT Naiks, VK Singhs, Sajjannars, Ayyannars and other khaki-clad goons who act like TDP politicians and as your private army—without whose protection no prominent politician from your Party dares step into the villages—openly call upon the lumpen elements in the villages, funded and trained by you, to kill the naxalites and announce rewards for such dastardly acts in the name of the people! Your Home Minister congratulates publicly a cowardly covert like Jadala Nagaraj for killing comrade Malkapuram Bhaskar, our SZC member of North Telangana, in the dead of the night. And you send coverts like Siraj to "democratically" kill the leadership of our Party by poisoning the food and, when our alert guerrillas foil your plan, you cry foul!

Where is the space for open democratic debate and open struggles and protests by the people? Do you have the guts to debate with us openly? If so, we challenge you to lift the ban and allow us to hold open meetings that you had prevented from taking place throughout the period of your rule. Yes. Lift the ban, withdraw the rewards on the heads of our cadres, and restore the freedom of speech, movement and assembly that had been denied to the oppressed masses of AP, particularly of Telangana, for long. Withdraw the police from the rural areas and stop harassment of the people who attend our meetings. Then let the whole country judge who has the real mass base. We can challenge you that our local leadership will draw more masses than any of your top leaders, including yourself, in any of our areas. We know that you know it very well. The spontaneous mobilisation of the masses to the funerals of our martyr comrades such as Shyam, Mahesh, Murali, Padma, RK, Lailtha, Ramana Reddy, Koumudi, Suguna, or name any comrade, defying the harassments and arrests on their way, show the deep support enjoyed by our Party cadres among the masses.

And it is precisely this spectre of the masses in their millions openly espousing our cause and coming out fearlessly against you that haunts you like a nightmare. Any relaxation in your brutal suppression campaign against us will shatter all your lies and myths about us. No stage-managed shows of your ‘prajala vaddaku palana’, Janmabhoomis, Maithri Sanghams, or the countless programmes that your police goons undertake in the name of the people, can match our land occupation struggles of the poor and landless peasantry, struggles against bonded labour, struggles for the self-respect of the dalits, women, adivasis, muslims and various oppressed sections. On a level playing-field the people of the state will know who has the real mass base. You know this truth very well and we know you will never take this democratic step. People of AP will judge who is speaking the truth and will step up their struggle for an end to the police raj.

Lie No. 7: You talk of secularism. But then why are you hob-nobbing with the worst communal fascists and perpetrators of the most inhuman crimes against the religious minorities, particularly against the Muslims? Every citizen in this country knows that it is the BJP-RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP fascist gangs that had razed the Babari Masjid to the ground bringing in its wake a trial of death and destruction and unleashing the worst communal riots since the time of Partition. Your support and alliance with the BJP means support to the brutal genocide and savage acts of Narendra Modi in Gujarat. But you shamelessly dance in their company, your police goons arrest and kill Muslims in the name of links with the ISI. Muslim masses will not forget the brutal, fake killing of the innocent Muslim youth in the name of so-called encounters. They know the anti-Muslim bias of your Party and the state that you run. Under your reign, and with the aid and abetment of the state, the communal fascist forces have grown stronger creating insecurity and fear among the Muslim masses. Genuine secular forces and the Muslim masses in the state know that they will be the victims of the communal dance of death if the TDP-BJP alliance comes to power again under your leadership.

Lie No. 8: You say that Naxalites had scuttled the Talks last year by trying to strengthen themselves using the ‘relaxation’ in police repression. If you think you can fool the people with such white lies then you are living in a fool’s paradise. There has never been any relaxation of your brutal, inhuman killing spree of your blood-thirsty hoodlums in khaki. Even as the representatives whom we had sent to finalise the formalities for the Talks were having formal discussions, your police thugs had gone on a killing spree and was vehemently protested by our representatives. And when the D-Day (for you as you never believed in Talks and only acted out of pressure of public opinion) drew near, you scuttled the process by enacting cold-blooded murders of Padma and several other activists of our Party.

You cannot get away with your savage crimes. People of AP know the sincerity with which we had shown restraint throughout the state for months giving due respect to the aspirations of the masses for peace, even if that be temporary. They know your double-speak, hypocrisy and your real motives in accepting the proposal for Talks. You had spurned away a good opportunity for resolving some of the burning issues of the people in AP by your arrogant, brutal, provocative actions. Yet, you repeat ad nauseum that your Party is prepared for Talks if the Naxalites give up arms. If the arms were to be given up then where is the need for Talks? Does it not mean surrender? Can anyone believe that you are unable to understand even this simple fact, which anyone with a little brain can easily grasp? It is clear that you don’t intend to resolve the problem. Just as Bush did not want to resolve the problem in Iraq and opposed weapons inspection as he was determined to invade that country in the name of unearthing WMD, you too were never prepared to sit at the negotiating table as your real intention is to unleash even more ruthless violence. You deliberately resorted to brutal killings so as to use the legitimate counter-violence that would invariably follow as an excuse to further step up your fascist suppression. This is crystal-clear to anyone and even Mr. Prakash Singh, who was appointed by you to enquire into our justified attack on your life, had to leave a piece of advise for you. We, of course, have absolutely no belief in your words anymore. You are the second self of hypocrisy and double-speak, saying one thing while intending the opposite. This is clear from the day you took over power.

Lie No. 9: You accuse those demanding a separate state of Telangana as disrupters who want to divide the people in the state. Are you not insulting the vast majority of the masses of Telangana through such an accusation? Why not hold a simple referendum on the issue if you have the guts? You will never dare to adopt such a democratic process, as it will deprive your TDP, and the class it represents, the spoils of Telangana. The majority of the people of Telangana would opt for a separate state and you are not a fool not to know these democratic aspirations. But, like Bush, who thinks that American monopoly capitalists have a natural right over the resources of every Third World country and spill blood for Iraqi oil, you think Telangana is your backyard whose resources can be exploited at will for the benefit of your imperialist masters, the comprador bourgeoisie and the neo-rich feudal-capitalist class from Andhra region.

That is why you oppose the demand for a separate Telangana tooth and nail and will not hesitate to unleash a blood-bath in the already blood-soaked killing fields of Telangana.

People of Telangana know that it is the interests of the big landlords from Andhra region who had usurped the lands from the local peasantry using their backwardness, the interests of the compradors from outside Telangana, and the interests of the imperialists that you seek to protect even as hundreds of the peasants are driven to mass suicides and live under the most inhuman conditions. Having been the worst victims of the savage state violence for decades, and languishing in the most unenviable conditions, they will teach you a fitting lesson. Telangana will become a separate state in the teeth of the opposition and suppression from your blood-thirsty regime. No force can stop this now. Not just for a separate state, the people of Telangana will continue their struggle for a democratic state throwing out feudalism, imperialism and comprador capitalism from their soil.

Lie No. 10: You are coming before the people with the Biggest Lie that you can resolve the Naxal ‘problem’ and bring development to the state if people give you the mandate to do so. Leaving aside the emptiness of your promises regarding development, how do you intend to resolve the ‘problem’ of Naxalism? When you admit that we had grown even stronger than when you first came to power (if we go by the paranoia that has caught you after our attack at Alipiri, prompting you to make Naxalism the principal agenda in the elections), that too in spite of the most savage repression let lose by your hoodlums clad in attires of khaki, saffron, yellow, and various hues, then how do you go about if at all you come to power? Is it not by unleashing more savage repression and suppression of all dissent? When all your attempts to turn the state in AP into a police state have come to nought is it not a big lie and illusion to think you can suppress us if you arm yourself with more repressive powers? You know it very well but, like all tyrants, you can think of no other alternative than resorting to brutal suppression.

The politically conscious people of AP, of course, will not allow you to unleash barbaric repression. We assure the people of AP that we shall always defend their interests, and make any sacrifices to lead them in the relentless struggle against feudalism, imperialism, comprador bureaucrat capitalism and their most trusted and loyal agents, TDP and BJP, in power in the state and the Centre. We have no other interests other than people’s interests. More than 3000 comrades had laid down their lives since the time of the formation of CPI(ML)[People’s War], half of them during your fascist reign in the last eight years. We bow before the people with all humility for the mistakes we had committed such as the killing of Ragya Naik, or the most unfortunate incident of the death of 14 adivasis in Chintagudem. We are ever ready to accept and rectify our mistakes that crop up in the course of advancing the new democratic revolution in India to victory. And herein lies our strength.

We accept the challenge thrown by you, Chief Minister. We are prepared to wage a political battle, a military battle, and a cultural battle to confront your all-round offensive. Yes. Initially, we had underestimated the role of the World Bank and the imperialists in bringing you to power. We had paid the price for it. We had learnt from the past mistakes and we are confident of taking on your all-round offensive. The people of AP will refuse to be partners in the savage campaign of terror that you are trying to bring about in their name. Even if you win through rigging the elections by abusing state power, an art at which you are a master, people will deem it as an illegitimate government. Conversely, even if the ban on our Party continues and repression is stepped up, we enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the people and will continue to grow. No place in the state will be safe for the rogue politicians of your party and your accomplice, BJP.

Your savage police offensive may take some more precious lives but many more revolutionary successors to comrades Shyam, Mahesh and Murali are taking birth who will see your nemesis. The more you kill, the more the number of revolutionaries who will join the ranks of the revolution with burning hatred in their hearts and blood in their eyes. That repression breeds resistance is a universal law. Our People’s Guerilla Army formed on this day, an year after the fake Koyyur encounter, will soon grow into the People’s Liberation Army and will march across the length and breadth of India providing the real solution to the vast oppressed masses.

We are thankful to you for making Naxalism as the principal agenda thereby unwittingly providing us with an opportunity to send our political message to the masses in AP and to expose your political bankruptcy and unending lies. We have dealt only with a small part of your lies that are being churned out round-the-clock. We shall soon come out with a comprehensive paper on your unending lies and misdeeds in AP.

You had drawn blood and it is our duty to repay these blood debts. How, when and where constitutes the essence of our guerrilla tactics. We shall strike at our own convenience, place and time of our choosing. People, and its vanguard Party, will not forgive dictators and notorious elements whether they are in the political parties, state bureaucracy or the police force. This is the message that our Party wants to put across on this day of sorrow as well as heroism for the loss of our beloved comrades on the one hand, and the formation of our brave PGA on the other.

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