If we have to destroy Brahminical Maoism, we must study everything that is published by Brahminical Manuwadi CPI (Maoists). I am trying to get hold of the writings of the recently dead Brahmin female “Comrade”, Anuradha Shanbag Ghandy, wife of Parsi Kobad Ghandy. Anuradha used to be a sociology teacher who lived in a Nagpur Dalit slum called Indora. She managed to fool the local Dalits there. Unless you go there and study the literature which she used to If B hand out, we will never be libe able to counter Tril the Brahminical Maoist ex movement. I am collecting her eve writings. Look, how much she is glamourized by the Go Brahmins.
HOME MINISTRY WATCH
She was born into privilege The and could easily have chosen lea the easy life. But Anuradha ex Ghandy chose guns over Dia roses to fight for the dispossessed, says Rahul the Pandita, another Brahmin Raj (Sept.26, 2009)
Source: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-rebel
On a muggy April evening in 2008, somewhere in Mumbai, a doctor was trying desperately to get in touch with his patient. The patient happened to be a woman in her early 50s, who had come that morning with high fever.
The doctor had advised a few blood tests, and, as he saw the reports, he started making frantic calls to the phone number the patient had scribbled in her nearly illegible handwriting. The number, he soon realized, did not exist. He was restless. The reports indicated the presence of two deadly strains of in malaria the woman’s bloodstream-she had to be admitted to a hospital without delay. Time was racing by and there was no trace of her.
By the time the woman contacted the doctor again, a few days had passed. The doctor wanted her placed under intensive care immediately. But it was too late.
The next morning, on April 12, Anuradha was dead. She had suffered multiple organ failure, her immune system already weakened by systemic sclerosis, an auto- immune disease responsible for, among other things, her bad handwriting.
The news spread quickly among friends and followers of Anu, as she was fondly called. Before long news had reached Indora, a Dalit basti in Nagpur where Anu had lived for seven years. This was before her name appeared in the Home Ministry dossiers as Janaki alias Narmada alias Varsha – the only woman in the CPI (Maoist)’s Central Committee, the highest decision-making body of the Naxalites.
How did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of Bombay High Court, a graduate of the city’s prestigious Elphinstone College, an M.Phil. in Sociology, a girl born into privilege, come to choose a life of struggle and hardship in the treacherous jungles of Bastar, a rifle by her side and a tarpaulin sheet for a bedding? The answer perhaps lies in the times she lived in. Or the kind of person she was. Or maybe a bit of both.
KARNATAKA CONNECTION
Anuradha was born to Ganesh and Kumud Shanbag, both of them activists, who chose to marry in the CPI office. As a young boy, Ganesh Shanbag (A Konkani Brahmin) had run away from his home in Coorg to join Subhash Chandra Bose’s army, and later, as a lawyer, he would fight the cases of communists arrested in the Telangana struggle. While his briefcase would be full of petitions filed on behalf of the arrested comrades, Kumud would be busy knitting and collecting sweaters to be sent for soldiers fighting war with China.
Anuradha’s brother Sunil Shanbag, who is a progressive playwright, recalls her being good at studies as well as extra-curricular activities like dancing. But she was extremely aware of what was happening around her. Says Sunil: “When I was in boarding school, she would send me letters, writing about issues like the nationalization of banks. And she was only 12 then.” But beyond this awareness Anuradha was like any other girl when she joined college in 1972. “She would come home and straighten her hair with the help of a warm iron as girls would do in those days,” recalls Kumud Shanbag.
RICH PARSEE
Meanwhile an alumnus of Doon School, and a classmate of Sanjay Gandhi. Kobad Ghandy, whose father was a top Glaxo executive, and the family lived in a sprawling sea-facing flat in Worli. He had gone to pursue a course in chartered accountancy in England, and it was there that he got initiated in radical politics. Leaving his course unfinished, he returned.
Anuradha was a lecturer, but involved in naxal movement which united her with Kobad. The two got married in Nov. 1977.
KONDAPALLI CONNECTION
By 1980, Naxals from the erstwhile CPI(ML) (People’s War) were entering Dandakaranya-a swathe of forest spread across Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Orissa-to set up a guerrilla base. In 1981, the founder of the People’s War, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah expressed his desire to meet Kobad during a conference of the Radical Students’ Union in AP. The People’s War was keen to enter the Gadchiróli region of Maharashtra. Naxal ideologue Brahmin Varvara Rao says the meeting between the two paved the way to the formation of People’s War in Maharashtra.
Anuradha moved to Nagpur which has the second largest slum population (Dalits) in Maharashtra. It was in Nagpur in 1956 that B.R. Ambedkar accepted Budhism.
DALIT SLUM
By 1986, Anuradha moved to Indora locality, the epicenter of Dalit politics. She rented two small rooms at the house of a postal department employee, Khushaal Chinchikhede. “There was absolutely nothing in their house except two trunksful of books and a mud pitcher,” he says. Anuradha also worked as part-time lecturer in Nagpur University. Later, Kobad would also come to live there. Both would be out till midnight. Anuradha used a rundown cycle to commute, and it was later at the insistence of other activists that Kobad bought a TVS Champ moped.
Indora was notorious for its rowdies. “No taxi or autorickshaw driver would dare venture inside Indora,” says Anil Borkar, who grew up in Indora. But Anuradha was unfazed. “She would pass though the basti at midnight, all alone on a cycle,” remembers Borkar. He met Anuradha through a friend. “She made me aware of so many things. It was like the whole world opened in front of me,” he says
Because of Anuradha, Devanand Pantavne, a black belt in karate turned into a poet and the lead singer of a radical cultural troupe. Pantavne remembers her as a stickler for deadlines. “She would get very angry if we took up a job and then didn’t deliver on time,” he says. Another young man, Surendra Gadling was motivated by Anuradha to take up law. Today, he fights cases for various activists and alleged Naxals. “She is my guiding light,” he says. It is not without reason. Anuradha led by example, living the life she wanted the basti boys to lead.
DALIT WOMAN’S RAPE
In 1994, a Dalit woman, Manorama Kamble, working as a maid in an influential lawyer’s house was found dead, with the lawyer’s family claiming that she had accidently electrocuted herself to death. But the activists feared that she had been raped and then killed by the lawyer. Anuradha led an agitation, and it was due to her efforts that the case created ripples in the state assembly and in Parliament.
In Indora, one of Anuradha’s trusted lieutenants was Biwaji Badke, a 4 feet-tall Dalit activist. “Every morning Badke would come to her house and share all news with Anuradha over tea,” recall friends. Later, when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, Anuradha brought him to her house and nursed him for months: Another associate, Shoma Sen remembers her being very sensitive to the lives of others, “Her house in Indora was open to everyone. Every time someone would come and one more cup of water would be added to the tea,” she says.
ANURADHA GOES TO BASTAR
Because of her, many others from well-to-do families were inspired to become activists. Says her old friend and associate of her activist days, Susan Abraham: “When I became an activist it was always heartening to see someone from Anu’s background working along with you.”
It was in the mid-90s that Anuradha joined the Naxal leadership in the jungles of Bastar and finally went underground. Maina, a member of the CPI-Maoist’s Special Zone Committee in Dandakaranya. remembers her efforts to mingle with the local Gond tribals: “Many people used to question us about her, saying didi (Anuradha) is not from this country, she does not know our language. Didi would smilingly approach them saying: ‘1 know what you are asking; please teach me your language; I will learn everything from you.”
CHHATTISGARH TANK REPAIR
In 1999, Anuradha was camping along with other guerillas in Chhattisgarh’s Sarkengudem village when the police surrounded them. An encounter ensued. Lahar, a senior guerilla remembers Anuradha taking cover and aiming her gun at the ‘enemy’. Later, she would always recollect that incident, urging the youth to learn the skills of guerrilla warfare. But Sunil remembers her speaking about the “awkwardness of carrying a gun.”
The hard life of the jungle was not easy on her body-she suffered frequent bouts of malaria. During the same summer, she had been walking for hours one day when she stopped and lost consciousness. Her comrades made her drink glucose water. Apparently, she had suffered a sun- stroke. After she recovered, she refused to hand over her kit-bag to others, says Lahar,
No matter what the Centre claims, the Naxals often fill in the void created by the govt. in their areas of influence. In Basaguda in Chhattisgarh, an embankment needed to be built around a tank called Kota Chervu; some ten villages were counting on supplies from this tank. The govt. had ignored the villagers’ pleas for years. It was under Anuradha’s guidance that people from 30 villages undertook this work. Those who worked were given a kilogram of rice a day. The govt. panicked and sanctioned Rs 20 lakh; it was refused. By 1998, over 100 tanks had been constructed by the Naxals in Dandakaranya. Anuradha would make secret trips to Mumbai. “She would come, and I would apply oil in her hair and massage her body. I wanted to pamper her as much as I could.” says Kumud.
KOBAD GANDY ARREST
At the ninth congress of the CPI (Maoist) in 2007, Anuradha was made a member of the central committee. By this time, Kobad had become one of the key Naxal leaders, in charge of party documentation. (He was arrested in Delhi on Sept. 20).
It was on the basis of Anuradha’s work that the Naxals prepared the first-ever caste policy paper within the Marxist movement in India. She also drafted papers on “Marxism and Feminism’, of which the top Naxal leadership took note
In her memoirs of Anuradha, her friend Jyoti Punwani wrote: “The Naxalite menace’, says Manmohan Singh, is the biggest threat to the country. But I remember a girl who was always laughing and who gave up a life rich in every way to change the lives of others.” (See also p.26: “DV must fight Brahminised Dalits”)
