When on 25th May 1967, a police party shot dead 8 tribal women and 3 tribal men in the village of Naxalbari in the terai region of Bengal, Charu Mazumdar announced that this was the beginning of a revolution. Standing with him in support of such an announcement were Kanu Sanyal and a local tribal leader Jangal Santhal.
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In the elections of February 1967, had failed to get elected. He and his supporters, including Charu Mazumdar attributed his failure to his standing the rights of tribals. Mazumdar opined that force was the only way tribals could get what was rightfully theirs.
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Following upon this, on 18th May 1967, under the leadership of Jangal Santhal, Kanu Sanyal and Charu Mazumdar, the tribal peasants of a few villages in the terai region of Bengal formed a 'Peasants Council'. This council resolved to forcibly take away the harvest from land on which tribal peasants were forced to work but which otherwise was owned by jotedars. Individual tribal peasants were allotted small portions of the land of local jotedars. Then they, along with people assigned by the Peasant Council, forcibly harvest crop on the jotedars land.
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Jyoti Basu, the leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), was the Home Minister of Bengal at this time found himself incapable of talking to those who insisted on the use of such force or of stopping them.
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On 23rd May 1967, a police party headed by inspector Sonam Wangdi entered the village called Kheru Jote to arrest those involved in forcible harvesting.
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The police party was surrounded by a group led by Jangal Santhal and Sonam Wangdi was killed in a hail of arrows. The rest of the police party ran away dropping their weapons. The tribals picked up the weapons and later deposited them at the police station. While it may be said that the police was incompetent, it also needs to be noticed that this sort of violence meeting a police party was unprecedented.
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In search of the killers of the sub-inspector, two days later a larger troop of police entered a neighbouring village called Naxalbari. When a crowd gathered to oppose the entry of the police into the village, the police opened fire. Here they shot dead nine tribal men and women. Many women had children tied to their back. But the police, we have already noticed that the Bengal police was particularly incompetent, was skittish and seeking revenge. It was the 25th of May 1967.
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At this Charu Mazumdar, the young man who had been advocating tribal peasants to take possession of the crop and the land, announced the beginning of an all round insurrection.
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On 28th June 1967, Charu Mazumdar addressed a gathering of tea plantation workers and tribal peasants and announced the plan to forcibly grab the land of tyrannical landlords for use by peasants.
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Groups of tribals armed with bows and arrows attacked the properties of jotedars and police stations. A few government officials, shopkeepers and landlords were lynched. This was very much in line with frequent tribal uprisings that had happened across India over many centuries. However, there was one important addition to the uprising this time. This was China. Charu Mazumdar and his friends insisted that their way of using violence and murdering people was justified by the ideology of Marxism as practised in China. Kanu Sanyal would later say that he had reservations about choosing such a murderous path. But he would wait for two years before breaking away from Charu Mazumdar.
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China, ever eager to foment trouble in India, quickly announced an ideological affinity to the course of action that Charu Mazumdar and his friends advocated. Radio Beijing came out with a long broadcast on how important it was for this insurrection to succeed and how much help China was willing to offer for its success. It offered all support, financial and weapons, to the political grouping that Charu Mazumdar had formed.
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Home Minister Jyoti Basu proved entirely incapable of handling the killings and burnings that followed. The terrorised people did not know what to do.
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While Jyoti Basu sat helpless in Kolkata, Naxalbari was flooded by other ministers from the communist party. Among them was Harekrishna Konar. The ministers insisted on directing the police force from their camp offices inside the police station. Effectively this meant preventing the police from taking any action against anyone. At the same time the Communist ministers made no effort to reach out to the angry tribal peasants either. This resulted in an increase in attacks on non-tribals, and those who owned property.
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It was almost as if the state had dissolved in this part of Bengal.
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Finally, by July the government began to take some action. Announcements were made demanding the surrender of wrong-doers. By August, as a result of police action but mostly because many who had participated in the first flush of violence did believe that they had done wrong, some 1000 persons had been arrested.
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Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Biswanath Mukherjee, the three non-tribals who claimed to lead, escaped.
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Such chaos lasted till 1972 when elections were held once again.
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In March 1972, the people voted out the leftists and self-proclaimed revolutionaries who were running the government and gave a majority to the Congress party.
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The new government was headed by the lawyer Siddharth Shankar Ray. He ordered the police to take effective action against those egging on the tribals to rebel. The police resorted to various illegal measures. These included the custodial murder of Charu Mazumdar.
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Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal were arrested, tried and imprisoned.
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Kanu Sanyal was finally released from jail in 1977. He returned back to organising the tribal peasants and help them fight for their rights. But this time he did not advocate armed insurrection. He also remained in the forefront of opposition to land acquisition for building the Tata Nano factory at Singur in 2006. On 23rd March 2010, he hanged himself at his home at village Seftullajote near Siliguri.
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Jangal Santhal was released from prison in 1979. Life outside had changed, he discovered. No one was interested in him or his ideas of armed insurrection any more. By now he had four wives and found it difficult to manage them. He also turned alcoholic. He died in 1987, unsung.
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