Man behind the spring thunder'

"A peal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of India. Revolutionary peasants in the Darjeeling area have risen in rebellion... "This was how the People's Daily, the organ of the Chinese Communist party, described the incident of Naxalbari in 1967. And those in the forefront of that "rebellion" included Kanu Sanyal.

Born into a middle-class family at Kurseong in 1932, Naxalite leader Kanu Sanyal joined the communist movement in the Fifties and left home to work among the peasants. Like Charu Majumdar, he was also a senior leader of CPI's (and later, CPM's) Darjeeling district until he left the party during the peasant uprising in Naxalbari in 1967 when the first United Front government was in power in Bengal.

"Kanubabu and myself joined the CPM after it was formed in 1964. Later, we formed a committee within the party to continue with the inner party struggle against revisionism. Some of us continued with the theoretical debate while Kanu Sanyal kept working among the peasants to show them the way. For we believed that a step to revolution is more important than a dozen programmes. Sanyal dumped the party when police opened fire on peasants demanding land to the tillers. That was on May 24, 1967. Eleven peasants were killed in the incident. The killings firmed up the peasants and the movement spread to other parts of the state. Kanu Sanyal led the peasant movement that culminated in the formation of the CPI(M-L) on April 22, 1969," said Ajijul Haque.

Sanyal was arrested in August 1970 and was put behind the bars for seven years in connection with the Parvatipuram Naxalite Conspiracy case. He was released in 1977 after the Left Front came power in West Bengal.

Recollecting Sanyal's political contribution, Haque pointed to the leader's thesis Eleven great deeds in Naxalbari. "In his writings, Sanyal showed how peasants irrespective of their political affiliations came together to take part in sanitation activities, digging up ponds and even setting up health centres. He spoke about demolishing the old regime of the oppressive jotedars, and also about construction of a new society with poor peasants at the helm," Haque said.

Lamenting his death, CPI(M-L) leader Santosh Rana said his well-wishers had been insisting the ailing leader to come to Kolkata for treatment. "We were ready to bear the expenses. Even some doctors of the SSKM Hospital were eager to treat him. But Sanyal wouldn't leave his village and the men with whom he worked. He was a true communist who never asked for favours. A dedicated soul Sanyal spent his life reorganising the revolutionaries all over the country and stood by the poor till the last day," Rana said.

Writer Saibal Mitra is yet come to terms with Sanyal's suicide. "It is unbelievable. Sanyal did not bow his head ever. Even in his old age he resisted a dacoity while travelling in train to Kolkata. Sometime ago the commune he stayed in was ravaged by elephants from the forests. But he didn't ever think of leaving the place. Party was his life. He was a true professional revolutionary as Lenin used to call communist wholetimers," Mitra said.

Mitra would call Kanu Sanyal and not Charu Majumdar the architect of the Naxalbari uprising in the late sixties. "Sanyal's thesis as he elaborated in his writing More on Terai Movement' is that peasants in Naxalbari wanted to establish their right to till on vested lands. It was not a movement to grab state power as Charu Majumdar espoused. He worked among the peasants and tea garden workers and seldom came to Kolkata to participate in intellectual discourse. He even refused treatment when his friends and well-wishers wanted to bring him in the city," Mitra said.

Months before his death, Sanyal had told TOI that he was in favour of more autonomy to the Hill people of Darjeeling Kalimpong and Kurseong. The Naxal leader said he recognised the right to self-determination but did not endorse the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha's demand to include parts of the Dooars in the proposed Gorkhaland.

From The Times of India