Siliguri, March 23: Many had at first refused to believe that a charismatic leader like Kanu Sanyal had ended his life by hanging himself. Alaka Dey was one of them.
In Kurseong, Dey, a retired teacher who knew Sanyal since the mid-40s, said she was shocked when she heard the news.
“I got the news (of his death) this afternoon. It was so shocking,” said Dey who retired from St Joseph’s Girls’ Higher Secondary School in Kurseong in 1999.
Recalling his leadership qualities, Dey, now 70, said: “Kanuda was almost eight-nine years elder to me, and his sister, Usha, was my classmate. He was a quiet, sports-loving person and used to enjoy chatting with others. At that time his leadership qualities like forming an organisation and working with others had been noticed. In those days, young boys of Kurseong used to visit Raj Rajeswari Hall for physical training and Kanuda was one of the regular members.”
Sanyal studied in Kurseong Pushparani Roy Memorial High School with Dey’s elder brother, the late Ashim Banerjee. “They used to stay at Bhalu Busty in Lower Domaram in Kurseong,” said Dey.
According to Dey, Sanyal had shifted base from Kurseong to Siliguri in the late 50s. Around 10 years later, she met the Naxal leader for the last time when he came to visit a party comrade who was then under treatment at the Kurseong T.B. Sanatorium. Dey’s husband, the late Amiyo Dey, was the in-charge of the female ward of the hospital.
“He (Sanyal) came along with the late Jangal Santhal, another Naxal leader, to visit Shanti who was admitted then to the female ward,” Dey reminisced at her residence in Kurseong, 50km from here.
“When I saw him last, he was wearing a dhoti and a white full-sleeve shirt. A bag was slung on his shoulder. My mother asked him in jest if he had any gun inside the bag. Kanuda smiled in reply and said there was nothing like it in the bag,” she said.
Abhijit Majumdar, the son of late Charu Majumdar who was the co-founder of the Naxalite movement along with Sanyal, said the death was a great lose for the communist movement in the country. “He was totally dedicated to the ideology. He was one of the main architects of the Naxalbari movement who had worked throughout his life for tea workers and farmers,” said Majumdar, a central committee member of the CPI(M-L) Liberation and the district secretary of the party.
Source: The Telegraph
The last surviving legend of the Naxalite trio embraces death
at 8:38 PM Labels: gorkhaland, kanu sanyal, naxal leader, naxalbariNaxalbari, March 23: Kanu Sanyal, one of the founding leaders of the Naxalite movement in the country and the all-India secretary of the CPI(M-L), committed suicide at his house in a Naxalbari village this afternoon.
Sanyal’s body was found hanging from the rafters of his mud hut at Hatighisa village, 20km from Siliguri, by Santi Debnath, the wife of party worker Kesab Debnath who had gone to check on the veteran CPI(M-L) leader around 1.15pm.
Police said Sanyal, 78, a bachelor who was ailing, was suffering from depression.
“My daughter Jaya, who cooks for him, had served him chapatis and vegetables in the morning and rice, dal and egg curry around noon for lunch. He retired after lunch, reading the newspapers and Jaya returned home. I went to check on him later but did not find him on the mattress on the floor. I saw him hanging from the ceiling. I raised the alarm immediately,” Santi said.
She said ever since Sanyal suffered a stroke in 2008, she used to call on him every day and her son-in-law stayed with him at night.
Hearing the news of Sanyal’s death, neighbours and hundreds of people from around the area thronged his Hatighisa home. Leaders of other Naxalite factions and those belonging to the CPM, Congress and the Trinamul Congress also arrived at the spot.
“Of late, he was sounding very depressed. He was frustrated with the current communist movements in the country and used to say that both the Maoists and the CPM had deviated from their ideology. After his stroke, he had become feeble and could not move out to address meetings and rallies,” said Dipu Haldar, a district committee member of the CPI(M-L).
Haldar said though the Naxalite movement of the late sixties had witnessed killings, especially in the urban areas, Sanyal would always say that he was against the “wanton killings of innocent villagers” that the Maoists had been indulging in.
Around 3.30pm, Sanyal’s body was taken to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem. Cries of Kanu Sanyal Amar Rahe rent the air and tribal men and women broke down as the ambulance drove off.
Jogen Biswakarma, the Darjeeling district secretary of the CPI(M-L), said Sanyal’s body would be kept at his home tonight as Naxalite leaders from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand were expected here tomorrow to pay their last respects.
Sanyal was born in 1932 in Kurseong and quit the CPM in 1967 to form the CPI(M-L) along with other leaders like Charu Majumdar. He practically led the May 1967 peasant’s insurrection by declaring the “liberation” of Naxalbari village — after which the movement came to be known.
Before that, Sanyal had worked as a revenue clerk at the Kalimpong and Siliguri courts.
Sanyal was arrested in 1970 and spent about seven years in various jails in Bengal and in Andhra Pradesh. Jyoti Basu personally saw to it that Sanyal was released when the Left Front came to power in Bengal in 1977.
Since then Sanyal, though maintaining a relatively low profile, had been campaigning for the rights of farmers and the tea garden workers in north Bengal by denouncing his original ideology of armed struggle.
Sanyal, in recent years, had been vocal in opposing land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram and was also in favour of Gorkhaland.
The CPM has condoled Sanyal’s death. Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said for the past two years Sanyal had become critical of the Maoists.
“His death is very unfortunate. He had been saying that the line adopted by the Maoists did not conform to the revolutionary understanding at the time when he started the Naxalite movement. Sanyal had actively participated in all major agitations of the CPM and other Left parties in Bengal against neo-imperialism,” Yechury said.
Source: The Telegraph
"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
