We, the friends of Cherukuri Rajkumar (Azad), present this bouquet of his writings and interviews collected from popular newspapers and websites, to all those who are interested to know the ideas of the Maoist politics in India in general and Azad’s articulation of the politics in particular. Azad has been our friend for more than thirty years and as much time, two thirds of his short life of 56 years, he spent developing, exploring, elucidating and debating these ideas.
A voracious reader and prolific writer that he was, the writings collected here might be less than a tenth of his literary output. Much of his writing was anonymous or under different pseudonyms in clandestine journals and documents and we leave it for future research to prepare his collected works, most probably with active support from the party for which he was a spokesperson, member of Central Committee and Politbureau at the time of his brutal killing by police on July 2, 2010 in Adilabad forests of Andhra Pradesh.
His death brought back his memories to us and we, from different walks of life, began cherishing his recollections more after his death. Indeed he began living amongst us more vigorously after his death, justifying the saying “a tyrant dies and his rule is over, a martyr dies and his rule begins”. Azad’s writings, statements, opinions, letters and his expositions of the revolutionary movement that is spreading leaps and bounds are reverberating in the present more vociferously. During the last three months after his cold-blooded killing by the police his name is more visible in the news than when he was alive.
We, as friends of Azad, thought it was our duty to propagate his ideas, his personality and his thoughts and writings. Even as we understand that his party would be in a better position to undertake that effort, we also wanted to add our bit to the task. Within one week of his death, we brought out a small collection of obituary articles written by prominent journalists and civil libertarians in Telugu. We were overwhelmed by the international response against his killing and brought out another slim volume of statements of solidarity and condolence issued by various parties, oraganisations and individuals across the world.
This book, in that process, is our third attempt to propagate Azad’s ideas. All these articles and interviews appeared in popular newspapers like Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu, Mainstream, People’s March, etc. and available on the net. We gratefully acknowledge all the publications and websites.
We distributed our earlier publications to all those people we knew but we thought this book should be available to all those whom we may not know, but really want the book. We would like to remind all those that given the kind of repression prevailing in India now it would be difficult to identify ourselves. Hence we requested revolutionary writer Varavara Rao, who was an emissary of the CPI (Maoist) when the latter had peace negotiations with the government of Andhra Pradesh, to lend his address to the book. We are thankful to him for accepting our request.
Our friend Azad lives here in his words. In his eloquence. In his turn of phrase. In his penchant for truth. In his meticulous approach. In his incisive analysis. In his steadfast practice. In his supreme sacrifice. Azad continues to inspire.
Table of Contents
Preface
A Brief Biography
Azad’s Writings and Interveiws
1. Maoists in India October 2006
2. On the ‘Comprehensive Peace Agreement’ in Nepal December 2006
3. Interview on the Developments in Nepal May 2008
4. On V Prabhakaran May 2009
5. On Patel Sudhakar Reddy & Venkataiah May 2009
6. On the Election Boycott Tactic of the Maoists September 2009
7. Interview on the Governments’ military offensive October 2009
8. On Talks October 2009
9. On Balagopal October 2009
10. On Telangana December 2009
11. On Sakhamuri Appa Rao & Kondal Reddy March 2010
12. On Dantewada Guerilla Attack April 2010
13. Interview to The Hindu April 2010
14. Letter to Swami Agnivesh May 2010
15. On Jnaneswari Express Tragedy May 2010
16. On Bhopal Verdict June 2010
17. A Last Note to A Neo-Colonialist July 2010
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