Women Martyrs of The Indian Revolution

Let Us Realize the Dreams of the Great Martyrs

We are presenting here the poignant life histories of undaunted
courageous and ever inspiring women who were martyred in the struggle
for New Democratic Revolution (NDR) in India, since the historic Naxalbari
armed peasant rebellion which burst forth like a ‘Spring Thunder’ in 1967.
The great Naxalbari rebellion, the armed agrarian revolution itself was
not an isolated phenomena and it had erupted in an international
background of earth-shaking events. Particularly, it was inspired by the
Great Debate against modern revisionism of Kruschev & Co. and Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched under the leadership of Mao in
China. Naxalbari had broken the back of the modern revisionism, mainly
that of CPI (M) and shown the real path of liberation for the oppressed
masses of India.

The spring thunder of Naxalbari was a clarion call for the oppressed
and exploited people of India. It showed them the path for liberation. It
has been forty years since six peasant women, two children and a peasant
had laid down their lives in Naxalbari while fighting for land and life with
dignity – their liberation. Then onwards oppressed people of our country
have begun to write a new history of their own through their own class
struggle and with their own hands to reach their ultimate destiny which
paves the way for the liberation of entire mankind from all clutches and
prejudices of class society. This all-encompassing history is tremendously
influencing all spheres of our society, the polity, economy, relations
between different social classes and communities, family, culture, literature
and ecology. The history of oppressed women is the real history of the
dearest daughters of our beloved country which is an inseparable, vital
component of the history of oppressed people. And no success in the
revolutionary war or the final victory of the revolution is imaginable or
possible without women. Hence, the need to study their history. These
life histories are an inseparable part of this people’s history.
In these long-drawn forty years, the Indian revolutionary communist
movement had gone through many ups and downs and twists and turns.
After the setback of Naxalbari struggle, the CPI (ML) party split into
many streams. MCC was the other revolutionary stream which stood by
the slogan ‘Naxalbari Ek Hi Raasta’ (Naxalbari is the only Path) and built
a revolutionary movement in some states. Of the many splinters of the
CPI (ML), CPI (ML) (People’s War) and CPI (ML) (Party Unity) stood by
Naxalbari politics and built revolutionary movements covering some states.
These two parties merged in 1998 and formed the CPI (ML) [People’s
War]. Finally on September 21, 2004 the two main streams of revolutionary
communists – the MCCI and the CPI (ML) [People’s War] merged and
formed the CPI (Maoist) and thus a strong single centre to lead the
revolutionary movement finally emerged. In the 37 years of class struggle
and people’s war of these two main streams before the merger many
comrades had laid down their precious lives for the victory of NDR in
India. The villages, towns, soils, furrows of fields, collieries, woods and
mountains, rivulets and rivers of vast India turned red with the warm blood
of these thousands of immortal martyrs which included hundreds of women
comrades. In the thorny and tortuous trajectory every success, experience
and the unity of the party could be achieved only through their innumerable
sacrifices. It is the base on which the party stands today and endeavors
to advance the People’s War. It is by paying homage to their glorious
martyrdom that the unity was cemented. Now, the CPI (Maoist) is
advancing in the path of protracted people’s war and striving to develop
guerilla war into mobile war and to develop People’s Liberation Guerilla
Army into People’s Liberation Army with the aim of establishing Base Areas.
It is the duty of every communist to pay tribute to the memory of martyrs
by continuing the unfulfilled tasks till the victory of communism. People
are always inspired by the sacrifices of martyrs. So it becomes our bounden
duty to propagate about their great qualities, which we have to emulate,
their lives and their ideals, among the vast masses so that they are inspired
to join the liberation struggle to carry forward and realize their lofty aims.
July 28 to August 3 is celebrated as Martyrs’ Memorial Week to
commemorate the martyrs and take a vow that we will follow their footsteps
with renewed vigor and determination. We are using this occasion to give
the readers a glimpse into the lives of women martyrs. It is really sad that
we could not collect the life histories of all the martyred women comrades.
CPI (Maoist) is leading a revolutionary movement which is spread over a
vast area and that too it is concentrated in the most backward and remote
pockets of India and is working under severe repressive conditions. So,
one of the main reasons for the unavailability of their life histories is the
fascist repression it is facing. We have made an effort to compile the
whole list of women comrades martyred from Naxalbari to 2009. We are
giving the available life histories and list of women comrades martyred in
this period as far as we could gather. The list is more or less complete but
there are some more women comrades who were martyred during the
state sponsored Salwa Judum, the counterrevolutionary and terrorist
military campaign unleashed by the Chhattisgarh and central governments.
We could not get in time their names and details. Some more women
comrades also were killed recently in encounters with paramilitary and
other armed forces in various parts of India whose details we could not
obtain due to the war like situation prevailing in these areas as part of
Operation Green Hunt. We would definitely try to overcome these
shortcomings in the next edition. But meanwhile we thought it would be
useful and inspiring to bring out as many life histories as possible on this
solemn occasion when we commemorate our beloved martyrs.

Here we have compiled in two volumes the life histories of women
revolutionaries who were martyred since Naxalbari to 2009 under the
leadership of those streams of the Indian revolution which merged into
the CPI (Maoist) in 2004. In the first volume we have included the life
histories of women martyrs from Naxalbari to September 2004. In the
second volume we have included the life histories of women martyrs from
September 2004 to 2009, i.e., since the formation of CPI (Maoist). The
life histories of women martyrs of CPI (Maoist) and some of those who
were part of the genuine democratic and progressive movements have
been recorded here.

When we look at the lives of these women martyrs many things strike
us as extremely significant. The NDR in India is led by the working class
and peasantry is its main ally. So the majority of the martyrs belong naturally
to the peasantry. In the Srikakulam armed agrarian revolutionary struggle,
which was the major armed struggle of the Naxalbari period, there were
17 women martyrs. The most prominent among them was Panchadi
Nirmala who has inspired and is still inspiring generations of young women
to join the revolution. Altogether the total number of that period will be in
dozens. But after 1985 and especially in the 1990s and in the new
millennium their numbers reached hundreds. And more than two hundred
women comrades have laid their invaluable lives just in this past six years
since the formation of the new party. The protracted people’s war (PPW)
doesn’t advance along a smooth and straight path and its nature of
momentum is always zigzag. So this reality is reflected in these life histories
too. They represent the many ups and downs and successes and failures
experienced by the revolutionary movement. The Indian ruling classes
have always used brutal force to suppress the revolutionary movement.

They have launched many a suppression campaigns one after another
and have deployed lakhs of police and paramilitary forces to crush the
movement in the most heinous ways possible. The brutality of these forces
is on par with the brutality of most suppressive forces in the world. No
surprise, most of the women martyred in the movement died while fighting
these forces. They died in real encounters and fake encounters, both of
them illegal according to the existing constitution. Guerillas have been
surrounded by the mercenary forces which are many times over and above
their strength and have been fired upon without any warning or any effort
to arrest them. While some died in face to face battles, some of the women
guerillas were caught with injuries in different types of armed
confrontations. Many of those who were caught with injuries were gang-
raped, tortured and killed in cold blood. Many women revolutionaries were
caught unarmed in villages and towns and killed in fake encounters. Many
of them had been jailed and some died due to the tortures and the abysmal
jail conditions.

It was not just the women guerillas who died at their hands. Many
unarmed women activists of both over ground and underground mass
organizations (peasant, worker, women, cultural, youth, student etc) have
also been killed in cold blood either by the police, paramilitary or by vigilante
gangs sponsored by the reactionary governments. Unarmed urban women
activists who organized the working class, urban poor and various sections
of urban people were caught, cruelly tortured and killed. There are both
professional revolutionaries and part-time party activists among those who
died.

Apart from these comrades, some comrades have died due to illness
and in accidents (accidental fires, thunderbolt, snake bites, drowning etc).
Some died during child birth. In one sense, these deaths are also caused
due to the severe inhuman repressive conditions prevailing in the main
struggle zones or states. People and revolutionaries are dying due to
non-availability of medical facilities in those backward areas and the
embargo imposed by the enemy. The fascist governments are putting
restrictions even on sale of medicines in these areas and harassing the
doctors who treat the revolutionaries, even killing them some times. A
woman dying during child birth is due to the lack of any kind of pre-natal
and ante-natal care in the backward rural areas even after more than six
decades of “independence”. So, we can say most of these deaths are
also caused by the callousness of the ruling classes or manmade.
There are women of all age groups among these martyrs ranging
from babies to women over 60 years of age. Some were mothers of
children, some were pregnant and some had just given birth. Many teenage
girls were killed too. Neither age nor their physical condition deterred the
police from killing them.

As one goes through this book, one would find a wide spectrum of
women belonging to oppressed classes, castes and sections among these
martyrs. More than ninety percent of these martyrs belong to the most
oppressed classes and oppressed castes from the rural areas. It comes
as no surprise as New Democratic Revolution is waged in the vast rural
tracts with the strategy of liberating villages as a part of area-wise seizure
of power and surrounding the cities, ultimately liberating the whole country.
So agrarian revolution is at the core of this revolution and naturally the
women of oppressed classes and castes are the main revolutionary social
force. Some women belonging to the working class and urban poor had
also been martyred.

A considerable number of women belonging to the petty bourgeois
classes and sections like students, intellectuals, employees have also
been martyred. The specific feature to be remembered about these women
martyrs coming from a petty bourgeois background is that they have
realized that women’s liberation in India or anywhere in the world is not
possible without the liberation of the overwhelming majority of peasant or
working women and so had joined the agrarian revolution. They left their
homes, life styles and class baggage behind and completely integrated
with the rural women populace, educating them and getting educated in
class politics in turn. Comrades Snehalata, Kurnool Padma, Nyalakonda
Rajitha, Parvati of Karnataka, Ellanki Aruna, Suguna (Mahboobnagar),
Anuradha Ghandy, were some of the most popular and illustrious leaders
from this genre. Anuradha was an ideological and political leader of the
party and had developed to the level of CC. Rajitha was a state committee
member. Padma, Suguna and Aruna were on their way to become state
level leaders at the time of their killing and later would have developed as
central level leaders. Rajitha, Aruna and Suguna were great military and
political leaders of the movement and Padma was one of the best
organizers the party had ever produced and was a political and ideological
leader. She worked mainly in the urban areas amidst severe repressive
conditions and is one of the main architects of the urban women’s
movement in AP from 1989 to 1994. Anuradha was the in-charge of the
Central Mahila sub-committee and comrades Padma and J. Savitri were
members of AP Mahila Coordination committee. These were structures
formed by the party to specially concentrate on developing revolutionary
movement, to develop women comrades and tackle problems of patriarchy
in the whole revolutionary camp. So one can calculate the loss the women’s
movement had suffered with their deaths. Both Padma and Savitri were
killed by the brutal AP police. It is noteworthy that Anuradha and Padma
had particularly strived to build friendly relations with other democratic
and progressive women’s organizations and individuals in the country.
Revolutionary women organizations were built in the villages of forest
and plain areas and also urban areas and these organizations had
mobilized thousands and lakhs of women in various struggles and political
movements. Thousands of them are active participants in the People’s
War at various levels. These women organizations, the women leaders of
these organizations and the party women organizers who are the motive
force behind them have been specifically targeted by the ruling classes
and many have been killed in fake encounters and massacres of people.
Scores have been killed by the dozens of vigilante gangs sponsored by
the armed forces in all the struggle areas, the most notorious of them
being the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh and Sendra in Jharkhand.
On the other hand, when we look at some of the incidents we can
gauge how the fascization of the armed forces and entire state has risen
to unprecedented heights. It even looks as if the state is exceptionally
cruel towards women. In the bizarre Manala covert killings three women
comrades (along with another seven male comrades) were very cruelly
tortured after they became unconscious from the sedatives mixed in their
food and then killed them. The whole scene was so ghastly that people
were terrified when they saw the mutilated, mauled bodies. In the
Aguruguda encounter three women comrades were killed. In
Sangidigundala, six women comrades were brutally gunned down. Out of
them three were Chenchu adivasi young girls and the other three were
also young women from a poor peasant background. In the Seshachalam
Hills encounter also six women comrades were killed. This was also a
covert operation. In the Daraboyinapenta encounter (in which the AP state
committee secretary Com. Madhav was also killed) five women comrades
had laid down their lives. In the Gunukuralla encounter, three women
died fighting the police bravely. The notorious AP Greyhound commando
police did not spare even an old mother of four children. They tortured
and killed Eswaramma in a fake encounter after she was arrested. The
fake encounter of seven unarmed teenage girls at Sathrajpalle would go
down in history as one of most cruel killings. The only crime these girls
committed was trying to organize themselves into a women’s organization
to address their grievances as women.

Nayan’s child in Naxalbari, Biddika Chandram

Nayan’s child in Naxalbari, Biddika Chandramma’s six-month old baby
in Srikakulam, Mounika, a 2-year old child in Nalgonda district, 3-Year old
Beronica Titoya in Jharkhand, 10 year old Oyam Bujji in DK are just a few
names of children who have lost their lives to the brutality of the police. In
fact, their numbers would be more if we meticulously gather all the details
about the repression in the struggle zones.Some women lost their lives
for being family members of revolutionary activists or for giving them
shelter. Haseena Begum and Niranjana of NT were killed for this. Avalam
Lakshmi (DK) and Manthena Rajavva (NT), both old women lost their
lives just because they resided in the movement areas and happened to
cross the way of the armed forces.

The number of women dying at the hands of the various vigilante
gangs sponsored by the state are also increasing. And these count as
some of the most macabre killings ever. Belli Lalitha was a great singer
who worked in the cultural movement for Separate Telangana. She was
hacked to 17 pieces by the most notorious black gang of AP led by Nayeem
and those pieces were thrown into various wells. The gruesome murder
of Malati and Lakshmi in Bhitar Amada by NASUS would make one
shudder. Badki Devi of Jharkhand was strangled to death by the
reactionaries. All the women killed as part of Salwa Judum come under
this category. The spiteful killing of Kumme and Chaithe in DK by killer
gangs as part of Operation Green Hunt (OGH) in 2010 by raping them
and hacking their necks indicate what is in store for women activists from
such gangs. Their bodies were purposefully left naked. Some women
comrades lost their lives at the hands of coverts (Santha of AP, Manala
women martys of NT). Many coverts had been given targets by the police
officials to kill the women leaders in particular.

In many incidents, the AP and DK police raped women comrades
who were injured in encounters and then murdered them. This is the lowest
level they can stoop to in bestiality. If this sounds horrible then when we
hear about the atrocities the poor, adivasi women are subjected in DK,
particularly during Salwa Judum (SJ), there would be no words to describe
the horror. The kind of hatred with which their breasts and private parts
were attacked has perhaps never been witnessed in this scale in India in
Maoist revolution. When we remember the fact that these adivasi women
had to wage bitter struggles with their men to cover their breasts and
private parts properly with cloth, we may perhaps understand why those
parts are so particularly targeted. All along, ruling classes all over the
world have always used rape and sexual violence on women as a weapon
to suppress people’s movements and SJ is an appalling continuation of
that policy. Whether it is the DK adivasis or AP Chenchu adivasis or
Jharkhand Santhal adivasi or Odisha Kond adivasis or the dalit women in
the various plain and suburban areas, it is always the poor, backward,
lower caste women who are becoming victims of state repression. Their
only crime was to try to take their lives into their hands; to try to liberate
their people. In SJ, they particularly targeted Kranthikari Adivasi Mahila
Sangathan (KAMS) leaders and members, members of peoples’ militia
and Cultural front and common women. India, which boasts to be the
world’s largest democracy, doesn’t even allow poor adivasi women to
organize into women’s organizations for their fundamental rights. It is high
time the world sits up and expresses indignation at this appalling condition.
One should note that the revolutionary women’s movement of India is
one of the main and widespread women’s movements in the world and in
India apart from the nationality women’s movements in Kashmir and
Manipur.

These women martyrs were inspired by Maoism and the revolutionary
movement. The reasons for their joining the movement may vary but one
common feature we find in them is their aspiration to be liberated from
patriarchy and to liberate all women from patriarchy. Most of them were
themselves victims of patriarchy and some of them though not as
oppressed had consciously joined as they felt Maoism provided the answer
to the eradication of patriarchy. So when we go through the life histories
of these extraordinary women, we find that they fought patriarchy in society,
in their comrades in arms and also in themselves.

The women revolutionaries have been victims of patriarchal
psychological war of the ruling classes too. They have been put down as
sexual victims of their male colleagues. Their personal lives have
sometimes been derided with all kinds of slander as part of the foul
propaganda unleashed by the ruling classes’ psychological warfare, an
important component of the Low Intensity Conflict strategy to crush the
Maoists. The irony is that even some women (very few) who claim to
represent the interests of women have swallowed this propaganda
uncritically and wrote articles with the same tenor. The fact is that
revolutionary movement has the avowed aim of fighting patriarchy and
encourages women to fight it at all levels. One cannot explain the huge
participation of women in the movement if the above had not been true.
The revolutionary movement had never claimed there were no
manifestations of patriarchy in the party, people’s army, or in the
revolutionary camp. In fact, it has released documents explaining its origins
and the forms it gets manifested in and even created some specific forms
to fight it like rectification campaigns against patriarchy apart from the
regular criticism-self criticism sessions. The lives of these martyrs are
testimony to the above facts and we hope these would dispel some of the
doubts which lurk in minds of some people about women being victims of
patriarchy in the movement. Such a view does not see these women as
active participants in the revolution or as makers of history and only sees
them as ‘victims’. Doesn’t this view represent one of the most disgusting
forms of patriarchy too? The lives of these martyrs not only show how
they had fought patriarchy but also how to fight against it till its elimination
or its complete eradication from the face of the globe. With their glorious
lives they had demolished every kind of feudal and bourgeois stereotype
about women in all the fields and this is no ordinary feat for the ‘backward,
uneducated’ peasant, dalit and adivasi women or the ‘fragile’ petty
bourgeois women.

One more thing we want to emphasize about the lives of these martyrs
is the extremely difficult conditions in which they had worked and died.
They braved it all with sheer determination and their aspiration for a better
society for all the oppressed masses of India and ultimately for the
establishment of a classless society in the entire world. The daily lives of
these women are full of circumstances which require extraordinary grit to
continue. In the severe repressive conditions, they had to go without food
and water, go without sleep and forego all kinds of comforts. In the plain
areas, they had to walk the whole night and take shelter in a small secret
place with almost no movement in the daytime. In Telangana they used to
take shelter in the homes of the peasants and they had to be so secret
that they had to urinate and defecate inside the house into pots. They
would be disposed only in the night when they go out of the shelters.
Taking bath was an extremely risky job and could cost you your life. Some
comrades had died fetching drinking water for the squad as water points
are ambush spots for the police. One can imagine what the women
comrades in the plains in those severe repression days went through
when they were menstruating. They had to work under constant physical
and mental pressure amidst police combings and mopping up campaigns.
None of them could be counted under the category of ‘healthy’ women
and had to survive with all kinds of diseases and illnesses including
gynecological problems, not to mention the omnipresent, constant
companion – the dreadful malaria resulting in severe anemia. Some had
surgical operations for various ailments and worked under severe physical
constraints. Their commitment to the people is unparalleled and worthy of
admiration.

After the setback of Naxalbari, women comrades like Chittekka of
Srikakulam, a veteran comrade who served people for above forty years
till her last breath had worked under severe repressive, discouraging and
hopeless conditions. Chittekka’s life is so full of inspiring episodes that
she deserves a whole book or novel in her name. They were part of the
pioneer comrades who had revived the revolutionary movement in India
again from scratch after the setback of the Naxalbari, and Srikakulam,
Bhirbhum and other struggles. Their unflinching confidence in Maoism
even under such difficult conditions is exemplary and worthy of emulating.
Many women comrades had lost their loved ones in the movement but
continued with redoubled spirit, vowing to carry on the lofty aims of their
beloved life partners. Some have married again but lost that partner too.
And all this at a very young age. In some incidents both the husband and
the wife had died in the same incident (both in real and fake encounters).
Some of these are very young couples. Some of these martyrs had lost a
brother/sister/relative in the movement. Bhagyalakshmi’s and Nagamani’s
(AP) brothers were martyred before them. There are some comrades
who have a relative in the enemy camp too. Morri Lakshmi (NT) killed her
own brother when he turned covert and damaged the party. Such vertical
divisions in the family could be seen mostly during the SJ fascist campaign.
Some martyrs had lost their limbs or were injured in firings (some of them
more than once) but nothing could dampen their spirit. Some of them
could not get treatment in time due to the repression and so had to undergo
a lot of pain and some even had to carry on with disability due to this
delay.

Majority of the women comrades, particularly the guerillas had chosen
not to have children. Some of them had children when at home and had
left them to join the movement. Some gave birth to children in the
movement but left them with somebody and dedicated themselves to the
people. In one sense, they have shattered the myth of ‘motherhood’
concept imposed on them by the feudal society. They have proved with
their practice that communist women do not love or care for only their
own children and that they love and take care of all the children belonging
to the oppressed masses. These ‘mothers’ left their own children and
worked and died for the bright future of all the children in this world. Another
myth that some of these comrade have shattered is that women follow
their husbands whatever they may do. Comrades like Padma, who
developed into a Divisional Committee member in Adilabad district, Santhi
of Nallamala in AP did not leave the movement till their last breath even
though their husbands abandoned the movement. This shows their higher
level of class consciousness and their immense commitment of these
comrades towards the people. The women comrades in the revolution
are the pioneers for building new man-woman relations in the party, army
and in society. They are steeling themselves in the class struggle and are
also establishing new relations and new values through their practice in
the class struggle. Establishing new man-woman relations is also part of
this all-encompassing class struggle. Some martyr couples or martyr
comrades had forever remained as models to follow in man-woman
relations.

Among these martyrs we would particularly like to highlight the life
histories of those senior women comrades who had dedicated their lives
for decades together for the revolution and had almost remained nameless
till their death due to the nature of their work in the technical mechanism
formed for the protection of leadership and other tasks like press, weapons
production etc. Comrades like Bhagyalakshmi (technical mechanism, AP),
Vijayakka (technical mechanism, AP), Narmada (Weapons Production,
DK), Jilani Bano (technical mechanism, NT) are just a few names. They
spent years together in these works withstanding all kinds of difficulties
and problems in that life. It was a sacrifice on their part because as
communists they would have always preferred to work among the people
and not spend their lives in some secret den. Matta Rattakka was the first
woman comrade from the plains to come to DK and work there. Later she
worked for many years in the technical mechanism and then she again
came back to DK and died in an encounter while working there. Rajeswari
of Karnataka, another senior comrade, left her job, joined the movement
and edited party organs from underground. The revolutionary movement
considers the life histories of all those veteran women comrades as
treasures to be preserved for the future generations and always urges
the younger comrades to learn from their lives, works and from their long-
standing commitment and steadfastness in the face of umpteen numbers
of difficulties. The very mention of their long revolutionary lives fills one’s
heart with a warmth and inspiration which the younger comrades should
hold on to very dearly.

Comrades belonging to various departments of the party, PLGA and
Janathana Sarkar were martyred. There were computer operators
(Swetha, AOB), tailors (Gadapa Sarita, DK), teachers (Madhavi, AP),
doctors (Karuna, AOB; Anju, JH; Kamala, DK), technicians (Narmada and
Sunita, DK), press workers (Chaithe, DK), agriculture workers (Kumli, DK)
etc among the martyrs. Their contribution in these various fields which
are an inseparable part of the ongoing PPW is unforgettable.
The readers would find that there are a few comrades who had
committed suicide. It is really one of the tragedies of the movement that
some comrades had committed suicide in spite of being in the revolutionary
camp. They had been active in their fields and had a great promise in
them. The movement had rescued many women in the society who were
on the verge of suicide and we can only imagine how many more would
have committed suicide in the villages if not for the revolutionary women’s
movement. So a woman committing suicide while being in the revolutionary
camp is to be taken seriously. The revolutionary movement takes these
incidents seriously though they are very few in number because they show
where the weaknesses of those comrades and that of the movement lie.
The movement reviews these incidents to avoid such occurrences again.
Their life histories, particularly those of oppressed people, adivasi,
dalit, show the tremendous efforts they had put in to develop themselves
ideologically, politically, organizationally and militarily in order to become
communist leaders of the movement. Most of them became literate after
joining the movement. Many of them had developed as party committee
members right from village party committee to district/divisional level
committees. We are very proud of the manner they carried on their
responsibilities as committee members quite efficiently. Their efforts in
this direction will serve as an inspiration for all comrades in the generations
to come. They have forever buried the false dictum of this society that
women are always inferior. So we see women doing all kinds of works
and taking up all kinds of responsibilities in the party, army and united
front activities. They are working and leading in all fronts of the revolution.
Another feature we want to highlight about these martyrs is their
bravery and valiance in fighting the enemy. Innumerable incidents of their
bravery can be quoted. They have been immortalized in many art and
literary forms not to mention the countless songs which describe their
bravery and courage. They have become legends in the eyes of the people
and sometimes we find even their ‘enemies’ praising their valiance. Their
military skills are not inferior to any of the male comrades and sometimes
even surpassed that of their male colleagues. Ordinary peasant, adivasi
and petty bourgeois women had become soldiers and military leaders.
The military exploits of Rajitha and Lalitha of NT have become legendary
and even the armed forces feared them. Karuna and Somvari died during
Daula raid, Rambatti during the illustrious Nayagadh raid, Rukmati during
the historic Mukaram attack, Anju in the Jhumra Pahad raid, Srilata during
the raid on Tirumalagiri PS and many are the working class heroines who
died fighting the enemy valiantly in attacks on the armed forces and in the
scores of encounters with the armed forces. Porteti Penti (DK) had special
forces training and proved her mettle in the last encounter with the police.
Vanaja’s (AOB) and Radha’s (DK) last battles with the police are some of
the most valiant fights put up by the guerillas of PLGA. Rathna (AOB) was
an action team member. A woman in action teams is still a rarity to find in
the PPW. Many sacrificed their lives in these armed confrontations to
save their fellow comrades. Health is not on their side and one would be
surprised at how much these undernourished, lean, short built women
could achieve in the military sphere. The answer is again the same – their
determination to fight all patriarchal notions about women and their
commitment towards the people as builders of new society.

Here lies the strength of the communist ideology which makes such
things possible. It can give rise to this kind of selflessness and their lives
in turn guarantee the ultimate triumph of this ideology over selfish class
interests and ushers in the communist society. It is their communist spirit
and selflessness which turned them into such wonderful human beings.
Not for nothing do the masses mobilize in thousands and lakhs to pay
homage to these great martyrs.
The one point we want to emphasize many times over to all those
who go through this book is the huge number of budding women leaders
that had been done away with by the ruling classes. One’s heart bleeds
when one thinks of the kind of people’s leaders India has lost in this severe
repression unleashed by the perpetrators of exploitation, oppression and
male domination in the society. There were ideological, political,
organizational, military and cultural leaders among them. There were great
mass leaders who could lead thousands of people in various struggles.
Lingakka (NT), Linge Nano, Pauribai Salaami, Mallam Seethi of DK,
Lakshmi (AP) and Badki Devi (JH) were such leaders to name a few.
Leaders of the newly emerging people’s political power organs were killed
(like Mainabai Naitham of DK). Young dynamic militia comrades and militia
commanders who were to develop into future military leaders were killed
(like Pottami Aithe, Midiyam Aithe of DK). Great singers and artistes who
could inspire lakhs of people with their performances had been killed.
They were leaders of the cultural movements too. Now, we are talking of
the leaders who had a chance to prove themselves. But we have to talk
more about the women who had the potential in them to develop into
great leaders but had been extinguished too soon. Undoubtedly, many of
them could have developed into state level and central level leaders. The
revolutionaries are often questioned about the less number of women in
the higher level decision making bodies in the party. A perusal through
the life histories of these martyrs shows one of the main reasons behind
that fact. If only, if only these women had not been killed, one can surely
say that they would have developed to those higher levels without any
difficulty. Their potential is stuff that leaders are made of. Any person who
genuinely feels that revolutionary movement should have considerable
number of women leaders should take this fact into consideration and do
everything possible to oppose and stop the killings of women
revolutionaries.

Some of these martyrs had been arrested and had spent jail terms in
the course of their revolutionary lives. They had been tortured when they
were arrested and even in jails they had to live in abysmal conditions. But
they kept the red flag aloft in jails too and had placed a model before the
people about the role of a revolutionary in jail. The important thing to note
is that in such difficulties did not make them step back but fought against
the system in a different way by facing immense torture including solitary
confinement for indefinite period and they immediately joined the
revolutionary movement as soon as they were released. In fact, some of
them had to try hard to get the contact of the underground party and had
to face more difficulties meanwhile. The ruling classes try to break the
spirit of revolutionaries by torturing and putting them in jails but in majority
of the cases all this only served to redouble their commitment. We hold
such martyrs in great esteem and put their example before the people as
models to emulate. Even today, scores of women comrades are
languishing in jails but are keeping up their spirits with the inspiration of
such martyrs.

The life histories presented here just give a glimpse about their lives.
In fact, if we write in detail about every individual comrade, it will become
a book. And we genuinely feel it is worthy of writing too. But our limitations
are such that in this war it is becoming increasingly difficult to record the
number of deaths or to note the details about their lives. It made us
extremely sad to see that about some women comrades the information
available is so meager. It made our hearts bleed to write so less about
somebody who had not hesitated to make the supreme sacrifice for the
sake of the oppressed people. We are painfully aware that the task of
recording their life histories would become even more difficult in the future
as the war intensifies. So we are using this occasion to place an imperative
request before all of you to try and bring to light the various inspiring
aspects in the lives of these great women in as many ways as possible.
Already as part of the revolutionary cultural and literary movements,
innumerable songs, write ups, memoirs, poems, stories, articles etc had
been written about the martyrs. A novel was written about Com. Jilani
Bano in Telugu. Separate books/booklets/folders had been published about
some women comrades. Their writings were published too. But even these
do not suffice. They show us only the tip of an iceberg. Recording the
various emotional, moving and inspiring aspects in their lives cannot be
done by any individual and so we would like each person concerned about
or associated with the revolutionary and democratic movements in our
country to take this up as one of the tasks to be fulfilled as part of their
activities. We also request the comrades in the revolutionary movement
to be more diligent and meticulous in recording the life histories of martyrs
and to do it in time as far as possible. This should be realized as an
integral part of the ‘war’ too – the war to reclaim our memories from those
who swear to destroy them.
The reason for the repression becoming more and more severe in the
past 15 years is the globalization policies pushed by the government under
the guidance of the imperialists. The imperialists, big comprador
bureaucratic capitalist and the feudal landlords want to plunder the vast
mineral and natural resources of India especially in the forest areas of
Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, West
Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, Kanataka, Northeast, etc. The reactionary
ruling classes want to suppress the Party and PLGA which defends the
interests of the people and which are organizing the people into struggles
against the plunderers. The unjustified ‘War on People’ was launched in
the name of Operation Green Hunt for this purpose since mid-2009. Many
people as well as party activists and soldiers of PLGA and highest level
party leaders were targeted and killed. They sacrificed lives in this bitter
struggle against the imperialist led ruling classes. As more and more
women are realizing the truth and joining the struggles, the number of
women losing their lives also increases. But this large number not only
indicates the level of repression and the scale of the movement but also
the fact that women are joining the party and army in large numbers. It
shows that oppressed women are increasingly choosing the revolutionary
path.

Never in the history of the Indian communist movement have so many
women comrades (that too in leading positions in the party, army and UF)
been killed by the armed forces. It is necessary to build up a strong civil
rights and democratic movement to fight this brutal repression. Highlighting
the repression on women should be one of the main tasks of this
movement. More than anything the need of the hour is to unite every just
struggle of the women under a banner of democratic and revolutionary
organizations. We hope this book would serve its role in inspiring the
people of our country to take steps towards taking and intensifying such
action. Comrades like Anuradha Ghandy, Kurnool Padma and many other
comrades had strived to interact with the other democratic and progressive
women’s movements and individuals in their life time to build such a broad
based united women’s movement building bridges between the vast rural
tracts and the expanding urban populace. It would be a fitting homage to
the efforts of such martyrs to build such a unity among the oppressed
women of all sections.
The ruling classes are using every opportunity at their disposal to
carry on psychological warfare against the revolutionaries. It is one of the
main tasks of the revolutionary movement to fight back this foul propaganda
in various forms and manners. The life histories of these great martyrs
are one of the most powerful weapon in the hands of the party and the
revolutionary people to defeat the psy-war of the ruling classes which
always to try to portray the Maoists as ‘terrorists’ ‘cruel’ ‘selfish’ ‘killers’
‘hoarders’ ‘oppressors and exploiters of women’ etc etc. By giving a
glimpse into what goes into the making of a communist, these life histories
prove without an iota of doubt that communists represent the most humane
values in life and that they have sacrificed their lives to establish those
values in the whole society.

The revolutionary movement is also humbly accepting that it has to
review the causes for the martyrdom of each invaluable comrade and
analyze the shortcomings which led to them. This is a class war and no
victory for the oppressed people is possible in this war without sacrifices.
In fact, as the People’s War intensifies, the brutal onslaught of the exploiting
classes would increase further and martyrdoms would also increase due
to this. But it is the declared aim of the communist party to achieve the
liberation of the people with as less sacrifices as possible. The
revolutionary movement vows to overcome the shortcomings, wrong
assessments and any other reasons which may have led to martyrdoms
which could have been avoided if only more attention has been paid to
these reasons. This constitutes one of the important inherent aspects in
the homage paid to the martyrs by the revolutionary party. The glorious
martyrs are teaching lessons to their revolutionary heirs not only through
their lives but also with their deaths. Every revolutionary should humbly
learn these lessons in order to advance the People’s War further.
The fact that so many women and men are getting killed in the
movement is not dampening the spirit of the fighting people in the
movement areas. On the contrary, their lives are inspiring more and more
women and men to join the revolution. The most popular books among
the cadres, soldiers of PLGA and people are the books which contain the
life histories of these martyrs. Even these martyrs had been inspired by
revolutionaries who had been martyred before them. The cadres studiously
study their lives to imbibe their exemplary qualities. As the people’s war is
advancing, most of the cadres find their close comrades in arms getting
martyred in front of their eyes. Many a time they have to carry their dead
bodies and weapons to safety and perform their last rites in revolutionary
tradition. Death has become a daily fact of life and the cadres and soldiers
know that one day it will be their turn.

The occasion which is observed with great solemnity in all the
movement areas is the Martyrs’ week from July 28 to August 3. July 28 is
the day when Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the great founder leader of
Naxalbari rebellion and leader of Indian revolution was martyred in police
custody. This week is observed in the memory of the innumerable martyrs
of Indian revolution starting from Com. Charu Mazumdar and Com. Kanhai
Chatterji, the founding leaders of the party. People build martyrs’ columns
in their memory, conduct meetings, rallies, sing songs and perform plays
and vow to fulfill the dreams of martyrs of the Indian Revolution and the
World Socialist Revolution. The maximum number of songs written as
part of the cultural movement is about the martyrs. Parents, relatives and
friends of the martyrs attend these meetings and pay their homage. Most
of them are proud of their darling daughters and sons who have won a
place in the hearts of lakhs of people. In the movement areas, martyrdom
is something to be inspired from, to be proud of and not something to be
feared or to be apprehensive about.

And this is what the ruling classes fear the most. That is why their
mercenary armed police and paramilitary goons try to destroy everything
that even remotely reminds one of their supreme sacrifices. Martyrs’
columns are demolished; July 28 meetings are disrupted, fired upon;
people are jailed, maimed and harassed for attending the commemoration
meetings; martyrs’ families are threatened and so forth. So now July 28
has become not just a day of commemorating martyrs but a day of
defiance, a day of battles with the police to preserve their memories.
Publishing books like these would also amount to ‘treason’ in the eyes of
the ruling classes.
The Indian revolution is carried out as part of the World Socialist
Revolution and the CPI (Maoist) considers itself an inseparable part of it,
considers the PLGA as a detachment of the army of the international
proletariat and the new democratic people’s power or base areas as an
integral part and parcel of bases of world proletariat and oppressed people.
Countless leaders and soldiers and people have laid down their lives all
over the world in all the countries as part of the revolutionary struggles
and Maoist movements. Many women have become martyrs as part of
the ongoing nationality struggles against the imperialists and reactionary
ruling classes. Likewise there have been many sacrifices of women in the
revolutionary movements of Peru, Turkey, Phillippines and Nepal. All over
the world, many women are sacrificing their lives in anti-imperialist
struggles. On this occasion we remember all those martyrs who gave
their lives for building a better society for all of us as part of the World
Socialist Revolution.

On this solemn occasion let us bow our heads humbly before the
martyrs and once again vow that till our last drop of blood we will continue
their work and strive to realize their lofty aims. As the People’s War
advances the sacrifices also increase. No revolution can advance without
such supreme sacrifices. Let us mobilize millions upon millions women,
intensify the revolutionary war for area-wise seizure of power, liberate our
country and realize the dreams of our beloved martyrs.
Let us vow to prepare ourselves for any kind of sacrifice to fulfill their
dream of establishing communism all over the world where there is no
exploitation, domination and oppression of the people. The lives of these
martyrs would constantly inspire us in fulfilling these aims.