Maoist upsurge a thing of past in Kerala

KOZHIKODE: Development and high wages in the farm sector have snuffed out indigenous Maoist outfits that once mushroomed in the border tribal villages of Wayanad, particularly on the banks of river Kabani and hinterland forest hamlets like Chekadi and Thirunelli.

The echoes of ‘Spring Thunder’ in Wayanad hills have fallen silent.  It may be recalled that farmers’ revolt inspired by Mao and Chinese revolution in  the Bengali village of Naxalbarry on May 25, 1967 had triggered  a chain of rebellions in various parts of the nation. The first setback to the revolt came with the killing of comrade Varghese by the police in 1970. Thirunelli and Pulppalli police stations were attacked. Persons like Ajitha and her father Kunnikkal Narayanan, leading lights of the movement, were also arrested.

Many of those who were part and parcel of the Naxalite movement in the 1960s and 1970s in Wayanad and those who  migrated to the Maoists’ outfits that mushroomed in the late 1990s feel that those days of suppression and poverty are over. By 2010 these outfits among tribals vanished gradually.  

“Isolated in jungle, these hamlets were safe havens for extremist elements then,”  says Satheesan Nair, a resident of Pulppalli. “Now the roads are tarred. Villages are connected with the outer world with transport buses and other vehicles which increased the public movement in search of jobs to nearby cities,” he points out.

“The paltry wages of adivasis, known to be experts in cultivating ginger, paddy and pepper, have been increased manifold,”  he said and added  that at present the running wage was Rs 300 to Rs 500 for men and rS 200 for women.

The wanted Maoist Roopesh and his wife Shyna were regular visitors to  these tribal villages along the banks of Kabani river like Chekadi since 2008 as many of the cadre came out from the revolutionary spell.

“In those days when a few of us associated with Maoist frontal groups like Janakeeya Vimochana Munnani, there was a political climate ideal for such Utopian ideologies,”  said Saju Janardhanan, a former fellow traveller of Maoist ideologies, who is detached from the organizations for almost a decade.

Saju, who now owns  an Akshaya centre at Kenichira in Wayanad,   says only fools can say that now an armed revolution is possible in the state.
“Those days of systematic political activities for long-term goals are over. Now politics is  for seasonal goals,”  said Civic Chandran, writer who was instrumental in the cultural face that supported the Naxalite movement in the 1970s.

“That era of class struggle is over,”  he said.