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New book on Naxal movement founder reveals China's plans for secret route to India

New book on Naxal movement founder reveals China's plans for secret route to India

India Blooms News Service | | 18 Aug 2014, 12:48 pm
Kolkata, Aug 18 (IBNS) China's moral support for the Naxal insurgents from India in the 1960's is not an unknown fact. Publication of an editorial in People's Daily praising the Naxals or the news bulletins on Peking Radio telling about the progress of Naxal Uprising have been highly publicised and many authors have put these to record.

Now a new book titled "The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal" penned by  Kolkata based journalist Bappaditya Paul has brought forth a startling revelation as regards China’s grand plan centred on the Naxal Movement.

It quoted Sanyal saying that China had wanted to lay a secret transit route running from North Bengal to Lhasa via Nepal-Bhutan for the Naxal rebels. The plan was in such an advance stage that the Chinese army had given a map of the proposed secret transit route to Kanu Sanyal during his secret trip to China in 1967 and had also given some advance monetary support to start the work. 

The plan, however, did not materialise as a few months after returning from China, Sanyal and his aides were arrested by the police, says the book.

Sage Publications, headquartered in California (USA) and having principal offices in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., London, New Delhi, and Singapore, is the publisher of the book "The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal".

The book by Bappaditya Paul, who works for The Statesman, will be released worldwide later this week. The 264-page book is primarily based on several direct and recorded interviews of late Kanu Sanyal, the founder of the Naxal Movement.

It is the only authorised biography of Kanu Sanyal in any language. He had personally read and cleared all the chapters of this book but the last one that deals with his aberrant demise in 2010.

While scores of books have been penned over the years on Naxal Movement, The First Naxal is the only book wherein the founder of the movement is himself narrating the story about its origin, progress, climax and present status.  The book brings to light several hitherto unknown but startling facts and facets of the Naxal Movement.

Commenting about the book, Vivek Mehra, Managing Director and CEO, SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, said: “Every once in awhile comes along a book that makes one rethink conventionality. The idea of Naxalism is also revisited through the eyes of the very first Naxal. I am sure this will be a book which will make us pause to rethink what we believe.”  

Sanyal  was never impressed by the Maoist activities of recent time. The founder of the Naxalbari uprising instead accused the Maoists of straying into the path of terrorism. He had pointed out that the Maoists were relying more on arms than on people and were thus getting isolated from the masses. 

Sanyal was also critical of present West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her role in the Singur movement.

Kanu Sanyal used to hold  Banerjee responsible for diluting the huge prospects that the two agitations of Singur and Nandigram had thrown up between 2006 and 2008.

Much before Trinamul Congress came to power and the Tatas moved to court challenging the validity of the Singur Land Bill that the new government passed, Kanu Sanyal had observed that because of Mamata Banerjee’s “hijacking of the Singur movement”, the farmers will never ever get back their land that were forcibly acquired from them for the Tata Nano car factory.


An excerpt from the book on China plans: CHAPTER-14, PAGE- 131: 

After the revision exercise, the Naxalbari revolutionaries indulged in a discussion with a few top-ranked PLA officers of Lhasa. The agenda was to chalk out a strategy for future cooperation between the Com¬munist rebels of India and the Chinese army. In this crucial meet, the PLA officers advised them to minimise the use of the Chinese Embassy at Kathmandu for regular communications. Instead, they suggested establishing a secret transit-route with camps at regular distance along the Nepal–Bhutan route to China.

‘They had already identified a number of locations for setting up the proposed camps and handed us over a map of this. The transit-camps were envisaged for use by the Indian revolutionaries visiting China on military training and to smuggle in arms–ammunitions. The PLA officials assured us full monetary support towards the cost of establishing such camps and in fact asked us to collect an advance of Rs 10,000 from their Embassy at Kathmandu,’ Sanyal pointed out.

‘…We had started from Lhasa on 22 December and reached Kathmandu on the night of 24 December. Despite travelling in the engi¬neering vehicle, the journey was not that troublesome,’ Sanyal recalled. They halted for the night at the Chinese Embassy at Kathmandu. The Ambassador was personally present to supervise their accommodation; he also joined them at dinner.

On being told by the Naxalbari rebels that they want to set out for India the very next day, the Ambassador gave them Rs 10,000 in Nepali currency. The money was given towards establishing secret transit camps to China as had been decided in the meeting with the PLA officers at Lhasa.

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