Top Naxal leader Kanu Sanyal found dead in his house
Saugata Roy, TNN, Mar 23, 2010, 04.20pm IST
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* Article <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5715411.cms>
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Tags:Siliguri
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Siliguri>|Naxal
leader
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Naxal%20leader>|Naxalite
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Naxalite>|Kanu
Sanyal
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Kanu%20Sanyal>|Charu
Majumdar
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Charu%20Majumdar>|Top
Naxal leader
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topics.cms?query=Top%20Naxal%20leader>
Kanu Sanyal
Naxal leader Kanu Sanyal committed suicide at his home on Tuesday. (TOI
Photo: Avijit Ghosh)
SILIGURI: Veteran Naxal leader and one of the founders of the CPI(M-L)
Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house at Sephtulajote village in
Naxalbari on Tuesday where he worked among the peasants till his last.
His health was failing since 2009 after he suffered a massive stroke.
Sanyal's neighbours fear that the leader killed himself because he was
unable to bear with his failing health any longer.
Born in a middle-class family in Siliguri, Sanyal left his house to work
among the peasants soon after he joined the communist movement while he
was a student in the fifties. Sanyal was a district organiser of the
CPM's Darjeeling district like Charu Majumdar till he broke away from
the party during the Naxalbari peasant uprising during the first United
Front government in 1967. Like Majumdar and one of his comrades Jangal
Santhal, Sanyal believed that peasant revolution was the axis of change
in Indian society, the signs of which were evident from the Naxalbari
uprising.
"Kanubabu was then with the CPM. He 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," CPI(M-L) leader Santosh Rana said.
Lamenting his death, Rana said that 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.
However, Rana was taken aback with Sanyal's committing suicide. "I am
shocked. He has never compromised on ideology and even in his life," the
CPI(M-L) leader said, while reminiscing the days when he came closer to
Sanyal during their days in jail in the seventies.
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, while talking to TOI, Sanyal said 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.
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