Those were the words of Gaddar during a conversation I had with him in August 2005 in the wake of the ban on some Naxalite groups including Veerasam—a writer’s group in Andhra Pradesh supporting the Naxalite struggle. Gaddar is a revolutionary poet and singer in Andhra Pradesh who has touched the hearts of millions with his songs. Gaddar says that the peace process was deliberately sabotaged. For the eight months during the cease fire there was no killing by the Naxalites. He does not support the killing of Congress MLA Narshi Reddy and other security men on Independence Day at Mehboob Nagar, but for Gaddar, Narshi Reddy was not just an individual. He represented the system. He and his family ran a liquor empire in Mehboob Nagar district. For Gaddar, “The murder of Narshi Reddy is a product of the failure of the Constitution. The agenda of the peace talks was within the framework of the Constitution. Once the peace talks began, people started approaching the local Naxalite leaders to solve their problems rather than the Government. This made the Government feel shaky. The Government went back on the peace process. With the coming together of various Maoist parties, the Center and the State governments felt shaken. Now, the problem of the oppressed, such as untouchability and landlessness, has been redesigned as a law and order problem.”

Gaddar is afraid that now, with both sides at war with each other the violence will escalate. “Many people will be killed. Kanakaya, a primary school teacher and a civil rights activist in Mehboob Nagar was cut into pieces by a private armed gang named Narsi Kobra. Many people wept at this brutal killing.” Gaddar says that all these gangs are state-sponsored gangs. They have been propped up to terrorize intellectuals, artists and poets so that they do not criticize the Government. Recently, Narsi Kobra has also threatened to cut myself and Hargopal [Professor G. Hargopal of Central University, Hyderabad] into pieces. Gaddar pleads with his heart: “Let there be no more killing from both sides. I am not for killing. Man must live. You stop encounter death and state-sponsored killing and much of violence would stop.”

Gaddar has spent years as a member of the Naxal squad. He says that during the last thirty-five years, at least one thousand of his comrades have been killed in false encounters many while “taking tea and tiffin.” But Gaddar is afraid that now the war is going to become fiercer. If earlier the fighters were from the outside, now it is the oppressed themselves who are taking up arms. “Now, the movement is more qualitative. Now, it is my battle that I am fighting. It will be more vigorous, militant and tit for tat. If the landlord rapes my sister I won’t kill him at one shot. I’ll cut him into pieces. In a forest squad now, only two to three people will be intellectuals, the others will be militants.” People are now taking up weapons. “People take pride in the fact that we have an Army. The State has an army, the private parties have their armies. This is our army.”

But for Gaddar, just having an army is not enough. It must have an appropriate revolutionary direction. In the words of Gaddar: “The armed struggle is based in the forest. They’ve gone to the forest because they want to start a guerilla war. But armed struggle alone won’t do. We need a broad, mass organisation. We also need revolutionary thinking without which these will turn into killing squads, as happened in the case of LTTE.” While pleading for political control of the armed struggle, Gaddar nonetheless feels that all people’s movements should have an armed wing without which it is difficult to carry on the struggle.

Gaddar says that the Naxalite movement was started by the rich and by high-caste radicals. Many of the rich, middle-class and high-caste youth from the cities went to the jungle and they were killed not by the police but by the mosquitoes. But even the Naxalite movement has not understood the problem of caste. It has been his struggle within the party to bring the issue of caste and class together. This was one of the reasons (apart from his writing songs for the film and starting a school) for his being expelled from the party. (But Gaddar makes clear that this expulsion was only for six months.) Even after all these years, not a single tribal is member of the central committee of any Maoist party though one Dalit did make it in.. This is a major inadequacy of the Naxalite movement. He also discusses the following in a self-critical manner:

In this context, Gaddar pleads for a “new democratic revolutionary movement. We are calling our movement a new democratic revolutionary movement. We are not calling it a socialist movement.” For Gaddar, this new struggle is against imperialism, American imperialism. “This calls for a new national struggle in which all of us have to come together and ask how America has come to our land. Our water, our labour, our machine—you just add the formula and it becomes coca cola. Now the fight is between jhas (butter milk), nimbupani (lemon water) and coca cola. That’s why the rich peasantry and the national bourgeois are also our friends. Our enemy is capitalism and American imperialism.”

Gaddar urges us to be a part of this new struggle of awakening and ask ourselves what has happened to our lives. “You are a blacksmith but who has taken your machine? You are a weaver, who has taken your loom? You are a potter but you don’t have pots because the plastic company has come.”

Of the Naxalite movement, Gaddar says: “If you implement 25% of the Constitution, the Naxalite movement would stop.” Instead of addressing the root problem of the Dalits and tribals, the Government is bringing in more battalions and forcing the tribals to fight among each other. They are now raising a Girijan battalion of 12, 000 soldiers while a backlog of 50, 000 jobs for Dalits and tribals remains vacant. If they spend a fraction of the money spent on fighting the Naxals on people’s development, it would help solve the problem.”

Gaddar urges all concerned to understand people’s anger. He takes a dig at the intellectuals too. In his words: “They say Gaddar is more militant. You want to sit in the A.C. room and direct the movement. I am non-violent. I am a poet. If any innocent person is killed I am the first person to condemn it and write a poem about it.” In this context, Gaddar tells us that he started a movement to return dead bodies from the encounter deaths by the police to their families. “Whatever may be, one is always a son to one’s mother. Why deny people this right to dignity?”

Gaddar comes from an Untouchable family. “My mother is a folk singer and father is an Ambedkarite. I began singing songs in my childhood, from when I was six. In sixth and seventh standard, I used to perform folk songs. I started writing and singing based on folk tunes. I used the Katha form and folk instruments.

About his life and work, Gaddar says that he is primarily an artist though he has also been on the front and been a part of the armed struggle. “When I was an engineering student in 1969-70, I moved towards Naxalism, Marxism, Leninism. In 1970, I started the Art Lover’s Association which was inspired by the vision that art is for people and everything has a social purpose. I also formed Jana Natya Mandali (people’s theater) which was directly supporting the Naxalite movement. In 1975, in the wake of the Emergency, there was repression and we went underground. During the Emergency, we were arrested and tortured like anything. When the Janata Party was elected, we came out and in 1977 I worked in Canara Bank for a year as a clerk. Then I went into the jungle.”

Being in the jungle has been an unforgettable experience for him. “I was a square commander. Once I had participated in a hunt.. They gave two pots to a woman who was pregnant. I asked why? They said that she is pregnant and she has to eat for two persons. How lovable the tribals are!. Though I was in the squad, my primary work was art and literature. I have written a song about the life of a guerilla describing what happens in the life of a squad in twenty-four hours. I have also written songs about ordinary things such as chappals. I have also written songs about the Lambardas—a Lambarda comes to the market to sell firewood but he sells his daughter.” Gaddar further tells us: “I have written poems and songs in people’s languages expressing their fears, hopes and aspirations. I am fighting for the tribals, Dalits as well as Muslims.”

Gaddar calls for a new democratic struggle -- for him, this is different from the conventional democracy of fighting elections. “In Telangana, young people prefer to take up arms because they feel that through democracy no problem is solved. There is a lot of unrest among the peasants and the middle-class. In the last fifty-five years, no election has delivered any good and it has not delivered one-fifth of the Constitution. In the election, how can you win if you do not have money, media and power?” But while conventional democracy is limiting, Gaddar has to indicate how the new struggle he hints at can address the challenge of representation. As Gaddar himself acknowledges, armed struggle for liberation has degenerated into mindless killing without a genuine striving for transformation on so many occasions.

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Ananta Kumar Giri is on the faculty of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai and is author of several books on social movements including Reflections and Mobilizations: Dialogues with Movements and Voluntary Organizations (2004). He has contributed often to New Quest.

Gaddar is a well known revolutionary balladeer and poet from Andhra Pradesh. He has been associated with various social movements over the last four decades. He lives in Hyderabad.