Kanu Sanyal, a founder of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), was found hanging at his residence at Seftullajote village.
Kanu Sanyal, the legendary founder of the Naxalite movement of the 60s that heralded a violent struggle and claimed thousands of lives in West Bengal, committed suicide on Tuesday by hanging from the ceiling of his house in native Seftullajote village, 25 km from Siliguri, in the Naxalbari region of north Bengal. A life-long bachelor, Sanyal was 78.
Family friends said he was suffering from acute mental depression. Other reports said he was suffering from age-related ailments, of which kidney and prostate were severe.
Sanyal was general secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), formed in 1969 by the merger of splinter groups of the original party. The firebrand Maoist shunned the path of violence at a later stage in his life.
In his early days, Sanyal, with another legendary naxal leader and co-chairman of CPI(M-L), Charu Majumdar, and Jungal Santhal, formed the deadly triad that spearheaded the so-called ‘Indian Revolution’ that began with a peasant uprising at Naxalbari, a small village in north Bengal, on May 25, 1967.
The then officer-in-charge of Phansidewa Police Station was killed by an arrow shot by Naxalites, as they came to be known. This started a series of killings of landowners, policemen and those associated with the establishment.
In that period, Sanyal advocated guerrilla attacks, including political assassinations and looting of government armories. He also claimed Chinese patronisation.
At the peak of the Naxalite movement in the sixties and early seventies, Sanyal managed to convince a section of the media to voice the cause of radical communists. His views on “reunification of wealth” and “dictatorship of the proletariat” received accolades from a sympathetic section of the media, with some newspapers going to the extent of comparing him with revolutionary freedom fighter Jatin Das.
Sanyal’s popularity among the youth with radical communist leanings became evident when he was arrested in 1970. Soon after his arrest, the entire West Bengal turned into a tinderbox, with followers resorting to massive violence.
Sanyal, however, shunned the path of radicalism after the death of
Majumdar, leading to a collapse of the Naxalite movement. He was released from prison in 1977 when then West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu brought a proposal to free all arrested Naxals.
After release, Sanyal announced the adoption of a democratic path and continued to criticise Maoist violence till his last days. “The way the present Maoist groups are unleashing terror against their own people is unacceptable and condemnable,” he said.
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