India: CP (Maoist) on Death of Leading Comrade Koteswarlu (Kishenji)

January 30, 2012. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a press release signed by Abhay, spokesperson of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), dated January 13. For the full statement see bannedthought.org.

On November 24, 2011, the Indian revolution lost its great leader, and the oppressed masses of India lost their most reliable servant. November 24 would remain a dark day in the history of the Indian revolution. On July 1, 2010, the Indian ruling classes had murdered our Politburo member and spokesperson Comrade Azad. Within one and a half years, another Politburo member, Comrade Koteswarlu (who is popular among the people and party ranks as Kotanna, Prahlad, Ramji, Kishenji and Bimal), was caught alive in a covert operation, tortured inhumanly and was killed in a fake encounter.

In India, which claims to be the largest democracy in the world, the feudal and comprador-bureaucrat bourgeois ruling classes, with the support of the imperialists, particularly the U.S. imperialists, are trying to suppress the democratic, national liberation and revolutionary movements with an iron heel. Particularly since 2009 they have been carrying on an unjust war on the people in the name of "Operation Green Hunt." They are shamelessly violating even the constitution and the laws formulated by themselves and are killing people, activists and leaders of the movement. They are unsuccessfully trying to justify all their unlawful murders in the name of a lie named "encounter," tracing the footsteps of the British colonial rulers. Now it is an established fact that an "encounter" anywhere in India means a conspiratorial murder by the state.

Comrade Koteswarlu was born on November 26, 1954 in Peddapalli, a town of Karimnagar district which has a legacy of the glorious Telangana armed struggle. He led the Indian revolutionary movement for nearly four decades. Comrade Koteswarlu was brought up by democratic-thinking parents and imbibed patriotic feelings and love for the oppressed people since childhood. He was a top-ranking representative of the generation after the glorious Naxalbari rebellion. Though the Naxalbari rebellion, which established Maoist Protracted People's War as the path for the Indian revolution, was suppressed within a few years, it had a great impact all over the country. Peasant rebellions arose in many areas following its model. It awoke the students in colleges and universities. The slogan "Naxalbari Ek Hi Rasta" ("The Only Way is Naxalbari") reverberated all over the country. It was this backdrop that turned Comrade Koteswarlu into a Maoist revolutionary.

At the end of the 1970s, Comrade Koteswarlu played a crucial role in the Jagityal peasant movement and in the first decade of the 21st century he became the architect of the illustrious Lalgarh people's upsurge. He was an inspiring leader who never left the people and the cadres and who stood firmly during many an ebb and flow in the Indian revolutionary movement with courage and initiative. He was an organizer with initiative, a warrior/commander and a guide who imparted love and care. His very presence proved to be a hard nut to crack for the enemy right from the beginning. He successfully fought back several attacks and attempts to murder him. He was a tireless warrior who fought incessantly and uncompromisingly and never let go of any opportunity to attack the enemy politically and militarily.

That is why the ruling clique of this country led by Sonia-Manmohan-Chidambaram-Pranab-Jairam colluded with the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, and killed him in the cruelest manner. The brutal signs of torture on his dead body indicate the fascist nature of the enemy, its cowardliness and its defeat. On the other hand, he bore all the inhuman tortures at the hands of the enemy and emerged victorious even in the face of death. The crimson of the international red flag of the proletarians turned deeper with the blood spilled by him in Jungle Mahal.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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