Prof who left classroom for Naxal fatigues

Sun, May 11 12:05 AM

At the point when university teachers are settling down comfortably in their careers, this 40-year-old professor of sociology at Nagpur University gave up everything to head to the jungles of Chhattisgarh, wear Naxal fatigues and pick up a rifle. Anuradha Ghandy, the highest ranking woman underground leader in India, died last month of malaria after 15 years as a Naxalite.

She was 54. The intriguing story of one woman's choices in life also offers a window into how hundreds of educated men and women continue to be drawn to the Naxal movement.

Ghandy, who used four fake names - Narmada, Varsha, Janki and Rama - died on April 12 after returning to Maharashtra from the jungles of Jharkhand; new details about her underground life were provided this week to HT. She was the lone woman member of the Naxalites' top decision-making central committee as well as head of the women's wing. She was sought by the police in several states as she scoured the forests of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

Even as she opposed government policies, her last campaign was for a better role and more leadership opportunities for women fighters. Of the estimated 40,000 armed Naxal fighters in India, almost 40 per cent are women, according to Naxalite leaders in custody.

That is a proportion of women higher than most militant groups in the world, security officials say. In a trend that continues to baffle security officials, many educated youth are among the urban recruits who lead Naxal squads.

"At the time of her death, she was working on studying the problems women comrades were facing in the party, the varied forms of patriarchy they face," said an obituary document prepared by her Maoist colleagues. It said she was "devising a rectification plan that would help the growth of women comrades, so that they can grow to take greater leadership responsibilities".

Ghandy was a student at Elphinstone College in Mumbai; taught in Mumbai and then moved to Nagpur. At one time, she was a known public figure in Maharashtra, famously campaigning in 1977 for the release of political prisoners, including V.M. Tarkunde, Govinda Mukhoty, George Fernandes and Arun Shourie.

She took to the jungles in the mid-1990s, marching with armed squads. Maoist cadres say she only carried a gun for self-defence and never used it.

She was nearly killed once in a police ambush when, according to the Maoist account, "the police came within a feet of where they were resting. Their firing missed and retaliation by the squad allowed them to escape".

But mosquitoes turned out to be a worse adversary than police bullets. "Her tenacity in staying with local squads impressed even the local tribals who would time and again mention how at this age she had managed to come and stay there," the Maoist document said.

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