Karthik Navayan
Today 17th April is the 1st death anniversary of K.G.Sathyamurthy (‘Sivasagar’) the revolutionary leader and poet from Andhra Pradesh. He was the poor man among the poor, intellectual among the intellectuals and a soldier among the soldiers.
Simple because of his social background, because he belonged to an untouchable community and faced discrimination and humiliation within the CPI (ML) (People’s War) party of which he was the founder and central committee secretary.
The upper caste Hindu maoists expelled him from the party saying that he was involved in a conspiracy. Sathyamurthy kept on asking them to explain what “that conspiracy was?” No one explained what that conspiracy was.
According to Sivasagar, he was expelled from the party for the reason that he started speaking about the caste inequalities in the society, untouchability and Ambedkar which actually led to this. For Hindu Maoists, Party means power and money, not the people.
If he had not been from an untouchable community, his leadership would have been accepted and he would probably have not started talking about the caste problem and Ambedkar.
From 1990s to 2012, he lived among the general public, touring various districts in Andhra Pradesh: Nalgonda, Hyderabad, Guntur, Vijayawada. In between, he also visited his daughters in Visakhapatnam. He never lived like a traditional, biological family member of his own family. He simply lived like a life time revolutionary with a mission.
The Hindu revolutionaries who are preaching Maoism to the public are living with their own families, among their own biological sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, living in their own registered properties — it is like they are enjoying lives after retirement by writing and speaking of Maoism and naxalism.
The worst part of their lives is that they start criticizing Satyamurthy: from the 1990s to the present day, even after his death. One Brahmin Hindu Maoist leader abused Satyamurthy saying that “Satyamurthy said Virasam (‘Viplava Rachayitala Sangham’ or ‘Revolutionary Writers’ Association’) is dead but, Virasam is alive and Satyamurthy is dead” in a meeting organised in his memory. Can you imagine this kind of attitude anywhere in the world? Abusing a person in a meeting organised for him to honor his memory after his death? It is only possible in India and only possible with Hindu Maoists. And how do only upper caste Brahmins – whether it is Vara Vara Rao in Andhra Pradesh or Dandapani Mohanty in Odisha – become spokesmen for the Maoist parties?
One famous Marxist feminist writer (Sivasagar had always referred to her as a ‘Naqli Marxist’) abused Ambedkar and Buddha in the name of criticism. That was countered and answered by Satyamurthy in a book titled ‘Ambedkar Suryudu’ (‘Ambedkar, the Sun’). This writer was completely silent on that book until Satyamurthy’s death and has now started abusing Satyamurthy. This is the character of Hindu Marxists or Hindu Maoists.
Satyamurthy was praised by a lot of poetry lovers in Andhra Pradesh irrespective of their caste back ground. But when it comes to his leadership we cannot say that they are ready to accept him as a leader. The problem is the caste mindset.
It is now one year since his death. If he were an upper caste, there would be publication of lots of books on him. Some university would have instituted a chair in his name and started a memorial lecture.
But the hard reality is this: many works of Sivasagar still remain unpublished. The important ones are his life history and a theory developed by him called “Dalita Bahujana Viplava Pantha- Military line, Programme and Political line”. And his earlier book “Ambedkar Suryudu” has also got to be reprinted as it is out of stock for the last two years. Gurram Seetaramulu has published some of Sivasagar’s poetry recently.
We demand that the Hindu upper caste communists and Maoists should stop abusing Satyamurthy. He was a people’s man, people’s poet, and people’s leader who lived and died among the people.
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Please also read an earlier article on K. G. Satyamurthy (‘Sivasagar’) by Karthik here.
Karthik Navayan is a human rights activist.
