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Kobad Ghandy, Naxalite

Last year, when Anu Ghandy -- activist-academic turned member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the only woman to have served on the party's Politburo -- passed away, Jyoti Punwani had written movingly in the TOI about Memories of a Naxalite Friend:

In Marxist study circles, 'declassing oneself' is quite a buzzword. From Mumbai's Leftists, only Anu and her husband Kobad, both lovers of the good life, actually did so. ..

...Kobad's family home had been a sprawling Worli Sea Face flat; he was a Doon School product. Anu's lawyer-father may have left his family estate in Coorg to defend communists in court in the '50s, but she had never seen deprivation. Despite her own rough life, neither did Anu make us feel guilty for our bourgeois luxuries nor did she patronise us.

The recent arrest of the husband of that friend -- Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy, a member of the Communist Party of India-Maoist Politburo -- has created quite a sensation, only because of his affluent background: son of a Khoja-Parsi senior finance executive in Glaxo, who grew up in a large, rambling sea-facing house in Worli in Bombay, who studied in Doon School, St Xavier's College Bombay and went to London to study Chartered Accountancy. Writing in the Hindustan Times, Jypoti Punwani says this is The Kobad Ghandy I knew:

Kobad Ghandy was among the three who signed as witnesses at my marriage. His family’s ice cream was served there, much to the distaste of older guests who frowned at the strawberry chunks in a dessert supposed to be smooth and synthetic.

Kentucky’s — a name straight from ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ — was one of the two companies to introduce fresh fruit ice cream in Mumbai; its strawberries were sourced from Mahabaleshwar, where the Ghandys owned a hotel.

Fresh strawberry was the flavour that rewarded us at the end of our study circle afternoons in the vast, empty expanse of Kobad’s sea-facing flat. And scrambled eggs with sausages was the breakfast Kobad served before sitting down to explain Marx’s confounded ‘Wage, Labour, Capital’.

Aloke Banerjee reminds those too young to know otherwise, on the New Face of Naxalism in Mail Today:

What was the London- educated son of an ice- cream magnate doing in the top echelons of the Communist Party of India ( Maoist)? Indeed, a look at the leadership of the Naxalite movement today does make Ghandy appear a little out of place.

But that is not how the revolution began. Many of Ghandy’s comrades in the 1970s — the time he joined the stillnascent uprising — were intellectuals born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

In the same newspaper, Ajoy Bose recounts, Why I became disillusioned with the revolution: "I soon realised that while violence as a concept was acceptable and even attractive, it was a horrendous brutish thing in reality"

The Hindustan Times points out:

The man touted to be one of the biggest Maoist catch in recent times, 63-year-old Kobad Ghandy used to write for economic journals and prominent newspapers using a pseudonym, Arvind.

Sheela Bhatt adds in rediff:

Someone who sympathises with him is livid that a television news channel compared him on Tuesday night to Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Mohammad Sayeed

"It is ridiculous," this individual said, "TV is helping whitewash the State's violence. There is no comparison between the two. The Maoist movement is against State violence. TV anchors, who do not believe in anything but provocative news, are defending the State's unconstitutional acts. Are they not supporting violence themselves?"

Across India Kobad Ghandy's many supporters and friends are watching the situation closely in the hope that he will not end up the next Binayak Sen. Will he?

BBC has an old - 2008 - interview with him:

Are you saying you are not killing but helping people to live?

Yes. But we are defined by the prime minister as the deadliest virus... (laughs)

Why do you think so?

We have a clear-cut definition of development. We think the society is in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial state and there is a need to democratise it.

The first step is to distribute land to the tiller. So our fight is against land grab and exploitation of the poor, especially focusing on rural India.

And a comprehensive profile that quotes Asghar Ali Engineer:

Mr Engineer remembers how they used to meet at the convocation hall of Bombay University once a week at six pm after office hours.

"He was a thorough gentleman and was very strong in his convictions even then. He regarded the ruling Congress party as a clever bourgeois and capitalist party."

Also See: Outlook Archives

TAGS: Maoists/Naxals

POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 24, 2009 AT 22:57 IST

Comments :

HAVE YOUR SAY

Sep 29, 2009 03:51 AM 11	There are many more Kobad Ghandys doing their job silently. They are not known even to Kobad. There is a silent side to the violent revolution. Indian revolution will grow stronger each day. This is the reality. Saraswathi Zurich, Switzerland
Sep 28, 2009 12:43 AM 10	Swapan Dasgupta in the Pioneer: "It is necessary to provide a background to the contrived tear-jerking that is being witnessed in the English-language media over the arrest of one Kobad Ghandhy, an ideologue and Politburo member of the outlawed CPI(Maoist). Normally, the arrest of a senior Maoist leader doesn’t lead to every cub reporter shedding tears. But Ghandhy’s advantage is that he came from a rich Bombay family, went to Doon School, bummed around London in the 1970s, was a leading light of the Human Rights industry and, finally, went “underground” to service a group of armed murderers. Of course, Ghandhy has probably never killed someone personally or planted one of those deadly mines that have led to the deaths of policemen and para-military forces in Chhattisgarh. For that matter, he was probably never personally around when his comrades turfed poor Adivasis out of their homes for the crime of refusing to acknowledge the power of the Red Flag. No, or so the argument goes, Ghandhy was a good man because he felt for the poor, spoke good English and had eschewed his inheritance. He was a good man because he cut a romantic figure." http://www.dailypion...of-their-crimes.html Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 27, 2009 08:57 PM 9	Jyoti Punwani in the Hoot: "According to his lawyer, Kobad was picked up on September 17, three days before his arrest was announced. He was interrogated continuously. Had the police got anything out of him, they'd have fed it to the media." "Incidentally, it's interesting that except The Telegraph, no other paper decided to carry details of Kobad's illegal abduction and his ill-treatment and denial of medical treatment thereafter, though it was handed out as a detailed press release at a press conference.Wasn't it sensational that a Doon School son of a Parsi MNC executive was also ill-treated by the police? But then this wasn't a police handout, so why carry it?" "So is Kobad Ghandy in Tihar Jail only because he writes documents for a banned organization? Doesn't that make him a political prisoner? And shouldn't the media be pointing that out?" http://thehoot.org/w...tionId=22&valid=true Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 27, 2009 04:26 PM 8	In the Indian Express, Zahid Rafiq & Stuti Shukla with Smita Nair provide another perspective: “Ghandy never once used a mobile phone. His aides were trained to such perfection that they were the best couriers of information,” says a senior official, who spent a decade trying to track Ghandy. He adds that Ghandy had sympathisers at government offices and had eight separate identity documents issued in Maharashtra. When a divisional commander surrendered and the police took him in for questioning, he did not know Ghandy by his name, the official adds. “After much prodding, he talked about a long lecture Ghandy had delivered, nibbling dry cashewnuts while talking about revolution in France, China and Russia even as a huge classroom of cadre sat hungry and tired for hours. ‘When it was over, we told him we were hungry and he looked angrily at us and left,’ the commander said.” http://www.indianexp...ular-rebels/521959/0 Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 27, 2009 02:45 PM 7	It is time for the members of Indian middle class to rise above the selfishness about their own family and community. Mr Ghandy is an inspiration. The issues of the poorest are not as simple as classifying Naxalites as terrorists. Amit Singapore, India
Sep 26, 2009 11:31 PM 6	This is with reference to interview of Mr. Kobad Ghandy by BBC, the leader of CPI(Maoist). From the interview it seems Mr. Ghandy is still in 1850s or at best early 20th century. Marx released “Communist Manifesto” in 1848 at a time when the industrialist class of Europe was shuddering at the upcoming of communism, but with the East European debacles of Socialism, disintegration of Soviet Russia and China or Vietnam turning more towards pragmatic capitalism (it is a well known fact that Mr. Ghandy and his comrades call the erstwhile and present socialist countries as “revisionist”), all governments of the world in general (including India) is indifferent towards communism, contrary to what Mr.Ghandy’s claims of fear of communism. Since the revolution of Soviet Russia Marxists held the view that socialist revolution will be completed in a country by practicing Marxism in a creative way with respect to the concrete reality of the country, but the Marxists forget that all the problems (economic, environmental, medical, drugs & terrorism etc) today the mankind faces are of global nature and not localized. Marx had said ‘Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, but the point however is to change it’. The world indeed has changed so much that Maoists like Ghandy is unable to interpret it. This is evident from the fact that strongest base these Maoist have is amongst tribals and in the jungles contrary to what Marx & Lenin preached that the revolution will be led by the most advance detachment of the proletariat and Ghandy despite his Doon and Harvard education continues to characterize Indian state as semi-feudal semi-colonial as done by naxalites around 1967. Mr. Ghandy proclaims with pride on the good work and success of the Maoist in terms of imparting basic education and lessons on hygiene amongst the tribals do poses a question do you need guns and a Maoist organization to do this? I think people like Sanjay Pandey and other social activists are doing much better work without these two weapons. abhijit mukherjee mumbai, india
Sep 26, 2009 05:22 PM 5	Kobad Ghandhy should have conducted his struggle for the poor and underpriviledged by adopting the tried and tested Gandhian methods of non violent struggle. Maoism is a violent ideology and will not work in India. Many of the elite friends of his in the media are simply that elitists who have shed any moral and ethical values they may have and certainly have shut their eyes to the real damage done to the people's cause by Maoism. Glorifying him by calling him a gentle soul etc. is simply evading the issue. Dr. Vijaya Rajiva Montreal, Canada
Sep 25, 2009 09:30 PM 4	"Ghandy" is indeed the correct spelling. Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 25, 2009 09:21 PM 3	Please correct the spelling of Gandhi not Ghandy. Praful R Shah Houston, USA
Sep 25, 2009 06:16 PM 2	Arrest of Kobad Ghandy has created a huge gridlock for the elitist media & they are ambivalent so far Ghandy being a naxal is concerned. He being a naxal is too much of a news & its potential ratings too high to consign him to oblivion. How to handle him in news & views ? Advocate encounter him? Beat the hell out of him to exorcise his naxalism? A lesser elite Dr. Binayak Sen was ignored. When his inevitable release from jail came, he got fleeting mention in mainline media & quickly forgotten. But Ghandy has a home right on the sea down Malabar Hills as many of his near & dears ones seem to do. They may or may not allow him to be forgotten or dump him to his devices in the infamous Tihar. Watch this spot. MANISH BANERJEE KOLKATA, India
Sep 25, 2009 01:45 AM 1	I salute you from bottom of my heart Mr. Ghandy. You are a big exception in our greedy and materialistic nation. In a nation where a small servant boy carry School bag of his same age Master's son. I don't know how we get blinded in our day to day life and ignore vast sea of poor souls. I hope your sacrifice will make some people wake up and hear cry and pain of our poor brothers. andy Mobile, United States

Sep 25, 2009 01:45 AM 1	I salute you from bottom of my heart Mr. Ghandy. You are a big exception in our greedy and materialistic nation. In a nation where a small servant boy carry School bag of his same age Master's son. I don't know how we get blinded in our day to day life and ignore vast sea of poor souls. I hope your sacrifice will make some people wake up and hear cry and pain of our poor brothers. andy Mobile, United States
Sep 25, 2009 06:16 PM 2	Arrest of Kobad Ghandy has created a huge gridlock for the elitist media & they are ambivalent so far Ghandy being a naxal is concerned. He being a naxal is too much of a news & its potential ratings too high to consign him to oblivion. How to handle him in news & views ? Advocate encounter him? Beat the hell out of him to exorcise his naxalism? A lesser elite Dr. Binayak Sen was ignored. When his inevitable release from jail came, he got fleeting mention in mainline media & quickly forgotten. But Ghandy has a home right on the sea down Malabar Hills as many of his near & dears ones seem to do. They may or may not allow him to be forgotten or dump him to his devices in the infamous Tihar. Watch this spot. MANISH BANERJEE KOLKATA, India
Sep 25, 2009 09:21 PM 3	Please correct the spelling of Gandhi not Ghandy. Praful R Shah Houston, USA
Sep 25, 2009 09:30 PM 4	"Ghandy" is indeed the correct spelling. Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 26, 2009 05:22 PM 5	Kobad Ghandhy should have conducted his struggle for the poor and underpriviledged by adopting the tried and tested Gandhian methods of non violent struggle. Maoism is a violent ideology and will not work in India. Many of the elite friends of his in the media are simply that elitists who have shed any moral and ethical values they may have and certainly have shut their eyes to the real damage done to the people's cause by Maoism. Glorifying him by calling him a gentle soul etc. is simply evading the issue. Dr. Vijaya Rajiva Montreal, Canada
Sep 26, 2009 11:31 PM 6	This is with reference to interview of Mr. Kobad Ghandy by BBC, the leader of CPI(Maoist). From the interview it seems Mr. Ghandy is still in 1850s or at best early 20th century. Marx released “Communist Manifesto” in 1848 at a time when the industrialist class of Europe was shuddering at the upcoming of communism, but with the East European debacles of Socialism, disintegration of Soviet Russia and China or Vietnam turning more towards pragmatic capitalism (it is a well known fact that Mr. Ghandy and his comrades call the erstwhile and present socialist countries as “revisionist”), all governments of the world in general (including India) is indifferent towards communism, contrary to what Mr.Ghandy’s claims of fear of communism. Since the revolution of Soviet Russia Marxists held the view that socialist revolution will be completed in a country by practicing Marxism in a creative way with respect to the concrete reality of the country, but the Marxists forget that all the problems (economic, environmental, medical, drugs & terrorism etc) today the mankind faces are of global nature and not localized. Marx had said ‘Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, but the point however is to change it’. The world indeed has changed so much that Maoists like Ghandy is unable to interpret it. This is evident from the fact that strongest base these Maoist have is amongst tribals and in the jungles contrary to what Marx & Lenin preached that the revolution will be led by the most advance detachment of the proletariat and Ghandy despite his Doon and Harvard education continues to characterize Indian state as semi-feudal semi-colonial as done by naxalites around 1967. Mr. Ghandy proclaims with pride on the good work and success of the Maoist in terms of imparting basic education and lessons on hygiene amongst the tribals do poses a question do you need guns and a Maoist organization to do this? I think people like Sanjay Pandey and other social activists are doing much better work without these two weapons. abhijit mukherjee mumbai, india
Sep 27, 2009 02:45 PM 7	It is time for the members of Indian middle class to rise above the selfishness about their own family and community. Mr Ghandy is an inspiration. The issues of the poorest are not as simple as classifying Naxalites as terrorists. Amit Singapore, India
Sep 27, 2009 04:26 PM 8	In the Indian Express, Zahid Rafiq & Stuti Shukla with Smita Nair provide another perspective: “Ghandy never once used a mobile phone. His aides were trained to such perfection that they were the best couriers of information,” says a senior official, who spent a decade trying to track Ghandy. He adds that Ghandy had sympathisers at government offices and had eight separate identity documents issued in Maharashtra. When a divisional commander surrendered and the police took him in for questioning, he did not know Ghandy by his name, the official adds. “After much prodding, he talked about a long lecture Ghandy had delivered, nibbling dry cashewnuts while talking about revolution in France, China and Russia even as a huge classroom of cadre sat hungry and tired for hours. ‘When it was over, we told him we were hungry and he looked angrily at us and left,’ the commander said.” http://www.indianexp...ular-rebels/521959/0 Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 27, 2009 08:57 PM 9	Jyoti Punwani in the Hoot: "According to his lawyer, Kobad was picked up on September 17, three days before his arrest was announced. He was interrogated continuously. Had the police got anything out of him, they'd have fed it to the media." "Incidentally, it's interesting that except The Telegraph, no other paper decided to carry details of Kobad's illegal abduction and his ill-treatment and denial of medical treatment thereafter, though it was handed out as a detailed press release at a press conference.Wasn't it sensational that a Doon School son of a Parsi MNC executive was also ill-treated by the police? But then this wasn't a police handout, so why carry it?" "So is Kobad Ghandy in Tihar Jail only because he writes documents for a banned organization? Doesn't that make him a political prisoner? And shouldn't the media be pointing that out?" http://thehoot.org/w...tionId=22&valid=true Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 28, 2009 12:43 AM 10	Swapan Dasgupta in the Pioneer: "It is necessary to provide a background to the contrived tear-jerking that is being witnessed in the English-language media over the arrest of one Kobad Ghandhy, an ideologue and Politburo member of the outlawed CPI(Maoist). Normally, the arrest of a senior Maoist leader doesn’t lead to every cub reporter shedding tears. But Ghandhy’s advantage is that he came from a rich Bombay family, went to Doon School, bummed around London in the 1970s, was a leading light of the Human Rights industry and, finally, went “underground” to service a group of armed murderers. Of course, Ghandhy has probably never killed someone personally or planted one of those deadly mines that have led to the deaths of policemen and para-military forces in Chhattisgarh. For that matter, he was probably never personally around when his comrades turfed poor Adivasis out of their homes for the crime of refusing to acknowledge the power of the Red Flag. No, or so the argument goes, Ghandhy was a good man because he felt for the poor, spoke good English and had eschewed his inheritance. He was a good man because he cut a romantic figure." http://www.dailypion...of-their-crimes.html Sundeep Dougal New Delhi, India
Sep 29, 2009 03:51 AM 11	There are many more Kobad Ghandys doing their job silently. They are not known even to Kobad. There is a silent side to the violent revolution. Indian revolution will grow stronger each day. This is the reality. Saraswathi Zurich, Switzerland

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