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