Profile of an Indian Terrorist

More than half of the Indian terrority is reeling under the impact of terrorism. They may be under the cover of terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir state, under the covert patronage of the neighbour Pakistan or Naxalites (Maoists) in the forests of Chattisgarh, Orissa and Telengana in Andhra Pradesh State. Their influence is increasing day by day in the wake of callous approach by the democratically elected successive governments. Gummadi Vittal Rao, 56,a fire brand terrorist in Andhra Pradesh, has acted in two movies, and carries a bullet in his body. He is best known as a singer, and thousands of copies of his songs have been sold. In Left wing circles, he is a living legend. He is Gaddar, the balladeer. Born into a poor Dalit(untouchable) family in a village of Medak district on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, his parents worked as labourers. He earned his school certificate with flying marks and succeeded in joining the Osmania University Engineering College to pursue a BE degree but dropped out after the first year to earn a living. Gaddar joined the movement for a separate Telangana state in 1969 and formed a burrakatha (folk art) troupe named after Mahatma Gandhi to spread the message. However, he was soon disillusioned. For a while, he gave performances on family planning and other social themes for the Indian government’s information and broadcasting ministry. After a stint as a manual worker in a chemical factory, he joined the Art Lovers Association and acted in two films. His political affiliation began when he heard about the Srikakulam armed struggle by tribals in north coastal Andhra under the leadership of the Communist Party of India. Gaddar chose folk art to fight against social inequalities. The Art Lovers Association was renamed the Jana Natya Mandali in 1972 and Vittal Rao adopted the pseudonym Gadar — as a tribute to the Gadar Party, which resisted British colonial rule in Punjab during the early twentieth century. Due to a spelling error, Gadar became Gaddar. And it stuck. Even while he was singing of revolution in the villages, Gaddar took a banking recruitment exam and got the post of a clerk at a government Bank in 1975. He quit his bank job in 1984 and concentrated on the Jana Natya Mandali. After he voiced his protest against the killing of several Dalits by upper caste landlords in a village of Prakasam district in July 1985, the police raided Gaddar’s house. He went underground. In exile, Gaddar roamed through the forests of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, spreading the revolutionary ideology through folk arts. Gaddar and his troupe adapted folk forms such as Oggu Katha, Veedhi Bhagotham (vernacular ballets using a combination of song, dialogue and dance) and Yellamma Katha (the story of the local deity) to revolutionary themes depicting the travails of peasants, labourers and other weaker sections. The Mandali was soon regarded as the cultural wing of the People’s War, the Maoist group active in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa. After about five years long exile, Gaddar emerged from hiding in 1990. During the last 15 years since he surfaced from self-imposed exile, Gaddar has launched campaigns to protest against State repression in the countryside and killings of scores of Naxalites by the police in what he calls ‘fake encounters.’ Gaddar believes those wielding political and administrative power will, one day, realise that the Naxalite issue can be tackled only by addressing the socio-economic issues in the countryside, and not through ‘State terror.’ On April 6, 1997 there was an assassination bid on Gaddar. While two of the three bullets the assailants fired into him, two were removed. One was left untouched because of medical complications. The near-fatal attack, which the balladeer believes was engineered by the police, did not deter Gaddar from being a champion of the downtrodden. The police have, so far, not arrested Gaddar though they say they have evidence against him. Since the re-imposition of the ban on the Maoists, particularly on Virasam, (the Viplava Rachayitala Sangham, or Revolutionary Writers Association) Gaddar has been highly critical of the present state government. The police accuse Gaddar of inciting violence and propagating the Naxalite ideology of ‘power through the barrel of the gun.’ Unlike other left-wing revolutionary writers and poets, Gaddar is equally well known in rural and urban Andhra Pradesh. He is a familiar face on television screens, participating in protest programmes or spirited debates. His songs cut across the barriers of region, religion, dialect, caste and social status. Prominent academic Dr Kancha Ilaiah described Gaddar as ‘the first Telangana intellectual who established a link between the productive masses and the literary text and, of course, that text established a link between the masses and educational institutions.’