New Delhi Former Niti Aayog vice-chairman Rajeev Kumar was drawn to Naxal ideology during his student days in the 1970s, hung posters of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh in his hostel room, and even stayed in a remote village in Bihar to experience the harsh reality of rural India and prepare villagers to “exterminate the predatory jotedars and zamindars,” says a new book.
According to excerpts from the book Rebel Bastar: History, Maoism and the Search for Answers in the Heart of India, written by senior journalist and historian Shantanu Nandan Sharma, Kumar was drawn to the Communist Party of India while he was a student at Delhi’s prestigious St Stephen’s College, but now considers current Naxalism to be the “most harmful and dishonest influence” on Indian youth which has perhaps “hindered India’s political and economic development by years”.
“Fortunately, it has been almost eradicated now. We have to ensure that this ideology is also eradicated,” he told PTI on Friday.
Kumar was vice-chairman of Niti Aayog from 2017 to 2022. The Prime Minister is the head of the government think tank.
“Influenced by the arguments of a senior history student and an astute professor of psychology, a young man from Lucknow began to idolize Mao Zedong during his second year at St Stephen’s College,” the books say.
For the young student of economics, it was a radical shift in his political beliefs, a complete change of heart brought about by his new intellectual mentors. Helen Wigg, his favorite American teacher, while studying at the Delhi Modern School, instilled in him, among others, a strong support for the United States in the escalating Vietnam War.
Swept away by the winds of radical activism blowing at elite universities such as Stephen’s University and the Presidency, Kuma’s path took a sharp turn towards the revolutionary faction.
“By his third year,” the book says, “he found lecture halls less urgent than picket lines. His newfound enthusiasm was directed toward securing workers’ rights in his university café and nearby textile mills.”
Inside the hostel room, the young man hung two large posters — one of Che Guevara, the charismatic revolutionary immortalized by his epic motorcycle ride, and the other of Ho Chi Minh, the Marxist-Leninist.
His descent into this ideological extremism is far from over. He took a train to Katihar on a December evening in 1970, followed by a bus ride to his final destination – Lakshmipur, a poor village in Bihar state.
“The Lucknow boy, the son of an accountant and a university teacher, has officially crossed the Rubicon. He has become a Naxalite, an Indian synonym for Maoism,” the book says.
The new Naxalite party, the Communist Party of India, formed in April 1969, gave him and other recruits two specific tasks: the first, “to experience the harsh realities of rural India,” echoing Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and the second, “to prepare the villagers for the next stage – the extermination of the predatory jotedars and zamindars.”
Accustomed to the comforts of city life, the ‘young Naxalite’ soon discovered the harsh reality of his new life.
Sleeping on a straw bed in a farmer’s outbuilding—a straw hut in the fields—was a stark contrast to his previous existence.
To make matters worse, the host farmer’s wife acted in a fit of rage because she had to bear the burden of feeding an extra mouth.
A month later, he was instructed to move to Santal village, followed by another transfer to Munger. There he found himself living in the hut of a landless farmer. Boiled rice, simple kadu soup, and green chilies fueled his days. He also learned the art of brick making.
The target was quickly chosen: a local landlord. A deadly plot took hold when villagers, trying to seize the rich man’s land, conspired to lacquer his shoes with poison when he entered the village temple to perform his customary prayers.
The young man from St. Stephen’s read the words of the head of the Iranian Communist Party, Charo Mazumdar, about the choice of weapons to annihilate class enemies, which were, first, not to use firearms, and, second, to show the horrific result in full view of everyone.
After listening to this reasoning, the villagers looked at the young man with an accusatory look, suspecting that he was either mentally ill or a police agent. They feared it would be a trap to send them to prison. Death was cast. He was given marching orders: leave the village and quickly.
The young man retraced his steps to seek guidance from his elders. But circumstances conspired against him. His college buddies and a railway official harboring the new recruits are arrested.
With nowhere to turn, he returned to Lucknow in April 1971. For his parents, his return was a relief. A long wild beard hiding the child they loved.
What followed was a tearful hug. But abandoning Mao’s ideology was not easy.
Facing a dead end, he returned to academia and joined the Department of Economics at Lucknow University, where he flourished, earning multiple degrees, culminating in a Ph.D. He then pursued a PhD in Philosophy at Oxford University under an INLAX Scholarship, and economics became his permanent intellectual home.
“His name is Rajiv Kumar. Turning from the red tide, he became an economic advisor in the Indian Ministry of Finance, an economist at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Manila, secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and then vice-chairman of the government think tank NITI Aayog,” the book says.
The senior student who indoctrinated Kumar into Naxalism was Arvind N Das, once a prominent byline in the Times Of India. The psychology professor, a far-left iconoclast who inspired Kumar and other students to jump on the bandwagon, was Ajit Pal.
As Kumar recalls in the book, ten to twelve Stephenites and many others from Presidency College in Calcutta “became UGs.”
Kumar lists some of them. Among them are Rabindra Rai; Trinanjan Mitra, a fellow economics student who later moved to Luxembourg; Dilip Simon, former professor of history at Ramjas College; Ajay Bose is a journalist.
The book says: “The government at the time took a relatively tolerant approach towards these young people. Those who did not have criminal files against them were allowed to move on in life.”
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