Let us All Learn from Comrade Mahendra Singh

— Dipankar Bhattacharya

HIS existence posed a constant challenge to the BJP’s brutal rule in Jharkhand. Now his martyrdom has hit the last nail into the coffin of communal-fascist forces in the state. On 16 January, 2005, the day after he had filed his nomination to seek re-election for the fourth successive term from Bagodar Assembly constituency of Giridih district in Jharkhand, Comrade Mahendra Prasad Singh was gunned down by hired assassins just when he had finished addressing a village election meeting. “Yes, I am Mahendra Singh”, he assured his assassins as the gang sprayed bullets into his body. Today, his last words are resonating in every corner of Jharkhand as the most glorious and inspiring statement of life against the merchants of death.

Comrade Mahendra will be remembered by generations to come not only for why and how he lived his life but also for the extraordinary revolutionary courage with which he faced his death. His was a life that constantly defied the forces of darkness and reaction to ignite the fire of social progress and political assertion in the hearts of the most oppressed and marginalised sections of our society. And now his martyrdom is destined to produce an impact that will be several times more powerful and enduring. Martyr Comrade Mahendra Singh’s legacy will intensify Jharkhand’s battle for justice and progress and inspire the Indian people’s forward march for a better tomorrow.

In the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, Comrade Mahendra was the lone CPI(ML) legislator. But his was the most fearless and forceful voice that reared against every injustice and resonated equally powerfully both within and outside of the Assembly. He thus emerged as the most energetic embodiment of the popular yearning for freedom from the BJP’s corrupt and communal rule, as the most courageous and consistent crusader against mafia domination and state repression. The BJP government spared no attempt to persecute him and crush the movement, but the Party organisation successfully broke through every cordon under Comrade Mahendra’s inspiring and bold leadership.

Following the dastardly state-sponsored physical assassination of Comrade Mahendra, the state sought to kill him a second time by offering to arrange a state funeral with state ‘honours’. The Party organisation and the fighting people of Bagodar rejected this proposal with the contempt it deserved. The Chief Minister of a killer government had no right to stage a show of paying floral tribute to a revolutionary martyr. Representatives of an anti-people state had no right to tamper with the mortal remains and political legacy of a revolutionary representative of the people. The state was forced to beat a retreat and the people of Bagodar gave a historic farewell to their most beloved comrade and leader. With clenched fists, tens of thousands of people resolved to protect and defend the revolutionary legacy of Comrade Mahendra and fulfil his unfulfilled tasks and dreams.

Comrade Mahendra’s life and struggles will remain an inexhaustible treasure of political education and revolutionary inspiration for every committed communist. Born into an ordinary peasant family, he left home at an early age in life and ventured out on a spiritual quest to find the meaning of life. Unsatisfied, he travelled to different parts of the country as a wanderer and migrant worker. His formal education did not cross the boundaries of school, but literature became his constant companion and life remained his greatest teacher. By the time he came in contact with the Party in the late 1970s, he already carried great promise as a man with a mission.

That was the period when the Party was in the midst of a thoroughgoing rectification campaign, a campaign that mobilised the entire Party against the fixed and frozen framework of dogmatism and challenged and invited comrades to explore new horizons of mass initiative and mass struggles, to tap the latent energies of the people and unleash their full initiative in multifarious struggles. Mahendra returned to his village (Khambhra village in Dondlo panchayat in Bagodar block) to translate this new mass line of the Party into creative and dynamic practice. Soon he united the youth, found amicable solutions to many of the petty quarrels that overshadowed life in the village, and turned the ideas and energies of the people against the basic problems of backwardness and oppression. Till the end of his life Bagodar would continue to serve as the most living laboratory for Comrade Mahendra’s creative imagination and constant experimentation with mass struggles.

In February 1990, Comrade Mahendra won his first victory in elections to the Bihar State Assembly and was entrusted with the responsibility of leading the seven-member team of IPF legislators. A new front of struggles opened up before him and Mahendra promptly began to master the art of using the floor of the Assembly as a powerful platform of exposure and agitation against the anti-people and anti-democratic Acts, policies and steps of the state and governments that direct its affairs. He also used his position as a member or chairperson of various Assembly committees as a weapon of struggle against corruption and injustice, including corrupt practices of other members of Assembly. Following the creation of Jharkhand and installation of a BJP-led government in the state, Mahendra emerged as the most determined and articulate voice of protest and democracy in Jharkhand Assembly.

In the history of communist participation and intervention in parliamentary institutions in India, Comrade Mahendra would be remembered as a shining star who excelled in using the laws and institutions of the bourgeois state for the revolutionary cause of the people. He knew that the ruling classes and their shrewd representatives would not miss a single opportunity to bribe and co-opt communist parliamentarians. Comrade Mahendra was ever alive to this danger and rejected every such attempt with utter contempt. On one recent occasion when the government and the opposition ganged up against him and tried to silence him in the name of upholding the privilege of the Speaker, he promptly submitted his resignation and vacated his flat in no time. On the insistence of the overwhelming democratic opinion in the state, the Speaker had to refuse to accept his resignation and Mahendra returned to the Assembly to resume his battle.

Comrade Mahendra’s unique contribution to communist experience of parliamentary struggle lay primarily in the matchless manner in which he combined his role within the Assembly and his role as a leader of the people’s movement raging outside. For all the fifteen years he functioned as an MLA, he continued to lead the movement from the front, looking after every live aspect of the movement and turning every adversity into an opportunity. There have been occasions when the movement has had to beat a retreat, but never did he fail to regain initiative and regroup the forces. He was repeatedly implicated in false cases and incarcerated on several occasions. In the 1980s, the lower court had even sentenced him to life imprisonment, but he was acquitted by the High Court with the comment that he had been falsely implicated as he fought for the oppressed and the downtrodden.

Comrade Mahendra had many original ideas about rural development and people’s participation in managing their own affairs and never hesitated to test those ideas in the crucible of practice. He would never view the people as passive beneficiaries or recipients of whatever growth and development corrupt officials and bourgeois politicians may allow to ‘trickle down’ to the villages. For him development meant transformation and the people were to be respected as the most active agents and dynamic designers and directors of this process. The community centres, roads and irrigation facilities constructed in his constituency stand in glorious contrast to any ‘constituency development’ that any minister may boast of in Jharkhand. When everybody remained content by merely complaining about the government’s refusal to hold panchayat elections in Bihar and Jharkhand, he motivated and mobilised the people of Bagodar and Giridih to elect their own ‘parallel’ panchayats.

Comrade Mahendra’s passion for development and people’s participation was however not limited to the spheres of economy and politics. He fought equally powerfully for bringing about a radical cultural transformation and regeneration in the rural society. He would take on every obscurantist idea and practice, would challenge every feudal, communal and patriarchal prejudice, and explore every possible medium to promote secular democratic values among the people. He has rightly been described by a renowned journalist of Jharkhand as a modern-day Kabir even as we see in him traits of a worthy heir of Bhagat Singh. He was a deeply sensitive person and the poems he had started writing in the last decade of his life sprang from the depth of his human sensitivity and communist commitment.

Comrade Mahendra was an outstanding orator, but people would also remember him as one who used to listen to others, who was always open to ideas and receptive to criticism. He never suppressed his own communist identity and views, and yet he could attract people with different views and approaches and could easily work with them for any common cause. He combined both communist firmness and flexibility and showed how, in the quest for a new democratic India, communists should and must establish themselves both as resolute fighters as well as the most reliable and acceptable builders of united fronts.

We must all learn from Comrade Mahendra’s life and struggles and uphold his lustrous legacy by rededicating ourselves to the interests of the people and to the glorious goal of their liberation.

Red salute to this immortal martyr!