Azizul Haque (1942-2025): He was the face of 1970s Naxalbari movement, believed in ‘power grows out of gun barrel'

Indian Express

3 days ago

Veteran Naxalite leader and one of the faces of the 1970s Naxalbari movement, Azizul Haque, passed away on Monday. He was 83.
Haque, who had been suffering from ailments related to old age, was admitted to a private hospital in Salt Lake after a fall at home left him with a fractured hand. He passed away around 2:30 pm, sources said.
Expressing her condolences, Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee on her 'X' handle said, ' 'I express my deep condolences on the passing of veteran politician Azizul Haque. Azizul Haque was a militant, struggling leader. He never bowed his head in his long political career. My deepest condolences to his bereaved family and associates.'
A poet, political thinker and once the head of the CPI(ML)'s second central committee, Azizul Haque was born in 1942 in Ranmahal village in Howrah. Born to a huge zamindari family, Haque gave up his share of the land as a show of his political ideology.
He arrived in Kolkata to study under the guidance of Nandgopal Bhattacharya. While studying with Nandgopal, Azizul met the communist leader Vishwanath Mukhopadhyay, which led to his involvement in the leftist movement.
Azizul belonged to the generation of Naxal leaders who believed that 'Bonduker nol-i, khomotar utsa' ( Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun) a concept was popularised by their ideological mentor, Charu Mazumdar, in India during the sixties and seventies.
At just 17 years old, Azizul joined the undivided Communist Party. He got injured while participating in the food movement procession. Although Jyoti Basu became closely associated with the mass movement, Azizul opposed Basu's political stance and accepted Charu Mazumdar as his leader.
A close associate of Charu Mazumdar and Kanai Chatterjee, Haque was a key figure in sustaining the Naxalbari uprising long after it was suppressed. Expelled from CPI(M) for endorsing Mazumdar's radical views, he co-founded the CPI(ML)'s Second Central Committee with Nishith Bhattacharya after the latter's death. Together, they attempted to establish parallel revolutionary governments in rural Bengal and Bihar during the late 1970s, but were expelled following a ceasefire with the West Bengal government.
First arrested in the Parvathipuram conspiracy case in 1970, Haque spent nearly two decades in prison, with his re-arrest in 1982 prompting outrage even within the ruling Left Front, leading to calls for his parole from jail ministers. His book Karagare Atharo Bochor (Eighteen Years in Jail) is a poignant account of the Naxalite movement and ideological perseverance. While his later writings, such as 'Naxalbari: Tirish Bochor Aage ebong Pare', ( Naxalbari: 30 years before and after) continued to critique establishment thinking.
Notably, he supported the CPI(M)'s industrialisation drive in Singur in 2006, distancing himself from many of his former comrades who opposed land acquisition. 'Leftism is to walk against the current,' he often said, and till the end, his pen remained active-contributing columns and essays to leading dailies and journals, always with a streak of rebellion.