The Left has been up-in-arms about ‘poet’ Varavara Rao, who happens to be 81-years-old, not getting bail from the High Court. Rao has been lodged in jail for his role in the violence that followed the inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad conclave held at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31, 2017. He was arrested in August 2018. Further, he was charged by Karnataka police in July 2019 in connection with a 2005 Maoist attack case registered at Tirumani and was later sent to Mumbai prison.
In July this year, the National Investigating Agency (NIA) had accused Rao of attempting to take undue advantage of the Coronavirus outbreak after he applied for bail on grounds of health. In the reply filed in response to Rao’s bail plea before the Supreme Court, the NIA said, “The appellant-accused Varavara Rao under the garb of the current situation on account of global pandemic Covid-19 and his old age, is trying to take an undue benefit in the aforesaid situation in seeking bail on the grounds mentioned in his application.”
Since the bail was rejected by the High Court, the Left ecosystem has been outraging about how the judiciary is failing an 80-year-old man who is also a ‘veteran poet’. The entire media establishment has attempted to paint him as an innocent poet-activist who has been wronged by the state for his harmless views of dissent.
Sample some of these headlines:
You see how, every media house that leans to the left, from NDTV to The Wire calls Varavara Rao an ‘activist’? Not just an ‘activist’, some even call him a ‘human rights activist’.
But who is Varavara Rao really and what are his views as a ‘Human Rights Activists’? Well, his views are pretty simple. Only the lives of Maoists matter and them killing police officials is fair game.
A video that has now gone viral on the internet gives us a window into exactly what kind of a ‘Human Rights Activist’ and ‘Rebel Poet’ Varavara Rao really is.
The “81 year old Poet” who defends massacres without batting an eyelid.
— VarunReddy2002 (@reddy2002_varun) November 18, 2020
VaraVara Rao. pic.twitter.com/jZLi6rQDcw
In the video, the interviewer asks Varavara Rao why he is calling the Malkangiri Massacre a ‘one-sided massacre’. Essentially, this question implies that Varavara Rao believed that the Maoists did not really do much to deserve to be encountered by the police. To the question, Rao says that the 18 Maoists were killed during their ‘rollcall’. The interviewer then asks, how he can call it ‘one-sided’ after the Balimela massacre where Maoists had killed 38 greyhounds.
What Varavara Rao says next is rather shocking. He says that there is a difference between the two. “Greyhounds were travelling in a boat. Maoists saw and opportunity and killed them. It is not one-sided. The difference is Maoists don’t believe in the constitution, laws, the very existence of police, greyhounds there is unlawful”, he says. On being probed further, he said the police should not go there and questions the need of the presence in areas where Maoists are there.
The shocking rant by the “human rights activist” does not end there. He says that if they (the greyhounds) put their hand in an anthill, they will bite. “Snakes are trying to occupy the anthill, won’t they retaliate?”, the “poet” says justifying the massacre of police personnel. He asserts then that the Maoists killed the policemen as a part of the “People’s War”. He then justified the killing of 74 CRPF Jawans in Chhattisgarh asking why they were there in the first place.
Quoting ‘anthropologist’ Roy Burman, Varavara Rao then says, “Why were they there in the first place”, talking about an NMDC security guard who was murdered by Maoists.
From the interview of Varavara Rao, it is clear that this “human rights activists” endorses the killing of police officials and CRPF jawans as a part of the “people’s war” that Communists, Maoists are fighting. It is interesting to note that the media, that is hands in gloves with the Left wing terrorists are trying to gloss over these details and paint him as an activists, almost tacitly justifying the murder of police officials too.
Who is Varavara Rao
Rao is a communist, ‘activist’, ‘poet’, ‘journalist’, ‘literary critic’, public speaker and a Maoist ideologue who has been arrested several times in the past. He was jailed in 1980 for two years for waging a war and conspiring against the state. Varavara Rao shouted “long live revolution” as he was detained. He was later acquitted.
As per an interview with Countercurrents.org, he visited Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai in 2014 for a talk titled “Raging war against India: Deconstructing the notion of India”. In the interview, he talks freely about Maoism and what he envisions the future to be for Maoism.
The email exchanges between Varavara Rao and Maoist leaders
In 2018, the prosecution submitted ‘intercepted email communications’ exchanged between top CPI (Maoist) fugitive leader Ganapathy aka Chandrasekhar and Varavara Rao.
As told by the prosecution to the court, the emails were exchanged after the five Urban Naxals Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale were arrested on June 6.
Public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar, arguing before Sessions Judge K D Vadane opposing the bail applications of the accused persons at the time had told the court that the email communication reveals that the top leaders in CPI (Maoist) Central Committee (CC) were concerned after the arrest of the five and Chandrashekhar alias Ganapathy, who she claimed was the general secretary of CPI (Maoist), had asked Rao how the letters were leaked.
Quoting the content of an email written to Varavara Rao by Ganapathy on July 4, Pawar said, “The CC has received a news-clip of some communication that was leaked immediately after the arrests. The point of great concern is how exactly the letters were leaked and how the letters got in the hands of the police. We need to put efforts to understand the full scale of this breach and the methods of the intelligence agencies.”
“Please ensure the confidentiality of this communication channel and any report or message sent outside of the secured network through the microchip must be encrypted with a password,” said Pawar, quoting the mail.
Ganapathy in the mail told Rao that the committee is seeking a report from him as quoted by Pawar, “It is better to use multiple keys for the future correspondence. The CC also expects your report on the assessment of the damage caused by the police action.”
Further quoting the content of the email Pawar said that Ganapathy told Rao that after the recent arrests from Delhi and Maharashtra, CC is concerned and said that the “urban movement” is facing a lot of difficulties for last several years.”In the backdrop of all these events, the CC wants your suggestions to formulate a short and long-term action plan,” Pawar quoted.
Quoting the email conversation, Pawar said, “The five arrests have caused a lot of damage to the movement and some urgent steps are needed to boost the morale of the cadre”. Responding to defence’s claim that these seized letters are fabricated, Pawar said, “This email communication of banned outfit showing concerns about the actions proves that the seized letters are genuine”.
