It was 5:30 am, We were attending the funeral of Comrade Velmurugan. The State of Kerala and Tamilnadu conspired to bring the body of Murdered Velmurugan directly to the burial ground at such an odd time so that people cannot participate in his funeral. Last year comrade, Mani Vasagam’s body was brought directly to the burial ground at 11:45 pm. The same vulgar drama is again enacted in the funeral of comrade Velmurugan.
Comrade VelMurugan’s body was kept in a stretcher on the muddy ground. The angry slogans of the comrades mingled with the loud wailings of the old mother and filled the air. While the poor mother was falling over the body of her beloved son in agony, Comrade Pinarayi would have been sleeping in his A/C bedroom with the satisfaction of finishing another Maoist.
As per his friends and comrades, Comrade VelMurugan was a soft and to an extent shy man. A lovable person who wants to help others without any hesitation. His death has come as a rude shock to all those who spent some time with him. It has filled the hearts of an array of people, from his friends to the tribals (whom he met at Koraput prison) with grief and sorrow. But, According to Pinarayi Vijayan, He is a Maoist terrorist, trying to disrupt the ‘peace’ in the Kerala state, So he has to be killed. Thunderbolt, the Elite Police Force of Kerala followed their regular protocol, catch the Maoist, torture him and then shoot him dead. You can always cook up an encounter story for public consumption. An olive-green uniform and .303 rifle placed by the side of the dead man is enough to justify the killing.
Why do they call this 33-year-old soft-spoken, reserved young man as a terrorist and kill him? Because he has all the qualities of terrorist in the vocabulary of the Elites. Being a son of agricultural labourers, born out of suppressed caste, from a family of first-generation graduates is enough for the elites to despise anybody. But this man had more than that for the ruling classes to hate him.
In our so-called democracy, the toiling masses have to live as docile voting robots, accepting all the injustice, exploitation and suppression without even a murmur. But he was not such a ‘faithful’ citizen of the Republic. He had the ‘audacity’ to question the existing order, to rebel against it, to embrace the Revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and above all to join the fight to throw away this evil system. How could the ruling classes tolerate a person fighting for the political power of the workers and peasants? Spartacus, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara and many more were termed as terrorist by the elites of their time. So why not Velmurugan?
If anybody thinks that he was accused as a terrorist because he held a gun, it is not so. We can regularly find goons of RSS & Sangh Parivar publicly exhibiting their guns and even firing at the people. They are not terrorists in the vocabulary of the Indian elites, rather they are’ Nationalists’. Some people may think that Maoists are branded & banned as a terrorist because they reject the constitution. If so how could RSS (which doesn’t accept this constitution) rule this country by proxy? Even a layman knows that from corporates to Landlords and from bureaucrats to bourgeoisie politicians treat the constitution or the rule of law like tissue paper. So all this hullabaloo about violence and constitution is just a façade.
So, the real issue is that Velmurugan & his associates are fighting for the destruction of this rotten society and for the political power of workers and peasants. That is the hidden truth. This is the real reason for his untimely death or murder.
Comrade Velmurugan is from a village in Theni district of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the backward districts of the state. As told already, he was from suppressed caste. His father and mother were agricultural labourers. When he was a child, his father was working as a guard in grapevine farm. So he grew up in the fields, not in the house. He was the second Son of this poor couple. His elder brother comrade Murugan is an advocate and Human Rights Activist. Murugan was jailed for appearing on behalf of Maoist prisoners. He spent almost two years in jail under the draconian UAP(A).
Even during his school days, Comrade Velmurugan fought against the caste atrocities. He came into contact with the Maoist politics at a very young age of 16. From then on he continued his Revolutionary activities without any break. At the age of 33, he was a senior revolutionary with 17 years of experience.
He studied law as he was doing underground work, even the close friends did not know about his political orientation. So when he was arrested in a Maoist related case, it was a shock to everybody. He was only 19-years-old when he was arrested and was brutally tortured in that false case of arms training. This young revolutionary did not give up any secrets about his Comrades during the inhumane torture. The soft natured boy had the heart made of steel!
He spent nearly four years in jail along with martyr comrade Kannan and 2 other young guns. This Young brigade withstood all the odds of Jail life with the Fighting Spirit. They were sent to the Orissa’s Koraput prison in one more false case and they spent three full years there. They went on fighting even inside the prison and gained the Goodwill of hundreds of tribals arrested under false cases. In those 3 years, at least 50 days were spent on hunger strikes. They took up a struggle against the negligence of the prison authorities which resulted in the death of a tribal leader. Velmurugan was the youngest of the team (who was nicknamed as ‘baby’ by Other Comrades) but he showed his revolutionary will to fight the enemy at their own fort. He not only learnt Oriya but also earned the love and respect from those tribals. He could easily mingle with them and became one among them
After coming out of jail he rejoined the law course. But he discontinued it within a year as revolutionary duty called him and went underground. After the year 2015, he entered the tri-junction area and started working among the tribals along with the comrades already working there. Even when the bloodthirsty Pinarayi Vijayan government was killing Maoists one after another, he stood there with the heart of Steel. Comrade Velmurugan is another Hero from the working masses who gave up his future, youthhood, and everything for the sake of Liberation of the people of India. In his death, Comrade Velmurugan has become an ever Shining Red Star showing the path of revolution to the oppressed people of India.
#NoOneRapedDalits