K.G. Satyamurthy, author Sujatha Gidla's uncle, was a young rebel in the '46-51 Telangana uprising. In this excerpt, Satya plunges right into the struggle.
The army then occupied the area and carried out what the government called its “pacification programme.” This meant that whole villages were razed and Communist sympathisers there rounded up and sent off to concentration camps. Where roads had been dug up to aid the guerrillas, Indian soldiers buried peasants alive in the trenches and forced the survivors to build new roads over these mass graves. The Nehru government’s atrocities in Telangana were even worse than the Razakars’.
And they were not confined to Telangana. Many people from Andhra, especially Krishna and Guntur, had gone to fight alongside the peasants of Telangana.
The Nehru government dispatched a special bat talion of the army, the dreaded Malabar Police, to Krishna district in order to root out Communists and their supporters. By the time Satyam arrived in Telaprolu, scores of Communists there had been arrested and one shot dead. The Communist lea der in the village, Senagala Viswanatha Reddy, had gone into hiding. A senior cadre in nearby Buddhavaram, a Kamma man named Paparayudu, was shot dead shortly after Satyam arrived.
But Satyam knew in his heart that the Telangana fighters would soon be back to liberate Krishna district and the entire region.
This story is from the August 28, 2017 edition of Outlook.
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This story is from the August 28, 2017 edition of Outlook.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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