Azizul Haque [1942-2025]

Harsh Thakor

Azizul Haque–firebrand poet, political thinker and one one of the most prominent faces of the Naxalite movement, who left an indelible mark of India’s Naxalite uprising, died in Kolkata on July 21, chronicling a turning point in Bengal’s radical Left history that once shook the nation in the 1960s and ’70s. He was 83.

Haque, who was born in Howrah in 1942, preached the Maoist doctrine ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun’ which was popularised by Charu Mazumdar, who turned Mao Zedong’s slogan from a spark to a prairie fire in the Sixties and Seventies.

In an illustrious life, he played the roles of a poet, political thinker and once became the head of the CPI(ML)’s second central committee. Haque had for a prolonged period been battling illness and was admitted to ICU after a fall at home that left him with a fractured hand.

Paying last respects in the iconic Indian Coffee House in central Kolkata’s College Street, Haque’s friends and co-workers, both old and young, bid the stalwart leader farewell.

His leadership played a pivotal part in enabling the CPI (ML) 2ndCC to stand at the forefront of the revolutionary movements in West Bengal and Bihar, encompassing workers, peasants, students and youth. He nurtured many activists, like martyr Subroto Datta or Johar. He left no stone unturned in refuting the path veering towards parliamentary cretinism within the Naxalite camp. With untold mastery, he infused cadres with revolutionary ideology to steer mass movements.

Where Azizul erred was his inability to diagnose the reactionary character of the Lin Biaoist line and make a comprehensive self-criticism of the line of ‘annihilation of class enemies’. He invoked no criticism of Charu Mazumdar’s path of rejecting mass movements and organisations and continued to wave the cult of Charu Mazumdar.

At just 17, Azizul joined the undivided Communist Party. He got injured while participating in the great 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.

An intimately close associate of Charu Mazumdar Haque was among the few leaders who kept the flame of the Naxalbari peasant rebellion alive long after it was extinguished by the state.

He was expelled from the CPI(M) for promoting Charu Mazumdar’s radical line.

Azizul boldly confronted the revisionist path of CPI(M), while giving credibility to the political line of Naxalbari. To the last tooth, he rebuked political elements downgrading Charu Mazumdar’s contribution and the Chinese path of Revolution. At every juncture, he unwaveringly battled against all trends negating disunity amongst Communist revolutionary groups, and to the last core withstood all negative currents to dismantle it. He stood at the forefront in bringing communist revolutionary factions to collectively fight on a single plane on the burning issues of the day.

Haque had suffered 18 years in incarceration after he was arrested on multiple occasions. He was subjected to merciless torture in police custody and suffered lifelong ailments and injuries as a result of it.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed deep condolences on X, describing Haque as a “fighter who never bowed down in his long political life”. Even Left Front chairman Biman Bose sent his condolences.

First arrested in the Parvathipuram conspiracy case in 1970 and was released in 1977. Haque spent nearly two decades in prison over his lifetime. His re-arrest in 1982 incited outrage even within Bengal’s ruling Left Front, with jail ministers Debabrata Bandopadhyay and JatinChakraborty recommending his parole after visiting him behind bars.

His book ‘Karagare Atharo Bochor’ (Eighteen Years in Jail) remains one of the most illustrative explorations of the Naxalite movement and ideological rebellion in that era.

Haque’s writings, including ‘Naxalbari: TirishBochorAageebong Pare’, posed a continuous thorn in the flesh of the establishment, even as he gradually drifted away from hard-line Naxalism in his later years. He founded the BhasaShahidSmarakSamiti [Language Martyrs Memorial Committee].

Strangely, he supported the CPI (M)’s industrialisation drive in Singur in 2006, standing in opposition to many of his former fellow-travellers who opposed land acquisition.

After he was set free from prison for a second time in 1989, he ventured into writing about various social issues, including his own time in jail.

“Leftism is to walk against the current,” he often repeated, and till the end, his pen through columns and essays in leading dailies and journals, showcased rebellion.

Even after retreating from active party politics, he waged an unrelenting battle against religious bigotry, the ascendancy of right-wing forces, and the fascist designs of the BJP-RSS combine until his final days.

AzizulHaque’s death manifests the extinguishing of one of the last flames of Bengal’s genuine revolutionary Left. Even if physically gone, his spirit is bound to resurrect to enable new roses to bloom, to wave the banner of revolution.

[Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist]

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Vol 58, No. 7, Aug 10 - 16, 2025