Summary

Subhash and Udayan begin hearing about Naxalbari on All India Radio in 1967. They listen to the reports of how tribal peasants are manipulated by wealthy landowners; pushed off their land and robbed of the income from crops they’d grown. In March, a Naxalbarian sharecropper attempted to plough land he’d been evicted from, he was beaten and his plough and bullock taken from him. Sharecroppers retaliated, forcibly occupying land and burning records and deeds.

Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, Bengali communists and dissidents of the Communist Party of India, Marxist: the CPI(M) began organizing after having met in prison and helped to organize the revolt, but this time their response was militant, demanding rights of ownership for sharecroppers. That May a police inspector was attacked by peasants with bows and arrows and killed. The following day, local police encounter a...