Freedom Fighter Com. Gangadhar Appa Burande: An epicenter of loyalty, sacrifice and vision....by Dr.Ashok Dhawale

On October 1, 2023, the year of the Amrit Jubilee of the Marathwada Liberation War and freedom fighter and former MP Com. On his 15th death anniversary, Gangadhar Appa Burande's memorial was inaugurated at his village Moha in Beed district by Sitaram Yechury, National General Secretary of the Marxist Communist Party and former MP. Co. Gangadhar Appa Burande was a towering figure in the Left movement of Marathwada and a top leader of the Marxist Communist Party and All India Kisan Sabha in Maharashtra.

EARLY LIFE IN FREEDOM STRUGGLE

Appa was born on December 29, 1919, in a farming family in the village of Moha in Beed District of Maharashtra. He did his primary education at Ambajogai and his secondary education at Nanded. At that time Marathwada was under the tyrannical rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad. 

When Appa was in school, the song 'Vande Mataram' was banned in the Nizam's empire, which was broken by Appa and his fellow friends.

In 1942, Mahatma Gandhi warned the British government to 'Quit India'. The effect of this nationwide movement spread rapidly in Marathwada as well. The Nizam's rule in Marathwada was subordinate to the British Government. At Ambajogai there was a radio station of the Nizam's government on a high tower. Appa and his colleagues went and destroyed it. 

He removed the Nizam's flag from the Ambajogai Police Station and the Post Office and hoisted the tricolor flag of India. Many were arrested, but Appa did not fall into the hands of the Nizam government.

 Appa passed his matriculation from Yogeshwari Vidyalaya, Ambajogai, founded in 1942 by the great freedom fighter Swami Ramanand Theerth. As this school had patriotic administrators and teachers, many students like Appa later participated in the freedom struggle and the Marathwada liberation struggle.

There was no facility of higher education in Marathwada then. So Appa joined Osmania University, Hyderabad in 1943 for higher education. Hyderabad was then the political centre of the armed struggle of the peasants of Telangana that would soon begin.

 Also, many fighters of the Marathwada liberation struggle were also pursuing higher education in Hyderabad. The Communist Party had a great influence on both these movements. Camps, seminars, book readings etc. were regularly held here secretly on Marxist ideas. 

It is from this churning that Appa, R. D. Deshpande, V. D. Deshpande, Chandragupta Chaudhary, Vasant Rakshasabhuvankar, Athar Babar and many other activists were attracted to the communist movement. Appa joined the Communist Party in 1946 and abandoned his studies to become a full-time worker and plunged into the anti-Nizam movement.

TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE AND MARATHWADA LIBERATION WAR

Telangana's historic armed peasant struggle began in July 1946. Communist Party and Kisan Sabha leaders like Comrades P. Sundaraya, M. Basavapunnaya, C. Rajeshwar Rao, M. Chandrasekhar Rao, d. 

Venkateswara Rao, B. Narasimha Reddy were leading it. From 1946 to 1948, this unprecedented struggle was waged against the Nizam's regime and it’s armed Razakars, and from 1948 to 1951, the new central government of the Congress itself attempted to crush the struggle.

During this conflict, more than 4,000 peasant-farm labour activists of the Communist Party and Kisan Sabha were killed, 10,000 communist activists were jailed for 3-4 years each, 50,000 activists were arrested and tortured, thousands of women were subjected to untold abuse, and millions Property worth crores of rupees was confiscated. 

But on the other hand, in this brilliant struggle, Gram Rajya was established in as many as 3,000 villages in Khammam, Nalgonda, Warangal and some other districts, by which a total of 10 lakh acres of land was seized from the zamindars-savakars and redistributed free of cost to the landless agricultural laborers and poor farmers. That is why this fight is forever etched in golden letters in the history of Indian peasant struggles.

It was obvious that the result of such a tremendous fight would fall on the nearby Marathwada. Therefore, the Communist Party decided to organize an armed struggle against the Nizam in Marathwada as well. Appa and R. D. Deshpande started it from Telki village of Kandahar taluk of Nanded district. 

The description of that breathtaking event Dr. Vitthal More in his biography of Appa called him “Marxist Karmayogi”. Appa and Deshpande were arrested and kept in Nanded, Parbhani and later Nizamabad jails. Appa's parents died while he was first underground and later in prison. Appa didn't even get Appa's best friend and comrade Vasant Rakshasabhuvankar was working as a full-time Communist Party worker in Vaijapur area of Aurangabad district. On November 16, 1947, farmers under his leadership attacked the police station of Bhavthan village in Vaijapur taluka. Vasant was shot dead by Nizam's police. 

It was a big blow to the communist movement in Marathwada and to Appa personally.

Although India got independence on August 15, 1947, Marathwada did not become independent. It was still under the Nizam's heel. On 13 September 1948, the Government of India sent its army to Hyderabad on the news that the Nizam of Hyderabad was preparing to merge his principality with Pakistan, the Nizam surrendered on 17 September, and all the territories under the Nizam's rule, including Marathwada, were liberated. But it soon became clear that the Congress central government had also pushed its army into Hyderabad for another reason. 

It also sent the army to crush the armed struggle of the farmers of Telangana against the landlords led by the Communist Party and the Kisan Sabha. Yet the peasants' anti-feudal struggle continued for three years against the mighty Indian Army, and was finally withdrawn in October 1951.

The Congress Party also supported the capitalist-landlord classes in Telangana, Andhra, Marathwada and throughout the country and considered the Communist Party as its main enemy. 

Therefore, leaders like Govindbhai Shroff, Babasaheb Paranjpe left the Congress and founded the organization 'League of Socialist Workers'. In 1952, the League joined the Communist Party-led Janata Democratic Alliance, and in the first Lok Sabha elections, Babasaheb Paranjape was elected MP, defeating the Congress in Beed district.

In Telangana, as a result of the valiant struggle of the farmers, many candidates of the Communist Party were elected as MPs and MLAs, defeating the Congress in both the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in 1952. Communist Party leader Ravi Narayan Reddy was elected as the MP with the highest number of votes in the whole of India – even more than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru!

AN UNUSUAL COMMUNIST AND PEASANT LEADER

After independence and the victory of the Marathwada Liberation War, Appa devoted himself to the work of building and developing the Communist Party and the Kisan Sabha in Beed district for the first few years. He started from his village Moha. 

During that time there was a dense forest around Moha village. Wild animals roamed freely there. Once there was a rumour that a leopard had come near the village. Appa and Ranganath Deshmukh went to the nearby forest with axes in hand. 

A tiger hiding there suddenly pounced on Appa and a fight started between the two. Appa was covered in blood. But finally Appa inflicted a decisive blow on the tiger with his axe and the tiger collapsed. Both Appa and Ranganath were seriously injured. But the villagers were very impressed and took out the procession of these two and the dead tiger from the village. Appa took a long time to recover, but the incident left a lasting impression on the public.

In the subsequent period, the influence of the Communist Party and the Kisan Sabha under the leadership of Appa gradually increased in Beed district and Marathwada. Workers, agricultural labourers, students, youth and women's organizations were formed over time. There were many battles in Beed district, Marathwada and Maharashtra, it is obviously not possible to mention them all in this one article.

Obviously Appa would not have been able to do all this without the band of hundreds of fighting and loyal workers of the Marxist Communist Party in Beed district and Marathwada. Some of us are witness to the fact that many of these activists were made by Appa himself with a lot of hard work.

At that time, the influential rural group of the CPI(M) and Kisan Sabha in Maharashtra was headed by Godavari Parulekar, and this group included former MP Gangadhar Appa Burande, Narendra Malusare, former MP Ramchandra Ghangare, former MLA Vitthalrao Naik, Krishna Khopkar, L. B. Dhangar, former MP and former MLA Lanu Kom, among other veteran leaders were included.

MULTIFACETED CONTRIBUTIONS OF APPA

In 1955, he took intiative and organized a session of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha at Moha. Participated in the Goa Liberation Movement. Between 1956 and 1975, he was continuously elected as Sarpanch of Moha village. Till 1972 village elections were held unopposed.

 He was elected to the Beed District Local Board in 1957. In 1960, he founded the Maharashtra Education Institute and established and developed Maharashtra Vidyalaya, Moha and other schools through it. Marriage to Mahanandatai in the same year. In 1962, he was elected to the Beed District Council. 

He served imprisonment from 1962 to 1964 due to agitation. When the Marxist Communist Party was formed in 1964 and Appa was elected to its first Maharashtra State Committee. In the year 1967, he was elected as Member of Parliament from Beed district by Communist Party leader Kranti Singh Nana Patil. In 1969, he held the founding session of the CPI(M)-led Maharashtra State Kisan Sabha at Moha, where he was elected as the state vice-president. In 1972-73, they jointly fought against the terrible drought in Maharashtra. 1975-77 – Internal Emergency imposed by the Congress government and thousands of opposition party activists including Appa were jailed. In the 1977 post-Emergency elections, Appa was elected as a Marxist Communist Party MP from Beed district, while Ahilya Rangnekar from Mumbai and Lanu Kom from Dahanu were elected as party MPs in the same election. In 1978, when Appa was an MP, he survived an attack by Congress goons. In the same year, MP Appa and MLA Vitthal Rao bravely defended the Dalits in the Marathwada University name change movement and were jailed for protesting in favor of name change. He also participated in the Jalgaon to Nagpur United State-wide Shetkar Dindi in 1980. In 1982, the Maharashtra state convention of the Marxist Communist Party was held at Parli Vaijnath in Beed district, in which he was elected to the party's state secretariat. 

In 1985, he toured the Socialist Soviet Union. In 1992, he led the Marathwada foot march taken out by the CPI(M) against severe drought. In 1993, Appa was elected as the state president of the Maharashtra State Kisan Sabha at Khamgaon. 

Later in 1995, he was re-elected as the state president in the state session of Maharashtra State Kisan Sabha at Wardha. In 1996, Ambajogait Govindbhai Shroff was awarded Jangi Amrit Mahotsavvi for his contribution. In 1997, he was elected as the Chairman of the State Control Commission in the State Convention of the Communist Party of Marxism at Aurangabad. He passed away on October 1, 2008.

SOME SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE APPA

I first met Appa in 1981 at an SFI camp I visited in Beed district after I was elected as the State General Secretary of SFI. I still remember his excellent take on the subject “History of Indian Freedom Struggle” based on his own personal experience. Later, after I was elected to the state committee of the party in 1987 and to the state council of the Kisan Sabha in 1993, my relationship with Appan became stronger. 

The respect I had for him increased from the discussion with him. I titled this article “The Great Pole of Loyalty, Sacrifice and Vision”. And these are the three special features of the app.

Appa's integrity was debatable. His loyalty to Marxism-Leninism was unwavering and unwavering. He fought bitterly throughout his life against every invention of imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, bigotry, casteism, patriarchy. Seeing the corrupt and unethical 'Khoke' and 'ED' government of Maharashtra today would have angered them. He would have blown up the Modani government at the center which was objectionable in all respects.

Appa himself contested several MLA and some MP elections. But he never deviated from the principles and decisions of the party in electoral politics. A worker acting against the party policy in any case should be taken straight to the plate. 

He never showed liberalism on such occasions. Violation of party discipline used to be a serious crime in his writings. He never condoned any kind of financial malfeasance and corruption.

 His virtues of using party money sparingly, keeping its accounts strictly, maintaining a very simple life throughout his life, protecting communist values and morals were well-known. That is why even staunch political opponents used to respect him immensely. He always laid special emphasis on continuous political-ideological-organizational party education and his own reading to produce good loyal communist workers.

There is not a single worker who don’t knows Appa in Marathwada, who has not experienced his self-sacrificing attitude. The Marxist Communist Party was his everything. He himself was an embodiment of the promise made in the party constitution. 

He joined the Communist Party in 1946 at the age of 27, leaving his education partly under the influence of the freedom struggle and the Marathwada liberation struggle, becoming a full-time activist, and remained so till the end. Even when he was an MP, he was definitely ST. Travel by bus or train or on foot. 

He rarely used the motorcar given to him on the occasion of his Amrit Mahotsava felicitation to facilitate his mobility in his advanced age. However, he always paid close attention to fulfilling the right needs of the workers.

Starting the Maharashtra Educational Institution in 1960, running various schools including the well-known Maharashtra Vidyalaya of Mohya in Beed district with integrity, consciously creating good activists for the movement from it, is another prominent example of Appa's vision. 

He always paid special attention to this institution and the development of its teachers and students. There is an urgent need for all of us to strictly follow the example set by Appa as we are running many educational institutions in Maharashtra today.

October 2, 2023