The Communist Workers’ Union (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) of Colombia deeply lamments the assassination of comrade Nambala Keshav Rao, «Basavarj,» secretary general of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), who was killed along with 26 other brave Maoist fighters on May 21 by military forces led by the reactionary regime of Narendra Modi in the lush forests of Abuijhmad, in the district of Narayanpur, in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Comrade Basavarj dedicated his entire life to the Maoist revolutionary movement in India: first, as a militant of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War during the 1980s until the founding of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in 2004; then, as a leader of this party, he was a member of its Central Committee and Military Commission, which led him to become one of the founders of the People’s Guerrilla Liberation Army in 2000, and in 2018, he assumed the position of general secretary of the Party. A life that lasted 70 years in the service of the emancipation of the exploited and oppressed of India.
His vile assassination, along with that of 26 other communists, is part of the counterinsurgency military actions that the Modi government has been carrying out through Operation Kagaar, a strategic genocidal military operation that has used various tactics: mass arrests, repression of the social movement, imprisonment of popular fighters, military occupation of territory and bombing of villages, rape and prohibition of political rights, etc., with the aim not only of ending the ongoing people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), but also of exterminating the Adivasi (tribal) and Dalit (outcast) peoples of India, thereby allowing multinationals to enter the territories where the Maoist insurgency is present.
Our organization sends fraternal, warm, and internationalist greetings to our comrades in the Communist Party of India (Maoist), to its Central Committee, to its militants and sympathizers, to the selfless fighters of the People’s Guerrilla Liberation Army, and to all the proletariat and peoples of India who are rising up against the despicable Hindutva government of Modi.
Without a doubt, the loss of Comrade Basavarj is a heavy blow to the Party and to the glorious people’s war underway, but we are confident that the Party, in close connection with the oppressed and exploited of India, will emerge victorious from this situation, for it is not the first time that prestigious revolutionary communists have been assassinated by the rotten Indian state, and instead of ending the revolutionary process, hundreds of new communist cadres continue to emerge, ready to give their lives for the sake of the new democratic revolution.
We express our willingness to continue expressing our solidarity and proletarian internationalism, participating in the actions called for by the International Committee to Support the People’s War in India in the framework of the Campaign Against Operation Kagaar and in support of the people’s war in India.
Down with Operation Kagaar!
Eternal glory to Comrade Basavarj!
Long live the People’s War in India!
Long live the Communist Party of India (Maoist)!
