REC to Red Corridor: Nambala Keshava Rao, Cherukuri Rajkumar among top Maoists traced back to now NITW

 WARANGAL

Being a fountainhead of diverse thoughts and ideas is not unusual for any academic institution. However, what is surprising to many is that an engineering college, established with the specific purpose of producing technical manpower and academic leaders, became an epicentre of the Maoist movement that shook the nation. This institution is the Regional Engineering College (REC), Warangal— the first such college to be established in the country in 1959.

Subsequently, the college upgraded and renamed as the National Institute of Technology (NIT), went on to produce many luminaries in the various fields, and at the same time also produced at least half a dozen top Naxalite leaders.

Among the most notable of them were Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju (70), the outlawed CPI Maoist party’s General Secretary and Chief of the Military Commission, who was killed in an encounter with security forces on Wednesday (May 21) in Chhattisgarh. Another prominent alumnus, Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, a spokesman of the Central Committee of the same party, was killed in an alleged encounter in Adilabad district in 2010.

The other top leaders include Soorapaneni Janardhan, a founding member of the Radical Students Union (RSU), Nagabelli Ravinder, a State Committee member, Gajjala Ganga Ram, Shyam,  Visheshvar Rao, and Mukku Subba Reddy, one the founding members of the People’s War. All of these youngmen were greatly influenced by the Naxalbari and other communist movements in the country and elsewhere. 

“By the time Rajkumar entered the REC in 1972, the college had become a hotbed of revolutionary student movements, inspired by the peasant uprisings in Telangana,” says senior journalist N. Venugopal. Janardhan was killed along with a few other student leaders in an alleged encounter at Giraipalli village near Siddipet in July 1975. Shyam was said to have been killed by the police in Hanamkonda, while Gajjala Ganga Ram reportedly lost his life when a hand grenade exploded in his hands in 1981. It is said that a brilliant Ganga Ram was even offered a lucrative post by an aeronautical company, which he turned down due to the passion for the revolutionary path.

Scores of students from the REC were actively engaged with the “Go to Villages” that aided the formation of the Radical Youth League in May 1978 and the Rythu-Coolie Sangham in 1980.

Concurrently, a teacher from Warangal Kondapalli Seetharamaiah (KS) along with another teacher K.G. Satyamurthy (Sivasagar) formed Peoples’ War group (PW or PWG) from splinter groups of the CPI (ML) in 1980. The merger of the PW with the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) ultimately led to the formation of the CPI (Maoist).

“While the involvement of REC alumni in the Maoist movement is a significant aspect of the institution’s history, it’s important to note that not all graduates were involved in the movement. The movement’s influence on the college was a complex phenomenon, and many alumni choose different paths,” observed a former faculty member.

“During my time as a student at the REC, I was part of the ABVP/RSS. The institution was a hotbed of extremist activity, with a significant presence of Naxalite sympathisers among students, mess workers, and even some faculty members,” recalled a former Director, NITW, Dr. G.R.C. Reddy. One student, Vinod Kumar Jha, who is associated with the ABVP, was reportedly murdered in the mess.

“While I strongly disagreed with their ideology and methods, I can acknowledge that their movement did address some of the pressing agrarian and social issues of the time,” Mr. Reddy opined.

Rights activist and the founder of the Human Rights Forum (HRF) K. Balagopal also did his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the college, during that tumultuous period.