A gentle soul who once espoused violence, an ideologue who was a humanist and above all an individual who was no never loath to swim against the current, Azizul Haque, eminent Naxal leader was a man of contradictions. Never hiding his contempt for parliamentary democracy, Haque came into prominence after the passing of key Naxalite leader Charu Majumdar in 1972.
He took over the party’s second central committee and steered it ahead though some of his comrades accused him of directionlessness. But there is no denying the fact that he stood up and chose to be counted against the might of the State.
A firm believer that power flows from a gun barrel, Haque sought to practice what he preached. The State responded with its machinery and in the manner in which it had been targetted
Haque was imprisoned. Beaten every evening, often his body gave way but never his soul.
The man who in a write-up in party organ Deshbrati in April, 1972 had advocated spreading guerilla warfare in South-24-Psrganas was made of sterner stuff. He remembered every bit of his harrowing time behind the bars.
He protested in a manner which had nothing to do with conventional manner of “dealing with class enemies’. He penned his experiences in a prison memoir “Karagare Atharo Bochor “(18 years in prison).
His incarceration memoirs barely escaped being seized and when they came out in cold print, they generated sympathy for his cause and admiration for his person. Such feelings cut across the political divide.
On his release from prison, Haque became a social commentator which fitted him like a glove. A man of clear vision he had once described a central Kolkata goon who doubled as a strong arm for a political party espousing socialism and secularism.
To warn a political opponent, this roughneck would call on the latter’s father. He would touch the older man’s feet as a mark of respect and ask him to caution his son or else…, but he would never harm any other member of the family.
Never a votary of the Left leaders treading the path of parliamentary democracy, Haque held meetings in support of the government Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. One of the ardent advocates of revolutionary politics seems to have lost his way by then.