A brief history of the pro Maoist presence on the Internet (1997-2008)

In the course of the last two years , that I have been present on the Internet,
I have been able to retrieve some information from various online sources
which I am posting here so that it may serve as a reference point for anyone
who is interested in this type of information.

A brief history of the pro maoist presence on the Internet with
reference to India.

Year 1997
Vara Vara Rao - The pro maoist poet appeared numerous
times on live chat on rediff.com
The transcripts of one such chat session is available at the link below.
Vara Vara Rao Chat Transcripts- July 1997

Year 1998
Interviews of Com Ganapathy , then the general secretary of CPI(M-L)
People's War appearing on the internet on rediff.com
Interview with Com Ganapathy.. CPI(M-L)PW - Aug 1998

This was followed up by rediff.com with a special article on the
CPI(M-L)People's War which was titled
Karl and the Kalashnikov- Aug 1998

Interviews with CCM Com Prasad of PU
All Revolutionary Ranks must unite - Nov 1998

Year 2002
In the year 2002, a pro naxalite sympathiser started
http://www.geocities.com/cpimlpwg(Currently deleted)

But nothing on the internet ever disappears.
http://web.archive.org/ maintains copies of web
pages as a part of its archive.

The website can still be accessed at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/cpimlpwg

In fact some of the original documents of the CPI(M-L)PW can still be
accessed online through the above website

http://web.archive.org/web/20021012230004/www.geocities.com/cpimlpwg/docu.html

Some time in early 2005 , it is believed that the website owner made
the below provocative statement on his website.

Death Warrant
By the Suppressive actions of the comprador State Governments of Andhra Pradesh,Jharkhand,West Bengal,Bihar,MP,ChattisGarh the respective comprador Goverments have virtually signed their own Death Warrants.Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya,Chandrababu Naidu,Babulal Marandi shall perish.Peoples' War gives a call to all revolutionaries to take up arms and join the struggle for emancipation.Death to Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya,Chandrababu Naidu,Babulal Marandi .Long Live revolution.Inquilab Zindabad.

This emotional outburst was stated as the reason for the state security forces
who sent a notice to geocities.com to take down the website.
Geocities was only to too glad to oblige them.

The current status,background and origin of the webmaster of http://www.geocities.com/cpimlpwg is not know , but it is most
likely he/she was from Andhra Pradesh as CPI(M-L)PW
had a strong presence there.

Year 2003
Peoplesmarch.com(currently deleted) a pro-maoist magazine came
online this year
http://web.archive.org/web/20030823153035/http://peoplesmarch.com/

It was one of the most active online resources on the
revolutionary movement in India until May 2006 when according
to the editor Com Govindan Kutty the state intelligence bureau
threatened the website hosting provider who caved into state
pressure and deleted peoplesmarch.com

The exact statement can be accessed at a another website that the
editor set up on
http://peoplesmarch.googlepages.com/

Most of the back issues of peoplesmarch can today be accessed at
http://www.bannedthought.net/India/ via single-spark.net

On Feb.14 2008 the Ernakulam District Magistrate issued an order banning the publishing of the magazine in the district. The order was issued on the eve of Com. Kutty coming out of the jail on bail where he had been incarcerated on false charges. The real purpose for the arrest is now clear: to stifle freedom of expression in the country. The People’s March is an independent magazine that fearlessly seeks to present the facts without facing any pressure from advertisers or the government to sing to any tune.

The editor subsequently started peoples-truth.blogspot.com which some people believe is the new avatar of peoplesmarch but it is not yet registered as a magazine.

Year 2006 - The Blogging Revolution
By the year 2006 , the Web 2.0 communication revolution had begun and
blogs were an integral part of it.

Revolutionary Blogs
By doing a random search for certain key words, one can come across
several defunct pro maoist blogs like http://springthunder.blogspot.com/
which seems to have started in 2003 and http://naxalnext.blogspot.com/
and http://cpimaoist.blogspot.com/which started in 2006 some months
before this blog, but most of them failed to garner an audience or make any
impact and soon shut shop.

Naxalrevolution - June 2006
naxalrevolution.blogspot.com
The blog was not the first pro-naxalite blog, but it was the first to garner
a dedicated following and was quite popular on the Internet getting almost
500 unique visitors and 1000 page views on a daily basis during its peak.

The blogger who ran naxalrevolution posted under the name of abhay and
claimed to live in bangalore , in a post he that his intentions
for starting this blog was mainly to protest against the censorship of
peoplesmarch and to counter disinformation against social workers
and activists being carried out by some other blogs.

Within a short time the blog started carrying some press releases that seemed
to be from some Maoist organisations and which the blogger claimed he
received through email.This contributed to the popularity of the blog.

The blog mostly carried articles from mainstream media which were rehashed
to suit the tastes of maoist sympathisers along with media found online like
videos,audio,pictures and the occasional official press release from Maoist
organisations.

In October 2007 , the blogger made an unexpected U turn on his views
on the Maoist movement in India and in this post , made the following observation.

After following the Maoist movement closely
for the last one year and a study of the prevailing conditions
in the country I have come to the conclusion that
the armed struggle waged by the Maoists may not be
able to provide a lasting solution to the problems
faced by this country and humanity in general, nor would I
follow , endorse or recommend this path to anyone else as of
today.

Some people believe that the split in CPI(Maoist) Karnataka ,where
a large section broke away and formed the RCP (Karnataka) which
seeks to function as a legal democratic organisation could
have influenced the blogger views .

The blog eventually ceased publishing for more than 6 months after
which some activity was observed in the months of August 2008, as
of writing this post the blog was active again but it seems it is only
temporary.

Resistance India - February 2007
http://resistanceindia.blogspot.com/
Resistance India was started by a blogger who knew
Mr Govindan Kutty , the editor of peoplesmarch. Resistanceindia
also became popular after it started carrying exclusive
press release of Maoist parties.

The blogger posted under the name of bimal and was based from Kozhikode,
Kerala. Resistance India had a diverse following and as per the statistics
displayed on its website it had received more than 15,000 unique visitors.

In August 2007, the blog was hacked by unknown sources.The AP SIB denied
hacking into the blog in this news article.

What most likely happened is that the blogger used the same username and password
for his blog and his profile on the social networking site orkut and it is more likely
his account was hacked into via orkut.

He subsquently started maoistresistance.

Maoist Resistance - August 2007
http://maoistresistance.blogspot.com/

Having already set up a successful blog at resistance india it was not
at all difficult for bimal to set up another one and within no time the
new blog also started getting large number of visitors.
As per the current statistics displayed on the website it has recieved
more than 26,000 visitors till date.

After Naxalrevolution stopped active posting Maoist resistance
emerged as the new center of the pro-Maoist blogosphere.

However it was not without it's consquences...
By then CPI(Marxist) government intensified its suppresion
of democractic' struggles of the people in Kerala and Bimal was arrested
in mid february and held in police custody for 24 hours
during which he was interrogated and threatened to stop his blog
or face the consequences.

The fact that the mighty Indian state feels threatened by a small
blog is an indication of the paranoia in the establishment.

A news paper article appeared about his arrest in the Hindu ...

Youth grilled for suspected Maoist links
Staff Reporter

The police are examining his computer and documents to verify his antecedents

---

Youth was an SFI leader earlier

Police intensify drive against naxalites

---

KOZHIKODE: A team of police officers on Wednesday night took into custody for interrogation a youth believed to be having links with the extremist Maoist group. He was released on Thursday evening.

The Vadakara police arrested the 25-year old from his residence in the Edacherry police station limits. Vadakara Superintendent of Police K. Natarajan; Assistant Superintendent of Police Anoop John Kuruvilla; and Vadakara Circle Inspector Jaison K. Abraham questioned him.

Senior police officials said the youth was a non-teaching staff at the Government Engineering College in the city. He was known by several names among his friends, employees and Internet community groups. The police also seized a computer as well as other documents to verify his antecedents.

Mr. Natarajan said that the police had kept a tab on the activities of the youth for some time. Recently he joined the clerical cadre in government service. He subscribed to extreme Left leanings. However his links with any Maoist group so far had not been established.

Earlier, he was a member of the Students Federation of India (SFI), student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and had also been the area secretary of the Nadapuram unit. He shifted his sympathies to extreme Left groups. He was also associated with groups such as Revolutionary People’s Front as well as Porattam, the police said.

Investigating officers are examining the contents of his personal blogs. The hard disk of his computer is also being checked to corroborate whether he had proven links with some persons recently arrested on charges of subversive activities.

The Hindu

Subsquently Maoist resistance was discontinued by the blogger.

Bimal made history unknowing as he became the first blogger to be
arrested in India solely on the basis of his online activities.
Currently it is believed that because of increased police harassment
and intimidation the blogger was forced to join some
pro-maoist mass organisations.

Chairman Mao says " Let a thousand blogs bloom "

Today there exist hundreds of pro-maoist blogs with
a large international following many of whom have an active interest
about the revoluionary movement in mainly three countries India,
Nepal and Phillippines.

There exist today many solidary sites like the french solidarity
Site - http://laltara.free.fr/

The press releases of many maoist organisations nowadays appear
in spanish,french on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION/

Some maoist/pro-maoist organisations have their own blogs like

http://rcpkarnataka.blogspot.com/

http://tamilporali.blogspot.com/

http://rdf-2005.blogspot.com/

http://rpfkerala.blogspot.com/

A list of active pro-maoist blogs based in India

• Ajadhind
• DSU JNU
• Parisar
• PMSG India
• Red Barricade

List of blogs linking to Maoist resistance
http://referer.org/list/78d1468a9fa119c96458d5598926c7d9

It is impossible to recollect or post the entire list of all the International blogs but
a large number of links appear on

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/

http://naxalrevolution.blogspot.com/search/label/Links

Each blog contains a number of links to other blogs of similiar content.
All one has to do is follow the links and you will be amazed at the number
of pro-maoist blogs out there.

New blogs can be found by searching for key terms like Naxal,
Naxalite,Maoist on http://blogsearch.google.com/ but a lot
of spam blogs make the process a little tiring.

Pro-Maoist presence on Social Networking Websites
There are thousands of Maoist sympathisers of Indian origin
present on social networking websites like orkut, facebook
who regularly interact and debate various issues.

Perils of Modern Day communications

The revolutions in communication technologies have today made it
possible to connect and collaborate at a level that was impossible
even a decade ago.However this has not been without its failings.

The recent assasination of Com Raul Reyes who was the spokesperson
of the FARC is merely a pointer in that direction.Com Raul Reyes was
assasinated after his satellite phone was intercepted by the CIA which
traced his call and handed over the exact co-ordinates of his location
to its Colombiancounterparts who then launched a full military assault
through air and ground troops.

It must be mentioned that the satellite phone which uses GPS
was a product of the US Military and so was the Internet.

Internet Surveillance
It can be assumed that all pro-Maoist blogs and email ids are under
surveillance thought there is no direct evidence...

There are thousands of illegal porn websites on the internet that sell
images of exploited women from India illegally.Other than contributing
enormous amounts of traffic to these website , the intelligence bureau
has not shut down a single porn website in the last 10 years, let
alone arrest those who profit from it.

But in the last one year alone at least one pro-Maoist blogger has
been arrested and several bloggers face constant harassment
through direct and indirect means.

As per what appeared in media reports www.ernet.in
is one of the central nodal agencies to monitor the internet in India.

Other than there is heavy duty surveillance from the states of
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra pradesh and Tamil Nadu , it is not
known if this surveillance is done by state or central agencies.

Maoist leaders traced through the Internet and killed in fake encounters ?

While there is no direct proof to prove this there are at least two incidents
which arouse suspicions...

Murder of Com Sende Rajmouli
The karnataka state secretary was picked up from Kerala and shot dead in
Andhra pradesh. A news paper report in the Indian Express that appeared
the next day claimed a CD containing a list of websites was recovered from his body.

Is it possible that Com Sende Rajmouli was an avid internet surfer and that
he was traced after he visited some website ?

Murders of Com Gajerala Saraiah and Com Rama
Maoist Gajerala Saraiah (44) alias Azad alias Bhaskar and his wife and
member of the Maoist party, B. Aruna alias Rama, who were
reportedly killed in an encounter in AP had spent nine to 10 months
in a sleepy village near Belgaum.

A newspaper article which appeared in the Hindu claimed that Com Gajerala
and Com Rama lived in belagaum, Karnataka in a rented house and
while renting the house they had told the house owner that he worked
as a DTP technician. Now as some of you may know DTP stands for desktop
publishing and involves preparing ,editing documents on the computer.

Is it possible that in the process of making and editing of documents
he came online , and he was traced and murdered ?

This is something the human rights organizations must investigate.

Surveillance on blogs
Many blogs have installed visitor counters or statcounters which show
on a real time basis the visitors and their ip addressees.They can be
identified as they display the visit count on their blogs and
there are many invisible visitor counters too.

Even though the bloggers may have done it with good intentions in mind
it must be emphasized that it may not be too difficult for some groups
of people to access these visitor counters by hacking or breaking into them
through legal , illegal means.

Note - Naxalrevolution.blogspot.com does not collect any information
about its users other than those submitted willingly by the users, like
email id for email updates...

Hence we have this disclaimer

_________________________________________________
..End of Article..
_________________________________________________

This is not a comprehensive or complete list.Any errors or
misrepresentations if any are regretted.If you can find any mistakes
or have something to add, you
can email me at naxalrevolution(at the rate ) gmail(dot ) com

The information published above is accurate to the best of my knowledge
and is wholly based on information sourced through the Internet.

Other resources on censorship in India

Committee to protect Bloggers - India

The Discreet Charms of the Nanny State

Harrassment of Tehelka.com and other incidents - Reporters Sans Frontiers

Censorship in India - Wiki

Indian Bloggers Collective on Censorship

Tags: cpimaoist, naxalite blogs, maoist blogs, censorship in India, bloggers collective, pro-maoist blogs, cpimarxist, protect bloggers, list of maoist websites, india