Remembering K Balagopal

K Balagopal, B Ramulu and Gaddar in a public rally demanding water from Pranahita river and irrigation resources for the neighboring villages to Sirpur and Kagaznagar in Adilabad.

Dr. K Balagopal educational lecture on river water disputes in Andhra Pradesh. In this two hour long lecture, delivered in July 2009 at Human Rights Forum (HRF) chapter meeting in Vishakapatnam, Balagopal discusses the background of the river water disputes in the state of Andhra Pradesh and provides the historical, political and economical context in which the policies and the existent water sharing practices and irrigation projects on Krishna and Godavari rivers came about. And stresses the need for a proper water sharing framework – from a fairness, justice viewpoint and people rights to resources and development – of all the three regions of the state of Andhra Pradesh. And provides the right context to understand the grievances of the people of Telangana and Rayalaseema regions. And argues for a intra-state water redistribution and independent authority , along the lines of Bachawat Tribunal, for fair allocation of water resources.

Part 1 of 13

Part 2 of 13

Part 3 of 13

Part 4 of 13

Part 5 of 13

Part 6 of 13

Part 7 of 13


Part 8 of 13

Part 9 of 13

Part 10 of 13

Part 11 of 13

Part 12 of 13

Part 13 of 13

Balagopal TV interview in September 2009 (in Telugu) about Maoists, Green Hunt and Chattisgarh, where he talks about the ongoing violence both that of Maoists and the government in the states of Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. And states that the in the long run inherent structural violence and increasing inequality in the society are much more of a bigger threat to the Indian democracy than the Maoists, as claimed by the Indian government.
And talks about the need to oppose Green hunt and support a peace talks initiative.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

It has been difficult for us in the CL&DR movement to reconcile the loss of Balagopal from our midst. Balagopal has been the face of this movement in Andhra Pradesh for over three decades and its integral component beyond it. The debate that ensued over some fundamental questions he raised about the conception of human rights in APCLC that led to his eventual break up with it had created tremors beyond the boundaries of Andhra Pradesh. For many of us, I included, it had come as a shock that Balagopal, who more than any of us saw and suffered the vicious face of the state, could raise those questions. Some resisted to react adversely and chose to watch but some, prompted by ideological exigency, openly voiced their criticism and antagonistically declared that Balagopal abdicated Marxism. In Andhra Pradesh, expectedly it had raised a storm. If it had not been for Balagopal, whose integrity and commitment to the cause of poor and oppressed humanity could never be questioned by even his worst detractor, it would have been simply devastating. But Balagopal not only withstood it all with his rocklike conviction but went ahead actualizing it by forming Human Rights Forum (HRF) in 1998 and demonstrated that his commitments to CL&DR were unshakable. Read the rest of this entry »

Chikati Konalu , K BalagopalCritical essay on 30 years of Naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh.

( MuDDu Dashabdla Naxalbari, Gamyam Gamanam (1967 – 1997) ,

Editors: S. Sudhakar and M. Kodandram Reddy,  Perspective Publishers, August 1998).

K. Balagopal, ( Source: Niharonline.com,  22.01.2000)

How we look at an historical event depends upon what we have expected from it. This principle applies also to the Communist experiment that had its hey day in the century now past, and is for the present almost wiped out.

If the Communist experiment is understood as a force that stood against the Capitalist system and the mode of life it offers to humankind, its victories and its failures take on one meaning. They take on a different colour if we understand it as an experiment to rebuild human existence on a basis of equality and cooperation. From the second view point, failure is the judgement one passes on the Communist experiment. It is true that it has given us some knowledge of what is to be done to build a society based on cooperation and equality, but it has told us more of what is not to be done. If it is said that that too is knowledge and we should be grateful for it, then so be it. Read the rest of this entry »

Combatlaw.org

Special Commemorative Issue on Balagopal (January-Febuary,2010)

K.Balagopal  (Source:   Voices for  Change , vol 2 no 3 1998)

Human Rights activists have generally found political violence to be problematic. By political violence I mean here the violence of rebel movements. There is no theoretical difficulty in understanding the kind of political violence that stems from the attempts of oppressors to sustain their domination over the oppressed. The Human Rights movement finds it easy and unproblematic to condemn it. Nor is there much problem with intra-elite violence. The Human Rights movement has sometimes ignored it as a matter of no concern, or else analysed it and opposed it from the point of the harm it does to the life, livelihood or other interests of the poor and the oppressed. Read the rest of this entry »

K.Balagopal August 2009

( Foreword to ‘Special Economic Zones in Andhrapradesh : Policy Claims and People’s Experiences’ book written by S.Seethalakshmi )

Wishes have a way of coming home as caricatures. There was a time when the rural poor, especially those living in agriculturally backward areas, asked for industries to be set up so that they could leave the uncertain life of rain-fed agriculture and get a job with a monthly wage slip. In the days when spinning or weaving mills were the prototype of industrial establishments, the industries could often absorb more persons than they displaced, especially because the proprietor of the establishment often  had to purchase the land for himself, and therefore did not gobble up huge expanses. But even if the Government acquired the land for him, it would acquire and transfer no more than the minimum required, for land was not seen as vacant space made by god to house the infrastructure that Capital needs. It was seen however inconsistently as the substructure of life for millions. Read the rest of this entry »

Balagopal Interview Transcript—_{by DEEPA DHANRAJ}

Video Links:

Deepa Dhanraj Interview: Face To Face with Balagopal (Part I)

Deepa Dhanraj Interview: Face To Face with Balagopal (Part II)

Transcript

I had vaguely leftist sympathies almost from my initial college days. Though I think in the beginning I was more of an admirer of Bertrand Russell and through him I had an idea that communists are good in the heart but wrong in the head. That’s roughly Bertrand Russell’s attitude towards the communist movement. Up to the emergency, I also thought that… I had a lot of friends among the Naxalite movement in Warangal where I was studying, but I thought that philosophy was all wrong, though they were, they were good in the heart. Their heart was in the right place. The Emergency that way.. I mean I couldn’t find anything in Russell’s philosophy which would explain the Emergency. Or in anything else that I believed at that time which would explain the Emergency. I thought the Marxist understanding would help me to explain more. If I remember rightly it was during the Emergency that I declared to myself that I am a Marxist hereafter. Later I became a sympathizer. But as far as activity is concerned I was never… I was only in the civil rights movement from the very beginning. In 1978, 79 I was in civil rights movement. Being in Warangal made a lot of difference; if I had been somewhere else perhaps I won’t have been involved in these…. Warangal was a major center for the ML movement in its earlier phase. Where one could see its social content, one did not have to infer it dialectically. One could see it physically. That they were there among the poorest sections of the people and for whom the law had done nothing for the last, by that time 30 years, today it is 50 years. That one could see. Read the rest of this entry »

To remember K Balagopal now is only to remember our own humanness and the conditions under which we struggle for a better life for everyone.

A tribute by a friend who also worked alongside Balagopal for close to three decades, from the early days of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee and through his subsequent reflections which led to the formation of the Human Rights Forum.

The full article is available here.

Two excerpts from a documentary by Deepa Dhanraj:

By N Krishnaji in EPW

K Balagopal was unique in many respects. To my mind, he can be counted along with E M S Namboodiripad, A K Gopalan and such others, who had given up all personal possessions and aspirations and struggled for the oppressed poor. Balagopal straddled the intellectual and activist domains in an amazing and most effective way. But that effort took him away from us: he literally worked himself to total exhaustion. Following K G Kannabiran, another fighter in the same mould, he worked tirelessly to strengthen a movement for civil liberties in Andhra Pradesh, and later extended his domain of activities to the whole country through the Human Rights Forum. Balagopal had the courage to raise serious questions about how Marxism is practised in India by all those who call themselves Marxists. He raised questions about basic human values, about social concerns that transcend ideology, and as a consequence became something of an outcast in Marxist circles. But to the last breath he worked for the poor and the oppressed.

By P A Sebastian and Bernard D’Mellow in EPW

K Balagopal’s role as a civil liberties and democratic rights activist had two phases – the first, when the opening sentence of the Communist Manifesto and Marx’s last thesis on Feuerbach guided his life’s activity, and the second, when, even as he gave up on these precepts, he continued in the tradition of practical humanism.

The complete article is available here: Quintessential Intellectual-Activist

By K G Kannabiran in EPW

K Balagopal metamorphosed from a committed believer in the Naxalbari movement to a human rights activist, defining the terms of his transition. In doing so, he rejected the choice of social transformation by violence, opting instead for such change through a struggle for rights. But the problem is that rights campaigns by themselves will not lead to social transformation. As a lawyer, Balagopal showed himself as the only lawyer of the poor of his generation with a reputation for competence. The poor knew that he was about the one lawyer who believed in their right to life. In his competence that equalled the lawyers of the affluent he was visible. Balagopal made the Court conscious that he was appearing for a citizen or a collective of citizens for whose benefit the Constitution was created.

The complete article is available here:  A One in a Century Rights Activist