Naxalite Discourse as Counter- memory: A Study of Kerala’s Naxal Bari: Ajitha: Memoirs of a Young Revolutionary as a Counter-narrative

Abstract

Counter-memory, as an act of resistance against socially constructed public memory, allows for a rethinking of hegemonic discourses about social, political, and cultural events throughout history. As a subject governed by power structures, memory frequently devolves into a one-sided affair, frequently in the absence of a counter-narrative. At that moment, memory is reduced to a selective form rather than a complete one, owing to its subjective rather than objective nature. Since memory narratives began to garner widespread attention from diverse fields such as literary studies, history, linguistics, psychology, and communication, the term ‘memory’ has been a point of research, rather than the term ‘remembering.’ While ‘remembering’ is merely an act and ‘memory’ is a repository of previous occurrences, memory studies mature when they overcome the dominance of the present over the absent. Individual memory narratives are not merely echoes, but precise recreations of reality from unique vantage points. Individual Naxalite memory narratives penetrate the popular imagination by disrupting the silences of the official versions. In this regard, Kerala’s Naxal Bari: Ajitha: Memoirs of a Young Revolutionary (2008), the English translation by Sanju Ramachandran of Ormakkurippukal, emerges as a potent counter-narrative from the perspective of the ‘missing’ in Kerala's public memory of the Naxalite struggle. Ajitha's memoir also serves as a chronicle of  Kerala's first wave of Naxalites. Influenced by the 1967 Naxal Bari rebellion in the village of Naxal Bari in West Bengal, K. Ajitha became the only female member of A. Varghese's militant activist organization, founded in response to the atrocities committed against the tribals and villages of Wayanad by feudal lords and police. Kunnikkal Ajitha was the group's face during the initial wave of Naxalitism in Kerala, India. In her memoir, she retells history from the perspective of someone who is the ‘other.’ As Ajitha reveals the elite's cruelty toward the disadvantaged in terms of class, financial status, and gender, Kerala’s Naxal Bari: Ajitha: Memoirs of a Young Revolutionary is regarded as one of the finest political counter-mnemonic discourses in history. So, the goal of this paper is to look at K. Ajitha's memoir from a human rights point of view as a revisionist story of individual resistance that is based on gender.