Footprints of Foot Soldiers

Naxalbari, a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas, became a rallying point for the social upheaval of the late 1960s. The peasant movement gave call for not only ‘land to the tiller’ but also for seizure of state power. During these stormy years, a young man from a small town moves to Kolkata and comes face to face with the political struggles against food scarcity, the flames of Naxalbari and the global rise of protest movements. He travels to the village of Bengal and Bihar to join the peasant’s rebellion and is joined by comrades from his institute Jadavpur University, as well as from Presidency College, Kolkata and Stephens, Delhi. The journey would make him a witness to the extremes of rural poverty, political adventurism, violence and eventually disillusionment.

This book aims to honestly depict the enormity of the social and human motives that led young foot soldiers like the author to think, feel and act the way they did.