Mandakini Narayanan (died 16 December 2006), popularly known as Ma, was an Indian Naxalite leader in Kerala. Born in Gujarat, she married the late Naxal leader Kunnikkal Narayanan. She herself was one of the front-runners of the Naxalite movement in Kerala, a prominent state in India.
Mandakini was born to a Gujarati couple, Navin Chandra Osa and Urvashi Osa. She worked with the undivided Communist Party while studying in Mumbai.
Mandakini, along with her husband and daughter, led several agitations waged by Naxalites in Kerala. She was arrested and sent to jail in the Pulpally and Thalassery police stations attack cases, which resulted in death of two police officials. She received a sentence of two and a half years during the emergency and was subjected to severe police excesses.
Mandakini died on 16 December 2006, at the age of 82.
Mandakini was survived by her daughter K. Ajitha, Naxalite turned human rights activist and social reformer. Ajitha now champions the cause of women-rights and fights against social evils and corruption through an organization named ANWESHI.
Kocheril Raman Narayananlisten (help·info) was an Indian diplomat, academician and politician who served as the tenth president of India (1997–2002) and ninth vice president of India (1992–1997).
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
Murlidhar Devidas Amte, popularly known as Baba Amte, was an Indian social worker and social activist known particularly for his work for the rehabilitation and empowerment of people suffering from leprosy. He has received numerous awards and prizes including the Padma Vibhushan, the Dr. Ambedkar International Award, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Templeton Prize and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award. He is also known as the modern Gandhi of India.
Kunnikkal Ajitha is a former Indian naxalite who took active part in the naxalite movements in Kerala in the 1960s when the group conducted armed raids on Thalassery and Pulpally police stations and killed two policemen. Ajitha was subsequently arrested, tried and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Aruna Asaf Ali was an Indian educator, political activist, and publisher. An active participant in the Indian independence movement, she is widely remembered for hoisting the Indian National flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan, Bombay during the Quit India Movement in 1942. Post-independence, she remained active in politics, becoming Delhi's first Mayor.
C.K Janu is an Indian social activist.
Salwa Judum was a militia that was mobilised and deployed as part of anti-insurgency operations in Chhattisgarh, India, aimed at countering Naxalite violence in the region. The militia, consisting of local tribal youth, received support and training from the Chhattisgarh state government. It has been outlawed and banned by a Supreme Court court order, but continues to exist in the form of Armed Auxiliary Forces, District Reserve Group and other vigilante groups.
The Suryanelli rape case refers to a case of kidnapping and subsequent rape of a 16-year-old school girl from Suryanelli, Kerala, India, in 1996. The girl was allegedly lured with the promise of marriage on 16 January 1996 and kidnapped. She was allegedly raped by 37 of the 42 accused persons, over a period of 40 days. The remaining had abetted the crime. After P.J. Kurien, the then Union Minister and later Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman belonging to UDF led by Congress party, was named, the issue was politicised, due to a then upcoming general election. Several women's rights activists like K. Ajitha and Suja Susan George, and women's organisations, like NFIW and Anweshi, have taken an interest in the case.
The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency, officially referred to as the Left Wing Extremism (LWE), is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups known as Naxalites or Naxals; a group of far-left radical communists, supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology, and the Indian government. Influence zone of LWE is called the Red corridor, which has been steadily declining in terms of geographical coverage and number of violent incidences, and in 2021 it was confined to 25 "most affected" and 70 "total affected" districts across 10 states in two coal rich, remote, forested hilly clusters in and around Dandakaranya-Chhattisgarh-Odisha region and tri-junction area of Jharkhand-Bihar and-West Bengal. The Naxalites have frequently targeted tribal, police and government workers in what they say is a fight for improved land rights and more jobs for neglected agricultural laborer and the poor.
Panchagni is a 1986 Indian Malayalam-language drama thriller film directed by Hariharan and written by M. T. Vasudevan Nair. The story is loosely inspired from the life of naxalite K. Ajitha who was part of the naxalite movement in Kerala in the 1960s. The film tells the story of Indira, a naxalite who comes out from prison on parole, she is serving a life sentence for killing a landlord. It stars Mohanlal, Geetha, Nadia Moidu, and Thilakan. The film features songs composed by Bombay Ravi and a score by Pukazhenthi. Cinematography was done by Shaji N. Karun.
Arikkad Varghese, popularly known as Saghavu Varghese, was an Indian communist activist (Naxalite), who fought mainly to protect the Adivasis in Wayanad from the exploitation of the feudal lords who were primarily members of political parties like Congress, and the police system which then aided the exploitation, during the 1960s.
S. Nambi Narayanan is an Indian aerospace engineer who worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award by the Government of India, in 2019. The scientist was instrumental in developing the Vikas engine that would be used for the first PSLV that India launched.As a senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), he was in-charge of the cryogenics division. In 1994, he was falsely charged with espionage and arrested. The charges against him were dismissed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in April 1996, and the Supreme Court of India declared him not guilty in 1998.
Venkiteswaran Chittur Subramanian is an Indian film critic, professor, documentary filmmaker, writer and occasional subtitler from Chalakudi, Kerala, India, who writes predominantly in English and Malayalam. He won the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 2009.
Bipin Chandran is an Indian writer and screenwriter from Kerala. He predominantly works in Malayalam cinema and his debut film was Daddy Cool.
Dakshayani Velayudhan was an Indian parliamentarian and leader of the Oppressed classess. Belonging to the Pulayar community, she was among the first generation of people to be educated from the community. She holds several distinctions including becoming the first woman from her community to wear an upper cloth, the first Scheduled Caste woman graduate in India, a science graduate, a member of the Cochin Legislative Council and of being one of nine female members of the Constituent Assembly of India. But it is not correct to mention that she was one of the first women from her community to wear an upper cloth. Her elder sister and her mother Thayyithara Maani may be given this credit prior to her. Mother Maani lived lived up to the post independent period in India and died in 1959.
Cheeram Veetti Sathyan, popularly known as Odessa Sathyan was an Indian documentary filmmaker and social activist, known for his involvement in the naxal movements of the seventies in Kerala and his association with Odessa Collective, a people's film movement which was founded by the noted Malayalam filmmaker, John Abraham. He received the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi award, for his musical documentary Balikurup, a film on Malayalam poet, A. Ayyappan.
Kunnikkal Narayanan was one of the front-runners of the Naxalite movement in Kerala, India. His wife was Mandakini Narayanan. Narayanan, along with his wife and daughter, led several agitations waged by Naxalites in Kerala. He was arrested and sent to jail in the Pulpally and Thalassery police stations attack cases, which resulted in death of two police officials.
Annie Thayyil, was an Indian novelist, journalist, translator and biographer of Malayalam language and a member of the Cochin Legislative Council between 1945 and 1948. Her oeuvre comprises 78 books covering the genres of novel, biography, politics, travelogue and biblical literature. She was the secretary of the Sahitya Parishad and a member of the executive council of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi.
Kadathanat Madhavi Amma was an Indian poet, novelist and short story writer of Malayalam literature. Known for poetry anthologies such as Kalyopaharam and Kanikkonna, she was also the author of two works based on Vadakkan Pattukal viz. Thacholi Othenan and Payyamvelli Chandu. The Kerala Sahitya Akademi awarded her their annual award for overall contributions in 1996.
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