Journalistically speaking, life’s been good for Shubhranshu Choudhary, founder of CGNet Swara mobile news and author of Let’s Call him Vasu. In the past month, he’s been derided as a Maoist and an Intelligence Bureau (IB) agent by people on both ends of the ideological spectrum. Shubhranshu confesses that his book, published simultaneously in Hindi as Uska Naam Vasu Nahi, is “a Maoist point of view, with the camera placed on their shoulders.”
The book is about the Maoist movement in Chhattisgarh, and starts off with his search for an old Maoist friend, described only by his nom de guerre “Vasu.” The book breaks new ground as a first draft of the history of the Maoists in Chhattisgarh since their entry from Andhra in the early 1980s. It contains several interviews with top guerrilla leaders like Mupalla Lakshman Rao alias Ganapathy, Kosa, Sonu alias Bhupathy, Sabyasachi Panda and Rajanna and also young Adivasi leaders like Venkitesh.
