Sai Baba In Media - Deccan Herald - Indian newpaper

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Deccan Herald

A lost battle: from a fiery beginning to a search for a new blend of ideology

There cannot be any final military solution to the Naxalite problem. It can be

resolved only through the process of harmonisation and love.

For one who began his career with an armed struggle to overthrow the government,

59-year-old Philip M Prasad’s career history is virtually peppered with

contradictions. From being a ``right thinking Marxian dogmatist’’ he became a

votary of the Lohia movement, and then a brief honeymoon with politics. Again,

from politics to Sathya Sai Baba and Shiv Sena. And he still calls himself an

atheist! Prasad was one of the accused in the police station storming case of

1968 at Pulpally in Wayanad and had been in and out of jails till 1977. ``I was

more into ideological activities... organising classes, drafting resolutions and

of course, occasionally taking up arms,’’ he told Sunday Herald about his

Naxalite life at his humble office near the civil court in Thiruvananthapuram.

Though the Naxalite movement in Kerala today is reduced to certain fringe

groups who use relatively peaceful modes of protest, Prasad affirms that it was

a fiery beginning for them. Nevertheless, disillusionment set in in less than a

decade and the movement fizzled out after it splintered into four-five groups.

His search for a “new blend of ideology’’ led him to a serious study of Indian

scriptures, puranas and Buddhism among other things. Prasad says he emerged out

of it “more an Indian than a Marxian dogmatist.’’

In the 80s, Prasad got enamoured with Ram Manohar Lohia and joined the Lohia

Vichar Vedi. “Nobody else has understood India’s industrial scenario better

than Lohia and I still believe that the idea holds good in the country’s

socio-political context,’’ he says. The honeymoon lasted hardly four years. He

left it in the mid-80s to float the Indian Labour Party which he claims was a

militant Dalit movement. “But again, I abandoned it after I found the party

rudderless,’’ he said. Prasad says he withdrew to himself for sometime after

that and became an introvert. That was when he met Sathya Sai Baba at

Puttaparthi. “For the last 21 years I have been at his feet. Many people

believe that swamis and Naxalites are two polarities. However, I have found

that they mutually respect each other. Naxalites in East Godavari and

Visakhapatnam districts have high regard for Sai Baba and encourage Sai bhajans

in their villages,” he said. Prasad said Baba also understood their good aspects

though he did not endorse their violence. Prasad has already published six books

on his guru and several of them have been translated into different languages.

Prasad has no doubt that the Naxalite movement is a battle lost. “Today, they

have built an establishment that is swallowing them. In the last decade, they

have also become corrupt. Money has begun to flow and their former ideological

purity is no more visible,’’ he said. “There cannot be any final military

solution to the Naxalite problem. It can be resolved only through the process

of harmonisation and love,’’ he adds. R Gopakumar (in Thiruvanathapuram