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Contemporary insiders put the number of core Naxal's in the college at the height of militancy at no more than 30 - not a big figure, but by most accounts, the single largest Maoist presence in all DU institutions. In 1968, history student Arvind Narain Das had run for president of the college student's body elections on an openly Naxal platform. He won. "We were ready to storm heaven," Dilip Simeon, a leading member of the group, was to write later. Times have moved since. Awadhesh Sinha is additional chief secretary in the Maharashtra government. Das, Ray and Simeon went on to do their PhDs. Das, a journalist and sociologist, died in 2000. He was 52. Ray teaches at Delhi School of Economics. Simeon joined Ramjas College as a teacher in 1974. In the '80s, he was attacked brutally while leading an agitation. He is now a senior research fellow at Nehru Library. Rajiv Kumar did his DPhil from Oxford and is director of ICRIER a leading government supported rightwing economics thinktank.

from The Heart of our Darkness
by Mohan Guruswamy

Naxalbari is the name of a village and a region in northern part of the state of West Bengal. Naxalbari comes under the jurisdiction of Darjeeling district with its sub divisional headquarter at Siliguri. The stretch of land, where Naxalbari is situated, lies on the Terai region at the base of the Himalayas. To the west of Naxalbari, across the border river Mechi lies Nepal. The entire stretch of the land surrounding Naxalbari is covered by farmlands, tea estates and forests and small villages, consists of an area of 121 sq. km. The large villages in the region are Buraganj, Hatighisha, Phansidawa and Naxalbari.

from The Heart of our Darkness
by Mohan Guruswamy

Naxalbari

During the mid 1960s Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal organized an ultra leftist faction in CPI (M) in northern Bengal. In 1967, a militant peasant uprising took place in Naxalbari, led by the Mazumdar-Sanyal group. This group would later become known as the Naxalites. The same year, Mazumdar and Sanyal broke away and formed the All India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), which in turn founded the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969, with Mazumdar as its General Secretary.

From:-
The Heart of our Darkness
by Mohan Guruswamy

It's All Gibberish

Gibberish, when done with absolute intensity, takes us out of our logical mind and into the realms of the mysterious and spiritual. Here are some guidelines for Gibberish meditation; it will take you no more than 10 minutes to practise each stage respectively.

First Stage: Throw thoughts out; get rid of gibberish

1. While sitting, close your eyes and begin to utter nonsense sounds - any sounds or words, so long as they make no sense.
2. Just speak any language that you don't know!
3. Allow yourself to express whatever needs to be expressed within you. Throw everything out.
4. The mind thinks, always, in terms of words. Gibberish helps to break up this pattern of continual verbalisation. Without suppressing your thoughts, you can throw them out.
5. Let your body likewise be expressive.

Second Stage: Moving into a great silence

1. Just sit in a space of deep silence, stillness and relaxation.
2. Go inwards, deeper and deeper, just like an arrow.
3. Penetrate all the layers and hit the centre of your existence.

The Gibberish technique is a wonderful tool to get rid of anger and frustration. However, it is not only about removing negativity. It also helps the practitioner express and enjoy positive emotions such as joy or excitement. It gives you an opportunity to feel free and uninhibited.

When the troubles first erupted in the predominantly tribal village of Naxalbari and began spreading to other areas in West Bengal, a popular slogan then was "China's Chairman is our Chairman". It may not have fired the minds of the rural masses, but it caught on in the university campuses all over the country. Many students of Delhi's elite St. Stephens College even went underground to fight for the revolution. But they soon, like their compatriots from Kolkata's elite Presidency College, discovered that revolution was not a dinner party, or even a seminar.