Varavara Rao - After Release From Jail

After Release From Jail

After a stifling repression period between 1985-89 under the Telugu Desam Party rule, the newly elected Indian National Congress government allowed a little relaxation for a short period after December 1989. Beginning from January 1990, when Virasam held its twentieth annual conference in Hyderabad to May 1990 when Andhra Pradesh Raithu Cooli Sangham held its annual conference in Warangal, millions of people attended the meetings and expressed their unity with the movement. The media reported that 12 lakh people attended the Warangal meeting; almost double the population of that city. Varavara Rao played a very important role in all these meetings as organizer and speaker. But within a short time from this massive gathering, repression on the revolutionary movement resumed with the killing of N Prabhakar Reddy, a lawyer and leader of APCLC. Varavara Rao had to shift to relatively safer Hyderabad, where he joined as a post-doctoral research scholar studying oral traditions in literature at University of Hyderabad.

Varavara Rao, along with a number of intellectuals and people’s organizations stood in the forefront in exposing and resisting the globalization policies of Chandrababu Naidu who came to power in 1994. During Chandrababu Naidu’s government, three Central Committee members of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Peoples War were arrested in Bangalore and killed. Some private criminal gangs killed T. Purushotham and Md Azam Ali, leaders of APCLC and life-threat to Varavara Rao turned imminent.