Police ask Rao’s kin: Why read Marx and Mao?

A day after poet and leftist ideologue Vara Vara Rao was arrested by Maharashtra police and taken to Pune, his family members were still trying to recover from the shock of early morning raids.

For Professor Satyanarayana and Pavana, the son-inlaw and daughter of Vara Vara Rao, it was a nightmare.

A group of police officers rushed into their home in Hyderabad, ransacking the house, throwing books, clothes and other articles around. Strangely, the cops objected to the couple having a large number of books including leftist literature, and a photo of Karl Marx in their home. ‘If you read so much, you must be dangerous,’ one of the cops said.

Raids, arrests not new for activist

For the noted poet and founder of Revolutionary Writers Association Vara Vara Rao, the arrest by Pune Police in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence was a case of déjà vu.

The 78-year-old activist, often branded by the government and its agencies as a Maoist-sympathiser, played the role of a mediator in the failed peace talks between the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh and then the outlawed People’s War Group in 2005. But he has been arrested several times and treated as an antagonist.

A postgraduate in Telugu Literature, the government employee and lecturer — in the 1960s — decided to use his writing and literary power to fight for the cause of the poor and landless, instead of taking up arms.