Calcutta police were told not to watch cinema during the heydays of naxalism

Tell your family members not to disclose your profession. Avoid going to cinemas or theatre. Always treat your revolver as if it is loaded. These were among a series of instructions given to the Calcutta Police personnel during the heydays of the Naxalite movement in the late sixties and the early seventies.

Security experts, police forces and researchers on the movement can draw lessons from the rich and voluminous records of the Calcutta Police Gazette (CPG) between 1967 and 1975. These records have been painstakingly dug out and compiled in a book The Naxalites -- Through the Eyes of the Police, edited by noted author on militant nationalist and political movements, Ashoke Kumar Mukhopadhyay.

In his 24-page introduction to the book, he recalls those days when the walls of Kolkata buildings were full of grafitti like Amar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari (Our home is Naxalbari), Chiner Chairman, Amader Chairman (Chairman of Chinese Communist Party Mao Tse Tung is our Chairman) and Pulish Maro, Austro Karo (kill the police and snatch their weapons).

The entire metropolis was affected by violent clashes, demonstrations and killings of police and CPI(M) cadres and "fake encounter" killings of a large number of youth.

"Scanning the notifications appearing in the CPG of the 1970s is like the interception of signals by the military intelligence at the times of war," writes Mukhopadhyay.

Besides providing the reader with invaluable information about the everyday tactics adopted by the police to fight the "urban guerrilla war" that had rocked the eastern metropolis, the CPG lends another dimension to the history of the Naxalite movement by "offering an alternative version from the viewpoint of its antagonist," he says.