Chile’s former president and a democratically elected Marxist late Salvador Allende and Arjun Dumada, 60, from Vevaji village in Talasari tehsil of Thane district who barely studied till his SSC, have nothing in common. But this notion erodes, as you begin chatting with Dumada.
From Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to Allende, Mao and Fidel Castro are not only the names, but his ‘source of inspiration,’ as he puts it, needed to work against the ‘capitalist’ and ‘bourgeoisie’ political parties in the area. Dumada, by no means, is an isolated example in the 21 villages of Talasari tehsil, the 90% of the population of which is Warli tribal.
These are the activists, party workers and comrades which are the backbone of Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the tribal belt of Thane district. After the results of recently held Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections, the Panchayat Samiti of Talasari remained with CPI (M) for the 50th consecutive year. Ever since the state of Maharashtra was formed and the first elections were held in 1962, the CPI (M) has never lost this Panchayat Samiti. The tribal population of Talasari has been voting for the ‘Red Flag’ without an interruption for all those years and no other party such as Congress, Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena seem to have been able to make inroads in this red bastion of Maharashtra.
A party which has a negligible political presence in the rest of the state, except for few places, has kept on winning in Talasari. DNA travels to the interiors of Talasari to understand what has been forcing the people of this region to never leave the Red Flag.
There are the stories from the past that still haunt the tribals, there are stories of heroic leadership that the tribals got and then there are concerns about the future. A look at the history of Talasari answers the most eligible question which everyone has, ‘Why the red flag keeps flying high here?’
