Counterview / by Harsh Thakor

Varavara Rao, born in 1940, is an Indian poet, teacher, and activist associated with radical politics. He turns 85 on November 3. Known as VV, Rao gained prominence during the rural land rights movements of the 1960s and served as a mediator between the Andhra Pradesh government and Naxalite groups in the early 2000s. The Indian state has classified him as a dissident and a national security threat.
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Also read:
▪ Activist Varavara Rao’s request to travel for dental surgery rejected (Scroll.in / Oct 2025)
▪ SC refuses to hear plea of P Varavara Rao on bail modification (Hindustan Times / Sep 2025)
▪ Verse, ablaze: Excerpts from ‘Varavara Rao: A Life in Poetry’ (The Week / Jul 2023)
▪ Supreme Court grants permanent medical bail to P. Varavara Rao in Bhima Koregaon case (The Leaflet / Aug 2022)
▪ Captive Imagination – Letters From Prison

Author: Varavara Rao
Publishing Date: 2010
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Pages: 208

Poet, Marxist critic and activist, Varavara Rao (VV) has been continually persecuted by the state and intermittently imprisoned since 1973, but he never stopped writing during all these decades, even from within prison. When he was subjected to ‘one thousand days of solitary confinement’ during 1985­-89 in Secunderabad Jail, a leading national daily invited him to write about his prison experiences.

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