Milind Teltumbde: A Red Star Sprouted from the Soil

Poet Ajay Tanveer wrote “Milind Teltumbde: A Red Star Sprouted from the Soil” to honour a former senior commander of the Naxalite insurgency who was killed in a clash with Indian government forces in 2021. Teltumbde’s brother, Anand Teltumbde, is a scholar, writer,and human rights activist who wrote Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

Milind Teltumbde: A Red Star Sprouted from the Soil

By Ajay Tanveer

Milind Teltumbde—
A red star sprouting from the soil.
You were born to battle
The dark forces and the long, dark nights
That devoured the dreams
And destinies of billions.
You marched on—
With your comrades,
Through stones and thorns
Through jungles, and streams,
And crossed mounts
over ridges and across battlefields.
That knew no victory nor defeat,
only the relentless struggles,
…infinite and eternal.You fought,
So that the billions born to this wounded earth
Might live with dignity.

The soil soaked with your blood
holds the scroll of your struggles—
Inscribed with dreams
To be deciphered by the millions
Who will follow in your footsteps,
Carrying your hopes on their shoulders.
Each one of them
Will draw strength from your words.
And we—
scattered across the globe—
the multitudes rising in resistance
across continents
will lift their fists
in veneration—
To shout in silence
Red Salute!

All who believe
this system must change.
The demons of greed and power
that enslaved the planet—
must fall.
Their rotten books be
Shredded and burnt.
The Earth restored to her quiet serenity
Shielded from all that is vile.
Never again
Shall she nurture hierarchies
Of big and small.
She will embrace
All her children
With abandon of motherly love,
So that
They all stand tall, side by side.
As proud human beings
A ditch and a mound
will be all alike.
Every tiller and every worker
will walk the land with dignity—
through fields they have ploughed with their hands.
And they shall take pride
In the sweat and soil
That stains their tanned skin—
For it speaks of their roots,
Deep beneath their feet.

Unshackled,
They will unleash their caged energies,
Their dormant creativity—
Their passions
To shape a world
Born of their own imagination.
They will hear the music
In the rustle of swinging leaves,
Plant dreams like seeds,
And watch them grow.
They will lift their arms,
And embrace the sky.

Where every bird flies free of its cage,
Where no stomach goes hungry—
Where food fills every bowl.
Where in every season,
Lilies and wildflowers bloom without fear.
Where orphaned ideas need not wander,
Nor be cast aside as eyesores.
Where villages do not lie
Crushed beneath the boots of soldiers.
And yes, just like this—
The workers of the mills
Shall never stand helpless before anyone,
But hold their rightful stake
In the life of the great city.
You will breathe always
Through the people of this nation.
You will live like this—
Each day, every day—
As certain as the rising sun,
As steady as the heartbeat of a people
Who will never forget.

Milind…
Your mother, Ansuya—
She is no less than Mother Earth herself:
She gave birth to those
Who stand for the people.
Anand Teltumbde.
Milind Teltumbde.
Two brothers—
Each dedicating his life’s journey
To the struggle for justice,
Driven by the same dream,
A shared destination,
Though walking different paths.
One wielded the pen,
Sharpened by thought and reason.
The other took up arms,
Sharpened by fire and fury.
Both moved by the pain
Of the same people—
forced to sell themselves
At the crossroads of the city
For a few coins,
Starving,
Just to earn their next piece of bread.

In the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra,
In the Ghanour belt,
Spies lurk in shadow,
Khaki uniforms patrol every lane.
A deafening silence hangs
at every crossing.
Centuries ago,
Maharashtra was on every tongue—
And so it is today.
It was on this very soil
That Namdev sounded the call of equality,
Shaking the throne of the Sultan.
Today, once again,
The legs of that throne are trembling.
The emperor’s dreams are dimming.
Once again,
A new epic is being written.
A lantern flickering in the distance
Is about to become a blaze.
Once more,
The cadence of rebellious rhymes rises.
Once more,
The palace foundations crack—
And the throne
Breaks into pieces.

As Far as the Eye Can See
As far as your eyes can reach,
People are leaving their homes—
Carrying their heads in their palms.
Each one carries your name, Milind,
And the many names you lived by:
Deepak… Sudhir… Sahyadri…
Parvir… Jeeva…
You breathe through them,
And they through you.
Spartacus—the rebel slave of Rome—
Was of your tribe,
And you, of his.
What a strange and fateful confluence…
Across centuries and empires,
The fire refuses to die.
Milind Teltumbde…
The fire of sacrifice
Boiled in your heart—
Your unwavering resolve,
Your fierce commitment.
You were a traveller
On a long and perilous march,
A truth that refused
To die with death.
In your footsteps,
One could hear the distant drumbeats—
The prelude to a coming storm.
And in the echo of your breath,
The chants of rebellion stirred—
A song of mutiny,
Woven into the ritual of martyrdom.
The poet’s verses
Have risen from the page,
To entwine themselves
With the edge of your sword.
Milind Teltumbde…
When your blood touched the earth,
Mother Earth must have smiled—
And your mother’s crown,
Like a blooming flower,
Must have gleamed with pride.
Her head must have lifted high,
As if to say:
Even a bullet could not pierce the chest of my son.
For within you, Milind,
Lived Bhagat Singh,
And Babasaheb Ambedkar—
A rebel and a visionary,
Fused into one soul.
You are not gone, Milind.
You haven’t gone anywhere.
You cannot go.
You are here—
in the clatter of machines, flutter factories,
In the bellowing dust of coal pits,
Where you once worked.
Forging tools
to punch holes through the darkness of this system.
You are there—
In the freedom songs echoing
Through the streets of Maharashtra and Bengal,
Ukraine, Cuba, and Palestine alike.
Look—
your offspring have taken to the streets.
A sea of heads rises wherever one looks.
In every town and village of Maharashtra,
The sun rests gently on each rooftop.
Buds blossom on trees,
Whose branches are now home
To the inheritors of martyrs.
And now,
In the wombs of expectant mothers,
So many more
Milind Teltumbdes
Are growing.
We have come all this way, unafraid, to honour your words—
Even as the noose haunts our dreams each night.

Ajay Tanveer is a California-based poet known as “Peeta Chandeli Wala” in the Punjabi literary world. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia, Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social, and Instagram @PancouverMedia.