Mallojula Koteswara Rao, commonly known as Kishenji, was a Politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the group's military leader.
Kishenji was born into a poor family in Pedapalli (in the district of Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh) which eked out a living on priesthood in near by temples. His father was a freedom fighter and, also vice-president of the state branch of the Congress Socialist Party. In 1973, after a BSc mathematics degree from Government Degree College, Peddapalli, he moved to Hyderabad to pursue law.
He launched the Radical Students Union (RSU) in Andhra Pradesh. He became a full-time member of the People's War Group in 1974. During the Emergency in 1975, he went underground to take part in the revolution.
Several things motivated him: Writer Varavara Rao, who founded the Revolutionary Writers Association, India’s political atmosphere and the progressive environment in which he grew up. When he joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), his father left the Indian National Congress saying, two kinds of politics cannot survive under one roof. His father believed in socialism, but not in armed struggle.
After the Emergency ended in 1977, Kishenji led the historic peasant movement against feudalism at Jagitial and Siricilla in Karimnagar. Over 60,000 farmers joined it. This was the basis for the formation of the People's War Group in Andhra Pradesh by Naxalite leader Kondapalli Seetharamaiah in the early '80s.
