The late communist leader Mao Zedong once said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. But the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student's wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has chosen karate as its weapon of choice to take on West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee government in the upcoming elections. Until now, the ABVP has trained 5,000 women aged between 13 and 40 in the martial arts discipline to ward off potential molesters under a state administration that it claims does little to protect them. And its political target, of course, is the ruling Trinamool Congress.
