The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my

appointment with India's Gravest Internal Security Threat. I'd been waiting for
months to hear from them.
I had to be at the Maa Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, hhattisgarh, at any of
four given times on two given days. That was to ta!e care of bad weather,
punctures, bloc!ades, transport stri!es and sheer bad luc!. The note said" #$riter
should have camera, ti!a and coconut. Meeter will have cap, %indi &utloo! maga'ine
and bananas. (assword" )amash!ar Guru*i.#
)amash!ar Guru*i. I wondered whether the Meeter and Greeter would be e+pecting a
man. ,nd whether I should get myself a moustache.
There are many ways to describe Dantewara. It's an o+ymoron. It's a border town
smac! in the heart of India. It's the epicentre of a war. It's an upside down,
inside out town.
In Dantewara the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The *ail-
superintendent is in *ail. The prisoners are free ./00 of them escaped from the old
town *ail two years ago1. $omen who have been raped are in police custody. The
rapists give speeches in the ba'aar.
,cross the Indravati river, in the area controlled by the Maoists, is the place the
police call '(a!istan'. There the villages are empty, but the forest is full of
people. hildren who ought to be in school run wild. In the lovely forest villages,
the concrete school buildings have either been blown up and lie in a heap, or
they're full of policemen. The deadly war that's unfolding in the *ungle is a war
that the government of India is both proud and shy of. &peration Green %unt has
been proclaimed as well as denied. (. hidambaram, India's home minister .and 2&
of the war1 says it does not e+ist, that it's a media creation. ,nd yet substantial
funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being
mobilised. Though the theatre of war is in the *ungles of entral India, it will
have serious conse3uences for us all.
If ghosts are the lingering spirits of someone, or something that has ceased to
e+ist, then perhaps the )ational Mineral Development orporation's new four-lane
highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. (erhaps it is the
harbinger of what is still to come.
The antagonists in the forest are disparate and une3ual in almost every way. &n one
side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money, the firepower, the
media, and the hubris of an emerging superpower. &n the other, ordinary villagers
armed with traditional weapons, bac!ed by a superbly organised, hugely motivated
Maoist guerilla fighting force with an e+traordinary and violent history of armed
rebellion. The Maoists and the paramilitary are old adversaries and have fought
older avatars of each other several times before" Telengana in the 4560s, $est
7engal, 7ihar, Sri!a!ulam in ,ndhra (radesh in the late 80s and 90s, and then again
in ,ndhra (radesh, 7ihar and Maharashtra from the :0s all the way through to the
present. They are familiar with each other's tactics, and have studied each other's
combat manuals closely. 2ach time, it seemed as though the Maoists .or their
previous avatars1 had been not *ust defeated, but literally, physically
e+terminated. 2ach time, they have re-emerged, more organised, more determined and
more influential than ever. Today once again the insurrection has spread through
the mineral-rich forests of hhattisgarh, ;har!hand, &rissa, and $est 7engal<
homeland to millions of India's tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world.
It's easier on the liberal conscience to believe that the war in the forests is a
war between the government of India and the Maoists, who call elections a sham,
parliament a pigsty and who have openly declared their intention to overthrow the
Indian state. It's convenient to forget that tribal people in entral India have a
history of resistance that pre-dates Mao by centuries. .That's a truism of course.
If they didn't, they wouldn't e+ist.1 The %o, the &raon, the =ols, the Santhals,
the Mundas and the Gonds have all rebelled several times > against the 7ritish,
against 'amindars and against moneylenders. The rebellions were cruelly crushed,
many thousands !illed, but the people were never con3uered. 2ven after
independence, tribal people were at the heart of the first uprising that could be
described as Maoist, in )a+albari village in $est 7engal .where the word )a+alite >
now used interchangeably with #Maoist# > originates1. Since then )a+alite politics
has been ine+tricably entwined with tribal uprisings, which says as much about the
tribals as it does about )a+alites.
This legacy of rebellion has left behind a furious people who have been
deliberately isolated and marginalised by the Indian government. The Indian
constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by parliament
in 4560. It was a tragic day for tribal people. The constitution ratified colonial
policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands. &vernight, it turned the
entire tribal population into s3uatters on their own land. It denied them their
traditional rights to forest produce. It criminalised a whole way of life. In
e+change for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and
dignity.
%aving dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a
cruel sleight of hand the government began to use their own penury against them.
2ach time it needed to displace a large population > for dams, irrigation pro*ects,
mines > it tal!ed of #bringing tribals into the mainstream# or of giving them #the
fruits of modern development#. &f the tens of millions of internally displaced
people .more than /0 million by big dams alone1 > refugees of India's #progress# >
the great ma*ority are tribal people. $hen the government begins to tal! of tribal
welfare, it's time to worry.
The most recent e+pression of concern has come from the home minister, who says he
does not want tribal people living in #museum cultures#. The well-being of tribal
people didn't seem to be such a priority during his career as a corporate lawyer,
representing the interests of several ma*or mining companies. So it might be an
idea to en3uire into the basis for his new an+iety.
&ver the past five years or so, the governments of hhattisgarh, ;har!hand, &rissa
and $est 7engal have signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding > all of them
secret > with corporate houses worth several billion dollars, for steel plants,
sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminum refineries, dams and mines. In order
for the M&?s to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved.
Therefore, this war.
$hen a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its
borders, what does that war loo! li!e@ Does the resistance stand a chance@ Should
it@ $ho are the Maoists@ ,re they *ust violent nihilists foisting an outdated
ideology on tribal people, goading them into a hopeless insurrection@ $hat lessons
have they learned from their past e+perience@ Is armed struggle intrinsically
undemocratic@ Is the Sandwich Theory > of #ordinary# tribals being caught in the
crossfire between the state and the Maoists > an accurate one@ ,re #Maoists# and
#tribals# two entirely discrete categories, as is being made out@ Do their
interests converge@ %ave they learned anything from each other@ %ave they changed
each other@
The day before I left, my mother called sounding sleepy. #I've been thin!ing,# she
said, with a mother's weird instinct. #$hat this country needs is revolution.#
,n article on the internet says that Israel's Mossad is training /0 high-ran!ing
Indian police officers in the techni3ues of targeted assassinations, to render the
Maoist organisation #headless#. There's tal! in the press about the new hardware
that has been bought from Israel" laser range finders, thermal imaging e3uipment
and the unmanned drones so popular with the ?S army. (erfect weapons to use against
the poor.
The drive from Aaipur to Dantewara ta!es about ten hours through areas !nown to be
Maoist-infested. These are not careless words. #InfestBinfestation# implies
diseaseBpests. Diseases must be cured. (ests must be e+terminated. Maoists must be
wiped out. In these creeping, innocuous ways the language of genocide has entered
our vocabulary.
To protect the highway security forces have #secured# a narrow bandwidth of forest
on either side. Curther in, it's the ra* of the #Dada log#. The 7rothers. The
omrades.
&n the outs!irts of Aaipur, a massive billboard advertises Dedanta .the company our
home minister once wor!ed with1 cancer hospital. In &rissa, where it is mining
bau+ite, Dedanta is financing a university. In these creeping ways, mining
corporations enter our imaginations" the gentle giants who really care. It's called
SA" corporate social responsibility. It allows mining companies to be li!e the
legendary actor and former chief minister, )andamuri Tara!a Aama Aao, who li!ed to
play all the parts in Telugu mythologicals > the good guys and the bad guys, all at
once, in the same movie. This SA mas!s the outrageous economics that underpins the
mining sector in India. Cor e+ample, according to the recent Eo!ayu!ta Aeport for
=arnata!a, for every tonne of iron ore mined by a private company the government
gets a royalty of AsF9 .G0p1 and the mining company ma!es As6,000. In the bau+ite
and aluminum sector the figures are even worse. $e're tal!ing daylight robbery to
the tune of billions of dollars. 2nough to buy elections, governments, *udges,
newspapers, TD channels, )G&s and aid agencies. $hat's the occasional cancer
hospital here or there@
I don't remember seeing Dedanta's name on the long list of M&?s signed by the
hhattisgarh government. 7ut I'm twisted enough to suspect that if there's a cancer
hospital, there must be a flat-topped bau+ite mountain somewhere.
$e pass =an!er, famous for its counter-terrorism and *ungle warfare training school
run by 7rigadier 7 = (onwar, Aumpelstilts!in of this war. %e is charged with the
tas! of turning corrupt, sloppy policemen .straw1 into *ungle commandos .gold1.
#Cight a guerilla li!e a guerilla#, the motto of the warfare training school, is
painted on the roc!s. The men are taught to run, slither, *ump on and off airborne
helicopters, ride horses .for some reason1, eat sna!es and live off the *ungle. The
brigadier ta!es great pride in training street dogs to fight #terrorists#. 2ight
hundred policemen graduate from the school every si+ wee!s. Twenty similar schools
are being planned all over India. The police force is gradually being turned into
an army. .In =ashmir it's the other way around. The army is being turned into a
bloated, administrative, police force.1 ?pside down. Inside out. 2ither way, the
2nemy is the (eople.
It's late. ;agdalpur is asleep, e+cept for the many hoardings of Aahul Gandhi
as!ing people to *oin the youth congress. %e's been to 7astar twice in recent
months but hasn't said anything much about the war. It's probably too messy for the
(eoples' (rince to meddle in at this point. %is media managers must have put their
foot down. The fact that the Salwa ;udum .(urification %unt1 > the dreaded,
government-sponsored vigilante group responsible for rapes, !illings, burning down
villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes > is led by
Mahendra =arma, a congress ME,, doesn't get much play in the carefully orchestrated
publicity around Aahul Gandhi.
I arrived at the Maa Danteshwari mandir well in time for my appointment .first day,
first show1. I had my camera, my small coconut and a powdery red ti!a on my
forehead. I wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. $ithin minutes
a young boy approached me. %e had a cap and a bac!pac! schoolbag. hipped red nail-
polish on his fingernails. )o %indi &utloo!, no bananas. #,re you the one who's
going in@# he as!ed me. )o )amash!ar Guru*i. I didn't !now what to say. %e too! out
a soggy note from his poc!et and handed it to me. It said #&utloo! nahi mila.#
.ouldn't find &utloo!1
#,nd the bananas@#
#I ate them,# he said. #I got hungry.#
%e really was a security threat.
%is bac!pac! said harlie 7rown > )ot your ordinary bloc!head. %e said his name was
Mangtu. I soon learned that Danda!aranya the forest I was about to enter was full
of people who had many names and fluid identities. It was li!e balm to me, that
idea. %ow lovely not to be stuc! with yourself, to become someone else for a while.
$e wal!ed to the bus stand, only a few minutes away from the temple. It was already
crowded. Things happened 3uic!ly. There were two men on motorbi!es. There was no
conversation > *ust a glance of ac!nowledgment, a shifting of body weight, the
revving of engines. I had no idea where we were going. $e passed the house of the
superintendent of police .S(1, which I recognised from my last visit. %e was a
candid man, the S(" #See Ma'am, fran!ly spea!ing this problem can't be solved by us
police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don't understand greed.
?nless they become greedy there's no hope for us. I have told my boss" remove the
force and instead put a TD in every home. 2verything will be automatically sorted
out.#
In no time at all we were riding out of town. )o tail. It was a long ride, three
hours by my watch. It ended abruptly in the middle of nowhere, on an empty road
with forest on either side. Mangtu got off. I did too. The bi!es left, and I pic!ed
up my bac!pac! and followed the small internal security threat into the forest. It
was a beautiful day. The forest floor was a carpet of gold.
In a while we emerged on the white, sandy ban!s of a broad flat river. It was
obviously monsoon fed, so now it was more or less a sand flat, at the centre a
stream, an!le deep, easy to wade across. ,cross was '(a!istan'. #&ut there, ma'am#
the candid S( had said to me, #my boys shoot to !ill.# I remembered that as we
began to cross. I saw us in a policeman's rifle-sights > tiny figures in a
landscape, easy to pic! off. 7ut Mangtu seemed 3uite unconcerned, and I too! my cue
from him.
$aiting for us on the other ban!, in a lime green shirt that said %orlic!sH, was
handu. , slightly older security threat. Maybe F0. %e had a lovely smile, a cycle,
a *erry can with boiled water and many pac!ets of glucose biscuits for me, from the
(arty. $e caught our breath and began to wal! again. The cycle, it turned out, was
a red herring. The route was almost entirely un-cycleable. $e climbed steep hills
and clambered down roc!y paths along some pretty precarious ledges. $hen he
couldn't wheel it, handu lifted the cycle and carried it over his head as though
it weighed nothing. I began to wonder about his bemused village-boy air. I
discovered .much later1 that he could handle every !ind of weapon, #e+cept for an
EMG#, he informed me cheerfully.
Three beautiful, so''led men with flowers in their turbans wal!ed with us for about
half an hour, before our paths diverged. ,t sunset, their shoulder bags began to
crow. They had roosters in them, which they had ta!en to mar!et but hadn't managed
to sell.
handu seems to be able to see in the dar!. I have to use my torch. The cric!ets
start up and soon there's an orchestra, a dome of sound over us. I long to loo! up
at the night s!y, but I dare not. I have to !eep my eyes on the ground. &ne step at
a time. oncentrate.
I hear dogs. 7ut I can't tell how far away they are. The terrain flattens out. I
steal a loo! at the s!y. It ma!es me ecstatic. I hope we're going to stop soon.
#Soon.# handu says. It turns out to be more than an hour. I see silhouettes of
enormous trees. $e arrive.
The village seems spacious, the houses far away from each other. The house we enter
is beautiful. There's a fire, some people sitting around. More people outside, in
the dar!. I can't tell how many. I can *ust about ma!e them out. , murmur goes
around" #Eal salaam, !aamraid.# .Aed Salute, omrade1 #Eal salaam,# I say. I'm
beyond tired. The lady of the house calls me inside and gives me chic!en curry
coo!ed in green beans and some red rice. Cabulous. %er baby is asleep ne+t to me.
%er silver an!lets gleam in the firelight.
,fter dinner I un'ip my sleeping bag. It's a strange intrusive sound, the big 'ip.
Someone puts on the radio. 77 %indi service. The hurch of 2ngland has withdrawn
its funds from Dedanta's )iyamgiri pro*ect, citing environmental degradation and
rights' violations of the Dongria =ondh tribe. I can hear cowbells, snuffling,
shuffling, cattle-farting. ,ll's well with the world. My eyes close.
$e're up at five. &n the move by si+. In another couple of hours, we cross another
river. 2very village we wal! through has a family of tamarind trees watching over
it, li!e a clutch of huge, benevolent gods. Sweet, 7astar tamarind. 7y 44am the sun
is high, and wal!ing is less fun. $e stop at a village for lunch. handu seems to
!now the people in the house. , lovely young girl flirts with him. %e loo!s a
little shy, maybe because I'm around. Eunch is raw papaya with masoor dal, and red
rice. ,nd red chilli powder. $e're going to wait for the sun to lose some of its
vehemence before we start wal!ing again. $e ta!e a nap in the ga'ebo. There is a
spare beauty about the place. 2verything is clean and necessary. )o clutter. ,
blac! hen parades up and down the low mud wall. , bamboo grid stabilises the
rafters of the thatched roof and doubles as a storage rac!. There's a grass broom,
two drums, a woven reed bas!et, a bro!en umbrella and a whole stac! of flattened,
empty, corrugated cardboard bo+es. Something catches my eye. I need my spectacles.
%ere's what's printed on the cardboard" Ideal (ower 50 %igh 2nergy 2mulsion
2+plosive .lass-F1 SD ,T II.
$e start wal!ing again at about two. In the village we are going to we will meet a
Didi .Sister, omrade1 who !nows what the ne+t step of the *ourney will be. handu
doesn't. There is an economy of information too. )obody is supposed to !now
everything. 7ut when we reach the village, Didi isn't there. There's no news of
her. Cor the first time I see a little cloud of worry settling over handu. , big
one settles over me. I don't !now what the systems of communication are, but what
if they've gone wrong@
$e're par!ed outside a deserted school building, a little way out of the village.
$hy are all the government village schools built li!e concrete bastions, with steel
shutters for windows and sliding folding steel doors@ $hy not li!e the village
houses, with mud and thatch@ 7ecause they double up as barrac!s and bun!ers. #In
the villages in ,bhu*mad,# handu says, #schools are li!e thisJ# %e scratches a
building plan with a twig in the earth. Three octagons attached to each other li!e
a honeycomb. #So they can fire in all directions.# %e draws arrows to illustrate
his point, li!e a cric!et graphic > a batsman's wagon wheel. There are no teachers
in any of the schools, handu says. They've all run away. &r have you chased them
away@ )o, we only chase police. 7ut why should teachers come here, to the *ungle,
when they get their salaries sitting at home@ Good point.
%e informs me that this is a #new area#. The (arty has entered only recently.
,bout F0 young people arrive, girls and boys. In their teens and early twenties.
handu e+plains that this is the village-level militia, the lowest rung of the
Maoists' military hierarchy. I have never seen anyone li!e them before. They are
dressed in saris and lungis, some in frayed olive green fatigues. The boys wear
*ewelry, headgear. 2very one of them has a mu''le-loading rifle, what's called a
bharmaar. Some also have !nives, a+es, a bow and arrow. &ne boy carries a crude
mortar fashioned out of a heavy three-foot GI pipe. It's filled with gunpowder and
shrapnel and ready to be fired. It ma!es a big noise, but can only be used once.
Still, it scares the police, they say, and giggle. $ar doesn't seem to be uppermost
on their minds. (erhaps because their area is outside the home range of the Salwa
;udum. They have *ust finished a days' wor!, helping to build fencing around some
village houses to !eep the goats out of the fields. They're full of fun and
curiosity. The girls are confident and easy with the boys. I have a sensor for this
sort of thing, and I am impressed. Their *ob, handu says, is to patrol and protect
a group of four or five villages and to help in the fields, clean wells or repair
houses > doing whatever's needed.
Still no Didi. $hat to do@ )othing. $ait. %elp out with some chopping and peeling.
,fter dinner, without much tal!, everybody falls in line. learly we're moving.
2verything moves with usK the rice, vegetables, pots and pans. $e leave the school
compound and wal! single file into the forest. In less than half an hour we arrive
in a glade where we are going to sleep. There's absolutely no noise. $ithin minutes
everyone has spread their blue plastic sheets, the ubi3uitous #*hilli#, .without
which there will be no Aevolution1. handu and Mangtu share one and spread one out
for me. They find me the best place, by the best grey roc!. handu says he has sent
a message to Didi. If she gets it she will be here first thing in the morning. If
she gets it.
It's the most beautiful room I have slept in in a long time. My private suite in a
thousand-star hotel. I'm surrounded by these strange, beautiful children with their
curious arsenal. They're all Maoists for sure. ,re they all going to die@ Is the
*ungle warfare training school for them@ ,nd the helicopter gunships, the thermal
imaging and the laser range finders@
$hy must they die@ $hat for@ To turn all of this into a mine@ I remember my visit
to the opencast iron-ore mines in =eon*har, &rissa. There was forest there once.
,nd children li!e these. )ow the land is li!e a raw, red wound. Aed dust fills your
nostrils and lungs. The water is red, the air is red, the people are red, their
lungs and hair are red. ,ll day and all night truc!s rumble through their villages,
bumper to bumper, thousands and thousands of truc!s, ta!ing ore to (aradip port
from where it will go to hina. There it will turn into cars and smo!e and sudden
cities that spring up overnight. Into a #growth rate# that leaves economists
breathless. Into weapons to ma!e war.
2veryone's asleep e+cept for the sentries who ta!e one-and-a-half hour shifts.
Cinally I can loo! at the stars. $hen I was a child growing up on the ban!s of the
Meenachal river, I used to thin! the sound of cric!ets > which always started up at
twilight > was the sound of stars revving up, getting ready to shine. I'm surprised
at how much I love being here. There is nowhere else in the world that I would
rather be. $ho should I be tonight@ =amraid Aahel, under the stars@ Maybe Didi will
come tomorrow.
They arrive in the early afternoon. I can see them from a distance. ,bout 46 of
them, all in olive green uniforms, running towards us. 2ven from a distance, from
the way they run, I can tell they are the heavy hitters. The (eople's Eiberation
Guerilla ,rmy .(EG,1. Cor whom the thermal imaging and laser guided rifles. Cor
whom the *ungle warfare training school.
They carry serious rifles, I)S,S, SEA, two have ,=G9s. The leader of the s3uad is
omrade Madhav, who has been with the (arty since he was nine. %e's from $arangal,
,ndhra (radesh. %e's upset and e+tremely apologetic. There was a ma*or
miscommunication, he says again and again, which usually never happens. I was
supposed to have arrived at the main camp on the very first night. Someone dropped
the baton in the *ungle-relay. The motorcycle drop was to have been at an entirely
different place. #$e made you wait, we made you wal! so much. $e ran all the way
when the message came that you were here.# I said it was o!ay, that I had come
prepared, to wait and wal! and listen. %e wants to leave immediately, because
people in the camp were waiting, and worried.
It's a few hours' wal! to the camp. It's getting dar! when we arrive. There are
several layers of sentries and concentric circles of patrolling. There must be a
hundred comrades lined up in two rows. 2veryone has a weapon. ,nd a smile. They
begin to sing" Eal lal salaam, lal lal salaam, aane vaaley saathiyon !o lal lal
salaam. .Aed salute to the comrades who have arrived.1 It was sung sweetly, as
though it was a fol! song about a river, or a forest blossom. $ith the song, the
greeting, the handsha!e and the clenched fist. 2veryone greets everyone, murmuring
Ealslaam, mlalslaa mlalslaamJ
&ther than a large blue *hilli spread out on the floor, about fifteen feet s3uare,
there are no signs of a #camp#. This one has a *hilli roof as well. It's my room
for the night. I was either being rewarded for my days of wal!ing, or being
pampered in advance for what lay ahead. &r both. 2ither way it was the last time in
the entire trip that I was going to have a roof over my head. &ver dinner I meet
omrade )armada, in charge of the =ranti!ari ,divasi Mahila Sangathan .=ams1, who
has a price on her headK omrade Saro*a of the (EG, who is only as tall as her SEAK
omrade Maase .which means 7lac! Girl in Gondi1 who has a price on her head tooK
omrade Aoopi, the tech wi'ardK omrade Aa*u, who's in charge of the division I'd
been wal!ing through, and omrade Denu .or Murali or Sonu or Sushil, whatever you
would li!e to call him1, clearly the senior most of them all. Maybe central
committee, maybe even politbureau. I'm not told, I don't as!. 7etween us we spea!
Gondi, %albi, Telugu, (un*abi and Malayalam. &nly Maase spea!s 2nglish. .So we all
communicate in %indiH1 omrade Maase is tall and 3uiet and seems to have to swim
through a layer of pain to enter the conversation. 7ut from the way she hugs me I
can tell she's a reader. ,nd that she misses having boo!s in the *ungle. She will
tell me her story only later. $hen she trusts me with her grief.
7ad news arrives, as it does in this *ungle. , runner, with #biscuits#. %andwritten
notes on sheets of paper, folded and stapled into little s3uares. There's a bag
full of them. Ei!e chips. )ews from everywhere. The police have !illed five people
in &ngnaar village, four from the militia and one ordinary villager" Santhu (ottai
.F61, (hoolo Dadde .FF1, =ande (otai .FF1, Aamoli Dadde .F01, Dalsai =oram .FF1.
They could have been the children in my star-spangled dormitory of last night.
Then good news arrives. , small contingent of people with a plump young man. %e's
in fatigues too, but they loo! brand new. 2verybody admires them and comments on
the fit. %e loo!s shy and pleased. %e's a doctor who has come to live and wor! with
the comrades in the forest. The last time a doctor visited Danda!aranya was many
years ago.
&n the radio there's news about the home minister's meeting with chief ministers of
states affected by #leftwing e+tremism# to discuss the war. The chief ministers of
;har!hand and 7ihar are being demure and have not attended. 2verybody sitting
around the radio laughs. ,round the time of elections, they say, right through the
campaign, and then maybe a month or two after the government is formed, mainstream
politicians all say things li!e #)a+als are our children#. Lou can set your watch
to the schedule of when they will change their minds, and grow fangs.
I am introduced to omrade =amla. I am told that I must on no account go even five
feet away from my *hilli without wa!ing her. 7ecause everybody gets disoriented in
the dar! and could get seriously lost. .I don't wa!e her. I sleep li!e a log.1 In
the morning =amla presents me with a yellow polythene pac!et with one corner
snipped off. &nce it used to contain ,bis Gold Aefined Soya &il. )ow it was my Eoo
Mug. )othing's wasted on the Aoad to the Aevolution.
.2ven now I thin! of omrade =amla all the time, every day. She's 49. She wears a
homemade pistol on her hip. ,nd boy, what a smile. 7ut if the police come across
her, they will !ill her. They might rape her first. )o 3uestions will be as!ed.
7ecause she's an Internal Security Threat.1
,fter brea!fast omrade Denu .Sushil, Sonu, Murali1 is waiting for me, sitting
cross-legged on the *hilli, loo!ing for all the world li!e a frail, village
schoolteacher. I'm going to get a history lesson. &r, more accurately a lecture on
the history of the last /0 years in the Danda!aranya forest, which has culminated
in the war that's swirling through it today. Cor sure, it's a partisan's version.
7ut then, what history isn't@ In any case, the secret history must be made public
if it is to be contested, argued with, instead of merely being lied about, which is
what is happening now.
omrade Denu has a calm reassuring, manner and a gentle voice that will, in the
days to come, surface in a conte+t that will completely unnerve me. This morning he
tal!s for several hours, almost continuously. %e's li!e a little store manager who
has a giant bunch of !eys with which to open up a ma'e of loc!ers full of stories,
songs and insights.
omrade Denu was in one of the seven armed s3uads who crossed the Godavari from
,ndhra (radesh and entered the Danda!aranya Corest .D=, in (artyspea!1 in ;une
45:0, /0 years ago. %e's is one of the original forty-niners. They belonged to
(eoples $ar Group .($G1, a faction of the ommunist party of India .Mar+ist-
Eeninist1 (I .ME1, the original )a+alites. ($G was formally announced as separate,
independent party in ,pril that year, under =ondapalli Seetharamiah. ($G had
decided to build a standing army, for which it would need a base. D= was to be that
base, and those first s3uads were sent in to reconnoiter the area and begin the
process of building guerilla 'ones. The debate about whether communist parties
ought to have a standing army, and whether or not a #people's army# is a
contradiction in terms, is an old one. ($Gs decision to build an army came from its
e+perience in ,ndhra (radesh, where its #Eand to the Tiller# campaign led to a
direct clash with the landlords, and resulted in the !ind of police repression that
the (arty found impossible to withstand without a trained fighting force of its
own.
.7y F00G ($G had merged with the other (I .ME1 factions, (arty ?nity .(?1 and the
Maoist ommunist entre .M1 > which functions for the most part out of 7ihar and
;har!hand. To become what it is now, the ommunist (arty of India .Maoist11.
Danda!aranya is part of what the 7ritish, in their $hite Man's way, called
Gondwana, land of the Gonds. Today the state boundaries of Madhya (radesh,
hhattisgarh, &rissa, ,ndhra (radesh and Maharashtra slice through the forest.
7rea!ing up a troublesome people into separate administrative units is an old
tric!. 7ut these Maoists and Maoist Gonds don't pay much attention to things li!e
state boundaries. They have different maps in their heads, and li!e other creatures
of the forest they have their own paths. Cor them, roads are not meant for wal!ing
on. They're meant only to be crossed, or as is increasingly becoming the case,
ambushed. Though the Gonds .divided between the =oya and Dorla tribes1 are by far
the biggest ma*ority, there are small settlements of other tribal communities too.
The non-adivasi communities, traders and settlers, live on the edges of the forest,
near the roads and mar!ets.
The ($G were not the first evangelicals to arrive in Danda!aranya. 7aba ,mte, the
well-!nown Gandhian had opened his ashram and leprosy hospital in $arora in 4596.
The Aama!rishna mission had begun opening village schools in the remote forests of
,bhu*mad. In )orth 7astar, 7aba 7ihari Das had started an aggressive drive to
#bring tribals bac! into the %indu fold#, which involved a campaign to denigrate
tribal culture, induce self-hatred, and introduce %induism's great gift > caste.
The first converts, the village chiefs and big landlords > people li!e Mahendra
=arma, founder of the Salwa ;udum > were conferred the status of Dwi*, twice born,
7rahmins. .&f course this was a bit of a scam, because nobody can become a 7rahmin.
If they could, we'd be a nation of 7rahmins by now.1 7ut this counterfeit %induism
is considered good enough for tribal people, *ust li!e the counterfeit brands of
everything else > biscuits, soap, matches, oil > that are sold in village mar!ets.
,s part of the %indutva drive the names of villages were changed in land records,
as a result of which most have two names now, peoples' names and government names.
Innar village for e+ample, became hinnari. &n voters' lists, tribal names were
changed to %indu names. .Massa =arma became Mahendra =arma.1 Those who did not come
forward to *oin the %indu fold were declared =atwas .by which they meant
?ntouchables1 who later became the natural constituency for the Maoists.
The ($G first began wor! in South 7astar and Gadchiroli. omrade Denu describes
those first months in some detail" how the villagers were suspicious of them, and
wouldn't let them into their homes. )o one would offer them food or water. The
police spread rumours that they were thieves. The women hid their *ewellery in the
ashes of their wood stoves. There was an enormous amount of repression. In )ovember
45:0, in Gadchiroli the police opened fire at a village meeting and !illed an
entire s3uad. That was D=s first #encounter# !illing. It was a traumatic setbac!,
and the comrades retreated across the Godavari and returned to ,dilabad.
7ut in 45:4 they returned. They began to organise tribal people to demand a rise in
the price they were being paid for Tendu leaves .which are used to ma!e beedis1. ,t
the time, traders paid / paisa for a bundle of about 60 leaves. It was a formidable
*ob to organise people entirely unfamiliar with this !ind of politics, to lead them
on stri!e. 2ventually the stri!e was successful and the price was doubled, to 8
paisa a bundle. 7ut the real success for the (arty was to have been able to
demonstrate the value of unity and a new way of conducting a political negotiation.
Today, after several stri!es and agitations, the price of a bundle of Tendu leaves
is As4. .It seems a little improbable at these rates, but the turnover of the Tendu
business runs into hundreds of crores of rupees.1 2very season the government
floats tenders and gives contractors permission to e+tract a fi+ed volume of Tendu
leaves > usually between 4,600 and 6,000 standard bags !nown as mana! boras. 2ach
mana! bora contains about 4,000 bundles. .&f course there's no way of ensuring that
the contractors don't e+tract more than they're meant to.1 7y the time the Tendu
enters the mar!et it is sold in !ilos. The slippery arithmetic and the sly system
of measurement that converts bundles into mana! boras into !ilos is controlled by
the contractors, and leaves plenty of room for manipulation of the worst !ind. The
most conservative estimate puts their profit per standard bag at about As4,400.
.That's after paying the (arty a commission of As4F0 per bag.1 2ven by that gauge,
a small contractor .4,600 bags1 ma!es about As48 la!h .a la!h is 400,000 units1 a
season and a big one .6,000 bags1 up to As66 la!h. , more realistic estimate would
be several times this amount. Meanwhile the Gravest Internal Security Threat ma!es
*ust enough to stay alive until the ne+t season.
$e're interrupted by some laughter and the sight of )ilesh, one of the young (EG,
comrades, wal!ing rapidly towards the coo!ing area, slapping himself. $hen he comes
closer I see that he's carrying a leafy nest of angry red ants that have crawled
all over him and are biting him on his arms and nec!. )ilesh is laughing too. #%ave
you ever eaten ant chutney@# omrade Denu as!s me. I !now red ants well, from my
childhood in =erala. I've been bitten by them, but I've never eaten them. .The
chutney turns out to be nice. Sour. Eots of formic acid.1
)ilesh is from 7i*apur, which is at the heart of Salwa ;udum operations. )ilesh's
younger brother *oined the ;udum on one of its looting and burning sprees and was
made a Special (olice &fficer .S(&1. %e lives in the 7asaguda camp with his mother.
%is father refused to go and stayed behind in the village. In effect, it's a family
blood feud. Eater on when I had an opportunity to tal! to him I as!ed )ilesh why
his brother had done that. #%e was very young,# )ilesh said, #%e got an opportunity
to run wild and hurt people and burn houses. %e went cra'y, did terrible things.
)ow he is stuc!. %e can never come bac! to the village. %e will not be forgiven. %e
!nows that.#
$e return to the history lesson. The (arty's ne+t big struggle, omrade Denu says,
was against the 7allarpur paper mills. The government had given the Thapars a G6-
year contract to e+tract 4.6 la!h tonnes of bamboo at a hugely subsidised rate.
.Small beer compared to bau+ite, but still1. The tribals were paid 40 paisa for a
bundle which contained F0 culms of bamboo. .I won't yield to the vulgar temptation
of comparing that with the profits the Thapars were ma!ing.1 , long agitation, a
stri!e, followed by negotiations with officials of the paper mill in the presence
of the people, tripled the price to /0 paisa per bundle. Cor the tribal people
these were huge achievements. &ther political parties had made promises, but showed
no signs of !eeping them. (eople began to approach the ($G as!ing whether they
could *oin up.
7ut the politics of Tendu, bamboo and other forest produce was seasonal. The
perennial problem, the real bane of peoples' lives, was the biggest landlord of
all, the Corest Department. 2very morning forest officials, even the most *unior of
them, would appear in villages li!e a bad dream, preventing people from ploughing
their fields, collecting firewood, pluc!ing leaves, pic!ing fruit, gra'ing their
cattle, from living. They brought elephants to overrun fields and scattered babool
seeds to destroy the soil as they passed by. (eople would be beaten, arrested,
humiliated, their crops destroyed. &f course, from the Corest Department's point of
view, these were illegal people engaged in unconstitutional activity, and the
department was only implementing the rule of law. .Their se+ual e+ploitation of
women was *ust an added per! in a hardship posting1
2mboldened by the peoples' participation in these struggles, the (arty decided to
confront the Corest Department. It encouraged people to ta!e over forest land and
cultivate it. The department retaliated by burning new villages that came up in
forest areas. In 45:8 it announced a national par! in 7i*apur, which meant the
eviction of 80 villages. More than half of them had already been moved out and
construction of national par! infrastructure had begun when the (arty moved in. It
demolished the construction and stopped the eviction of the remaining villages. It
prevented the Corest Department from entering the area. &n a few occasions,
officials were captured, tied to trees and beaten by villagers. It was cathartic
revenge for generations of e+ploitation. 2ventually the Corest Department fled.
7etween 45:8 and F000, the (arty redistributed /00,000 acres of forestland. Today,
omrade Denu says, there are no landless peasants in Danda!aranya.
Cor today's generation of young people, the Corest Department is a distant memory,
the stuff of stories mothers tell their children, about a mythological past of
bondage and humiliation. Cor the older generation, freedom from the department
meant genuine freedom. They could touch it, taste it. It meant far more than
India's independence ever did. They began to rally to the (arty that had struggled
with them.
The seven-s3uad team had come a long way. It's influence now ranged across a 80,000
s3 !m stretch of forest, thousands of villages and millions of people.
7ut the departure of the Corest Department heralded the arrival of the police. That
set off a cycle of bloodshed. Ca!e #encounters# by the police, ambushes by the ($G.
$ith the redistribution of land came other responsibilities" irrigation,
agricultural productivity, and the problem of an e+panding population arbitrarily
clearing forestland. , decision was ta!en to separate #mass wor!# and #military
wor!#.
Today, Danda!aranya is administered by an elaborate structure of ;antana Sar!ars
.people's governments1. The organising principles came from the hinese revolution
and the Dietnam war. 2ach ;antana Sar!ar is elected by a cluster of villages whose
combined population can range from 600 to 6,000. It has nine departments" =rishi
.agriculture1, Dyapar-?dyog .trade and industry1 ,rthi! .economic1, )yay .*ustice1,
Aa!sha .defense1, %ospital .health1, ;an Sampar! .public relations1, School-Aiti
Aiva* .education and culture1, and ;ungle. , group of ;anatana Sar!ars, come under
an ,rea ommittee. Three area committees ma!e up a division. There are ten
divisions in Danda!aranya.
#$e have a Save the ;ungle department now.# omrade Denu says, #you must have read
the government report that says forest has increased in )a+al areas@#
Ironically, omrade Denu says, the first people to benefit from the (arty's
campaign against the Corest Department were the Mu!hiyas .village chiefs1 > the
Dwi* brigade. They used their manpower and their resources to grab as much land as
they could, while the going was good. 7ut then people began to approach the (arty
with their #internal contradictions,# as omrade Denu puts it 3uaintly. The (arty
began to turn its attention to issues of e3uity, class and in*ustice within tribal
society. The big landlords sensed trouble on the hori'on. ,s the (arty's influence
e+panded, their's had begun to wane. Increasingly people were ta!ing their problems
to the (arty instead of to the Mu!hiyas. &ld forms of e+ploitation began to be
challenged. &n the day of the first rain, people were traditionally supposed to
till the Mu!hiyas land instead of their own. That stopped. They no longer offered
them the first days pic!ing of mahua or other forest produce. &bviously, something
needed to be done.
2nter Mahendra =arma, one of the biggest landlords in the region and at the time a
member of the ommunist (arty of India .(I1. In 4550 he rallied a group of
Mu!hiyas and landlords and started a campaign called the ;an ;agran ,bhiyan .(ublic
,wa!ening ampaign1. Their way of #awa!ening# the #public# was to form a hunting
party of about /00 men to comb the forest, !illing people, burning houses and
molesting women. The then Madhya (radesh government<hhattisgarh had not yet been
created > provided police bac! up. In Maharashtra, something similar, called
Democratic Cront began its assault. (eoples' $ar responded to all of this in true
(eoples' $ar style, by !illing a few of the most notorious landlords. In a few
months the ;an ;agran ,bhiyan, the 'white terror' <omrade Denu's term for it<
faded. In 455:, Mahendra =arma who had by now *oined the ongress (arty, tried to
revive the ;an ;agran ,bhiyan. This time it fi''led out even faster than before.
Then, in the summer of F006, fortune favoured him. In ,pril, the 7;( Government in
hhattisgarh signed two M&?s to set up integrated steel plants .the terms of which
are secret1. &ne for As 9000 crore with 2ssar Steel in 7ailadila, and the other for
As40,000 crore with Tata Steel in Eohandiguda. That same month (rime Minister
Manmohan Singh made his famous statement about the Maoists being the #Gravest
Internal Security Threat# to India. .It was an odd thing to say at the time,
because actually the opposite was true. The ongress Government in ,ndhra (radesh
had *ust out-maneuvered the Maoists, decimated them. They had lost about 4800 of
their cadre and were in complete disarray.1 The (Ms statement sent the share-value
of mining companies soaring. It also sent a signal to the media that the Maoists
were fair game for anyone who chose to go after them. In ;une F006, Mahendra =arma
called a secret meeting of Mu!hiyas in =utroo village and announced the Salwa ;udum
.the (urification %unt1. , lovely mMlange of tribal earthiness and Dwi*B)a'i
sentiment.
?nli!e the ;an ;agran ,bhiyan, the Salwa ;udum was a ground-clearing operation,
meant to move people out of their villages into roadside camps, where they could be
policed and controlled. In military terms, it's called Strategic %amleting. It was
devised by General Sir %arold 7riggs in 4560 when the 7ritish were at war against
the communists in Malaya. The 7riggs (lan became very popular with the Indian ,rmy,
which has used it in )agaland, Mi'oram and in Telengana. The 7;( hief Minister of
hhattisgarh, Aaman Singh announced that as far as his government was concerned,
villagers who did not move into camps, would be considered Maoists. So in 7astar,
for an ordinary villager, *ust staying at home, living an ordinary life, became the
e3uivalent of indulging in dangerous terrorist activity.
,long with a steel mug of blac! tea, as a special treat, someone hands me a pair of
earphones and switches on a little M(/ player. It's a scratchy recording of Mr D S
Manhar, the then S( 7i*apur, briefing a *unior officer over the wireless about the
rewards and incentives the State and entral Governments are offering to '*agrit'
.awa!ened1 villages, and to people who agree to move into camps. %e then gives
clear instructions that villages that refuse to 'surrender' should be burnt and
*ournalists who want to cover )a+alites should be shot on sight. .I'd read about
this in the papers long ago. $hen the story bro!e, as punishment<it's not clear to
whom< the S( was transferred to the State %uman Aights ommission.1
The first village the Salwa ;udum burnt .on 4:th ;une F0061 was ,mbeli. 7etween
;une and December F006, it burned, !illed, raped and looted its way through
hundreds of villages of South Dantewara. The centre of its operations were the
districts of 7i*apur and 7hairamgarh, near 7ailadila, where 2ssar Steel's new plant
was proposed. )ot coincidentally, these were also Maoist strongholds, where the
;antana Sar!ars had done a great deal of wor!, especially in building water-
harvesting structures. The ;antana Sar!ars became the special target of the Salwa
;udum's attac!s. %undreds of people were !illed in the most brutal ways. ,bout
si+ty thousand people moved into the camps, some voluntarily, others out of terror.
&f these, about three thousand were appointed Special (olice &fficers .S(&s1 on a
salary of fifteen hundred rupees.
Cor these paltry crumbs, young people, li!e )ilesh's brother, have sentenced
themselves to a life-sentence in a barbed wire enclosure. ruel as they have been,
they could end up being the worst victims of this horrible war. )o Supreme ourt
*udgement ordering the Salwa ;udum to be dismantled can change their fate.
The remaining hundreds of thousands of people went off the government radar. .7ut
the development funds for these 8GG villages did not. $hat happens to that little
goldmine@1 Many of them made their way to ,ndhra (radesh and &rissa where they
usually migrated to wor! as contract labour during the chilly-pic!ing season. 7ut
tens of thousands fled into the forest, where they still remain, living without
shelter, coming bac! to their fields and homes only in the daytime.
In the slipstream of the Salwa ;udum, a swarm of (olice stations and camps
appeared. The idea was to provide carpet security for a 'creeping reoccupation' of
Maoist-controlled territory. The assumption was that the Maoists would not dare to
attac! such a large concentration of security forces. The Maoists for their part,
reali'ed that if they did not brea! that carpet security, it would amount to
abandoning people whose trust they had earned, and with whom they had lived and
wor!ed for twenty-five years. They struc! bac! in a series of attac!s on the heart
of the security grid.
&n F8th ;anuary F008 the (EG, attac!ed the Gangalaur police camp and !illed seven
people . &n 49 ;uly F008 the Salwa ;udum camp at 2rabor was attac!ed, F0 people
were !illed and 460 in*ured. .Lou might have read about it" #Maoists attac!ed the
relief camp set up by the state government to provide shelter to the villagers who
had fled from their villages because of terror unleashed by the )a+alites.#1 &n 4/
Dec F008 they attac!ed the 7asaguda 'relief' camp and !illed / S(&s and a
constable. &n 46 March F009 came the most audacious of them all. &ne hundred and
twenty (EG, guerillas, attac!ed the Aani 7odili =anya ,shram, a girls hostel that
had been converted into a barrac! for :0 hhattisgarh (olice .and S(&s1 while the
girls still lived in it as human shields. The (EG, entered the compound, cordoned
off the anne+e in which the girls lived, and attac!ed the barrac!s. 66 policemen
and S(&s were !illed. )one of the girls was hurt. .The candid S( of Dantewara had
shown me his (ower (oint presentation with horrifying photographs of the burned,
disemboweled bodies of the policemen amidst the ruins of the blown up school
building. They were so macabre, it was impossible not to loo! away. %e loo!ed
pleased at my reaction.1
The attac! on Aani 7odili caused an uproar in the country. %uman Aights
organi'ations condemned the Maoists not *ust for their violence, but also for being
anti-education and attac!ing schools. 7ut in Danda!aranya the Aani 7odili attac!
became a legend" songs and poems and plays were written about it.
The Maoist counter-offensive did brea! the carpet security and gave people
breathing space. The police and the Salwa ;udum retreated into their camps, from
which they now emerge<usually in the dead of night<only in pac!s of /00 or 4000 to
carry out ordon and Search operations in villages. Gradually, e+cept for the S(&s
and their families, the rest of the people in the Salwa ;udum camps began to return
to their villages. The Maoists welcomed them bac! and announced that even S(&s
could return if they genuinely, and publicly regretted their actions. Loung people
began to floc! to the (EG,. .The (EG, had been formally constituted in December
F000. &ver the last thirty years, its armed s3uads had very gradually e+panded into
sections, sections had grown into platoons, and platoons into companies. 7ut after
the Salwa ;udum's depredations, the (EG, was rapidly able to declare battalion
strength. It is an entirely voluntary army. )obody is paid a salary.1
The Salwa ;udum had not *ust failed, it had bac!fired badly.
,s we now !now, it was not *ust a local operation by a small time hood. Aegardless
of the doublespea! in the press, the Salwa ;udum was a *oint operation by the State
Government of hhattisgarh and the ongress (arty which was in power at the entre.
It could not be allowed to fail. )ot when all those M&?s were still waiting, li!e
wilting hopefuls on the marriage mar!et. The Government was under tremendous
pressure to come up with a new plan. They came up with &peration Green %unt. The
Salwa ;udum S(&s are called =oya ommandos now. It has deployed the hhattisgarh
,rmed Corce .,C1, the entral Aeserve (olice Corce .A(C1, the 7order Security
Corce .7SC1, the Indo-Tibetan 7order (olice .IT7(1, the entral Industrial Security
Corce .ISC1, Grey %ounds, Scorpions, obras. ,nd a policy that's affectionately
called $%,M<$inning %earts and Minds.
Significant wars are often fought in unli!ely places. Cree Mar!et apitalism
defeated Soviet ommunism in the blea! mountains of ,fghanistan. %ere in the
forests of Dantewara a battle rages for the soul of India. (lenty has been said
about the deepening crisis in Indian democracy and the collusion between big
corporations, ma*or political parties and the security establishment. If any body
wants to do a 3uic! spot chec!, Dantewara is the place to go.
, draft report on State ,grarian Aelations and the ?nfinished Tas! of Eand Aeform
.Dolume 41 said that Tata Steel and 2ssar Steel were the first financiers of the
Salwa ;udum. 7ecause it was a Government Aeport, it created a flurry when it was
reported in the press. .That fact has subse3uently been dropped from the final
report. $as it a genuine error, or did someone receive a gentle, integrated steel
tap on the shoulder@1
&n 4F &ctober F005 the mandatory public hearing for Tata's steel plant, meant to be
held in Eohandiguda where local people could come, actually too! place in a small
hall inside the ollectorate in ;agdalpur, many miles away, cordoned off with
massive security. , hired audience of 60 tribals was brought in a guarded convoy of
government *eeps. ,fter the meeting the District ollector congratulated 'the
people of Eohandiguda' for their co-operation. The local newspapers reported the
lie, even though they !new better. .The advertisements rolled in.1 Despite
villagers' ob*ections, land ac3uisition for the pro*ect has begun.
The Maoists are not the only ones who see! to depose the Indian State. It's already
been deposed several times, by %indu fundamentalism and economic totalitarianism.
Eohandiguda, a five-hour drive from Dantewara, never used to be a )a+alite area.
7ut it is now. omrade ;oori who sat ne+t to me while I ate the ant chutney wor!s
in the area. She said they decided to move in after graffiti had begun to appear on
the walls of village houses, saying )a+ali ,o, %amein 7achao .)a+als come and save
usH1 , few months ago Dimal Meshram, (resident of the village panchayat was shot
dead in the mar!et. #%e was Tata's Man,# ;oori says, #%e was forcing people to give
up their land and accept compensation. It's good that he's been finished. $e lost a
comrade too. They shot him. D'you want more chapoli@# She's only twenty. #$e won't
let the Tata come there. (eople don't want them.# ;oori is not (EG,. She's in the
hetna )atya Manch .)M1, the cultural wing of the (arty. She sings. She writes
songs. She's from ,bhu*mad. .She's married to omrade Madhav. She fell in love with
his singing when he visited her village with a )M troupe.1
I feel I ought to say something at this point. ,bout the futility of violence,
about the unacceptability of summary e+ecutions. 7ut what should I suggest they do@
Go to court@ Do a dharna in ;antar Mantar, )ew Delhi@ , rally@ , relay hunger
stri!e@ It sounds ridiculous. The promoters of the )ew 2conomic (olicy <who find it
so easy to say #There Is )o ,lternative# <should be as!ed to suggest an alternative
Aesistance (olicy. , specific one, to these specific people, in this specific
forest. %ere. )ow. $hich party should they vote for@ $hich democratic institution
in this country should they approach@ $hich door did the )armada 7achao ,ndolan not
!noc! on during the years and years it fought against 7ig Dams on the )armada@
N
It's dar!. There's a lot of activity in the camp, but I can't see anything. ;ust
points of light moving around. It's hard to tell whether they are stars or
fireflies or Maoists on the move. Eittle Mangtu appears from nowhere. I found out
that he's one of a group of ten !ids who are part of the first batch of the Loung
ommunists Mobile School, who are being taught to read and write, and tutored in
basic communist principles. .#Indoctrination of young mindsH# our corporate media
howls. The TD advertisements that brainwash children before they can even thin!,
are not seen as a form of indoctrination.1 The young communists are not allowed to
carry guns or wear uniforms. 7ut they trail the (EG, s3uads, with stars in their
eyes, li!e groupies of a roc! band.
Mangtu has adopted me with a gently proprietorial air. %e has filled my water
bottle and says I should pac! my bag. , whistle blows. The blue *hilli tent is
dismantled and folded up in five minutes flat. ,nother whistle and all hundred
comrades fall in line. Cive rows. omrade Aa*u is the Director of &ps. There's a
roll call. I'm in the line too, shouting out my number when omrade =amla who is in
front of me, prompts me. .$e count to twenty and then start from one, because
that's as far as most Gonds count. Twenty is enough for them. Maybe it should be
enough for us too.1 handu is in fatigues now, and carries a sten gun. In a low
voice omrade Aa*u is briefing the group. It's all in Gondi, I don't understand a
thing, but I !eep hearing the word AD. Eater Aa*u tells me it stands for
Aende'vousH It's a Gondi word now. #$e ma!e AD points so that in case we come under
fire and people have to scatter, they !now where to regroup.# %e cannot possibly
!now the !ind of panic this induces in me. )ot because I'm scared of being fired
on, but because I'm scared of being lost. I'm a directional dysle+ic, capable of
getting lost between my bedroom and my bathroom. $hat will I do in 80,000 s3uare
!ilometers of forest@ ome hell or high water, I'm going to be holding on to
omrade Aa*u's pallu.
7efore we start wal!ing, omrade Denu comes up to me #&!aythen omrade. I'll ta!e
your leave.# I'm ta!en abac!. %e loo!s li!e a little mos3uito in a woolen cap and
chappals, surrounded by his guards, three women, three men. %eavily armed. #$e are
very grateful to you comrade, for coming all the way here.# he says. &nce again the
handsha!e, the clenched fist. #Eal Salaam omrade.# %e disappears into the forest,
the =eeper of the =eys. ,nd in a moment, it's as though he was never here. I'm a
little bereft. 7ut I have hours of recordings to listen to. ,nd as the days turn
into wee!s, I will meet many people who paint color and detail into the grid he
drew for me. $e begin to wal! in the opposite direction. omrade Aa*u, smelling of
iode+ from a mile off, says with a happy smile, #My !nees are gone. I can only wal!
if I have had a fistful of pain-!illers.#
omrade Aa*u spea!s perfect %indi and has a deadpan way of telling the funniest
stories. %e wor!ed as an advocate in Aaipur for eighteen years. 7oth he and his
wife, Malti, were (arty members and part of its city networ!. ,t the end of F009,
one of the !ey people in the Aaipur networ! was arrested, tortured and eventually
turned informer. %e was driven around Aaipur in a closed police vehicle and made to
point out his former colleagues. omrade Malti was one of them. &n FF ;anuary F00:
she was arrested along with several others. The main charge against her is that she
mailed Ds containing video evidence of Salwa ;udum atrocities to several Members
of (arliament. %er case rarely comes up for hearing because the police !now their
case is flimsy. 7ut the new hhattisgarh Special (ublic Security ,ct .S(S,1 allows
the police to hold her without bail for several years. #)ow the Government has
deployed several battalions of hhattisgarh police to protect the poor Members of
(arliament from their own mail.# omrade Aa*u says. %e didn't get caught because he
was in Danda!aranya at the time, attending a meeting. %e's been here ever since.
%is two school-going children who were left alone at home, were interrogated
e+tensively by the police. Cinally their home was pac!ed up and they went to live
with an uncle. omrade Aa*u received news of them for the first time only a few
wee!s ago. $hat gives him this strength, this ability to hold on to his acid
humour@ $hat !eeps them all going, despite all they have endured@ Their faith and
hope<and love<for the (arty. I encounter it again and again, in the deepest, most
personal ways.
$e're moving in single file now. Myself, and one hundred, 'senselessly violent',
bloodthirsty insurgents. I loo!ed around at the camp before we left. There are no
signs that almost a hundred people had camped here, e+cept for some ash where the
fires had been. I cannot believe this army. ,s far as consumption goes, it's more
Gandhian than any Gandhian, and has a lighter carbon footprint than any climate
change evangelist. 7ut for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotageK before
a police vehicle is burnt for e+ample, it is stripped down and every part is
cannibali'ed. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar
barrel, the re+ine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery
for solar charging. .The new instructions from the high command are that captured
vehicles should be buried and not cremated. So they can be resurrected when
needed.1 Should I write a play I wonder<Gandhi Get Lour Gun@ &r will I be lynched@
$e're wal!ing in pitch dar!ness and dead silence. I'm the only one using a torch,
pointed down so that all I can see in its circle of light are omrade =amla's bare
heels in her scuffed, blac! chappals, showing me e+actly where to put my feet. She
is carrying ten times more weight than I am. %er bac!pac!, a rifle, a huge bag of
provisions on her head, one of the large coo!ing pots and two shoulder bags full of
vegetables. The bag on her head is perfectly balanced, and she can scramble down
slopes and slippery roc! pathways without so much as touching it. She is a miracle.
It turns out to be a long wal!. I'm grateful to the history lesson because apart
from everything else it gave my feet a rest for a whole day.
It's the most wonderful thing, wal!ing in the forest at night. ,nd I'll be doing it
night after night.
N
$e're going to a celebration of the centenary of the 4540 7hum!al rebellion in
which the =oyas rose up against the 7ritish. 7hum!al, means earth3ua!e. omrade
Aa*u says people will wal! for days together to come for the celebration. The
forest must be full of people on the move. There are celebrations in all the D=
divisions. $e are privileged because omrade Eeng, the Master of eremonies, is
wal!ing with us. In Gondi Eeng means 'the voice'. omrade Eeng is a tall, middle-
aged man from ,ndhra (radesh, a colleague of the legendary and beloved singer-poet
Gadar who founded the radical cultural organi'ation ;an )atya Manch .;)M1 in '9F.
2ventually ;)M became a formal part of the ($G and in ,ndhra (radesh could draw
audiences numbering in the tens of thousands. omrade Eeng *oined in 4599 and
became a famous singer in his own right. %e lived in ,ndhra through the worst
repression, the era of 'encounter' !illings in which friends died almost every day.
%e himself was pic!ed up one night from his hospital bed, by a woman Superintendent
of (olice, mas3uerading as a doctor. %e was ta!en to the forest outside $arangal to
be 'encountered'. 7ut luc!ily for him, omrade Eeng says, Gadar got the news and
managed to raise an alarm. $hen the ($G decided to start a cultural organi'ation in
D= in 455:, omrade Eeng was sent to head the hetana )atya Manch. ,nd here he is
now, wal!ing with me, wearing an olive green shirt, and for some reason, purple
py*amas with pin! bunnies on them. #There are 40,000 members in )M now#, he told
me. #$e have 600 songs, in %indi, Gondi, hhattisgarhi and %albi. $e have printed a
boo! with 4G0 of our songs. 2verybody writes songs.# The first time I spo!e to him,
he sounded very grave, very single-minded. 7ut days later, sitting around a fire,
still in those py*amas, he tells us about a very successful, mainstream Telugu film
director .a friend of his1, who always plays a )a+alite in his own films. #I as!ed
him,# omrade Eeng said in his lovely Telugu accented %indi, #why do you thin!
)a+alites are always li!e this@# < and he did a deft caricature of a crouched,
high-stepping, hunted-loo!ing man emerging from the forest with an ,=-G9, and left
us screaming with laughter.
I'm not sure whether I'm loo!ing forward to the 7hum!al celebrations. I fear I'll
see traditional tribal dances stiffened by Maoist propaganda, rousing, rhetorical
speeches and an obedient audience with gla'ed eyes. $e arrive at the grounds 3uite
late in the evening. , temporary monument, of bamboo scaffolding wrapped in red
cloth has been erected. &n top, above the hammer and sic!le of the Maoist (arty, is
the bow and arrow of the ;anatana Sar!ar, wrapped in silver foil. ,ppropriate, the
hierarchy. The stage is huge, also temporary, on a sturdy scaffolding covered by a
thic! layer of mud plaster. ,lready there are small fires scattered around the
ground, people have begun to arrive and are coo!ing their evening meal. They're
only silhouettes in the dar!. $e thread our way through them,
.lalsalaam,lalsalaam,lalsalaam1 and !eep going for about fifteen minutes until we
re-enter the forest.
,t our new campsite we have to fall-in again. ,nother roll call. ,nd then
instructions about sentry positions and 'firing arcs'<decisions about who will
cover which area in the event of a police attac!. AD points are fi+ed again.
,n advance party has arrived and coo!ed dinner already. Cor dessert =amla brings me
a wild guava that she has pluc!ed on the wal! and s3uirreled away for me.
Crom dawn there is the sense of more and more people gathering for the day's
celebration. There's a bu'' of e+citement building up. (eople who haven't seen each
other in a long time, meet again. $e can hear the sound of mi!es being tested.
Clags, banners, posters, buntings are going up. , poster with the pictures of the
five people who were !illed in &ngnaar the day we arrived has appeared.
I'm drin!ing tea with omrade )armada, omrade Maase and omrade Aupi. omrade
)armada tal!s about the many years she wor!ed in Gadchiroli before becoming the D=
head of =ranti!ari ,divasi Mahila Sanghathan .=,MS1. Aupi and Maase have been urban
activists in ,ndhra (radesh and tell me about the long years of struggle of women
within the (arty, not *ust for their rights, but also to ma!e the (arty see that
e3uality between men and women is central to a dream of a *ust society. $e tal!
about the '90s and the stories of women within the )a+alite movement who were
disillusioned by male comrades who thought themselves great revolutionaries but
were hobbled by the same old patriarchy, the same old chauvinism. Maase says things
have changed a lot since then, though they still have a way to go. .The (arty's
entral ommittee and (olit 7ureau have no women yet.1
,round noon another (EG, contingent arrives. This one is headed by a tall, lithe,
boyish loo!ing man. This comrade has two names<Su!hdev, and Gudsa ?sendi< neither
of which is his. Su!hdev is the name of a very beloved omrade who was martyred.
.In this war only the dead are safe enough to use their real names.1 ,s for Gudsa
?sendi, many comrades have been Gudsa ?sendi at one point or another. ., few months
ago it was omrade Aa*u.1 Gudsa ?sendi is the name of the (arty's spo!esperson for
Danda!aranya. So even though Su!hdev spends the rest of the trip with me, I have no
idea how I'd ever find him again. I'd recogni'e his laugh anywhere though. %e came
to D= in ':: he says, when the ($G decided to send one third of its forces from
)orth Telengana into D=. %e's nicely dressed, in 'civil' .Gondi for 'civilian
clothes'1 as opposed to 'dress' .the Maoist 'uniform'1 and could pass off as a
young e+ecutive. I as! him why no uniform.
%e says he's been traveling and has *ust come bac! from the =esh!al Ghats near
=an!er. There are reports of bau+ite deposits</ million tonnes<that a company
called Dedanta has its eye on.
7ingo. Ten on ten for my instincts.
Su!hdev says he went there to measure the peoples' temperature. To see if they were
prepared to fight. #They want s3uads now. ,nd guns.# %e throws his head bac! and
roars with laughter, #I told them it's not so easy, bhai.# Crom the stray wisps of
conversation and the ease with which he carries his ,=-G9, I can tell he's also
high up and hands on (EG,.
;ungle post arrives. There's a biscuit for meH It's from omrade Denu. &n a tiny
piece of paper, folded and re-folded, he has written down the lyrics of a song he
promised he would send me. omrade )armada smiles when she reads them. She !nows
this story. It goes bac! to the 45:0s, around the time when people first began
trust to the (arty and come to it with their problems<their 'inner contradictions'
as omrade Denu put it. $omen were among the first to come. &ne evening an old lady
sitting by the fire, got up and sang a song for the Dada log. She was a Maadiya,
among whom it was customary for women to remove their blouses and remain bare-
breasted after they were married.
;umper polo intor Dada, Da!oniley
Taane tasom intor Dada, Da!oniley
7ata papam !ittom Dada, Da!oniley
Duniya !adile maata Dada, Da!oniley
They say we cannot !eep our blouses, dada, Da!oniley
They ma!e us ta!e them off, Dada,
In what way have we sinned, Dada,
The world has changed has it not Dada,
,atum hatte!e Dada, Da!oniley
,ada nanga dantom Dada, Da!oniley
Id pisval manni Dada, Da!oniley
Mava !oyatur!u vehat Dada, Da!oniley
7ut when we go to mar!et Dada,
$e have to go half-na!ed Dada,
$e don't want this life Dada,
Tell our ancestors this Dada,
This was the first women's issue the (arty decided to campaign against. It had to
be handled delicately, with surgical tools. In 45:8 it set up the ,divasi Mahila
Sanghathana .,MS1 which evolved into the =ranti!ari ,divasi Mahila Sangathan .=,MS1
and now has 50,000 enrolled members. It could well be the largest women's
organi'ation in the country. .They're all Maoists by the way, all 50,000 of them.
,re they going to be 'wiped out'@ ,nd what about the 40,000 members of )M@ Them
too@1 The =,MS campaigns against the adivasi traditions of forced marriage and
abduction. ,gainst the custom of ma!ing menstruating women live outside the village
in a hut in the forest. ,gainst bigamy and domestic violence. It hasn't won all its
battles, but then which feminists have@ Cor instance, in Danda!aranya even today,
women are not allowed to sow seeds. In (arty meetings men agree that this is unfair
and ought to be done away with. 7ut in practice, they simply don't allow it. So the
(arty decided that women would sow seeds on common lands, which belongs to the
;antana Sar!ar. &n that land they sow seed, grow vegetables, and build chec! dams.
, half-victory, not a whole one.
,s police repression has grown in 7astar, the women of =,MS have become a
formidable force and rally in their hundreds, sometimes thousands to physically
confront the police. The very fact that the =,MS e+ists has radically changed
traditional attitudes and eased many of the traditional forms of discrimination
against women. Cor many young women, *oining the (arty, in particular the (EG,,
became a way of escaping the suffocation of their own society. omrade Sushila, a
senior office bearer of =,MS tal!s about the Salwa ;udum's rage against =,MS women.
She says one of their slogans was %um Do 7ibi layengeH EayengeH .$e will have two
wivesH $e willH1 , lot of the rape and bestial se+ual mutilation was directed at
members of the =,MS. Many young women who witnessed the savagery then *oined the
(EG, and now women ma!e up G6O of its cadre. omrade )armada sends for some of them
and they *oin us in a while.
omrade Ain!i has very short hair. , 7ob-cut as they say in Gondi. It's brave of
her, because here, 'bob-cut' means 'Maoist.' Cor the police that's more than enough
evidence to warrant summary e+ecution. omrade Ain!i's village, =orma was attac!ed
by the )aga 7attalion and the Salwa ;udum in F006. ,t that time Ain!i was part of
the village militia. So were her friends Eu!!i and Su!!i, who were also members of
the =,MS. ,fter burning the village, the )aga battalion caught Eu!!i and Su!!i and
one other girl, gang raped and !illed them. #They raped them on the grass#, Ain!i
says, # but after it was over there was no grass left.# It's been years now, the
)aga 7attalion has gone, but the police still come. #They come whenever they need
women, or chic!ens.#
,*itha has a bob-cut too. The ;udum came to =orseel, her village and !illed three
people by drowning them in a nallah. ,*itha was with the Militia, and followed the
;udum at a distance to a place close to the village called (aral )ar Toda!. She
watched them rape si+ women and shoot a man in his throat.
omrade Ea+mi who is a gorgeous girl with a long plait, tells me she watched the
;udum burn thirty houses in her village ;o*or. #$e had no weapons then,# she says,
#we could do nothing, but watch.# She *oined the (EG, soon after. Ea+mi was one of
the 460 guerillas who wal!ed through the *ungle for three and a half months in
F00:, to )ayagarh in &rissa, to raid a police armoury from where they captured
4,F00 rifles and F00,000 rounds of ammunition.
omrade Sumitra *oined the (EG, in F00G, before the Salwa ;udum began its rampage.
She *oined she says, because she wanted to escape from home. #$omen are controlled
in every way,# she told me. #In our village girls were not allowed to climb trees,
if they did, they would have to pay a fine of As 600 or a hen. If a man hits a
woman and she hits him bac! she has to give the village a goat. Men go off to the
hills for months together to hunt. $omen are not allowed to go near the !ill, the
best part of the meat goes to men. $omen are not allowed to eat eggs.# Good reason
to *oin a guerilla army@
Sumitra tells the story of two of her friends, Telam (arvati and =amla who wor!ed
with =,MS. Telam (arvati was from (ole!aya village in South 7astar. Ei!e everyone
else from there, she too watched the Salwa ;udum burn her village. She then *oined
the (EG, and went to wor! in the =esh!al ghats. In F005 she and =amla had *ust
finished organi'ing the March :th $omen's day celebrations in the area. They were
together in a little hut *ust outside a village called Dadgo. The police surrounded
the hut at night and began to fire. =amla fired bac!, but she was !illed. (arvati
escaped, but was found and !illed the ne+t day.
That's what happened last year on $omen's Day. ,nd here's a press report from a
national newspaper about $omen's Day this year.
7astar rebels bat for women's rights
Sahar =han, Mail Today, Aaipur, March 9, F040
The government may have pulled out all stops to combat the Maoist menace in the
country. 7ut a section of rebels in hhattisgarh has more pressing matters in hand
than survival. $ith International $omen's Day around the corner, Maoists in the
7astar region of the state have called for wee!- long #celebrations# to advocate
women's rights. (osters were also put up in 7i*apur, a part of 7astar district. The
call by the self- styled champions of women's rights has left the state police
astonished. Inspector- general .IG1 of 7astar T. ;. Eong!umer said, # I have never
seen such an appeal from the )a+alites, who believe only in violence and
bloodshed.#
,nd then the report goes on to say"
#I thin! the Maoists are trying to counter our highly successful ;an ;agran
,bhiyaan .mass awareness campaign1. $e started the ongoing campaign with an aim to
win popular support for &peration Green %unt, which was launched by the police to
root out Eeft- wing e+tremists,# the IG said.
This coc!tail of malice and ignorance is not unusual. Gudsa ?sendi, chronicler of
the (arty's present !nows more about this than most people. %is little computer and
M(/ recorder are full of press statements, denials, corrections, (arty literature,
lists of the dead, TD clips and audio and video material. #The worst thing about
being Gudsa ?sendi# he says, #is issuing clarifications which are never published.
$e could bring out a thic! boo! of our unpublished clarifications, about the lies
they tell about us.# %e spea!s without a trace of indignation, in fact with some
amusement.
#$hat's the most ridiculous charge you've had to deny@#
%e thin!s bac!. #In F009, we had to issue a statement saying ')ahi bhai, humney gai
!o hathode say nahin mara.' .)o brother, we did not !ill cows with hammers.1. In
F009 the Aaman Singh Government announced a Gai Lo*ana .cow scheme1, an election
promise, a cow for every ,divasi. &ne day the TD channels and newspapers reported
that )a+alites had attac!ed a herd of cows and bludgeoned them to death< with
hammers< because they were anti-%indu, anti-7;(. Lou can imagine what happened. $e
issued a denial. %ardly anybody carried it. Eater it turned out that the man who
had been given the cows to distribute was a rogue. %e sold them and said we had
ambushed him and !illed the cows.#
,nd the most serious@
#&h there are do'ens, they're running a campaign after all. $hen the Salwa ;udum
started, the first day they attac!ed a village called ,mbeli, burned it down and
then all of them, S(&s, the )aga 7attalion, police, moved towards =otrapalJyou must
have heard about =otrapal@ It's a famous village, it has been burnt FF times for
refusing to surrender. $hen the ;udum reached =otrapal, our militia was waiting for
it. They had prepared an ambush. Two S(&s died. The militia captured seven, the
rest ran away. The ne+t day the newspapers reported that the )a+alites had
massacred poor adivasis. Some said we had !illed hundreds. 2ven a respectable
maga'ine li!e Crontline said we had !illed 4: innocent adivasis. 2ven =.7alagopal,
the human rights activist, who is usually meticulous about facts, even he said
this. $e sent a clarification. )obody published it. Eater, in his boo!, 7alagopal
ac!nowledged his mista!eJ. 7ut who noticed@#
I as!ed what happened to the seven people that were captured.
#The ,rea ommittee called a ;an ,dalat .(eoples ourt1. Cour thousand people
attended it. They listened to the whole story. Two of the S(&s were sentenced to
death. Cive were warned and let off. The people decided. 2ven with informers <which
is becoming a huge problem nowadays< people listen to the case, the stories, the
confessions and say #Is!a hum ris! nahin le sa!te# .$e're not prepared to ta!e the
ris! of trusting this person1 or, #Is!a ris! hum lenge# .$e are prepared to ta!e
the ris! of trusting this person.1 The press always reports about informers who are
!illed. )ever about the many that are let off. )ever about the people who these
informers have had !illed. So everybody thin!s it is some bloodthirsty procedure in
which everybody is always !illed. It's not about revenge, its about survival and
saving future livesJ &f course there are problems, we've made terrible mista!es, we
have even !illed the wrong people in our ambushes, thin!ing they were policemen,
but it is not the way it's portrayed in the media.#
The dreaded '(eoples' ourts'. %ow can we accept them@ &r approve this form of rude
*ustice@
&n the other hand, what about 'encounters' fa!e and otherwise<the worst form of
summary *ustice<that get policemen and soldiers bravery medals, cash awards and
out-of-turn promotions from the Indian Government@ The more they !ill, the more
they are rewarded. #7ravehearts# they are called, the '2ncounter specialists'.
',nti-nationals' we are called, those of us who dare to 3uestion them. ,nd what
about the Supreme ourt that bra'enly admitted it did not have enough evidence to
sentence Mohammed ,f'al .accused in the Dec F004 (arliament ,ttac!1 to death, but
did so anyway, because #the collective conscience of the society will only be
satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.#
,t least in the case of the =otrapal ;an ,dalat, the ollective was physically
present to ma!e its own decision. It wasn't made by *udges who had lost touch with
ordinary life a long time ago, presuming to spea! on behalf of an absent
ollective.
$hat should the people of =otrapal have done I wonder@ Sent for the police@
N
The sound of drums has become really loud. It's 7hum!al time. $e wal! to the
grounds. I can hardly believe my eyes. There is a sea of people, the most wild,
beautiful people, dressed in the most wild, beautiful ways. The men seem to have
paid much more attention to themselves than the women. They have feathered headgear
and painted tattoos on their faces. Many have eye ma!e-up and white, powdered
faces. There's lots of militia, girls in saris of breathta!ing colors with rifles
slung carelessly over their shoulders. There are old people, children, and red
buntings arc across the s!y. The sun is sharp and high. omrade Eeng spea!s. ,nd
several office-holders of the various ;antana Sar!ars. omrade )iti, an
e+traordinary woman who has been with the (arty since 4559, is such a threat to the
nation, that in ;anuary F009 more than 900 policemen surrounded Innar village
because they heard she was there. omrade )iti is considered to be so dangerous,
and is being hunted with such desperation, not because she has led many ambushes
.which she has1, but because she is an adivasi woman who is loved by people in the
village and is a real inspiration to young people. She spea!s with her ,= on her
shoulder. .It's a gun with a story. ,lmost everyone's gun has a story" $ho it was
snatched from, how, and by whom.1
, )M troupe performs a play about the 7hum!al uprising. The evil white coloni'ers
wear hats and golden straw for hair, and bully and beat ,divasis to pulp<causing
endless delight in the audience. ,nother troupe from South Gangalaur performs a
play called )itir ;udum (ito .Story of the 7lood %unt1. ;oori translates for me.
It's the story of two old people who go loo!ing for their daughter's village. ,s
they wal! through the forest, they get lost because everything is burnt and
unrecogni'able. The Salwa ;udum has even burned the drums and the musical
instruments. There are no ashes because it has been raining. They cannot find their
daughter. In their sorrow the old couple starts to sing, and hearing them, the
voice of their daughter sings bac! to them from the ruins" The sound of our village
has been silenced, she sings. There's no more pounding of rice, no more laughter by
the well. )o more birds, no more bleating goats. The taut string of our happiness
has been snapped.
%er father sings bac!" My beautiful daughter, don't cry today. 2veryone who is born
must die. These trees around us will fall, flowers will bloom and fade, one day
this world will grow old. 7ut who are we dying for@ &ne day our looters will learn,
one day Truth will prevail, but our people will never forget you, not for thousands
of years.
, few more speeches. Then the drumming and the dancing begins. 2ach ;anatana Sar!ar
has its own troupe. 2ach troupe has prepared its own dance. They arrive one by one,
with huge drums and they dance wild stories. The only character every troupe has in
common is 7ad Mining Man, with a helmet and dar! glasses, and usually smo!ing a
cigarette. 7ut there's nothing stiff, or mechanical about their dancing. ,s they
dance, the dust rises. The sound of drums becomes deafening. Gradually, the crowd
begins to sway. ,nd then it begins to dance. They dance in little lines of si+ or
seven, men and women separate, with their arms around each other's waists.
Thousands of people. This is what they've come for. Cor this. %appiness is ta!en
very seriously here, in the Danda!aranya forest. (eople will wal! for miles, for
days together to feast and sing, to put feathers in their turbans and flowers in
their hair, to put their arms around each other and drin! mahua and dance through
the night. )o one sings or dances alone. This, more than anything else, signals
their defiance towards a civili'ation that see!s to annihilate them.
I can't believe all this is happening right under the noses of the police. Aight in
the midst of &peration Green %unt.
,t first the (EG, comrades watch the dancers, standing aside with their guns. 7ut
then, one by one, li!e duc!s who cannot bear to stand on the shore and watch other
duc!s swim, they move in and begin to dance too. Soon there are lines of olive
green dancers, swirling with all the other colours. ,nd then, as sisters and
brothers and parents and children and friends who haven't met for months, years
sometimes, encounter each other, the lines brea! up and re-form and the olive green
is distributed among the swirling saris and flowers and drums and turbans. It
surely is a (eoples' ,rmy. Cor now, at least. ,nd what hairman Mao said about the
guerillas being the fish, and people being the water they swim in, is, at this
moment, literally true.
hairman Mao. %e's here too. , little lonely, perhaps, but present. There's a
photograph of him, up on a red cloth screen. Mar+ too. ,nd haru Ma*umdar, the
founder and chief theoretician of the )a+alite Movement. %is abrasive rhetoric
fetishi'es violence, blood and martyrdom, and often employs a language so coarse as
to be almost genocidal. Standing here, on 7hum!al day, I can't help thin!ing that
his analysis, so vital to the structure of this revolution, is so removed from its
emotion and te+ture. $hen he said that only 'an annihilation campaign' could
produce #the new man who will defy death and be free from all thought of self-
interest#< could he have imagined that this ancient people, dancing into the night,
would be the ones on whose shoulders his dreams would come to rest@
It's a great disservice to everything that is happening here that the only thing
that seems to ma!e it to the outside world is the stiff, unbending rhetoric of the
ideologues of a party that has evolved from a problematic past. $hen haru Ma'umdar
famously said, #hina's hairman is our hairman and hina's (ath is &ur (ath# he
was prepared to e+tend it to the point where the )a+alites remained silent while
General Lahya =han committed genocide in 2ast (a!istan .7angladesh1, because at the
time, hina was an ally of (a!istan. There was silence too, over the =hmer Aouge
and its !illing fields in ambodia. There was silence over the egregious e+cesses
of the hinese and Aussian Aevolutions. Silence over Tibet. $ithin the )a+alite
movement too, there have been violent e+cesses and it's impossible to defend much
of what they've done. 7ut can anything they have done compare with the sordid
achievements of the ongress and the 7;( in (un*ab, =ashmir, Delhi, Mumbai,
Gu*aratJ ,nd yet, despite these terrifying contradictions, haru Ma'umdar was a
visionary in much of what he wrote and said. The party he founded .and its many
splinter groups1 has !ept the dream of revolution real and present in India.
Imagine a society without that dream. Cor that alone we cannot *udge him too
harshly. 2specially not while we swaddle ourselves with Gandhi's pious humbug about
the superiority of #the non-violent way# and his notion of Trusteeship" #The rich
man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he
reasonably re3uires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the
remainder to be used for the good of society.#
%ow strange it is though, that the contemporary tsars of the Indian 2stablishment<
the State that crushed the )a+alites so mercilessly< should now be saying what
haru Ma'umdar said so long ago" hina's (ath is &ur (ath.
?pside Down. Inside &ut.
hina's (ath has changed. hina has become an imperial power now, preying on other
countries, other peoples' resources. 7ut the (arty is still right, only, the (arty
has changed its mind.
$hen the (arty is a suitor .as it is now in Danda!aranya1, wooing the people,
attentive to their every need, then it genuinely is a (eoples' (arty, its army
genuinely a (eoples' ,rmy. 7ut after the Aevolution how easily this love affair can
turn into a bitter marriage. %ow easily the (eoples' ,rmy can turn upon the people.
Today in Danda!aranya, the (arty wants to !eep the bau+ite in the mountain.
Tomorrow will it change its mind@ 7ut can we, should we let apprehensions about the
future, immobili'e us in the present@
The dancing will go on all night. I wal! bac! to the camp. Maase is there, awa!e.
$e chat late into the night. I give her my copy of )eruda's aptain's Derses .I
brought it along, *ust in case1. She as!s again and again, #$hat do they thin! of
us outside@ $hat do students say@ Tell me about the women's movement, what are the
big issues now@ She as!s about me, my writing. I try and give her an honest account
of my chaos. Then she starts to tal! about herself, how she *oined the (arty. She
tells me that her partner was !illed last May, in a fa!e encounter. %e was arrested
in )ashi!, and ta!en to $arangal to be !illed. #They must have tortured him badly.#
She was on her way to meet him when she heard he had been arrested. She's been in
the forest ever since. ,fter a long silence she tells me she was married once
before, years ago. #%e was !illed in an encounter too,# she says, and adds with
heart-brea!ing precision, #but in a real one.#
I lie awa!e on my *hilli, thin!ing of Maase's protracted sadness, listening to the
drums and the sounds of protracted happiness from the grounds, and thin!ing about
haru Ma'umdar's idea of protracted war, the central precept of the Maoist (arty.
This is what ma!es people thin! the Maoists offer to enter 'peace tal!s' is a hoa+,
a ploy to get breathing space to regroup, re-arm themselves and go bac! to waging
protracted war. $hat is protracted war@ Is it a terrible thing in itself, or does
it depend on the nature of the war@ $hat if the people here in Danda!aranya had not
waged their protracted war for the last thirty years, where would they be now@
,nd are the Maoists the only ones who believe in protracted war@ ,lmost from the
moment India became a sovereign nation it turned into a colonial power, anne+ing
territory, waging war. It has never hesitated to use military interventions to
address political problems< =ashmir, %yderabad, Goa, )agaland, Manipur, Telengana,
,ssam, (un*ab, the )a+alite uprising in $est 7engal, 7ihar, ,ndhra (radesh and now
across the tribal areas of entral India. Tens of thousands have been !illed with
impunity, hundreds of thousands tortured. ,ll of this behind the benign mas! of
democracy. $ho have these wars been waged against@ Muslims, hristians, Si!hs,
ommunists, Dalits, Tribals and, most of all against the poor who dare to 3uestion
their lot instead of accepting the crumbs that are flung at them. It's hard not to
see the Indian State as an essentially upper-caste %indu State .regardless of which
party is in power1 which harbours a refle+ive hostility towards the 'other'. &ne
that in true colonial fashion, sends the )agas and Mi'os to fight in hhattisgarh,
Si!hs to =ashmir, =ashmiris to &rissa, Tamilians to ,ssam and so on. If this isn't
protracted war, what is@
?npleasant thoughts on a lovely, starry night. Su!hdev is smiling to himself, his
face lit by his computer screen. %e's a cra'y wor!aholic. I as! him what's funny. #
I was thin!ing about the *ournalists who came last year for the 7hum!al
celebrations. They came for a day or two. &ne posed with my ,=, had himself
photographed and then went bac! and called us =illing Machines or something.#
The dancing hasn't stopped and it's daybrea!. The lines are still going, hundreds
of young people still dancing. #They won't stop#, omrade Aa*u says, #not until we
start pac!ing up.#
&n the grounds I run into omrade Doctor. %e's been running a little medical camp
on the edge of the dance floor. I want to !iss his fat chee!s. $hy can't he be at
least thirty people instead of *ust one@ $hy can't he be one thousand people@ I as!
him what it's loo!ing li!e, the health of Danda!aranya. %is reply ma!es my blood
run cold. Most of the people he has seen, he says, including those in the (EG,,
have a %aemoglobin ount that's between 6 and 8, .when the standard for Indian
women is 44.1 There's T7 caused by more than two years of chronic anaemia. Loung
children suffer from (rotein 2nergy Malnutrition Grade II, in medical terminology
called =washior!or. .I loo!ed it up later. It's a word derived from the Ga language
of oastal Ghana and means #the sic!ness a baby gets when the new baby comes.#
7asically the old baby stops getting mother's mil!, and there's not enough food to
provide it nutrition.1 #It's an epidemic here, li!e in 7iafra,# omrade Doctor
says, #I have wor!ed in villages before, but I've never seen anything li!e this.#
,part from this, there's malaria, osteoporosis, tapeworm, severe ear and tooth
infections and primary amenorrhea <which is when malnutrition during puberty causes
a woman's menstrual cycle to disappear, or never appear in the first place.
#There are no clinics in this forest apart from one or two in Gadchiroli. )o
doctors. )o medicines.#
%e's off now, with his little team, on an eight-day tre! to ,bhu*mad. %e's in
'dress' too, omrade Doctor. So if they find him they'll !ill him.
omrade Aa*u says that it isn't safe for us to continue to camp here. $e have to
move. Eeaving 7hum!al involves a lot of good-byes spread over time.
Eal lal salaam, Eal lal salaam,
;aane waley Sathiyon !o Eal Eal Salaam,
.Aed Salute to departing comrades1
(hir milenge, (hir milenge
Danda!aranya *ungle mein phir milenge
$e'll meet again, some day, in the Danda!aranya Corest.
It's never ta!en lightly, the ceremony of arrival and departure, because everybody
!nows that when they say #we'll meet again# they actually mean #we may never meet
again.# omrade )armada, omrade Maase and omrade Aoopi are going separate ways.
$ill I ever see them again@
So once again, we wal!. It's becoming hotter every day. =amla pic!s the first fruit
of the Tendu for me. It's tastes li!e chi!oo. I've become a tamarind fiend. This
time we camp near a stream. $omen and men ta!e turns to bathe in batches. In the
evening omrade Aa*u receives a whole pac!et of 'biscuits'.
)ews"
80 people arrested in Manpur Division at the end of ;an F040 have not yet been
produced in ourt.
%uge contingents of police have arrived in South 7astar. Indiscriminate attac!s are
on.
&n : )ov F005, in =achlaram Dillage, 7i*apur ;ila, Dir!o Mad!a .801 and =ovasi
Su!lu .8:1 were !illed.
&n FG )ov Madavi 7aman .461 was !illed in (angodi village
&n / Dec Madavi 7udram from =oren*ad also !illed.
&n 44 Dec Gumiapal village, Darba Division, 9 people !illed .names yet to come1
&n 46 Dec =otrapal village, De!o Sombar and Madavi Matti, .both with =,MS1
!illed.
&n /0 Dec Dechapal village (oonem (andu and (oonem Motu .father and son1 !illed.
&n ;an F040 .date un!nown1 %ead of the ;anatana Sar!ar in =ai!a village, Gangalaur
!illed
&n 5 ;an, G people !illed in Surpangooden village, ;agargonda ,rea
&n 40 ;an, / people !illed in (ullem (ulladi village .no names yet1
&n F6 ;anuary, 9 people !illed in Ta!ilod village, Indravati ,rea
&n Ceb 40 .7hum!al Day1 =umli raped and !illed in Dumnaar Dillage, ,bhu*mad,. She
was from a village called (aiver.
F000 troops of the Indo Tibetan 7order (atrol .IT7(1 are camped in the Aa*nandgaon
forests
6000 ,dditional 7SC troops have arrived in =an!er
,nd then"
(EG, 3uota filled.
Some dated newspapers have arrived too. There's a lot of press about )a+alites. &ne
screaming headline sums up the political climate perfectly" =hadedo, Maaro,
Samarpan =arao, .2liminate, =ill, Ma!e them Surrender.1 7elow that" Darta !e liye
lo!tantra !a dwar !hula hai .Democracy's door is always open for tal!s.1 , second
says the Maoists are growing cannabis to ma!e money. The third has an editorial
saying that the area we've camped in and are wal!ing through, is entirely under
police control.
The young communists ta!e the clips away to practice their reading. They wal!
around the camp reading the anti-Maoist articles loudly in radio-announcer voices.
N
)ew day. )ew place. $e're camped on the outs!irts of ?sir village, under huge Mahua
trees. The mahua has *ust begun to flower and is dropping its pale green blossoms
li!e *ewels on the forest floor. The air is suffused with its slightly heady smell.
$e're waiting for the children from the 7hatpal school which was closed down after
the &ngnaar 2ncounter. It's been turned into a police camp. The children have been
sent home. This is also true of the schools in )elwad, Moon*metta, 2d!a, Dedoma!ot
and Dhanora.
The 7hatpal school children don't show up.
omrade )iti .Most $anted1 and omrade Dinod lead us on a long wal! to see the
series of water harvesting structures and irrigation ponds that have been built by
the local ;anatana Sar!ar. omrade )iti tal!s about the range of agricultural
problems they have to deal with. &nly FO of the land is irrigated. In ,bhu*mad,
ploughing was unheard of until ten years ago. In Gadricholi on the other hand,
hybrid seeds and chemical pesticides are edging their way in. #$e need urgent help
in the agriculture department#, omrade Dinod says. #$e need people who !now about
seeds, organic pesticides, permaculture. $ith a little help we could do a lot.#
omrade Aamu is the farmer in charge of the ;anatana Sar!ar area. %e proudly shows
us around the fields, where they grow rice, brin*al, gongura, onions, !ohlrabi.
Then, with e3ual pride, he shows us a huge, but bone-dry irrigation pond. $hat's
this@ #This one doesn't even have water during the rainy season. It's dug in the
wrong place# he says, a smile wrapped around his face, #it's not ours, it was dug
by the Eooti Sar!ar.# .The Government that Eoots1. There are two parallel systems
of government here, ;anatana Sar!ar and Eooti Sar!ar.
I thin! of what omrade Denu said to me" They want to crush us, not only because of
the minerals, but because we are offering the world an alternative model.
It's not an ,lternative yet, this idea of Gram Swara* with a Gun. There is too much
hunger, too much sic!ness here. 7ut it has certainly created the possibilities for
an alternative. )ot for the whole world, not for ,las!a, or )ew Delhi, nor even
perhaps for the whole of hhattisgarh, but for itself. Cor Danda!aranya. Its the
world's best !ept secret. It has laid the foundations for an alternative to its own
annihilation. It has defied history. ,gainst the greatest odds it has forged a
blueprint for its own survival. It needs help and imagination, it needs doctors,
teachers, farmers.
It does not need war.
7ut if war is all it gets, it will fight bac!.
N
&ver the ne+t few days I meet women who wor! with =,MS, various office bearers of
the ;anatana Sar!ars, members of the Danda!aranya ,divasi =isan Ma'door Sangathan
D,=MS, the families of people who had been !illed, and *ust ordinary people trying
to cope with life in these terrifying times.
I met three sisters, Su!hiyari, Su!dai and Su!!ali, not young, perhaps in their
forties, from )arainpur district. They have been in =,MS for twelve years. The
villagers depend on them to deal with the police. #The police come in groups of two
to three hundred. They steal everything, *ewelry, chic!ens, pigs, pots and pans,
bows and arrows# Su!!ali says, #they won't even leave a !nife.# %er house in Innar
has been burned twice, once by the )aga 7attalion and once by the A(C. Su!hiari
has been arrested and *ailed in ;agdalpur for 9 months. #&nce they too! away the
whole village, saying the men were all )a+als.# Su!hiari followed with all the
women and children. They surrounded the police station and refused to leave until
the men were freed. #$henever they ta!e someone away#, Su!dai says, #you have to go
immediately and snatch them bac!. 7efore they write any report. &nce they write in
their boo!, it becomes very difficult.#
Su!hiari, who, as a child was abducted and forcibly married to an older man .she
ran away and went to live with her sister1, now organi'es mass rallies, spea!s at
meetings. The men depend on her for protection. I as!ed her what the (arty means to
her. #)a+alvaad !a matlab humaara (arivaar .)a+alvaad means our family.1 $hen we
hear of an attac!, it is li!e our family has been hurt.# Su!hiari said.
I as!ed her if she !new who Mao was. She smiled shyly, #%e was a leader. $e're
wor!ing for his vision.#
I met omrade Somari Gawde. Twenty years old, and she has already served a two-year
*ail sentence in ;agdalpur. She was in Innar village on : ;anuary F009, the day
that 9G0 policemen laid a cordon around it because they had information that
omrade )iti was there. .She was, but had left by the time they arrived.1 7ut the
village militia, of which Somari was a member, was still there. The police opened
fire at dawn. They !illed two boys, Su!lal Gawde and =achroo Gota. Then they caught
three others, two boys, Dusri Salam and Aanai, and Somari. Dusri and Aanai were
tied up and shot. Somari was beaten within an inch of her life. The police got a
tractor with a trailer and loaded the dead bodies into it. Somari was made to sit
with the dead bodies and ta!en to )arainpur.
I met hamri, mother of omrade Dilip who was shot on 8 ;uly F005. She says that
after they !illed him, the police tied her son's body to a pole, li!e an animal and
carried it with them. .They need to produce bodies to get their cash rewards,
before someone else muscles in on the !ill.1 hamri ran behind them all the way to
the police station. 7y the time they reached, the body did not have a scrap of
clothing on it. &n the way, hamri says, they left the body by the roadside while
they stopped at a dhaba to have tea and biscuits. .$hich they did not pay for.1
(icture this mother for a moment, following her son's corpse through the forest,
stopping at a distance to wait for his murderers to finish their tea. They did not
let her have her son's body bac! so she could give him a proper funeral. They only
let her throw a fistful of earth in the pit in which they buried the others they
had !illed that day. hamri says she wants revenge. 7adla !u badla. 7lood for
blood.
I met the elected members of the Mars!ola ;anatana Sar!ar, that administers si+
villages. They described a police raid" They come at night, /00, G00, sometimes
4000 of them. They lay a cordon around a village and lie in wait. ,t dawn they
catch the first people who go out to the fields and use them as human shields to
enter the village, to show them where the booby-traps are. .'7ooby-traps' has
become a Gondi word. 2verybody always smiles when they say it or hear it. The
forest is full of booby traps, real and fa!e. 2ven the (EG, needs to be guided past
villages.1 &nce the police enter the village they loot and steal and burn houses.
They come with dogs. The dogs catch those who try and run. They chase chic!ens and
pigs and the police !ill them and ta!e them away in sac!s. S(&s come along with the
police. They're the ones who !now where people hide their money and *ewelry. They
catch people and ta!e them away. ,nd e+tract money before they release them. They
always carry some e+tra )a+al 'dresses' with them in case they find someone to
!ill. They get money for !illing )a+als, so they manufacture some. Dillagers are
too frightened to stay at home.
In this tran3uil-loo!ing forest, life seems completely militari'ed now. (eople !now
words li!e ordon and Search, Ciring, ,dvance, Aetreat, Down, ,ctionH To harvest
their crops they need the (EG, to do a sentry patrol. Going to the mar!et is a
military operation. The mar!ets are full of mu!hbirs .informers1 who the police
have lured from their villages with money. .As 4600 a month1 I'm told there's a
mu!hbir mohallah<informers' colony< in )arainpur where at least four thousand
mu!hbirs stay. The men can't go to mar!et any more. The women go, but they're
watched closely. If they buy even a little e+tra, the police accuse them of buying
it for )a+als. hemists have instructions not to let people buy medicines e+cept in
very small 3uantities. Eow price rations from the (ublic Distribution System .(DS1,
sugar, rice, !erosene, are warehoused in or near police stations ma!ing it
impossible for most people to buy.
N
,rticle F of the ?nited )ations onvention on the (revention and (unishment of the
rime of Genocide defines it as"
,ny of the following ,cts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a
national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such" !illing members of the
groupK causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the groupK deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or partK imposing measures intended to prevent births within
the groupK PorQ forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
N
,ll the wal!ing seems to have finally got to me. I'm tired. =amla gets me a pot of
hot water. I bathe behind a tree in the dar!. 7ut I can't eat dinner and crawl into
my bag to sleep. omrade Aa*u announces that we have to move. This happens
fre3uently, of course, but tonight it's hard. $e have been in camped in an open
meadow. $e'd heard shelling in the distance. There are 40G of us. &nce again,
single file through the night. ric!ets. The smell of something li!e lavender. It
must have been past eleven when we arrived at the place where we will spend the
night. ,n outcrop of roc!s. Cormation. Aoll call. Someone switches on the radio.
77 says there's been an attac! on a camp of 2astern Crontier Aifles in Ealgarh,
$est 7engal. 80 Maoists on motorcycles. 4G policemen !illed. 40 missing. $eapons
snatched. There's a murmur of pleasure in the ran!s. The Maoist leader =ishen*i is
being interviewed. $hen will you stop this violence and come for tal!s@ $hen
&peration Green %unt is called off. ,ny time. Tell hidambaram we will tal!. )e+t
3uestion" It's dar! now, you have laid landmines, reinforcement have been called
in, will you attac! them too@ =ishen*i" Les of course, otherwise people will beat
me. There's laughter in the ran!s. Su!hdev the clarifier says, #They always say
landmines. $e don't use landmines. $e use I2Ds.#
,nother lu+ury suite in the thousand star hotel. I'm feeling ill. It starts to
rain. There's a little giggling. =amla throws a *hilli over me. $hat more do I
need@ 2veryone else *ust rolls themselves into their *hillis.
7y ne+t morning the body count in Ealgarh has gone up to F4, 40 missing.
omrade Aa*u is considerate this morning. $e don't move till evening.
N
&ne night people are crowded li!e moths around a point of light. It's omrade
Su!hdev's tiny computer, powered by a solar panel, and they're watching Mother
India, the barrels of their rifles silhouetted against the s!y. =amla doesn't seem
interested. I as!ed her if she li!es watching movies. #)ahi didi. Sirf ambush
video.# .)o didi. &nly ambush videos.#1 Eater I as! omrade Su!hdev about these
ambush videos. $ithout batting an eyelid, he plays one for me.
It starts with shots of Danda!aranya, rivers, waterfalls, the close up of a bare
branch of a tree, a brainfever bird calling. Then suddenly a comrade is wiring up
an I2D, concealing it with dry leaves. , cavalcade of motorcycles is blown up.
There are mutilated bodies and burning bi!es. The weapons are being snatched. Three
policemen, loo!ing shell-shoc!ed have been tied up.
$ho's filming it@ $ho's directing operations@ $ho's reassuring the captured cops
that they will be released if they surrender@ .They were released, I confirmed
later.1
I !now that gentle, reassuring voice. It's omrade Denu.
#It's the =udur ,mbush# omrade Su!hdev says.
%e also has a video archive of burned villages, testimonies from eyewitnesses and
relatives of the dead. &n the singed wall of a burnt house it says ')agaaaH 7orn to
=illH.' There's footage of the little boy whose fingers were chopped off to
inaugurate the 7astar chapter of &peration Green %unt. .There's even a TD interview
with me. My study. My boo!s. Strange.1
,t night on the radio there's news of another )a+al ,ttac!. This one in ;amui,
7ihar. It says 4F6 Maoists attac!ed a village and !illed 40 people belonging to the
=ora Tribe in retaliation for giving police information that led to the death of 8
Maoists. &f course we !now, the report may or may not be true. 7ut if it is, this
one's unforgiveable. omrade Aa*u and Su!hdev loo! distinctly uncomfortable.
The news that has been coming from ;har!hand and 7ihar is disturbing. The gruesome
beheading of the policeman Crancis Induvar is still fresh in everyone's mind. It's
a reminder of how easily the discipline of armed struggle can dissolve into lumpen
acts of criminali'ed violence, or into ugly wars of identity between castes and
communities and religious groups. 7y institutionali'ing in*ustice in the way that
it does, the Indian State has turned this country into a tinderbo+ of massive
unrest. The Government is 3uite wrong if it thin!s that by carrying out 'targeted
assassinations' to render the (I.Maoist1 'headless' it will end the violence. &n
the contrary, the violence will spread and intensify, and the Government will have
nobody to tal! to.
N
&n my last few days we meander through the lush, Indravati valley. ,s we wal! along
a hillside, we see another line of people wal!ing in the same direction, but on the
other side of the river. I'm told they're on their way to an anti-dam meeting in
=udur village. They're over ground and unarmed. , local rally for the valley. I
*umped ship and *oined them.
The 7odhghat Dam will submerge the entire area that we have been wal!ing in for
days. ,ll that forest, all that history, all those stories. More than 400 villages.
Is that the plan then@ To drown people li!e rats, so that the integrated steel
plant in Eohandiguda and the bau+ite mine and aluminum refinery in the =esh!al
ghats can have the river@
,t the meeting, people who have come from miles away, say the same thing we've all
heard for years. $e will drown, but we won't moveH They are thrilled that someone
from Delhi is with them. I tell them Delhi is a cruel city that neither !nows nor
cares about them.
&nly wee!s before I came to Danda!aranya, I visited Gu*arat. The Sardar Sarovar Dam
has more or less reached its full height now. ,nd almost every single thing the
)armada 7achao ,ndolan .)7,1 predicted would happen has happened. (eople who were
displaced have not been rehabilitated, but that goes without saying. The canals
have not been built. There's no money. So )armada water is being diverted into the
empty riverbed of the Sabarmati .which was dammed a long time ago.1 Most of the
water is being gu''led by cities and big industry. The downstream effects <salt-
water ingress into an estuary with no river<are becoming impossible to mitigate.
There was a time when believing that 7ig Dams were the 'temples of Modern India'
was misguided, but perhaps understandable. 7ut today, after all that has happened,
and when we !now all that we do, it has to be said that 7ig Dams are a crime
against humanity.
The 7odhghat dam was shelved in 45:G after local people protested. $ho will stop it
now@ $ho will prevent the foundation stone from being laid@ $ho will stop the
Indravati from being stolen@ Someone must.
N
&n the last night we camped at the base of the steep hill we would climb in the
morning, to emerge on the road from where a motorcycle would pic! me up. The forest
has change even since I first entered it. The chiron*ee, sil! cotton and mango
trees have begun to flower.
The villagers from =udur send a huge pot of freshly caught fish to the camp. ,nd a
list for me, of 94 !inds of fruit, vegetables, pulses and insects they get from the
forest and grow in their fields, along with the mar!et price. It's *ust a list. 7ut
it's also a map of their world.
;ungle post arrives. Two biscuits for me. , poem and a pressed flower from omrade
)armada. , lovely letter from Maase. .$ho is she@ $ill I ever !now@1.
omrade Su!hdev as!s if he can download the music from my Ipod into his computer.
$e listen to a recording of I3bal 7ano singing Cai' ,hmed Cai''s '%um De!henge' .$e
will $itness the Day1 at the famous concert in Eahore at the height of the
repression during the Iia-ul-%a3 years.
;ab ahl-e-safa-Mardud-e-haram,
Masnad pe bithaiye *ayenge
$hen the heretics and the reviled.
$ill be seated on high
Sab taa* uchhale *ayenge
Sab ta!ht giraye *ayenge
,ll crowns will be snatched away
,ll thrones toppled
%um De!henge
Cifty thousand people in the audience in that (a!istan begin a defiant chant"
In3ilab IindabadH In3ilab IindabadH ,ll these years later, that chant reverberates
around this forest. Strange, the alliances that get made.
The %ome Minister has been issuing veiled threats to those who #erroneously offer
intellectual and material support to the Maoists.# Does sharing I3bal 7ano 3ualify@
,t dawn I say good-bye to omrade Madhav and ;oori, to young Mangtu and all the
others. omrade handu has gone to organi'e the bi!es, and will come with me upto
the main road. omrade Aa*u isn't coming. .The climb would be hell on his !nees1.
omrade )iti .Most $anted1, omrade Su!hdev, =amla and five others will ta!e me up
the hill. ,s we start wal!ing, )iti and Su!hdev casually, but simultaneously,
unclic! the safety catches of their ,=s. It's the first time I've seen them do
that. $e're approaching the '7order.' #Do you !now what to do if we come under
fire@# Su!hdev as!s casually, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
#Les,# I said. #Immediately declare an indefinite hunger-stri!e.#
%e sat down on a roc! and laughed. $e climbed for about an hour. ;ust below the
road, we sat in a roc!y alcove, completely concealed, li!e an ambush party,
listening for the sound of the bi!es. $hen it comes, the farewell must be 3uic!.
Eal Salaam omrades.
$hen I loo!ed bac!, they were still there. $aving. , little !not. (eople who live
with their dreams, while the rest of the world lives with its nightmares. 2very
night I thin! of this *ourney. That night s!y, those forest paths. I see omrade
=amla's heels in her scuffed chappals, lit by the light of my torch. I !now she
must be on the move. Marching, not *ust for herself, but to !eep hope alive for us
all.