Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal [1° ed.] 1138503983, 9781138503984

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WINDOWS INTO A REVOLUTION

WINDOWS INTO A REVOLUTION ETHNOGRAPHIES OF MAOISM IN INDIA AND NEPAL

Edited by

Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew; individual chapters, the contributors; and Social Science Press The right of Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan). British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-50398-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14572-3 (ebk) Typeset in AGaramond by Tulika Pint Communication Services, New Delhi 110 049

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

vii

Biographical notes

ix

1. Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal ALPA SHAH AND JUDITH PETTIGREW

1

2. In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India ALPA SHAH

39

3. The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal SARA SHNEIDERMAN

60

4. Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar GEORGE J. KUNNATH

89

5. Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist SUMANTA BANERJEE

113

6. Radical Masculinity: Morality, Sociality and Relationships through Recollections of Naxalite Activists HENRIKE DONNER

136

vi Contents 7. Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution: Rethinking “Failed Development” 160 LAUREN G. LEVE 8. From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment: Two Narratives from a Nepalese Community ANNE DE SALES

185

9. Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal MARIE LECOMTE-TILOUINE

207

10. Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal JUDITH PETTIGREW AND KAMAL ADHIKARI

233

11. Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency in Rural Maharashtra AMIT DESAI

259

12. The Purification Hunt: The Salwa Judum Counterinsurgency in Chhattisgarh JASON MIKLIAN

282

13. The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings DEEPAK THAPA, KIYOKO OGURA AND JUDITH PETTIGREW

309

Index

334

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T

his book has its genesis in a conference panel on ‘The Everyday Life of Revolutionary Movements’ organized by us at the European Association of Social Anthropologists meeting in Bristol in 2006. Here, we established the need for a more focussed comparative exploration between the everyday experiences of the Indian Maoists and the Nepal Maoists. The British Academy kindly funded a subsequent workshop to discuss ‘Everyday Life with Maoism in India and Nepal: Anthropological Comparisons’. We would like to thank all those who presented papers at this workshop held in Lancashire in 2007 and Stephan Feuchtwang, David Gellner and John Hutnyk for acting as discussants and subsequently providing very helpful comments. Most of the papers for that workshop were revised for this book and a few others were additionally commissioned. We would like to thank all the contributors for the hard work they have put into their chapters as well as their more general support throughout the development of our collected works. We would also like to thank Ritisha Maharjan for her work on the index. The volume first appeared as a special double guest edition of Dialectical Anthropology. This book would not have been possible without

viii Acknowledgements the help of the editors of Dialectical Anthropology, Kirk Dombrowski and Anthony Marcus, at City University New York. They went out of their way to free up the copyrights for the original typescript from Springer so that the articles could be reworked for a book to be published in India to make the research more easily accessible to a South Asian audience. The editorial and production work here is entirely independent from what appeared in Dialectical Anthropology and anonymous reviewers at Social Science Press gave helpful comments. We especially thank Esha Béteille for all the work that Social Science Press in Delhi has put into this book. November 2010

ALPA SHAH and JUDITH PETTIGREW

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

EDITORS ALPA SHAH is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University

of London. Her research focuses on social inequality and efforts to address it and she has commented on indigeneity, environmentalism, migration, development, corruption, democracy, citizenship and the state. She is co-editor (with Tobias Kelly) of A Double Edged Sword: Protection and State Violence (2006) and author of In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency, Jharkhand (2010). JUDITH PETTIGREW is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She has conducted long-term anthropological research in Nepal since 1990 and has published widely on Nepal’s Maoist movement. Her research on the everyday impacts of violence on rural people examines the interrelationships between space, emotional life, violence and psychosocial wellbeing. Her forthcoming monograph is titled, Ethnography and Everyday Life in Nepal’s Civil War.

x Biographical Notes

CONTRIBUTORS KAMAL ADHIKARI is the co-author (along with Pettigrew) of ‘“There is

Nowhere Safe”: Intrusion, Negotiation and Resistance in a Hill Village in Central Nepal’ in P. Manandhar and D. Seddon (eds.) In Hope and In Fear: Living Through the People’s War in Nepal (2010). SUMANTA BANERJEE is a writer and journalist. He is the author of In

The Wake of Naxalbari (2009) and editor of The Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry (2009). Apart from articles on politics published in journals, his other books include The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989); Dangerous Outcast: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1998); and The Wicked City: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Calcutta (2009). AMIT DESAI is a social anthropologist and received his PhD from the

London School of Economics in 2007. He is currently Research Fellow at the School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University, Belfast. His research interests include the anthropology of Hinduism and Hindu devotion, religious transformation, art and materiality. He is co-editor (with Evan Killick) of The Ways of Friendship: Anthropological Perspectives (2010). HENRIKE DONNER teaches at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies,

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and is a Senior Visiting Fellow at London School of Economics. She has undertaken more than four years of fieldwork in Kolkata between 1994-2006 and her research interests include gender, kinship and politics. Her publications include Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India, and (with Geert De Neve) The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Urban Place in India as well as (with Sharad Chari) Ethnography and Activism. GEORGE J. KUNNATH holds a PhD in anthropology from SOAS, University of London. His work focuses on Dalits, Adivasis, caste-class relations and the Maoist Movement in Bihar and Jharkhand. His forthcoming monograph is titled, Rebels from the Mud Houses: Dalits and the Making of the Maoist Revolution in Bihar.

Biographical Notes xi MARIE LECOMTE-TILOUINE is Senior Researcher (Directeur de

recherche) in Social Anthropology at CNRS, France, and teaches at the Institut National des Langues Orientales, Paris. She is currently coordinating a programme on the ethnography and the history of the Nepalese People’s War financed by the ANR (the French national agency for research). Her recent books include Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal (2009) and Bards and Mediums: History, Culture and Politics in the Central Himalayan Kingdoms (2009). LAUREN LEVE is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An anthropologist by training, her interests focus on the intersections between religion, gender, development, sociopolitical subjectivities and the cultural dynamics of neoliberal globalization, including the current ‘ethical turn’. She has published several articles on the relations between a Theravada Buddhist reform movement and the Nepal state and also on NGOs and women’s empowerment. She is the author of a forthcoming book titled, The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal: Ethical Practice, Religious Reform and “Seeing Things as They Are”. JASON MIKLIAN is a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo

(PRIO) and NORAGRIC, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. His current work examines the relationship between India’s federal democratic structure and conflict resolution of the Maoist insurgency, with a particular emphasis on the interrelation between natural resource extraction, displacement and rebel group recruitment in the states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. In addition, Jason’s ongoing PhD work explores the potential role of rare earth elements as ‘blood diamond’style conflict resources in both India and the Democratic Republic of Congo. KIYOKO OGURA is a Japanese journalist based in Nepal since 1993. She

has undertaken extensive research and media coverage of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal since 2001, including ongoing fieldwork in the Maoist base area of Rolpa. She has written numerous publications on Nepali politics, including Kathmandu Spring: People’s Movement of

xii Biographical Notes 1990 (2001) and Nepal Ousei Kaitai (Dissolving the Nepali Monarch) (2007). ANNE DE SALES is a researcher in social anthropology in the French

National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is currently affiliated to the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative and to Paris Ouest university. Her publications on Nepal include a monograph on an ethnic minority, the Kham-Magar, and numerous articles on shamanic practices and oral literature. Since 1999 her publications have addressed a range of anthropological issues concerning the impact of the Maoist insurrection on rural Nepal. SARA SHNEIDERMAN is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale

University. Her research focuses on the relationships between political discourse, ritual practice, cultural performance and cross-border migration in producing contemporary identities. She has published on Nepal’s Maoist movement, as well ethnicity, religion and gender in the Himalayas. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled “Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Across Himalayan Borders”. DEEPAK THAPA is the Director of the Social Science Baha, an organization in Kathmandu dedicated to developing the social sciences in Nepal. He has written numerous articles on Nepal’s Maoist insurgency and is the co-author of A Kingdom under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 19962004 (2004) and editor of Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal (2003).

WINDOWS INTO A REVOLUTION ETHNOGRAPHIES OF MAOISM IN INDIA AND NEPAL ALPA SHAH and JUDITH PETTIGREW

A

red corridor, stretching from Nepal in the north to the State of Andhra Pradesh, India in the south, grips the public imagination in South Asia. Despite the collapse of socialism and the demise of communist governments across the world, Maoist Movements have (re)emerged as a significant force in this region. India and Nepal have had people across the country mobilized in protracted guerrilla war aimed at annihilating class enemies, creating liberated zones and seizing state power through the barrel of the gun. A “People’s War” was declared in February 1996 in Nepal. The objective was to overthrow the old order, which included monarchic and privileged rule by an establishment of landed families, and to replace it with New People’s Democracy. The following years saw the spread of the Maoists from their strongholds in Nepal’s mid-western districts, attacks on the Royal Nepalese Army,1 the deployment of the army, and the suspension of democratic powers. Nepal had the highest number of 1

The Royal Nepalese Army is also referred to as the Royal Nepal Army.

2 Windows into a Revolution disappearances in the world in 2003 and 20042 and more than fourteen thousand people have lost their lives since 1996. However, from November 2005, on the back of the success of the “People’s War”, the Nepal Maoists opted to bring about social transformation through open politics and began collaborating with the seven mainstream parties. King Gyanendra, who had staged a coup in February 2005, relinquished power following a successful People’s Movement in April 2006. The government and the Maoists signed a peace accord in November 2006 declaring a formal end to the ten-year insurgency. The Maoists gained the highest number of seats in the election for the new Constituent Assembly in April 2008. The Maoist supremo ‘Prachanda’ (Pushpa Kamal Dahal) led a coalition government between August 2008 and May 2009 before resigning in protest when the president overruled a cabinet decision on a technicality. Since relinquishing power, they have tried to make a comeback using a variety of strategies and though unsuccessful and despite their rhetoric of resumption of armed conflict, they have so far remained committed to the democratic process. Meanwhile, India remains a torch bearer of the Maoist protracted people’s war. Here, where South Asian Maoists have their roots, the movement has a long history. Although there were earlier communist uprisings, the Naxalbari Movement, which began in 1960s in West Bengal, is heralded as the beginning of the Maoist revolution in India. Following the severe state repression of the 1970s, the Indian Maoists operating as various factions, grouped and regrouped over the years. While the Nepali Maoists joined mainstream politics, the Indian Maoists consolidated their underground forces so that by 2006 they were declared by India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, as the single biggest internal security threat that the country has ever faced. As this book goes to press a military offensive of an unprecedented scale is underway to wipe out the Maoists. Over the years, the Maoist Movements in South Asia have attracted much media and scholarly attention. Several excellent books on the history and the politics of the movements have been written by activists, exMaoists, journalists, academics and state officials.3 This book aims to contribute to this existing scholarship in two primary domains: first, by 2

Human Rights Watch 2004.

3 These include Banerjee (1980); Bhatia (2000); Chakravarti (2007); Ghosh (1974);

Gupta (2004); Hutt (2004); Ogura (2007); Singh (1995); Sinha (1989); Thapa (2003); Thapa with Sijapati (2004); Yami (2007).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 3 considering the Nepali and the Indian cases in one frame, and second, by focussing on the everyday experiences of the movements through detailed case studies which draw on long-term extended fieldwork and analyses in areas affected by the spread of the Maoist revolutions.

THE COMPARATIVE PROJECT This book is one of the first to begin with the premise that the Nepali and the Indian experience should be considered in a comparative perspective. Undoubtedly, there are marked differences between the Maoist Movements in the two countries. Different histories of state formation have produced differing tactics. Even after the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990, it was possible for the Maoists to represent Nepal as still being dominated by the king and a “feudal” elite. Since the beginning their campaign was against the monarchy even though violent confrontation did not escalate until 2001 after the royal massacre in which King Birendra and all his family were killed,4 while in India with a parliamentary democracy, the Maoist Movement, characterizing India as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, focussed its initial struggles against the rural landed classes. There are also important differences territorially. Much of Nepal’s inhabited landscape consists of terrain that is difficult to reach even by foot. The forests of the midhills are therefore ideal territory for establishing and defending guerilla base areas.5 In India, by contrast, such terrain is limited to small parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.6 There are differences too in the organization of the Maoists: the Nepali Maoists were for years considered to be more united than their Indian counterparts whose most powerful groups—the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the People’s War Group (CPI(ML) People’s War) only united in 2004. These differences have also been reflected in the extent of war in each country. Nepal has experienced a country-wide, decade-long Maoist insurgency, whereas India has seen pockets of insurgency. This has meant that Nepal, especially between 2001–06, was entirely militarized in ways that are only taking shape in India since 2008. Moreover, as the turn of events since 2005 in Nepal has shown, the Maoists in the two countries 4

Lecomte-Tilouine (2004). Gellner (2003); Ramirez (2004). 6 (Banerjee 2006). 5

4 Windows into a Revolution have initiated differing degrees of integration into the official national political processes. There were certainly divisions within the communist leadership over this issue in both countries. In India, for example, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation left the armed route in the 1970s, and now participates in democratic electoral politics. Nevertheless, the decision of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to work within the multi-party democratic system and lay down their guns, commended by many as the “Prachanda Path” to a democratic republic based on the concrete analysis of the specific conditions that exist in Nepal,7 was also condemned by sections of the most powerful of the Indian Maoist groups, the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Despite these differences, there are significant reasons for treating the Indian and Nepali experiences together. First, the Nepali Maoists emerged out of intimate dialogue and debate with their Indian counterparts, and many Nepali Maoist leaders were educated in Indian universities where they engaged in radical politics. Second, the fragmentation and differences within the Maoist Movements in both countries, especially in India, mean that there may be greater similarities between particular factions operating in different countries than there are within the same country. For instance, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation is keenly observing the recent developments in Nepal, as a comparative lesson for its political vision of the future.8 Third, both countries have followed policies of economic liberalization from around the same time (from the late 1980s in Nepal and from the early 1990s in India), corresponding to the period in which the Maoists have gained increasing influence in both countries. Fourth, historically and culturally, the two countries have a shared history. It is, to a certain extent, an accident of history that Nepal ended up as a separate nation-state. Therefore, historically-embedded crossborder sociological issues, such as caste, mean that it makes sense to ask comparative questions about that issue in both countries. Caste and ethnicity were important dynamics within the Maoist Movements in both India and Nepal. Fifth, our collective project shows that there are often greater similarities in the experience of the spread of the Maoist Movements between sociologically similar regions of Nepal and India 7 8

Yechury (2006). Jha (2007).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 5 than there are between different regions within the same country. For instance, it makes greater sociological sense to compare the predominantly Magar ethnic areas of Rolpa and Rukum in Nepal, where the Maoist Movement began in the country, with the Indian adivasi areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra than it does to compare areas within India, such as the adivasi areas of Jharkhand with the landlordlandless structures of central Bihar. As we suggest later in this chapter, making this comparison does not cast ethnic groups or tribal peoples as natural vessels of a revolutionary consciousness, but rather acknowledges that in both Nepal and India, these marginalized populations live in terrain which is difficult to access by the state and is well suited to guerrilla warfare. In addition, there may be substantial sociological similarities between the Maoist-affected areas of each of these countries in terms of ethnicity and caste hierarchies. Sixth, in both the Indian and the Nepali cases, the movement was launched by highly educated middle class leaders. As Philippe Ramirez9 has put it, the political leadership that became the vanguard of the insurgency did not spring out of a peasant upheaval but preceded it. While this leadership needs to mobilize and voice the concerns of the people for whom the struggle was intended, their sociological and class differences mean that there is a possible risk that the leadership will substitute itself for the base. Considering the Nepali and the Indian situations together reveals comparative issues which might also emerge in any context of radical political mobilization, not necessarily just those specific to the South Asian context. For instance, one such set of issues that has emerged from our collaborative project is the importance of youth aspiration, modernity and gender roles in radical political movements. Another is the significance of ancestral conflicts and earlier histories of political mobilization in the spread of the Maoist Movements. These, and others, are issues that we turn to towards the end of this chapter.

ANTHROPOLOGY OF REVOLUTION Apart from its consideration of the Nepal and Indian experiences within one frame, this book is one of the first to focus specifically on the everyday 9

Ramirez (2004): 233.

6 Windows into a Revolution experiences of the Maoist Movements in South Asia through detailed and intensive field studies. Our concern is not primarily with the Maoist viewpoint, but with the lives of ordinary people living in Maoist areas. In fact many chapters here10 reinforce the perspective that there are blurred boundaries between state, society and revolution—a lesson that anthropology has shown us in relation to the difficulty of drawing lines between state and society.11 To say that our primary interest here is ordinary people living amidst the revolution is to specify that our main concern is not with Maoist writing and literature and/or the official histories of the movements. We do not examine the Maoist political economic analysis, their characterization of the South Asian economies as semi-feudal, semi-colonial, nor their strategies and tactics. We also do not explore the broad political and economic patterns that have given rise to Maoism in South Asia, nor do we analyse class formation as a political feature. We are putting forth a sociological analysis of the spread of Maoism in South Asia by tracing some of its effects on the lives of ordinary people living amidst its areas of proliferation. This may, of course, involve people who have joined the Maoists, are in the process of doing so, or have left them, but our project is much broader than just concern for these individuals. We are interested in the continuities and transformations of the social, economic and political lives of a range of people living within the sphere of influence of the Maoist Movements. We believe that this requires an approach that does not prioritize a study of the Maoists qua Maoists, but rather one that tries to understand them within a much wider context of everyday socio-politics, livelihood strategies and state-society relations. Essentially, we are offering an ethnographic insight into the experiences of the Maoist Movements: an anthropology of a revolutionary situation. The efforts to bring the “political” back into anthropology in the 1970s set the stage for a historically engaged anthropological approach that analytically addressed issues of domination, resistance, power and transformation from the perspective of marginalized communities.12 As a result, in recent years we have also seen an emergence of subjects

10

Shah; de Sales; Thapa et al. and Hariss (2001); Gupta (1995). 12 Comaroff (1985); Scott (1985); Taussig (1980) are key examples. 11 Fuller

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 7 traditionally at the margins of anthropology—an emerging “anthropology of the state”13 and an “anthropology of violence”.14 Some of the key proponents of this politically engaged anthropology were in fact concerned with rebellion. However, in recent years, we have seen a move away from scholarly concern with such radical political transformation. This shift is partly a result of the development of scholarly interest in everyday forms of resistance15 and its critiques,16 as well as in the field that lies between mass revolution and small scale resistance— social movements, “direct action” or “dissent”. This shift has led some scholars to argue that the old dream of total transformation may have faded in recent years.17 Nevertheless, as we are witnessing around the globe, the argument for radical social transformation through revolutionary movements was very much a part of the twentieth century and has clearly not disappeared with the dawn of the new millennium. If we take a revolutionary situation as one in which the proponents of revolution argue for radical social transformation and through mechanisms which are anti-state, and where people break off from previous networks of support in order to create new ones, then anthropologists who have researched such contexts have much to contribute. These include situations as diverse as the Sierra Leone revolutionary united front,18 the Palestinian liberation struggle,19 the liberation struggles of Zimbabwe,20 the Maoist revolutions of Peru,21 the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua,22 the guerilla movement in Guatemala23 and Mao’s Chinese revolution.24 The literature on such revolutionary situations from political science, governance, crisis states, and peace and conflict studies is vast. However, 13 On South Asia, see for example Brass (1997); Corbridge, et al. (2005); Fuller and Benei (2001); Gellner (2003). 14 Brass (1997; 2003); Das (1995; 2007); Hansen (2001) on South Asia. 15 Scott (1985). 16 Abu Lughod (1990); Mahmood (2001); Ortner (1995). 17 For example, Fox and Starn (1997). 18 Jackson (2004); Richards (1996). 19 Bornstein (2001); Jean-Klein (2001); Kelly (2006). 20 Kriger (1992); Lan (1985); Ranger (1985). 21 Starn (1999); Stern (1998); Taylor (2006). 22 Hale (1994); Lancaster (1992); Rodgers (forthcoming). 23 Falla (1994); Stoll (1993). 24 Bianco (2001); Hinton (1966); Perry (1980).

8 Windows into a Revolution the existing literature is rarely interested in an analysis of the direct voices of people mobilized and affected by revolution, and such voices are generally absent in political science studies of revolution. In fact, some political scientists even argue that revolutionary processes and outcomes are determined by structures (rather than human agency) and that it is thus irrelevant to seek the experiences of the participants.25 Others, who argue that human agency determines revolutionary outcome, generally infer ideas about experiences and action from secondary material. Clearly fieldwork in revolutionary and violent contexts is challenging26 and many of those limited number of anthropologists who have worked in revolutionary contexts have to rely on historical sources and oral histories. There is a serious lack of detailed field level data and analysis not only of the Maoist Movements in South Asia, but also of revolutionary movements in other parts of the world. Most anthropological work is done post-conflict when the guns become silent. In contrast, most of the contributors to this volume have conducted research in revolutionary situations. Hence this provides a rare opportunity of bringing together scholars embarking on a collective project to understand the different phases of the Maoist Movements in different regions through an analysis of ground-level data based on detailed and ongoing fieldwork.

MAOISM IN SOUTH ASIA Our purpose is not to provide a history of Maoism in South Asia. Nevertheless, some historical context provides essential background information to the chapters presented here. Triggered by the split between the Moscow and the Peking factions in the Communist Movement internationally, and inspired by the ongoing Cultural Revolution in China, the South Asian history of the Maoist Movements can be traced back to the mid-1960s when communist revolutionaries broke away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist)27 to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).28 Led by West Bengali intellectuals, Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal, the CPI (ML) proposed armed struggle and rejected the parliamentary route to power. Drawing on Mao Tse25

See especially Skocpol 1979. Hoffman (2003); Kovats-Bernat (2002); Peritore (1990); Pettigrew et al. (2004). 27 Henceforth CPI ((M)). 28 Henceforth CPI (ML). 26

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 9 tung, their revolutionary hero, they analyzed the Indian economy as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, and proposed that the rural peasantry and proletariat (as opposed to the urban proletariat) should be the major revolutionary force to overthrow the government and the ruling classes. The Maoist route that they envisioned explicitly connected political ideology to military strategy. They sought to launch a protracted people’s war of the peasantry and usher in a new democratic revolution as the first stage to communism. The Naxalbari Uprising of 1967, from which the Indian Maoists get the name “Naxalites”, is often regarded as the beginning of the Indian Maoist Movement. Majumdar and Sanyal led a violent uprising from Naxalbari village in West Bengal in which peasants attacked local landlords, forcibly occupied land, burnt records and cancelled old debts. The overall goal, as stated in the CPI (ML) programme of 1970, and reiterated again in the CPI (Maoist) programme of 2004, was to form liberated areas in rural zones and then encircle and capture the cities. This campaign was also initiated in the forested and hilly tracts of Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, Koraput in Orissa, and in the plains of Bhojpur in Bihar and Birbhum in West Bengal. In these regions, the Naxalites tried to draw on the histories of earlier peasant movements.29 Landlords were driven out of villages, people’s courts were set up to redistribute land and deliver justice, and there were programmes to initiate the mass mobilization of the rural poor. These achievements went hand in hand with a form of class struggle that entailed the tactical strategy of “annihilation of class enemies”: the dissolution of what the Naxalites called “the feudal classes” such as landlords, rich peasants, government employees, rival party members, as well as anyone suspected of being a police informer or agent. The history of the Maoists in Nepal is intimately tied to India. The Communist Party of Nepal30 was founded in Calcutta, India, in 1949 against the backdrop of the Rana’s autocratic regime in Nepal. Reflecting splits in the Communist Party of India,31 the 1960s and 1970s saw multiple factions emerging in the Communist Party of Nepal. Influenced by the developments in Naxalbari immediately across the border in India, 29 For example, the Communist Movements of Tebhaga in West Bengal and the Telengana in Andhra Pradesh in the 1940s. 30 Henceforth CPN. 31Thapa with Sijapati (2004): 23.

10 Windows into a Revolution one of the most important factions to emerge in the early 1970s was the “Jhapali group” from the District of Jhapa. Following the doctrines developed by Charu Mazumdar in Naxalbari, the Jhapalis were Maoists who eventually abandoned their adherence to Naxalism after the arrest and death of five members. The “Jhapalis” formed the nucleus of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) in 1978 and this has today become the largest mainstream communist group, now known as the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist).32 The party that eventually became the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), now called the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), had its roots in another communist faction, the Communist Party of Nepal (Fourth Congress). But while the CPN (UML) emerged through the continuous amalgamation of the various groups and became the largest party in the post-1990 period, the Fourth Congress was riven by factional disputes; by the time of the democracy movement in 1990, it had split into three groups. In India, massive state repression, which included the imprisonment of most of the Naxalite leaders, as well as factionalism within the Maoist ranks, meant that by 1973 Maoist activity in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal had largely subsided. While different Maoist factions chose different methods, guerrilla warfare re-emerged in the late 1970s in the forested areas of Burdwan in West Bengal. The movement spread in the 1980s to the central plains of Bihar and into the sociologically similar areas of northern Jharkhand. The Andhra Pradesh Maoist groups also retreated into Chhattisgarh as a result of the police repression they faced from the 1980s. The Maoists increased their spread over central and eastern India, in areas often represented as the dark underbelly of the tribal heartlands of the country in the 1990s. Some of these areas became guerrilla zones, regions where the Maoists made every attempt to prevent police and forest officials from entering, and they created their own “people’s rule.” Significantly, in 2004, while an attempted peace process in Andhra Pradesh broke down,33 the Maoist Communist Centre and the People’s War combined to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the largest Maoist rebel group in India.

32 33

Hoftun, et al. (1999): 84. Henceforth CPN (UML). Balagopal (2005); Kannabiran, et al. (2005).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 11 Many commentators acknowledge the Maoists’ positive achievements: confiscating and redistributing surplus land, achieving higher agricultural wages, eliminating the stranglehold of landlords, moneylenders and contractors, protecting locals from harassment by forest and police officials, heightening political consciousness and empowering the poor.34 But these accomplishments came hand in hand with the high human costs of the increasingly militant activity of the red guerrilla squads (to annihilate class enemies) and the ensuing severe police repression.35 There were heavy casualties on all sides. Most recently, since 2005, Dantewada District in Chhattisgarh has clandestinely sponsored a counterinsurgency through the production of a movement called the Salwa Judum, or “the purification hunt”. The Salwa Judum displaced at least thirty thousand people, put them in refugee camps and killed many suspected Maoists.36 Now, the Maoist threat is seen by the Indian Government to have overtaken all other internal concerns. Some reports suggest an underground military force of twenty thousand people active in 223 districts in twenty states including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh. The Indian Government banned the Maoists as “terrorists” in June 2009 further justifying rising state repression not accountable to any law. In addition to the existing paramilitary and police forces, one lakh (or hundred thousand) troops have been sent to eastern India, in particular to Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, as this volume goes to press. The Maoists faced a different fate in Nepal. Against the backdrop of a strong monarchy, the 1970s and the 1980s saw the various communist factions in Nepal fighting for a multi-party democracy to achieve a new people’s democracy.37 The more radical Leftist parties, including two of the three factions of the erstwhile CPN (Fourth Congress), however, did not join the Left alliance that had teamed up with the Nepali Congress in the movement for the restoration of democracy in 1990. The third faction led by Nirmal Lama joined the United Left Front.38 When 34

Balagopal (2006); Banerjee (1984; 2002; 2006); Bhatia (2000; 2005). Balagopal (2006); Bhatia (2006). 36 Independent Citizens Initiative (2006); People’s Union for Civil Liberties (2006); see also Jason Miklian’s chapter in this volume. 37 Hachhethu (2002; 2003); Hoftun, et al. (1999): 238. 38 Henceforth ULF. 35

12 Windows into a Revolution democracy was restored in 1990 with the Nepali Congress and their Left partners forming the interim government, these radicals rejected the Constitution of November 1990 which they saw as democratically inadequate. Instead, they demanded a constituent assembly with a view to drawing up a new constitution. But despite their protests, a Constituent Assembly was not deemed necessary by the ruling alliance. Thus, in November 1990, two of the factions merged to become the CPN (Unity Centre) while a splinter group under the leadership of Baburam Bhattarai joined them from the third faction. The underground Unity Centre floated their political front called the United People’s Front, Nepal,39 and contested the 1991 elections. They won just nine seats in a house of 205, but this still made them the third largest party. Following the election, some of the smaller communist parties also became increasingly sceptical about the potential achievements of the parliamentary route. A group from the Unity Centre broke away in 1994 and renamed itself as CPN (Maoist) in 1996. The “People’s War” was officially declared in February 1996, when the CPN (Maoist) presented a forty-point list of demands to the Nepal Government. They dealt largely with rectifying economic and social injustices, abolishing monarchy, and establishing a Constituent Assembly, and were described by several non-partisan commentators in terms such as, “reasonable and not dissimilar in spirit to the election manifestos of mainstream parties”.40 When these demands were not addressed, the Maoists began their underground war. From their original strongholds in the mid-western districts of Rolpa and Rukum (where they had captured power through the ballot box in the 1991–92 local elections and were therefore confident of their support), the Maoists slowly began to establish “base areas” elsewhere in Nepal.41 The conflict escalated after major police operations in 1998, with frequent skirmishes between the Maoists and the police throughout the country. It reached a new height in November 2001, when the guerrillas withdrew from a several-months-long ceasefire and initiated a series of attacks across the country including ones targeted at the Royal Nepalese Army. This confrontation marked several departures: for the 39

Henceforth UPFN. Thapa with Sijapati (2004):53. 41 c.f. Ogura (2007; 2008). 40

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 13 first time the Maoists had directly challenged the army (rather than just the police), and had demonstrated their now substantial strength outside their known strongholds in the western part of the country. In response, the government imposed a State of Emergency on 26 November 2001 which effectively suspended most of the civil rights and for the first time deployed the army to fight the Maoists. January 2003 saw a second ceasefire called between the parties, and a schedule for peace talks was established. The talks broke down in August 2003 when both sides refused to budge from their opposing positions on the issue of a Constituent Assembly. The period that followed saw a resurgence of violence. Advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have extensively documented the human rights violations committed by both the Maoists and the state forces.42 The government security forces were responsible for most of the disappearances. The disappeared were often kept in informal places of detention such as government buildings and army training centres, which made it extremely difficult for family members or lawyers to locate them. Approximately one thousand people remain unaccounted for. The Maoists also perpetrated serious abuses and executed suspected informants, political activists, government officials and people who refused extortion demands. King Gyanendra assumed direct power in February 2005, and strikes and protests against royal rule increased culminating in a People’s Movement (Jan Andolan) in April 2006 led by a wide range of civil society organizations and political parties. The Maoists participated in the Jan Andolan although there was no official collaboration between them and the Seven Party Alliance.43 By April 2006, the King had relinquished power. A negotiated ceasefire in May 2006 was followed by a peace accord signed by the government and the Maoists in November 2006. The Maoists declared a formal end to the ten-year insurgency. The Maoists entered parliament in January 2007 under the terms of a temporary constitution, but elections to a Constituent Assembly were twice rescheduled. Insisting on the abolition of the monarchy, the Maoists withdrew from the government in September 2007 until December 2007 when the parliament approved their proposal. Elections for the Constituent Assembly were finally held in April 2008, and the Maoists emerged as the largest party, although 42 43

Amnesty (2002a; 2002b; 2003). Henceforth SPA.

14 Windows into a Revolution with 220 out of 601 seats, they did not secure a majority. The Constituent Assembly voted to end the monarchy at its first sitting, and in May 2008 the country became the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal with Ram Baran Yadav of the Nepali Congress as its first President. In August 2008, the Maoist leader Prachanda formed a government which the Nepali Congress refused to join and went into opposition. Eight months later, Prachanda resigned in protest against the President’s rejection of a cabinet decision to sack the army chief. The mainstream communist party leader (of the CPN–UML) became the new Prime Minister but subsequently resigned. As this volume goes to press (January 2011), there is ongoing political dead-lock as the Constituent Assembly has repeatedly failed to elect a new Prime Minister. Limited progress has been made on writing a new Constitution, Maoist ex-combatants have not been integrated in the National Army and the peace process has stalled.

THE QUESTION OF SIDES What does it mean to write an anthropology of a revolutionary context? In a field so politically charged, and in which there are huge personal and emotional investments, an important question that may be posed to anthropologists working on the Maoist Movement is, “Whose side are you on?” This question became the basis of extensive discussion at the workshop where the chapters that formed this book were discussed. The chapters here show that when we get into the complex and ambiguous contexts of fieldwork, there are no straightforward answers to this question. While some of us might have embarked on our field research with some sympathy towards Maoist ideals, contributing to a militant anthropology,44 others may have started with no clear ideological position, while still others may have started out with a clearly anti-activist stance. Yet, many of us found that we had to adjust and redefine our positions over time. The complexities of the ground realities often threw clear-cut boundaries back in our face. From the families that we grew to care for, whose lives we were trying to understand, we might, for instance, find one son joining an extreme Left-wing cadre while the other is attracted to the extreme Hindu Right-wing. Later down the line, we might find that the son who joined the Maoists was accused of being a 44

Scheper-Hughes (1995).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 15 police informer by his neighbours. What does a militant anthropology mean in this context? At the ground level there are often no clear answers to who a Maoist supporter is, who is state-affiliated and who is neither. The chapters here show how it is not easy to homogenize “the people” who are the target of Maoist support. While some might be caught in the crossfire, others are inspired by revolutionary ideology or may be in search of certainty. Still others might be using the movements or accusations of police informer status as new means to settle old disputes, and others may be strongly against the Maoists. And many more may ignore the Maoists in certain spheres of life while supporting them in others. These complex realities cannot be translated into a simplistic ideal of a militant anthropology. Nevertheless, our writing is clearly a political intervention. If we take sides at all, they are those of understanding and sharing the multiple and varied life experiences of the people we work with, live with and care for—our adopted families, friends, colleagues and informants. Our commitment, then, is to an ethnographically grounded account of the complexities of the lives and the decisions that the people we live with face amidst a revolutionary context, understanding the continuities and transformations in their lives, and the contradictions and tensions which result. This is not just storytelling for the sake of storytelling but a record of the lives of people whose stories and points of views are rarely heard who get homogenized in most other accounts—from both Maoist and anti-Maoist perspectives—as “the people”.

WINDOWS INTO A REVOLUTION Our aim is to offer a series of windows into various areas in different stages of mobilization and transformation into what are or may become revolutionary strongholds. For instance, Sumanta Banerjee’s chapter gives a unique glimpse of his personal transformation into an activist in the 1970s in West Bengal. This is one of the earliest moments of the South Asian Maoist Movements, and like Henrike Donner’s contribution, Banerjee’s chapter sheds some light on the sociological characteristics and romantic ideals of the early activists in setting up the first revolutionary strongholds in India. George Kunnath’s chapter, on the other hand, looks at the effects of the transformations of Maoist methods since the 1980s and into the new millennium in a village in central

16 Windows into a Revolution Bihar, once a Maoist stronghold. Here he traces some of the shifting tensions that develop between strategies of mass mobilization and armed action as they were experienced by dalits. Amit Desai’s chapter concentrates on a later phase of the movement in Maharashtra, where for many adivasis the presence of the Maoists brought the police closer at some cost.45 And Jason Miklian looks at the production of a counterinsurgency programme in areas of Chhattisgarh where the Maoists have long had a stronghold. Comparatively, Alpa Shah’s chapter explores the early spread of the movement in Jharkhand, where in the year 2000, there was little sign of mass mobilization, and the Maoist spread was transforming the political economy of violence, disrupting previously taken-for-granted social relations. On Nepal, Sara Shneiderman’s chapter focusses on the emergence of political consciousness among Thangmi villagers that was foundational for the development of the Maoist Movement in the area, while Anne de Sales’ research in Rukum District focusses both on the early stage of the movement when mobilization was taking place through ancestral conflicts as well as a later period in the village (in 2005) when the Maoists were far more established in the area and were organizing village life. Marie Lecomte-Tilouine’s chapter also focusses on a later stage of the Maoist insurgency when the village she knew since the late 1980s became a model Maoist village, and the Maoists were operating through the production of red terror. The chapter by Judith Pettigrew and Kamal Adhikari discusses different phases of the insurgency in a village in Kaski District that Pettigrew has known since 1990. Lauren Leve’s chapter focusses on a later phase of the movement when in 2001 she found village women she had known since the early 1990s, even those whose husbands were in the army or police forces, supporting the Maoists. In their chapter Deepak Thapa, Kiyoko Ogura and Judith Pettigrew trace the history of the development of Maoism in the village of Jelbang in Rolpa in their attempt to explain the comparatively excessive violence experienced by this village, resulting in Jelbang having a higher death toll than any other village in the country during the ten-year-long insurgency. It is important to bear in mind that we are offering glimpses into different stages of the movements in several areas, as this will come to 45

c.f. Balagopal (2006).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 17 bear upon the reader’s analysis of the insights presented here. Take the example of the theme of fear in revolutionary movements: our comparative sociological project shows that this is an issue whose importance can sometimes emerge more in areas and times where the movements were relying on armed violence46 than in areas where the movements were based around issues of mass mobilization.47 In other cases, the production of red terror is a specific strategy that the Maoists use in particular circumstances.48 Bearing this comparative and contextual dimension in mind when reading the chapters will deter the reader from reaching simplistic conclusions—for instance that a particular author is engaging in a critique of the movement through an exposition of fear. In this case, our project is not one of exposition, but of attempting to comprehend the ways in which fear manifests itself, its particular historical trajectory in specific circumstances, how it adds to the myth and the spread of the movement, and how it is used in state responses. In short, we treat fear as a sociological category. How will our book be read in fifty years’ time? When working on regions and times that are shifting so rapidly, when there is so much more work to do in understanding the continuities and transformations that are taking shape as we write, this is a crucial question that we keep asking ourselves. This is, of course, a question that all anthropologists face, but perhaps it is more pressing when one is working on social transformation in a context of revolution explicitly conceptualized as such. An anthropological analysis of a revolution in the making means that it is inevitable that while we may come to particular sociological analyses of what we are seeing now, further down the line, our field data may be interpreted in the light of what has since taken place and may lead to new kinds of analyses and actions. Over time, our comparative anthropological project of the Maoist revolution in South Asia may come to be seen not as a collection of historical and ethnographic accounts, but also as historical artefacts. So perhaps in fifty years time, our experiment here might be read to show that the scholarly importance of an anthropology of revolution is in the details of ethnographic data and analysis, whose most lasting impact will 46

For instance in Shah’s field area and that of Pettigrew and Adhikari. For example in Kunnath’s field site. 48 For example, Lecomte-Tilouine’s field area. 47

18 Windows into a Revolution be as historical artefacts, as windows into a revolution. These are questions that remain to be answered, but it is with these issues in mind that we embark on this project now.

EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES OF THE REVOLUTION One of the great strengths of ethnographic research is its ability to shed new light on received wisdoms, to question that which is taken for granted. Why have Maoist insurgencies gained such huge support in many parts of South Asia? Against the simplistic treatment of the Maoists as a law and order problem, received wisdom about the main cause of support for Maoism in rural areas increasingly focusses on socio-economic problems: in particular, the unequal nature of development in South Asia, and the poverty and illiteracy of the affected masses. On the one hand, in media representations “poor illiterate village folk” of the “backward areas” are constructed as passive recipients who are caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and the state, dragged into the cancerous spread of the movement, often out of fear; on the other hand, the revolution is portrayed as garnering great success in poor tribal or ethnic areas of South Asia that are natural sites of rebel consciousness, emerging from the stereotype of ethnic or tribal communities as the original primitive rebels. These kinds of analyses of the spread of Maoist Movements in South Asia emerge from both sympathetic commentators and critics of the Maoists, as well as from Maoist activists themselves; the former often marginalize the significance of ideology in favour of the argument that the affected masses support the movements out of false consciousness.49 At the same time, as is evident from Sumanta Banerjee’s reflective piece, Maoist leaders have often romanticized a tribal peasantry whose primitive rebel consciousness could be mobilized in the service of class struggle. In these analyses, Maoism appears as one way out for the dispossessed rural (and usually tribal/ethnic) poor, and development is thus often proposed as the solution to curb Maoism. Our work shows that the ground realities of the Maoist Movements’ spread were far more complex. A host of factors that vary across space and time have influenced the expansion of the movements. These range from the attraction of Maoist theoretical ideology of historical materialism 49

See Sara Shneiderman’s chapter in this volume.

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 19 to the tactical measures of social and economic reform, the importance of earlier political mobilizations, the role of ancestral conflicts and local political tensions, the role of individuals and the promise of alternative modernities and futures offered by the Maoists through, not in spite of, development and education. For instance, in the Bihar case, the dalits supported the Maoists not because of an absence of education or health facilities but, as outlined in George Kunnath’s chapter, because of the dignity offered by the Maoists in the face of extreme caste violence. Kunnath’s informants reflect the views of Sumanta Banerjee’s informant who says that as a result of Maoist activities, lower caste individuals are now able to hold their heads up high in front of higher caste landlords. However, in areas like Bihar where the movement was influential in the 1980s, things have changed over time. Importantly, Kunnath points out that in the 1990s the CPI (ML) People’s War in Bihar shifted their emphasis from mobilizing landless dalits to uniting the middle peasants by addressing the latter’s demands for government subsidies and remission of rents, as well as protecting them from the demands of the classes below them. Unsurprisingly, the dalits in Jahanabad District of Bihar were suspicious of the Maoist alliance with the middle peasantry, and the basic contradiction between the landed kurmis (this middle peasantry) and the landless dalits was never resolved. Ultimately, the dalits were alienated from the movement in the 1990s, and in the village where Kunnath conducted fieldwork they ceased participating in the armed squads. There is an “uneasy marriage” between Maoist mass mobilization and armed action. The mobilization of the dalits in Bihar in the 1980s was accomplished through the Maoist mass fronts, in particular the Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Samiti,50 whereas the 1990s saw a shrinking of the space for mass mobilization and an increasing reliance by the Maoists on armed actions. Such shifts in Maoist policy and practice are noted to have a lasting negative impact at the local level. In Andhra Pradesh, Balagopal51 notes that while the mass mobilization of the 1970s and the early 1980s resulted in a lot of respect for Naxalites, the youth of today only see the violence of the armed squads and the police. In fact, the Indian Maoists were increasingly seen as becoming exclusively armed movements with 50 51

MKSS. Balagopal (2006).

20 Windows into a Revolution little focus on political mobilization. Jha52 argues that this decision is partly due to the fact that the repressive state leaves the rebels with little space for mass mobilization. He also suggests that the Indian Maoists are instituting lessons learned from their Nepali counterparts whose success, they believe, is also a result of an aggressive military strategy. These authors conclude that while some youth are now likely to get mobilized through the attractive images of masculinity (and femininity) offered by joining a squad and holding a gun, many others are likely to become further alienated when mass mobilization is replaced by armed squads that are often seen to bring the police closer.53 In contrast, Kunnath argues that armed action continues to be crucial to dalit needs as arms are necessary for protection from the middle and upper caste peasants. The key issue for the dalits was not the shift from mass mobilization to armed action but the fact that this shift resulted in the decline of a mass regarding politics that replaced the needs of the dalits for the needs of the middle peasantry. The transgression of caste and ethnic boundaries was also important to Maoist mobilization in Nepal. Although in both countries the upper echelons of the movements were dominated by the higher castes, within the movements, people of different castes ate from the same plates and fought side by side. Dalits within the movements entered higher caste households and sometimes led fighting units composed largely of members from higher caste groups, a remarkable transition in a highly divided caste society.54 Marie Lecomte-Tilouine’s chapter argues that such transgressions included the encouragement of matrimonial alliances between pure and impure castes among those who joined the Maoists, but have also affected more general village life in Nepal in the sense that people are now more likely to transgress established caste norms. For instance, most of the artisan castes and Magar families began eating cow meat as a result of Maoist presence, and Lecomte-Tilouine notes that her hostess served beer bought from a dalit to a high caste man. Despite these significant changes in attitudes towards caste hierarchy, the reader should be warned against reaching the simplistic conclusion that the spread of Maoism is accompanied by a disappearance of caste. In Bihar, for instance, the alienation of the dalits in the 1990s has led to the dalits 52

Jha (2007). Balagopal (2006). 54 Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004); Tamang (2006). 53

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 21 now turning to a valorization and celebration of their caste heroes.55 In this case, a class-based movement has ironically led to the reinforcement of caste associations. As a result of the Maoist Movement, in this case caste has become substantialized in the Dumontian sense. Indeed, things can work out in very complex ways in some arenas of the Maoist Movement; rights-based issues, such as caste discrimination, were often more important in the process of mobilization than development issues, such as poverty relief, microenterprise, or education and health. Such mobilization has often been dependent on the production of organic intellectuals and anthropological analysis of these leaders enables questioning the widespread assumptions of false consciousness that are often held as reasons why rural people join the movement, a point made by Shneiderman’s chapter here. In the case of the Thangmi village of Piskar in Sindhupalcok District of north-central Nepal, Shneiderman focusses on the development of political consciousness as a result of a 1984 massacre by police forces after villagers allegedly protested against the state-sponsored exploitative policies of local landlords. Shneiderman argues that together with the growing frustration with the lack of delivery on the promise of democracy and the sense of exclusion from its benefits, earlier state repression and movements against it created the social conditions which led to the development of the specific political consciousness on which the Maoists later built their project of mobilization. Maoist “practical ideology” referring to concrete social and economic reforms such as driving out the exploitative police and landowners, land reform and claiming political power for the disenfranchised, were hence relevant and attractive to many villagers in Piskar. So while it might be true that the theoretical ideology behind an abstract notion of class struggle and revolution has not played a crucial role in mobilizing the ordinary villager in many parts of rural South Asia, Maoist practical ideology has complemented theoretical ideology, and its central role in mobilizing support for the Maoists belies crude conclusions that people join only out of fear or false consciousness. However, ideology, even of a practical sort, was not important at all levels. In adivasi or tribal areas of Jharkhand the situation is significantly different, as shown by Alpa Shah’s research on the branch of the Naxalite groups reputed to be the most extreme, the Maoist Communist Centre. 55

c.f Kunnath 2008.

22 Windows into a Revolution In the area of Shah’s field research, the initial spread of the movement was not among the poorest tribal populations, but rather within an educated (often upper caste) rural elite, who were intimately connected with the developmental state. In effect, their participation blurred the boundary between state and rebel. Educated youth, no longer satisfied with tilling their land, looked to contracts from the developmental state as an alternative means of sustaining their livelihoods and local dominance. The Maoists progressed in the area, not through their mass fronts, but by entering the pre-existing “markets of protection” offered by locally powerful people to access the informal economy of state development schemes in the area. Development and education, which are often seen as the answer to the Maoists, might in such contexts only strengthen the revolutionary movements. Some of Shah’s analysis of the Jharkhand scenario has significant parallels in both Nepal and Peru. More than three years before the “People’s War” was officially launched in Nepal, Nickson56 pointed out that in fact the impact of education and development in the Nepal countryside were producing conditions that had parallels in Peru, circumstances that were ripe for the spread of Maoist Movement. As is emerging in the case of the initial expansion of the Maoists in Jharkhand, it was the educated disenfranchized youth who joined the movement in Peru.57 These young people were disenfranchized because the impact of education and development in the rural areas had promised new futures that were never met, and they saw livelihoods, hopes and visions in the Maoist alternative. Judith Pettigrew58 has suggested that participation in the Maoist Movement enabled Nepali village youth to participate in a new type of modernity. Prior to the Maoist Movement young villagers saw themselves and were seen as marginal to the “good and proper life”59 offered by town living and enjoyed by those with the money to re-locate. Rural youth were able to realign themselves with a new discourse of modernity, which was previously located only in towns through their participation in the movement. The rhetoric of Maoism constructed an alternative 56

Nickson (1992). Degregori (1988). 58 Pettigrew (2003). 59 McHugh (2001): 114. 57

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 23 version of modernity, one in which the consumerist version was rejected on ideological premises. Membership in the Maoist Party therefore reconfigured perceptions of a consumerist world that excluded them. In her chapter, Shneiderman argues that the symbol of the nation was an important part of this inclusion. Maoists empowered their cadres as national political actors by proposing a counter-hegemonic national vision where indigenous needs and sacrifice were honoured. Village youth rejected that which they were previously excluded from, and in doing so, re-positioned themselves at centre stage. Images of rural youth which were previously unseen or were presented as “backward” in media terms are now literally “front-page”, as the covers of popular magazines during the insurgency were as likely to feature gun-toting young women as they were to feature the ubiquitous beauty queens. Undoubtedly, as is argued by Lecomte-Tilouine in this book, the new role of the youth created intergenerational conflicts, as the position and role of respected elders as village authorities now became undermined by a younger generation of Maoist cadres. Alternative visions of the self, and in particular, masculinities, were not only important for the Nepali village youth, but also for the Bengali Naxalites of the 1970s, who are the focus of Henrike Donner’s chapter. Donner argues that rather than reproducing the Gandhian ideals of an activist, one who is deeply embedded in domestic relationships and hierarchies, the ruptured kin relations formed as a result of joining the movement created a space for rethinking relationships. In the new context, idioms of reciprocity, exchange, friendship and egalitarian values between males emerged to challenge hegemonic concepts of masculinity. While these former Naxalites interviewed by Donner were clearly involved in a very different stage of the movement than Pettigrew’s rural youth in Nepal, in both cases, alternative visions of gender roles offered by the movement were a great attraction to those who joined the movement. Moreover, in the Nepal case, as is true of Jharkhand, development and education, and perhaps economic liberalization, created the alternative visions of modernity and expectations for the future that set the stage for the spread of the revolutionary movement. Perhaps the Maoist spread in both countries is also an unintended consequence of the extension of state neoliberal policies. This is not to say that our informants, in supporting the movements, were adhering to any simplistic notions of agency implied in models of

24 Windows into a Revolution conscientization, progress and rebellion. Notions which, Lauren Leve in her chapter argues rely on an autonomous, socially disaggregated self that is simply not matched by supporters of the insurgency in Nepal. Leve’s chapter focusses on women in Gorkha District, participants of an International Non Governmental Organization-run rural women’s literacy and empowerment programme, who were sympathizers of the Maoist uprising. These Gorkha women supported the rebels by feeding them, housing them, and not informing the government about their presence or activities. In contrast to those who have argued that education programmes increased women’s conscientization, made them empowered agents that were needed for the spread of the insurgency, Leve shows that these women were socially rooted and reflected a very different sort of self – a self that defined itself by commitments and social relationships. The Gorkha women neither represented the modernist ideal of the autonomous self nor the absolute quest of liberation from all kinds of social constraints as the essence of human subjectivity that is implied in ideological projects of development, empowerment and rebellion. Rebellions, as James Scott 60 suggested, may be less matters of consciousness and more matters of morality. These rural Nepali women supported and participated in the insurgency by thinking of themselves as people who were constituted by their relations with others and who value reciprocity. Indeed, the grass-roots analysis of the multiple reasons for the spread of the movements reveals a picture that is quite different from the widespread assumptions that in South Asia’s poor, underdeveloped, tribal or ethnic heartlands, primitive rebels heralding some form of original communism are the “natural” supporters of the Maoists. Anne de Sales’61 work was one of the first to question such widespread myths in Nepal. Through her research in northern Rolpa and eastern Rukum, the KhamMagar areas that are often seen as the heart of Nepal’s revolution, she points out that in fact ethnic sentiment was surprisingly absent in the political mobilization of the population.62 In the first part of her chapter here, de Sales draws attention to other important factors in the spread of the Maoist Movement in Nepal: the 60

Scott (1976). de Sales (2003). 62 See also Ramirez (2004). 61

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 25 presence of charismatic local intermediaries and in particular the movement’s continuities with ancestral conflicts. Reflecting Shneiderman’s concern with earlier contexts of political mobilization as a key factor in understanding the spread of more recent Maoist Movements, de Sales traces the intricate kinship networks and factions in Nakhar village in Rukum District, through which the Maoist Movement works. One faction is headed by Ram Kumar Gharti, the son of the last collector of taxes, who supported the United People’s Front and the other by Karka Bahadur Pun, the son of the last mukhiya,63 a teacher who supported the UML in their opposition to the protracted Maoist war. These longstanding rivalries meant that when Ram Kumar was caught taking hashish to Nepalganj he also implicated Karka Bahadur as his supplier. Both were jailed for two years. After their release, Ram Kumar, the Maoist protracted war supporter, joined the royalist party (the Rashtriya Prajantra Party), whereas Karka Bahadur, who had originally not supported the protracted war, ended up presiding over the first Maoist Village Government, was tortured by the army, and then died. In this case, the longstanding conflicts between Ram Kumar and Karka Bahadur were crucial to their shifting positions vis-á-vis the movement. It is essential to trace these continuities with earlier forms of social conflict and political mobilization, rather than casting the arrival of a revolutionary movement as solely one of rupture and difference. Earlier contexts of social conflict and political mobilization also emerge as crucial to the spread of the Maoist Movement in the Jharkand case. There, Shah64 had pointed out that the Maoists worked through preexisting networks and relationships established by earlier political parties, such as the Jharkhand Liberation Front. In her chapter here, Shah arrives in rural Jharkhand to find her friend Chotu Ray, previously a broker between the state and the Maoists, now considering joining the armed squads. Chotu’s dilemma is precipitated by the murder of a shopkeeper— who has refused to pay the Maoist tax on shops—and in which Chotu becomes the central suspected murderer. On hearing these allegations, Chotu feels betrayed, and is fearful of the new context. This fear is not abstract, but results from the uncertainty of social relations around him— the possibility that longstanding tensions between kin, neighbours, and 63 64

Headman. Shah (2006).

26 Windows into a Revolution business and political rivals will now be materialized either by the police forces or the Maoists in unpredictable ways. In following Chotu’s dilemmas, Shah reveals the transformations of the normative order (also implied in the chapters of Lecomte-Tilouine and Pettigrew and Adhikari in Nepal) that have accompanied the shifting political economy of violence produced by the Maoist spread and which is characterized by the uncertainty of social relations. This new context of uncertain social relations drives people like Chotu, who work between the state and the Maoists, to search for the certainty that might be derived from either escaping from the affected areas entirely or joining the Maoist squads. In following Chotu’s dilemmas and reflecting on her earlier work, Shah makes three related points. First, the characteristics of revolutionary support can change over time. Second, the reasons why people join the revolutionaries can change over time. And finally, rather than assuming that revolutionary support arises out of fear or false consciousness, or out of some commitment to a practical ideology, we might find that ultimately the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty are a significant part of the process of becoming a revolutionary. These dialectics are not just the result of an ontological uncertainty of commitment to the movement, but are crucially also about the search for epistemological certainty in social relations imagined to be less opaque and hence more trustworthy. In Nepal, as was the case in Jharkhand, the transformations in social relations that resulted from the arrival of the Maoists and the security forces contributed crucially to the experience of fear. Drawing on fieldwork in villages in central and mid-western Nepal, the chapter by Pettigrew and Adhikari and that of Lecomte-Tilouine respectively examine local interpretations and understandings of fear and explore how fear worked through these transformations. Like Shah, these authors illustrate how terror and fear are perpetuated by the principle of uncertainty: no one knows who is going to be abducted, when, where and for how long. In Nepal, the significant difference from the Jharkhand case was the deployment of the army. In the case presented by Pettigrew and Adhikari, villagers were often far more fearful of the army than of the Maoists because the army was responsible for frequent, unpredictable disappearances of people in ways in which the more locally-based Maoists were not. While the previous administration exerted limited or minimal influence, during the “People’s War” villagers found themselves under a

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 27 shadowy Maoist regime characterized by what they experienced as random and unclear policies enforced by violence or the threat of violence. However, terror has different colours for the Maoists and at the village level, the “red terror” of the Maoists can be as frightening, if not more so, in particular stages of revolutionary situations, than the “white terror” of the army. This is the experience of the inhabitants of the Maoist model village of Derauli, analyzed by Lecomte-Tilouine, who were subjected to the Maoist strategy of mobilizing through the production of red terror. This terror, the Nepali term for which translates as intense fear, was used by the Maoists first to provoke white terror in order to reveal to villagers the real nature of the prevailing state, and at a later stage it was used as a political tool for the capture of state power. Red terror was not only spread by narratives of violence, as well as particular terrifying actions such as the taking away of children for Maoist cultural performances but also by staging messages, for example the defacing of buildings by red or black slogans. This regime of terror was explained by some Maoists as a transitional state, after which people would get used to new customs and would stop suffering. The importance of the uncertainty and the ambiguity that resulted from the Maoist Movement has led both Shah and Lecomte-Tilouine to argue counter-intuitively that fear thrives on ambiguity, disorder, mystery and uncertainty, just as much as it does on the life or death threat of physical violence. Lecomte-Tilouine reveals that paralyzing fright is just as extreme in areas where almost no actual physical violence has taken place than in localities where brutal killings occurred. These are important insights in a context where scholars who have otherwise sympathized with the Maoist cause have criticized the underground party’s use of arms. For instance, Bela Bhatia65 has argued that the use of arms in the end results in huge casualties for the poor, and ironically leads to a situation where a movement that promises liberation can actually end up making people less free. Shah and Lecomte Tilouine’s chapters here, in fact, suggest that such immediate physical violence can be rationalized and is actually less frightening and less constraining than the spectral violence implied by the presence of the Maoists. In the latter scenario, despite the absence of actual armed violence, the mere presence of the Maoists, and in response the state security forces, generates fear of the 65

Bhatia (2006).

28 Windows into a Revolution abstract and of the unknown. Pettigrew and Adhikari note that this fear generated in response to the Maoist Movement has lasting impacts. After the conflict formally ended in Nepal, although there was relief from conflict-related fears, the social effects of mistrust, uncertain allegiances and suspicion produced through fear during the insurgency period were not so easily erased. While villagers quickly re-inhabited the spaces of their village, Pettigrew and Adhikari note that the spatial arrangements were quicker to mend than the “shrunken” hearts and minds that are a consequence of fear. Despite the obviously complicated nature of ground realities in Maoist areas, widespread assumptions that the movement is supported by a “backward” peasantry have generated all sorts of unintended consequences. Amit Desai’s insightful chapter shows how in the forested areas of eastern Maharashtra bordering Chhattisgarh, the presence of the Maoists has led to increased police activity in an effort to crack down on adivasi “backwardness” believed to engender support for the Maoists. In this instance, the police focussed their efforts on the practices of witchhunting, in particular by prohibiting the propitiation of the Angadev, a powerful deity which detects troublemakers and disturbed spirits. Ironically, one interesting repercussion in this area is that the inability to deal with witches through customary practices has made adivasis turn to devotional sects which were ultimately interlinked with the growing spread of Hindu nationalism in the area. In this instance, the presence of the Maoists has ironically resulted in a police response which aids the agenda of the extreme Right. Assumptions that a “backward peasantry” forms the core of Maoist support are also sometimes held by the Maoist leadership themselves. It has long been noted that the Maoist leadership in both India and Nepal is overwhelmingly upper caste, and, as was the case in Peru, predominantly middle class intellectual elites. In the Thangmi speaking area of Piskar in Nepal, Shneiderman66 has noted the internalized class and caste prejudices that motivated many communist activists who saw themselves as the architects of a radical social transformation, and wanted the “wild” Thangmi to be domesticated, and to give up their “primitive” identity. The wildness of this peasantry can, of course, be both a positive and a negative force. While Maoist cadres on the one hand stressed the need 66

Shneiderman (2010).

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 29 to civilize the peasantry, on the other hand the wildness was valorized in the making of the peasantry as “natural” foot soldiers of the movements. Banerjee’s chapter here is biographical, reflecting on his own shifting involvement with the movement. Born into a Calcutta communist family, Banerjee found himself drawn to the Naxalite Movement while working as a journalist for The Statesman in the late 1960s, and he eventually joined its cadres in 1973 going underground. As is evident in his chapter members of the party romanticized stereotypes about tribal peasantry as natural insurgents. This was driven home to him one day when a peasant woman told him that one of her sons had joined the party, while the other was a dacoit. Banerjee’s point is that there is a thin line between a revolutionary and a criminal—not only could the potential revolutionary and the potential criminal come from the same class; they often come from the same families.67 The problem with such ideals of a “backward peasantry” is that they result in Maoist programmes of reformation which sometimes not only have little relevance in specific local contexts, but might in fact reproduce the very conditions of inequality and discrimination that the activists want to work against. In India, Shah68 has noted the repressive impact of brahminical ideals of drinking practices which inform the Maoist crackdown on village alcohol consumption. Poor adivasi men and women who participate equally in drinking rice beer and mahua wine, a central feature of village ritual and social life, ultimately suffer the costs of such Maoist programmes. The problem of Maoist policy in this case is significantly gendered, as the crackdown not only shows little understanding of the ritual importance of alcohol, but also restricts the spaces for women to drink on the same terms as and with men, while the male rural elite selling foreign varieties of alcohol that were drunk exclusively by men remain untouched. This may indeed be a significant problem in Nepal as well, argue Pettigrew and Shneiderman,69 as such strident alcohol bans can not only alienate rather than attract, but also curtail the existing freedoms of women from hill janajati70 groups for whom alcohol consumption and exchange hold important symbolic power in cultural and religious life. 67

c.f. Hobsbawm (2003). Shah (2006; 2011). 69 Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004). 70 Ethnic. 68

30 Windows into a Revolution These experiences were to some extent mirrored in the western heartlands of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. In the second part of her chapter here, de Sales shows how Maoist leaders in the Magarant Autonomous Region selectively objectified positive Magar culture such as dances, while reducing other aspects of Magar ritual and cultural life, in particular blood sacrifice, to barbaric activity and erroneous beliefs by which the villagers were imprisoned. She focusses on the celebrations of two annual village festivals in 2005—the Bhume festival and the Jhankri Mela. In the former festival, the Maoists banned the sacrifice of a ram saying it was a “backward barbaric practice” while allowing dancing. At the second festival, the required twenty shamans were prevented from attending. The Maoist limit was three shamans per festival and only for one day, on the basis that greater numbers of ritual specialists involved huge expenditure and excessive consumption of alcohol and, especially, chicken sacrifices. Lecomte-Tilouine’s chapter shows that these prohibitions on all religious festivals on the basis that they were “backward” and “superstitious” have meant that villagers were afraid of the resulting unhappy dead spirits, or bhuts, that were now wandering around the village because they were not properly appeased by blood sacrifices at the festivals.71 In Derauli, it is not only the prohibition of animal sacrifices that were forbidden but also death rituals curtailed and the propitiating of ancestral spirits stopped. While villagers in Derauli attempted to hold a council and revolt against the Maoists, they did not act on their intentions as ultimately they were scared that the red army would cut out their tongues. In de Sales’s cases, however, the villagers did not accept Maoist policies passively, but boycotted the dancing at the first festival, and at the second used a local Maoist leader to try and change the party line on that particular occasion. The villagers sought to reject the image of “backward peasants” that the Maoists imposed on them when they prohibited blood sacrifices. The issue is that Maoist policy in this case is informed by the ideals of urban, educated middle class and higher caste leaders whose understanding of rural life can be removed from the social life of the people that they want to represent. The bias of this male leadership is also directly reflected in contradictory Maoist attitudes towards gender relations. Despite an ideological commitment to gender equality, there 71

See also Pettigrew (2004): 280.

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 31 is a gap between rhetoric and practice.72 Undoubtedly the movements in both countries have precipitated new experiences for women of all backgrounds, whether in learning to use guns for combatant women, or negotiating the fine line of safety between state forces and the Maoists for civilian women. In Nepal, following the peace process, female ministers, members of parliament and election candidates were fielded by the Maoists and other political parties. However, the positions of the male leadership on women’s issues remained largely unstated. While senior Maoist women acknowledge some successes,73 they remain critical of their party’s record.74 It appears that women’s liberation is subsumed by the overriding Maoist goal of class struggle, and that in their devotion to this goal, the Maoists in some ways continue to replicate hegemonic Hindu attitudes towards women. Despite claims to have transformed such institutions as marriage, there were widespread intimations that marriage was used as a means of controlling female cadres. Conversely, the lack of attention given to recruiting married women can be considered a re-inscription of traditional divisions of labour, as Maoists required householder women to provide a village-based support network.75 In some areas, this led to a return to the early marriage of girls in order to prevent their recruitment into the armed squads—another unintended consequence of Maoist policy. Most repressively, the assumptions of a “backward peasantry” have influenced the ways in which the states in question have responded to Maoist Movements. Its most despotic consequences in India were felt in the State of Chhattisgarh, where in the Dantewada District, the state has funded and armed a counter-insurgency group called the Salwa Judum, which in the local Gondi language means “the purification hunt”, and which is the focus of the chapter by Jason Miklian. As implied by its name, the operation’s most prominent backer, a Congress Member of the Legislative Assembly by the name of Mahendra Karma, sees the Maoists as a disease, arguing that its source, the villagers, must be cleansed or purified to get rid of it. Moreover, official Indian forces operating in 72

Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004). Yami (2007). 74 Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004); Comrade Parvati (2003a and 2003b). Comrade Parvati is the pseudonym of senior Maoist leader Hisila Yami. Yami wrote under this name when underground. 75 Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004); Yami (2007). 73

32 Windows into a Revolution the region often dismiss the violence as a consequence of “ancient ethnic tribal hatreds” to justify shirking their duties of protection. Michael Taussig’s76 insightful arguments are relevant here: that if those labelled “terrorist” are portrayed as less than human, then every form of terrorism attributed to them becomes permissible for oneself. In the rhetoric of those who justify the counterinsurgency, the “backward” adivasis of rural Chhattisgarh become the Maoists’ natural terrorist rebel force against which only equally terrifying measures can be successfully deployed. In Chhattisgarh, this has meant the killing of thousands of combatants and civilians since mid-2005, forced eviction of at least forty thousand villagers in relief camps and the burning of their villages and the flight of three lakh people from the area. In addition, local village youth were conscripted into the Salwa Judum militia.77 As Miklian argues, others were given positions as Special Police Officers (SPOs) in order to increase the manpower of the Central Reserve Police Force with minimal financial or logistical outlays. Ramchandra Guha,78 who visited these areas on an Independent Citizen’s Initiative, argues that many tribal boys in their teens have joined the Salwa Judum for much the same reason as other boys had previously joined the Maoists or, as is argued by Pettigrew,79 the Maoists in Nepal. These youth, who because of their education were disenchanted with working in the fields and the forests, were easily enticed by a job which pays a salary even though it is only R 1500 a month and gives them a certain status in society through the particular notions of masculinity, or machismo, that emanates from the weapons they wield. Strengthened by the passage of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act,80 which gave forces greater flexibility in arresting suspected Maoists without hard evidence, and constructed in such a way as to make it open to civil liberties abuses as is also evidenced by the imprisonment of the human rights activists Binayak Sen and the film-maker Ajay T.G., the actions of the Salwa Judum are not accountable to anyone. Such counterinsurgency operations against the Maoists have some precedents in India. Most notably, in the mid-1990s, the Andhra Pradesh

76

Taussig (1984; 1992). A force of one lakh twenty thousand people according to Karma. 78 Guha (2007). 79 Pettigrew (2003). 80 CSPA. 77

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 33 State Government set up brutal special police forces, not accountable to any law, for eliminating Maoists. The best known of these is a well trained anti-guerrilla outfit that lives and operates like the Maoist armed squads, called the “Greyhounds”. In Andhra Pradesh, however, villagers were not co-opted into the counterinsurgency operations in the way they were in Chhattisgarh. These regionally specialized forces mean that in areas such as the Dantewada region of Chhattisgarh, where families might have one son who is a Salwa Judum activist and another a Maoist, have suffered some of the country’s worst repercussions from the Maoist Movement. In Nepal, where some of the worst violence was similarly inflicted by the counterinsurgency operations of the state security forces (both police and army), there were also regional differences in the ways in which violence has taken shape. As is clearly the case in Chhattisgarh, these regional differences are partly explained by the social fabric of the region and the rise of individual leaders such as Mahendra Karma. In their paper here Thapa, Ogura and Pettigrew analyze the story of the village of Jelbang in Rolpa District in mid-western Nepal, where there was an unusually high number of deaths. More than sixty people were killed in Jelbang during the early stages of the “People’s War”, primarily by the police. The authors ask why there were such a high number of deaths in Jelbang in relation to other villages in the area. In the detailed chronology of events that precipitated the deaths, Thapa, Ogura and Pettigrew demonstrate the importance of an analysis that considers the killings in the broader context of the social fabric of the village. In this case, the history of the spread of communism in the area is as important as the role of particular individuals who facilitated the entry of the police into the village. The authors trace the events, personalities and social interrelationships that led to the opening of two police posts in the village, and the means by which one of them became a place where torture was commonplace and extrajudicial executions carried out. This chapter also addresses the role that violent state repression has in radicalizing people and in prompting them to join the revolutionaries. As in the Chhattisgarh case, in villages like Jelbang the police far exceeded their remit. The brutality practised in the Jelbang police post, which characterized the state’s counterinsurgency, was widely acknowledged and attributed to the attitude of the political administration, the role of local intermediaries and their relationships

34 Windows into a Revolution with the police. Those who have perpetuated violence in both Dantewada and Jelbang have not been called to account for their atrocities. In these areas of rural South Asia, it seems that the construction of a “backward peasantry” as supporting and fuelling the insurgency allows the state to participate in the worst kinds of violence with impunity. In the far flung forested regions of central and eastern India, in particular, the future looks very grim as the Indian Government intensifies its military offensive against the Maoists. We hope that some of the chapters in this book will contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of what has happened and continues to emerge in these parts of rural South Asia, and will help to avoid the fatal dangers of actions taken in response to shallow and simplistic representations, and analyses of life in revolutionary war zones. BIBLIOGRAPHY Amnesty International. Nepal: A Deepening Human Rights Crisis, Amnesty International Index: ASA 31/072/2002. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ ENGASA310722002?open&of=ENG-NPL (2002a). ——. Nepal: A Spiralling Human Rights Crisis, Amnesty International Index: ASA 31/ 016/2002. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA310162002? open&of=ENG-NPL (2002b). ——. Nepal: Widespread ‘Disappearances’ in the Context of Armed Conflict, Amnesty International INDEX: ASA 31/045/2003. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ ENGASA310452003?open&of=ENG-NPL (2003). Abu Lughod, L. “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing the Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women”, American Ethnologist, 17(1), 1990: 41–55. Balagopal, K. “Have We Heard the Last of the Peace Talks?”, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 March, 2005: 1323–9. ——. “Maoist Movement in Andhra Pradesh”, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 July, 2006: 3183–7. Banerjee, S. In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India, Calcutta: Subarnrekha, 1980. ——. “Naxalbari: Between Past and Future”, Economic and Political Weekly, 1 June, 2002: 2115–16. ——. “Beyond Naxalbari”, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 July, 2006: 3159–63. Bhatia, B. “The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar”, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2000. ——. “The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar”, Economic and Political Weekly, 9 April, 2005: 1536–50. ——. “On Armed Resistance”, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 July, 2006: 3179–83. Bianco, L. Peasants Without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth Century China, Armonk: M.E.Sharpe, 2001. Bornstein, A. “Ethnography and the Politics of Prisoners in Palestine-Israel”, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 30(5), 2001: 546–74.

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36 Windows into a Revolution Hobsbawn, E. Bandits, London: Abacus (Time Warner Books), 2003 [1969]. Hoffman, D. “Frontline Anthropology”, Anthropology Today, 19(3), 2003: 9–12. Hoftun, M., Raeper, W., & Whelpton, J. People, Politics and Ideology: Democracy and Social Change in Nepal, Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 1999. Human Rights Watch. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Civilians Struggle to Survive in Nepal’s Civil War”, Human Rights Watch, 16(12), Accessed: hrw.org/english/ docs/2005/2001/2013/nepal9821.htm. (2004). Hutt, M. Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst, 2004. Independent Citizen’s Initiative. War in the Heart of India: An Enquiry into the Ground Situation in Dantewada District, Chhattisgarh, New Delhi: Independent Citizens Initiative, 2006. Jackson, M. In Sierra Leone, Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. Jean-Klein, I. “Mothercraft, Statecraft, and Subjectivity in the Palestinian Intifada”, Amercian Ethnologist, 27(1), 2000: 100–27. Jha, P. “Naxalite Be Not Proud”, Himal, 20(12), 2007. Kannabiran, K., Volga, & Kannabiran, V. “Reflections of the Peace Process in Andhra Pradesh”, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 February, 2005: 610–13. Kelly, T. Law, Violence and Sovereignty Among West Bank Palestinians, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kovats-Bernat, J.C. “Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork Amid Violence and Terror”, American Anthropologist, 104(1), 2002: 208–22. Kriger, N. Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Kunnath, G. “Becoming a Naxalite in Rural Bihar: Class Struggle and its Contradictions”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 33(1), 2006: 89–123. —— “From the Mud Houses of Magadh: Dalits, Naxalites and the Making of a Revolution in Bihar, India”, Ph.D. Thesis, SOAS, University of London, London, 2008. Lan, D. Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Lancaster, R. Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Lecomte-Tilouine, M. (translated by David M. Gellner). “Regicide and Maoist Revolutionary Warfare in Nepal: Modern Incarnations of a Warrior King”, Anthropology Today, 20(1), 2004: 13–20. Mahmood, S. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival”, Cultural Anthropology, 16(2), 2001: 202–36. McHugh, E. ‘Sliding, Shifting, and Re-drawing Boundaries’, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 20–1: 113–17, 2001. Mikesell, S. “The Paradoxical Support of Nepal’s Left for Comrade Gonzalo”, Himal, 6(2), 1993. Nickson, A. “Democratisation and the Growth of Communism in Nepal: A Peruvian Scenario in the Making?”, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 30(3), 1992: 358–86. Ogura, K. Nepal Ousei Kaitai [Dissolving the Nepali Monarchy], Tokyo: NHK Books, 2007. —— “Maoists, People, and the State as Seen from Rolpa and Rukum”, In H. Ishii, D.

Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal 37 Gellner, & K. Nawa (eds.), Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal: Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia, Volume 2, New Delhi: Manohar, 2007: 435–75. Ogura, K. “Maoist People’s Governments, 2001–05: The Power in Wartime”, In D.N. Gellner and K. Hachhethu (eds.), Local Democracy in South Asia: Microprocesses of Democratization in Nepal and its Neighbours, Delhi: Sage, 2008: 175–231. Ortner, S. “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1995: 171–93. Parvati, Comrade. “The Question of Women’s Leadership in People’s War in Nepal”, The Worker, 2003a. —— “Women’s Participation in the People’s War”, In A. Karki and D. Seddon (eds.), The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, Delhi: Adroit Press, 2003b: 165–82. People’s Union of Civil Liberties. When the State Makes War on Its Own People: A Report on the Violation of People’s Rights During the Salwa Judum Campaign in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, New Delhi: People’s Union of Democratic Rights, 2006. Peritore, P.N. “Reflections on Dangerous Fieldwork”, American Sociologist, 21(4), 1990: 359–73. Perry, E. Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845–1946, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980. Pettigrew, J. “Guns, Kinship and Fear: Maoists among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)”, In D. Gellner (ed.), Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, Delhi: Social Science Press, 2008 [2003]: 305–25. —— “Living between the Maoists and the Army in Rural Nepal”, In M. Hutt (ed.). Himalayan ‘People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: Hurst and Co., 2004: 261–83. Pettigrew, J., & Shneiderman, S. “Women and the Maobaadi: Ideology and Agency in Nepal’s Maoist Movement”, Himal South Asia, 17(1), 2004: 19–29. Pettigrew, J., Shneiderman, S., & Harper, I. “Relationships, Complicity and Representation: Conducting Research in Nepal During the Maoist Insurgency”, Anthropology Today, 20(1), 2004: 20–5. Ramirez, P. “Maoism in Nepal: Towards a Comparative Perspective”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst, 2004. Ranger, T. Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Richards, P. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone, Oxford: James Currey, 1996. Rodgers, D. “Searching for the Time of Beautiful Madness: Of Ruins and Revolution in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua”, In H. West & P. Raman (eds.), Enduring Socialism, Oxford: Berghahn, (forthcoming). Scheper-Hughes, N. “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology”, Current Anthropology, 36(3), 1995: 409–20. Scott, J. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Resistance in Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. —— Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale: Yale University Press, 1985. Shah, A. “Markets of Protection: The ‘Terrorist’ Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India”, Critique of Anthropology, 26(3), 2006: 297–314.

38 Windows into a Revolution —— “Alcoholics Anonymous: The Maoist Movement in Jharkhand, India”, Modern Asian Studies, 45(5) (forthcoming), 2011. Shneiderman, S. “Creating ‘Civilised’ Communists: A Quarter Century of Politicization in Rural Nepal”, In D. Gellner (ed.), Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, London: Sage Publications, 2010. Singh, P. The Naxalite Movement in India, New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1995. Sinha, S. Maoists in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi: Gyan, 1989. Skocpol, T. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979. Starn, O. Nightwatch: Politics and Protest in the Andes, Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Stern, S. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Stoll, D. (ed.). Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Tamang, M. “Culture, Caste and Ethnicity in the Maoist Movement”, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 11(2), 2006: 271–301. Taussig, M. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. —— “Culture of Terror, Space of Death: Roger Casement’s Putumanyo Report and the Explanation of Torture”, Comparative Study of Society and History, 26(3), (1984): 467–97. —— “Maleficium: State Fetishism”. In M. Taussig (Ed.), The Nervous System New York and London: Routledge, 1992: 111–40. Taylor, L. Shining Path: Guerrilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands, 1980–1997. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. Thapa, D. (Ed.). Understand the Maoist Movement of Nepal. Kathmandu: Martin Chauthari, 2003. Thapa, D., with Sijapati, B. A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2004. London: Zed Books, 2004 [2003]. Yami, H. People’s War and Women’s Liberation in Nepal. Kathmandu: Janadhwani Publications, 2007. —— People’s War and Women’s Liberation in Nepal. Kathmandu: Janadhwani Publications, 2007. Yechury, S. “Learning from Experience and Analysis: Contrasting Approaches of Maoists in Nepal and India”. Economic and Political Weekly, 22 July, 2006: 3168–71.

IN SEARCH OF CERTAINTY IN REVOLUTIONARY INDIA ALPA SHAH

WHAT MAKES A REVOLUTIONARY?

O

ne of the most intriguing questions about the spread of revolutionary insurgency, such as the Maoists in South Asia, is who is supporting the movement and why. While in South Asia, it is generally acknowledged that the leadership is educated middle class intellectuals, often urban based and higher caste,1 the composition and motivations of the grass roots support are heavily contested. The political commentary in general splits into two kinds of analysis. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the grass roots support for the movement is dependent on those caught between the fires who are often swept into the movement out of fear, or imply that it is false consciousness Thanks in particular to Denis Rodgers, Tobias Kelly and Stephan Feuchtwang. Thanks also to participants at the British Academy workshop, whose papers and discussions form the basis of this book, as well as those at the Micro-politics of Armed Group Workshop, International Relations Department, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Markets for Peace Network, Danish Institute for International Studies. 1

Bhatia (2000); Shah (2006).

40 Windows into a Revolution that accounts for their participation.2 On the other hand, there are those who are uncomfortable with explanations of this kind, who want to stress the agency of the recruits more, and who emphasize that the revolutionaries speak of a practical ideology amongst its supporters, nurture Gramscian “organic intellectuals” and form class consciousness.3 These debates are, of course, nurtured by a long history of discussion on rebel action which goes back to the analysis of peasant movements as pre-political4 and to the assertion of rebel consciousness, even if theoretically limited in some cases5 or limited to “weapons of the weak” in other cases.6 Undoubtedly, the answer is not one or the other— motivations are not only likely to be different for different people in different places and over time, but there are also serious questions to be asked about the concepts of individual autonomy that underwrite idioms of both resistance and subordination.7 In my previous work,8 I have explored how my fieldwork in rural Jharkhand showed that the early (by which I mean the first five years when the movement was establishing itself in an area) grass roots supporters of the Maoist movement were neither “organic intellectuals” nor were they acting out of “false consciousness”. The early Maoist spread in Jharkhand was in fact dependent on the educated rural elite and on greater control over a market of protection to access the informal economy of state resources. The tacit collaboration of the rural elite with the Maoists was an extension of rural elite activity in a pre-established informal economy of state development resources, for which the Maoists were only the most recent providers of protection. In a revolutionary context such as that of Jharkhand, support, however, can take on various different shades. It is one thing to support the revolutionaries by feeding them in your houses, or providing them with information about the local vicinity, enabling their access to the informal economy of state resources, but quite another to become a recruit of the 2

Guha (2007); Guha (1999),(1983); Mishra (2007). (2000); Kunnath (2006) and Shneiderman’s chapter in this volume. 4 Hobsbawm (1959). 5 Guha (1999); (1983). 6 Scott (1985). 7 See for instance the implications of the work of Mahmood (2001); Ortner (1995); Willis (1978). 8 Shah (2006). 3 Bhatia

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 41 armed squads. Ronald Berg9 has, for instance, argued of the Shining Path in Peru that support can vary from sympathy to passive and active support. Since I wrote the paper published in 2006 the movement has spread in my field research area, and Maoist activity has increased from control over the markets of protection of the informal economy of the state to recruiting candidates for the armed squads, who will be posted in other areas. In this shift, people who were previously mediating between the Maoists and the state might become potential recruits for the armed squads now. In this paper I focus on the dilemmas of a friend, Chotu Roy, who might very well have joined the armed squads. In doing so, I want to expand the arguments of my early work to show how the question of why one supports a movement, as well as the nature of that support, can change over time. In particular, I want to stress the importance of the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty, at two different levels of epistemology and ontology, which may be central to the making of a revolutionary. In considering religious subjectivity, recent research has questioned the certainty of values which characterize narratives of religious transformation. Matthew Engelke,10 for instance, in his analysis of the early days of the transformation of Shoniwa Masedza into Johane Masowe, Africa’s “John the Baptist”, has signalled the importance of moments of uncertainty and doubt that are constitutive elements in the production of religious subjectivity. These are moments of ontological uncertainty, a questioning of what is or ought to be. Leaving aside the fascinating analysis of millennarian movements where political mobilization is often led by a prophet and is directed by religious beliefs,11 it is surprising how rarely scholars have explored the parallels between the transformations of religious and revolutionary subjectivities, despite the centrality of the transformations in practical action and ideology that take shape in both the cases. In this chapter I argue that hesitation, doubt and uncertainty might well be constitutive elements of those who end up joining the revolutionaries. While these lessons from the considerations of religious subjectivity are important, I want to argue that epistemological uncertainty plays an important role in the formation of revolutionary subjectivity. This is an 9 Ronald

Berg (1986). Engelke (2005). 11 c.f. Adas (1979); Worsley (1957). 10

42 Windows into a Revolution uncertainty that is generated around what one knows about one’s social relationships and that is particularly characteristic of the epistemic murk of the revolutionary situation analyzed here. The argument proposed is that the search for greater epistemological clarity in social relationships can be the central experience of those who seek to go underground as revolutionaries. Here, the parallel analysis from religious subjectivity is limiting; while the central contribution has been an analysis of ontological uncertainty, the nature of the social relations which precede and characterize the transformations have surprisingly been rarely analyzed. The case of Chotu Roy shows not only the importance of the question of whether Maoist ideology was worthy of his support, but also how the dialectics between the certainty and uncertainty of social relations, that characterize the spread of revolutionary situations, can be central considerations in joining the armed squads. My argument in brief is that the potential revolutionary may be unsure about his/her ideological commitments in their decision to join the armed squads (why and for what end). And, that a crucial component of their decision may be an uncertainty about the social relations in which they find themselves and the hope that revolutionary engagement will come with more guarantees.

INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS It was a weekly Thursday market day in January 2007 in the town of Bero. I had just travelled a bumpy one-and-a-half hour journey from Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi, to get there. I took a deep breath of the strange but familiar smell of spices and dust in the air. As I closed my eyes the beeping of the trucks and the buzz of people intensified. Leaving the main road, I walked up the mud track past the house where I had lived in 1999. I was excited. I was anxious. It has been three years since my return and I was arriving unannounced. This time I had a husband by my side. Old neighbours shouted, “Alpa, Alpa! You’re here! Come in. Who is with you?” I promised I would return. My first stop had to be the house of my old friend Chotu Roy. As we turned into an alley, I expected to see the two brick rooms and the mud kitchen I knew well. But the landscape had changed. Facing us was a new, pink, two-storey building. A young girl in a yellow dress, who couldn’t have been more than two, was playing with a miniature

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 43

The dusty town of Bero in 2007 (Courtesy Alpa Shah).

mud stove and, cups and saucers at the bottom of a stairway. Before I could even ask for Chotu, his mother flew down the stairs shouting my name in excitement. News travelled fast in Bero. Behind her was a beautiful fair and slim young woman. Chotu was also married. I touched the feet of “Ma” and hugged Chotu’s wife. I introduced my husband. We climbed up the stairs; the ground floor had been rented out. As Chotu’s wife lit a new gas stove to make some lemon tea, his mother brought my attention to her wood-fuelled mud stove on the terrace. “The chilka roti (rice chapatti) you love just does not taste the same on gas. So tell me, when can I make it for my new son-in-law?” I laughed. We were happy, joking and cutting into each other’s words in our excited pleasure. There was much to catch up on. “Where is Chotu ? How is he?” Suddenly there was a chilly silence. His wife’s face fell. His mother burst out, “You speak to him. You tell him. He will listen to you. He has to leave this town. He has to go away from here.” My stomach lurched. I suspected the reasons. Had I not been in a similar situation five years ago? Did I not remember Shiv coming to me with the same request—to help him get away from the nearby village of Tapu where I lived during 2000–02? Chotu’s wife and his mother

44 Windows into a Revolution wanted Chotu to leave Bero to escape from the situation in which he found himself amidst the spread of the revolution. Over the last few years, this little known part of India, often considered a place where “nobody goes, the wild east, the subcontinent’s heart of darkness”,12 the forested plateau region of Jharkhand in eastern India, has gained international attention. The media’s eye has turned to its “flaming forests” housing the country’s poor, indigenous or tribal population alleged to be harbouring the rural spread of underground armed revolutionaries, commonly called the Maoists or the Naxalites, heirs to the revolutionary ideology of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong. The Naxalites’ immediate goal was seen as the creation of a liberated territory from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh, and in the late 1990s, Jharkhand became a crucial territorial link. By the time Jharkhand separated from the State of Bihar within the Indian Federal Union on 15 November 2000, three major Naxalite organisations—the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Party Unity, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC)—had made inroads into the area. The received wisdom is that Naxalite support in rural Jharkhand is buttressed by its disenfranchised indigenous or tribal poor. When the MCC, and the combined Party Unity and the Andhra Pradesh-based People’s War Group (PWG) formed the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in 2004, Jharkhand with its forest cover became one of the major guerrilla zones of the Maoist party. Maoism, rather than just Marxism-Leninism, is the guiding ideological force of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)—protracted armed struggle against class enemies with the objective to seize power not through participation in elections but through armed action. The new party believes in a revolution against imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism in order to fulfil the aspirations of the masses for a stronger revolutionary party and thus bring in a new democratic society by advancing towards socialism and communism (Communist Party of India (Maoist) 2004). Currently the Maoists are active in 18 out of 22 districts of Jharkhand. The Maoists run parallel governments in many areas in Jharkhand, holding jan adalats (People’s Courts) to settle both civil and criminal 12 The

Independent Magazine, 11 March 2006: 17.

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 45 disputes, imposing penalties that range from simple fines to death. It is widely reported that during 2000–09, well over a thousand people have been killed in Maoist related violence in Jharkhand alone.

THE TENSIONS OF THE MARKETS OF PROTECTION In my earlier writing,13 I began to explore who is supporting the early spread of the movement as well as the related questions of how and why. Through my experiences of the initial spread of the Maoists in rural Jharkhand, I questioned the received wisdom that the MCC is a poor indigenous people’s movement against the state, showing its early spread to be dependent not only on a rural elite (usually higher caste rather than tribal) intimately connected with the state, but also that it is sometimes used by and worked in collaboration with state officials. I thus questioned the boundaries between the “terrorist” extreme left-wingarmed guerrilla MCC and the local state in Jharkhand. I wondered about the extent to which the Maoists and the state have rhetorical arguments against each other in their own interests, whereas, what sustained both was intricate interdependencies and intimate collaboration. I also showed that continuities in people are not the only basis for focussing on the links between the MCC and the local state. As the representatives of the state had previously done, the MCC sells protection, an ambiguous commodity, in return for support, sold to access the informal economy of the state and also to safeguard itself from the possibilities of its own activities. The abolition of landlords in the early 1950s meant that the rural elites, such as Chotu’s family, who faced gradual impoverishment, increasingly attempted to sustain their lifestyles through state-related resources—whether directly (through government jobs) or indirectly (for instance, through government contracts). They reproduced (in the case of the descendants of the landlords) or created (in the case of the newer elite) their position through extensive links with the state. They were entrepreneurs who maintained their relatively better financial position to the tribal peasantry in large part because of their ability to be brokers for the implementation of state development schemes, and siphoning off money concomitantly. 13

Shah (2006).

46 Windows into a Revolution The expansion of the MCC was linked to the politics of access to this informal economy of state patronage. In return for their cooperation in harbouring and fostering the movement, recruits in areas under MCC control were offered privileged and protected access to state resources. Hence, when the MCC arrived in the village of Tapu, they promised my friend Shiv contracts from the local Block Development Office (Block Office) of the Ministry of Rural Development. Most of the Block Office schemes involve construction projects for common use (e.g. roads, dams, community buildings) and required a villager as the contractor. As Shiv had done when he built the first dirt track to Tapu in 1996, it was assumed that the contractor will siphon off up to 10 per cent of the total project money at the Block-level. Block Office contracts were, however, few and generated much competition. To obtain a contract, a “source” was necessary, a powerful person with leverage over the state officers sanctioning the contracts, as well as the ability to threaten competitors and offer protection. While in the past this “source” was usually a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) or an aspiring MLA, the MCC started to take over this role when they came to the area. While for some, the MCC guaranteed potential contracts and the possibility to siphon off money, for others such as Chotu, who operated more widely at the Bero regional level, the MCC also offered the possibility to manage their systematic access to the informal economy of the state resources better. The state engineers who were posted to rural development offices in places like Bero were often fearful of the surrounding village areas in which they had to implement schemes as they thought these regions were “wild” and “tribal”. Expecting a re-posting within three years, they sat in the safety of their offices, while relying on the local expertise of informal engineers such as Chotu who roamed the rural landscape, negotiated with the varied political actors making demands on state officers, and ensured the continued implementation of development projects. In return the officials gave Chotu a percentage of the illicit cut that they took for themselves from each project. When the MCC arrived in the region, they started to demand 5 per cent of the mony for all the large projects in the rural areas where they intended to expand. The savviest mediators in the area, like Chotu, who in any case made it their business to get to know and be on good terms with the new powerful people emerging in the area, negotiated good

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 47 relations with the MCC commanders. As a result of their ability to buy MCC protection, they were used by some state officials and aspiring contractors to manage their competitors and pressures in project implementation. The net effect was that some state officers and contractors asked for protection from the MCC to stave off competition in return for a cut of the project for the MCC. Thus the MCC expanded in the area entering a pre-existing market to sell protection and engaging in activities that were already established in the area. As a result of these findings, I have argued that the initial MCC grass roots support is neither based on a shared ideology nor on just the threat of violence, but on having greater control over what can be termed a market of protection. Violence became deployed in selling protection to bargain for power and material benefits. In selling protection, the MCC competed in a market previously controlled by parts of the local state. Unveiling this market of protection was central to contesting the boundaries between the state and its alleged enemies, the terrorist, in rural Jharkhand. The individuals who mediated these boundaries, however, clearly experienced significant tensions. At some point it was likely that the Maoists would call on them for support of a different sort—to either become sustained local informers or to join their red squads. In 2002, I had to help Shiv escape from the village of Tapu where I lived then because he was under pressure to become an MCC informer, and had no option but to leave the area if he wanted to avoid them. Shiv was a married man with children and was no longer keen to experiment with the particular model of masculinity, of being feared and fearless, that he once flirted with as a young road contractor. Chotu, on the other hand, at that point was an unmarried man and so opted to tread the more risky path, and five years later, was clearly more involved with the MCC. Nevertheless, in 2007, I found him having similar dilemmas at the regional level, to that which Shiv had previously experienced at the village level: whether to continue his activities, to join the armed squads, or to escape? The question was why and how had he come to be in this situation?

BECOMING A SUSPECTED MURDERER It was a cold frosty morning in December 2006. The shopkeepers in the Bero high street were opening the shutters of their shops to display their

48 Windows into a Revolution wares. Most of them were ex-zamindars (ex-landlords) from the neighbouring villages and had come to live in the market town of Bero in the last fifteen years, making its population swell from around 1000 to about 5000 now. Aspiring to join the middle class, they had left their mud huts in the surrounding villages and come to diversify their rural livelihoods to become small-time businessmen and upgrade their village mud houses to brick houses with running water and sporadic electricity. Sambath Sahu opened his hardware shop and put his heavy weight on the chair at the front. “Chai”, he ordered. The little boy across the street was attentive to this routine call. He ran into the restaurant nearby and came out a few minutes later with a small glass of milky tea. Waiting for the tea to cool, Sahu took in his surroundings. Opposite him, the pan-wallah (pan seller) was arranging his little bottles of paste, tobacco and leaves. In the distance he could see a police car leaving the local police office. As he sipped his tea, a motorbike flanked by two masked young men screeched to a stop in front of his shop. Sahu dropped his glass. One of the young men jumped off the bike. He shouted across the street, “Let this be a lesson to all who defy Bikram Bhagat,” and pulled out a revolver, and shot Sahu in the head. Then he jumped onto the bike. The driver revved up the engine and sped off. Bikram Bhagat was reputed to be the Area Commander of the new revolutionary force. An internal split in the MCC meant that the Bero faction was now called the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers.14 Over the last five years the revolutionaries had diversified their activities. While they continued to take a percentage of all the state development schemes, in the latter part of 2006 they had begun demanding a hefty levy of two to three lakh rupees (approximately 2380 to 3570 pound sterling) from all the Bero shopkeepers. Unless one had been actively supporting the 14 It is important to note that the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers are considered a “gang” by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) which is the major Maoist party at the time this chapter went to press in 2010. The CPI(Maoist) believe that such gangs have no ideology, no future vision of society, do not work in the interests of the poor, and are mere extortionists. There are indeed significant differences in operation—one small example is that the CPI(Maoist) do not seek levies from individual shopkeepers in the manner described here. Nevertheless, there are enough parallels between what is described here and with the very initial spread of the CPI(Maoist) for there to be conditions similar to that experienced by Chotu Roy in the case of the Maoists too. Moreover, the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers split off from the MCC (which later became the CPI(Maoist)) and the initial spread of both in this particular area were one and the same.

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 49 revolutionaries, everyone had to pay. Not even the small pan-wallah or newspaper-wallah was spared. Sambath Sahu had refused to pay. A friend in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, sent me an email in London about the incident in case Sambath Sahu had been an acquaintance. The murder had resulted in the posting of a Special Police Task Force in Bero and had drawn her attention to the story in the newspaper. In the old days it would have been almost impossible for me to verify anything about the murder without visiting Bero. The few phones in the town were rarely working and letters hardly seemed to reach. However, a year ago, Chotu had acquired a mobile phone. I tried to contact him to find out more about the killing. The phone was answered by someone who refused to give his name, refused to say whether my call had reached Bero, and denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chotu Roy. This was a strange response in a place where most people knew Chotu, and, moreover, people there were usually extremely helpful in trying to locate others. Chotu’s mother’s pleas to me to convince Chotu to leave Bero only made things murkier, but things began to become clearer once I realised that the town of Bero was rife with rumours about who had killed Sambath Sahu. The primary suspect was Chotu.

ROBBING SHOPKEEPERS I am interested neither in who killed Sambath Sahu nor in the question of who framed my friend. While it is indeed difficult for anthropologists to ultimately avoid assessments of the “truth”, like the contributors to Harry West and Todd Sanders’ collection15 I am not concerned about the veracity of conspiracy claims. Rather, I want to situate such claims in a wider socio-cultural framework. Specifically, I am interested in asking what we can learn about the contested formation of revolutionary support through an analysis of the dilemmas Chotu faced. It was a day in the summer of 2006. Chotu was ready to go to bed. His phone rang and he recognized the number, and wondered what the demand would be this time. He picked it up. Bikram Bhagat was at the other end. “I want you to collect R 30,000 from Avinash Maheto and R 20,000 from Mangal Roy. They are expecting you. Keep R 3000 and 15 West

and Sanders, Transparency and Conspiracy, (2003): 15.

50 Windows into a Revolution R 2000 of each collection for yourself. At 3 P.M. on Tuesday next week, wait under the mango tree opposite the Forest Office with the rest of the cash.” Chotu broke out in a sweat immediately. Until that moment he had been proud to mediate relationships between the state and the revolutionaries fearlessly. With some other young men, he had carved out a field for himself amongst the revolutionaries. He had got to know their local leaders, and was even getting enthralled by their talk of a movement against oppression and dispossession. He was one of the first points of call for all the demands that the revolutionaries made on state development schemes. As I have argued elsewhere,16 taking money from state development schemes, especially if it was to be spent for better public use, was generally concerned a legitimate activity in the area. But this demand was of a different order. He was being asked to take the money of honest hard working shopkeepers in Bero. This was essentially thievery. For two nights Chotu was racked by fever. How could he rob these men of honestly–earned money? What would the rest of the town say? But, if he didn’t, Bhagat would be suspicious of why he ceased to support him. Was this a test of his commitment and loyalty to Bhagat? If he failed, the risk was death. He had no choice. He got the money. His conscience did not allow him to take a commission. He waited under the mango tree by the Forest Office. At 3 P.M. he received a call. The person at the other end said, “In five minutes you will see a bicycle driven by a man with a woman wearing a red sari on the back. Give the package to this woman.” Chotu could not sleep that night. He was tortured by the guilt of being party to robbing an honest man. Moreover, he felt that all the townsmen were talking about him and the other men who were collecting levies from the shopkeepers for Bikram Bhagat. He could no longer walk through the town with his head held high. He was deeply affected by the fact that he had been party to this crime. He felt that he had betrayed himself and betrayed those around him.

BETRAYAL Soon his sense of self-betrayal and his betrayal of his townsmen turned into questioning others, and awakened fear that it was actually he who had 16

Shah (2009).

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 51 been betrayed by others. He began to wonder why Bikram Bhagat has asked him and not the others who were also acting as some form of revolutionary agents to extract money from shopkeepers. The recurring question that now kept him awake at night was: “Who put forward my name?” His suspicion turned towards his cousin Gaurav Chatterjee. Gaurav’s and Chotu’s family were engaged in a dispute over land. In the early part of the twentieth century, the king of the area had granted some land in Bero to Chotu’s family to look after. While Chotu’s family considered the land as theirs after India’s independence, Chotu’s father failed to acquire the papers to register the land in his name. Meanwhile, according to Chotu, Gaurav’s father acquired the registration certificates by persuading the current descendant of the king to sell the land to him. A few months ago, Gaurav had sold this land making a huge profit on it. This resulted in bitterness between Chotu and Gaurav. Chotu believed Gaurav had stolen land that was rightfully theirs. Gaurav was also known to mediate relations between Bikram and the state. Chotu suspected that Guarav had promoted his name to Bikram as a suitable collector for the levy from the shopkeepers. These suspicions were strengthened in Chotu’s mind after the murder. He began to think that Gaurav and his family had spread the rumour that Chotu had killed Sambath Sahu and that they were conspiring to cripple him. Chotu thought that Gaurav’s ultimate objective was to claim the land on which their two-storey, pink house was built, and for which his father had also not acquired all the correct registration certificates. Of course, Chotu was not sure whether or not Gaurav was behind the fix that he found himself in. But in the aftermath of the murder, Chotu did not pay much attention to the fact that there might be several other people involved. His immediate reaction and suspicion was that Gaurav was weaving a web to trap him. Chotu was sick with the realization that those closest to him, his kin, were conspiring against him. It was a damming thought that the cousin with whom he had played on a daily basis as a child, who knew him better than any of his friends, who was one of his closest relations in Bero, had become his worst enemy. However, three weeks after my arrival in the Bero area, and three weeks after Chotu had shared his doubts with me regarding Gaurav, another incident took place that made Chotu rework his suspicion about who had put forward his name to contract the levy, and the related question of who had framed him as the murderer of Sambath Sahu.

52 Windows into a Revolution

IN SEARCH OF CERTAINTY It was a Monday in March 2007. I walked up the mud track past the house where I lived in 1999. Shiv was with me and we were silent. I left Bero that day to return to London. How long would it be before I returned? What would happen in between? Chotu was waiting for us at his house. We sat on Chotu’s bed. Addressing Chotu, Shiv reflected on the situation, “It is impossible for you to break free from your past activities and distance yourself from Bhagat. You have tried. After the murder you stopped all your Block Development Office work in the hope that Bhagat would no longer be able pressurize you to make monetary demands of state officers and village contractors. You took up land brokerage instead. Like everyone in Bero who has a mobile phone and who is constantly changing their SIM cards for security, you changed your SIM card seven times. You hope that none of your old contacts will be able to reach you now. But really there is no escape unless you leave the area.” He reasoned, “Perhaps Bombay is a good idea.” Bombay was a metaphor for the market. In Bombay, Shiv imagined Chotu working as a manager in a factory or a small business. Bombay represented a life away from both the state and the shadow state. Chotu looked pensively at Shiv and said, “Either I go to Bombay, or I go to the Saranda Forest.” The Saranda Forest was a metaphor for joining the armed squads, for full involvement in the heartland of guerrilla activity. “At least there I will know who is who, I will have a clear sense of the command structures, I will know what my role is and I will be able to protect myself using arms. And perhaps, there I might live amongst people who are formulating a better world.” Apart from being mildly attracted by Maoist rhetoric, he thought that at least in the Saranda Forest, he would have a clear structure of the hierarchy of relations above him, a predetermined role cut out for him, and he would no longer have to carve a risky path by negotiating between unpredictable relationships. Ironically, Chotu wanted to join the Maoists because he thought they would behave like a Weberian state with clear lines and responsibilities. Ultimately, of course, the contrast was overdrawn as part of the fear of the Maoists, which I will explain, also develops because people think that the Maoists represent this influential solid structure that they just cannot see. Chotu was at that moment desperately in search of certainty. What I want to stress here is: First, the characteristics of revolutionary support

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 53 changes over time—from being a mediator to the Maoists in the area, Chotu was considering joining the armed squads. Second, the reasons for support change over time. And third, that ultimately the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty are likely to be a significant part of the process of becoming a revolutionary. This is not just about whether one wants to join the movement or not (the ontological doubt and uncertainty involved in the transformation of the subject that are part and parcel of conversion)17 but also about a search for epistemological certainty, that is the conditions of social relations that are imagined to be less opaque, more predictable, and hence more trustworthy. From an initial mediator of relations between the state and the Maoists, a man who facilitated the Maoist control of the market of protection over the informal economy of state resources through which the Maoists established a presence in the area, Chotu now considered supporting the Maoists by joining their armed squads. He was, undoubtedly unsure about whether he should commit to their visions of a better world— self-doubt and ontological uncertainty were central feelings that he experienced. However, significantly, it was also the epistemological uncertainty of social relations, what he knew about his kin and fellow townsmen, their intentions and motivations, an uncertainty exacerbated by the spread of the Maoists and his particular role in that spread that eventually led him to consider joining the Maoists. Witchcraft accusations, which have a long history in this area, also produce similar effects of uncertainty. The long history of anthropological engagement with the theme of witchcraft indicates that witchcraft efficacy is a direct function of the intimacy between the witch and the victim, and that the vast majority of accusations involve relations between peers and kin.18 Lessons from the analysis of witchcraft can be a central component of the analysis of modern politics, not only in the sense that ideas and practices of witchcraft are a response to modern exigencies in many parts of the world,19 but also because the analyses of witchcraft accusations might be tools through which we may better understand particular political processes.20 Indeed, Chotu’s case shows how the uncertainty in social relations generated by the spread of the revolution 17

Engelke (2005). Douglas (1970). 19 Comaroff and Comaroff (1993); Geschiere (1997). 20 Caplan (2006); West and Sanders (2003). 18

54 Windows into a Revolution can work in similar ways to witchcraft accusations—suspicions of rumours surrounding murder accusations, and accusations of revolutionary participation can become interpreted as a vehicle to settle longstanding tensions (in this case over land) in relations between kin. By mediating such intimate relations, witchcraft accusations have been noted to produce a normative order but they are also produced by and sustain a normative order.21 Arthur Miller, who was inspired to write The Crucible because of the parallels between the workings of witchcraft accusations in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and the crackdown on alleged communist supporters that stifled the McCarthy years of the Cold War, for instance, argued that he used to think, half seriously, that you could tell when a dictator was about to take power, or had been overthrown, in a Latin American country, if The Crucible was suddenly being produced in that country.22 In the context of the transformation of the wider political economy of violence, any notion of what is every day, what is normal, what is ordinary is, of course, not a neutral category of description, but has to be historically and politically contextualized. What characterized the transformation of the normative order that accompanied revolutionary spread? One common answer is a “culture of fear” or a “culture of terror”. Indeed, it is tempting to argue, as Linda Green23 has done so poignantly of Guatemala, that the effects of the revolution and state responses has meant that fear is not just a response to danger, is not just a subjective personal experience, but has penetrated social memory: fear is a way of life. While Green’s descriptions are emotive, the Bero case illuminates that fear is not just an abstract status quo in a violent, revolutionary or post–conflict context. As social scientists, it is important for us to analyze the changing historical, social and political contexts, through which fear develops. There is a transformation in the normative order, which accompanies the revolutionary spread, and which is characterized by the potential conditions for enhanced uncertainty of social relations. The experience of fear is a product of this uncertainty of social relations. How have the conditions for the enhanced uncertainty of social relations developed? In the shadows of violence, Das, Kleinman, 21

Douglas (1970). Miller (2000). 23 Green (1999). 22

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 55 Ramphele and Reynolds24 have argued, that there is often slow erosion through which loss of trust in one’s known world takes place, through which people’s access to established contexts and trusted categories disappears. The specific meanings of attempts to live “ordinary life” must be placed, as Tobias Kelly25 argued in his study of the West Bank, in the context of a wider political economy of violence. In my earlier work I showed that with the presence of the Maoists, the wider organization of violence in the Bero area has transformed. I argued that the MCC sold protection to its supporters by spreading the idea of its increasing coercive control of the area. It took over all the private arms in the area and produced a fear of itself by creating an imagination of the MCC as a highly centralized, hierarchical and organized movement with clandestine operations, opaque secrets and hidden resources. Uncertainty about the size and range of the movement was central to the spread of the movement, and it was created by both a cloud of secrecy and the breach of secrecy that accompanied its spread—the leak here and there that the MCC had arrived in “x” village, was planning “y” case. An idea was generated that the MCC is or could be anywhere and everywhere. In areas of new expansion it was easy for one person to suspect that anyone else could be involved; to create the impression that everyone is involved; and for that person to then become involved. In this process everyone could feel like that that one person; leading to everyone being involved. This generated normative uncertainty of knowing who was a Maoist, a villager or a state official, an uncertainty of one’s social relations was crucial to the spread of the movement. People like Chotu, who supported the movement as local mediators, experienced this uncertainty through the specific relationships of ambiguity and opacity that characterize living and working between the state and the shadow state. Whereas, before the arrival of the Maoists, Chotu was negotiating relations between the state and the politicians, now he was negotiating relations between the state, the politicians, the revolutionaries, as well as all the interrelations between them that can lead to all the three being one and the same thing. This situation created a new degree of opacity of local politics. This was not just a normative uncertainty of roles (who is a state official, who is a revolutionary), but a 24 Das, 25

Kleinman, Ramphele and Reynolds (2000). Kelly (2008).

56 Windows into a Revolution situation when it was never clear who was connected to whom, how, why and at what point this might change. He was constantly negotiating relations between people but he felt that he could no longer build relationships of trust as there was little transparency in social relationships. As a result, he did not know whether he might become a pawn to be sacrificed between a set of relations that he could never fully understand. He could not know who had stabbed him in the back, when and why, and who had the potential to do so in the future. He was worried about the way in which ongoing tensions between people flared up in unexpected ways. The fear was that family, neighbours and townsmen might seek to settle old scores with violence through the revolutionaries or in their name. It was not just fear of people like Bikram Bhagat but fear of those he knew well, and how they might be the harbours or potential harbours of violence that might creep through the cracks of their homes, in places that he least expected. As is also noted by some of the other contributors to this volume,26 more than the threat of physical violence or the threat to life, this fear thrives on ambiguity, disorder, mystery and uncertainty. Against the backdrop of this transformed normative order, that is the social ontological breakdown of the norms and relations by which a person has lived, Chotu was forced first to betray himself by having to take the levy from the shopkeepers, breaking his own principles of what he considered moral action. While siphoning off money from state development resources was moral,27 taking honestly-earned money of a local shopkeeper was not. In a recent book, Turnutari28 argues that, it is the relational nature of betrayal that makes it so feared. Always and in all circumstances betrayal involves the rupture of a pact, the negation of the principle of cohesion, and a threat to the possibility of all relations. Whether one betrays another individual or a community of which one is a part, the act implies breaking some social bond. Above all and on the symbolic level, it negates the principle of cohesion on which ties, bonds, and loyalties rest. Precisely because it threatens the survival of the relationship itself or of the group, betrayal is the threat to the social order most to be feared; it is the most significant symbolic break.

26 See

de Sales and Lecomte-Tilouine. Shah (2009). 28 Turnutari (2007), page 28. 27

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 57 This moment of betrayal is perhaps equivalent to the moment of conversion. It is the moment when Chotu had to choose to stand against or be subservient to the threat to his life. At this point he realized that the violence from which he was profiting was now also a threat to him. He did not have the necessary means to gain sufficient force to secure his physical life. This was then the moment that tested his own moral convictions—the fact that he did not want to rob the shopkeeper—and led to his betraying them. As a result of this low point, the question of whether his moral convictions would be replaced by other moral convictions and political commitments was opened up. Any new moral conviction would prove to be an escape from (not a resolution to) the betrayal of his moral standards, and they would disguise, deny or hide the new moral standards rather than replace the old ones. Being unable to sleep because of his actions, Chotu was soon overcome by questions of how he arrived at this point in the first place: who put his name up for taking the levy? And then, after the murder of Sambath Sahu, the question of who framed him as the murderer? Chotu’s betrayal of himself and his fellow townsmen made him question all the relations around him and the norms by which he lived. His own acts of betrayal made him suspicious of others betraying him. Turnutari29 argues that betrayal forces us to “erase the image of ourselves that we have constructed together with the other, the image of the other that we have created, and the image of ourselves as part of that shared experience. In this sense, betrayal is a devastating experience because it forces us to redefine ourselves, to raise questions about the other and about ourselves in combination with the other.” Her implication is that we begin to fear that many of the relationships of which we are a part might collapse. “Uncertainty (my emphasis) takes the place of all previous security, and everything seems fragile, precarious and illusory. In this sense, betrayal is a traumatic experience that destabilizes identity, because it throws into crises both interpersonal trust and trust in oneself.”30 Chotu drove himself to a situation of suspicion and paranoia because his disbelief of his own deeds made him question the deeds of others. His anxieties transformed into fear, a paralyzing inability to act and to distrust—he couldn’t live with it. His desperation opened up new moral 29 Turnutari 30 Turnutari

(2007), p. 29. (2007), p. 28.

58 Windows into a Revolution possibilities for him and forced him into the following dilemma: either to join the armed squads or to escape from the area. His considerations in joining neither emerged from a fear of the Maoists nor were they based on a total conviction of a shared ideology. Rather, his considerations in joining emerged from the uncertainty that his involvement with the Maoists had precipitated. This uncertainty was not merely ontological, as scholars of religious subjectivity have argued accompanies conversion, but it was especially a product of the epistemological uncertainty and unpredictability that characterize social relations in revolutionary contexts. Chotu’s considerations in becoming a revolutionary were then above all marked by the dialectics between certainty and uncertainty— the tension between the unpredictability of social relations, and his attempts at fixing these relations. In the Colombian Putamayo basin described by Michael Taussig31 the rubber planters who ruled by terror created an epistemic murk that was used and kept murky both for healing, shamanism and sorcery, and for super-profitable exploitation out of the organization of force and threat. By contrast, in the epistemic murk that accompanies the breakdown of the normative order in Jharkhand, Maoist terror arises from the creation of epistemic clarity—the possibility that on the other side norms and relationships will be more certain. This is a certainty carved out of uncertainty and ambivalence, a certainty that denies or projects away uncertainty. It is dependent on paranoia, an ability to make enemies where there would be doubt, betrayal where there would be the benefit of doubt. In this context, becoming a revolutionary is also about being in search of certainty. BIBLIOGRAPHY Berg, R. “Sendero Luminoso and the Peasantry of Andahuaylas”, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 28(4), 1986: 165–96. Bhatia, B. The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2000. Caplan, P. “Terror, Witchcraft and Risk”, The Anthroglobe Journal, http://anthroglobe.info/ docs/caplanp_witchcraft_060119.htm, 2006. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

31 Taussig

(1987).

In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India 59 Communist Party of India (Maoist). Party Programme: Central Committee. Communist Party of India (Maoist), 2004. Das, V., Kleinman, A., Ramphele, M., & Reynolds, P. (eds.). Violence and Subjectivity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 Douglas, M. “Thirty Years after Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic”, In M. Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, London: Tavistock, 1970. Engelke, M. “The Early Days of Johane Masowe: Self-doubt, Uncertainty and Religious Transformation”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47(4), 2005: 781–8. Geschiere, P. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Occult in Postcolonial Africa, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Green, L. Fear As a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Guha, R. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Durham: Duke University Press, 1999 [1983]. Guha, R. “Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy”, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 August, 3305–12, 2007. Kelly, T. “The Attractions of Accountancy: Understanding the Ordinary During the Second Palestinian Intifada”, Ethnography, 9(3), 2008: 351–76. Kunnath, G. “Becoming a Naxalite in Rural Bihar: Class Struggle and Its Contradictions”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 33(1), 2006: 89–123. Mahmood, S. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival”, Cultural Anthropology, 16(2), 2001: 202–36. Miller, A. “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?”, The Guardian/Observer, 17 June 2000. Mishra, T. Barrell of the Gun: The Maoist Challenge and Indian Democracy, Delhi: Sheriden Book Company, 2007. Ortner, S. “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37(1), 1995: 171–93. Sanders, T., & West, H. “Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order”, In T. Sanders & H. West (eds.), Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. Scott, J. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale: Yale University Press, 1985. Shah, A. “Markets of Protection: The ‘Terrorist’ Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India”, Critique of Anthropology, 26(3), 2006: 297–314. ——. “Morality, Corruption and the State: Insights from Jharkhand, India”, Journal of Development Studies, 45(3), 2009: 295–313. Taussig, M. Colonialism, Shaminism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Turnaturi, G. Betrayals: The Unpredictability of Human Relations (translated by Lydia G. Cochrane), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. West, H., & Sanders, T. (eds.). Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. Willis, P. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, Westmead, Hants: Saxon House, 1978. Worsley, P. The Trumpet Shall Sound, New York, 1957.

THE FORMATION OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN RURAL NEPAL SARA SHNEIDERMAN In every country the process is different, although the content is the same. And the content is the crisis of the ruling class’s hegemony, which occurs either because the ruling class has failed in some major political undertaking … or because huge masses… have passed suddenly from a state of political passivity to a certain activity, and put forward demands which taken together, albeit not organically formulated, add up to a revolution. A ‘crisis of authority’ is spoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony, or crisis of the state as a whole.1

This article draws upon research conducted from 1999-2007, funded by the Fulbright Commission, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Department of Anthropology and the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. Thanks are due to the participants of conference panels organized by the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies in Madison, Wisconsin in 2002, and Social Science Baha in Kathmandu in 2003, as well as to David Holmberg, Sushma Joshi, Genevieve Lakier, Kathryn March, John Metz, Shambhu Oja, Judith Pettigrew, Jakob Rigi, Matt Rothwell, Alpa Shah, Deepak Thapa and Mark Turin for their comments. Finally, I thank Bir Bahadur Thami, Man Bahadur Thami, the people of Piskar, and the larger Thangmi communities of Sindhupalchok and Dolakha. 1

Antonio Gramsci, as cited in Forgacs (2000): 218.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 61

INTRODUCTION

T

his chapter considers the formation of political consciousness at the village level in Nepal through an ethno-historical examination of the 1984 Piskar Massacre (hatyakand), in which a local festival (jatra) in Sindhupalchok District became a fatal confrontation between villagers and the police. This case study suggests how we might broadly conceptualize the formation of political consciousness as a key historical process, in relation to which any genuine understanding of motivations behind participation in Nepal’s Maoist Movement in particular, and the political sphere in general, must be considered. Since I first wrote this article in 2002, the political landscape in Nepal has changed dramatically. The royal coup in February 2005 and the ensuing People’s Movement (jan andolan II) of April 2006 brought about the end of the decade-long civil conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) and Nepali state forces. After the conflict officially ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) in November 2006, the Maoists returned to mainstream politics, surprising many with their strong showing in the April 2008 Constituent Assembly elections. Academic, journalistic and political analyses have shifted away from casting the Maoists as Nepal’s most intractable threat as new identity-based armed groups representing a range of interests in different regions have stolen the limelight. Still, many fundamental questions concerning the processes through which political consciousness has been forged in local contexts across Nepal remain remarkably relevant, yet poorly addressed. Two earlier versions of the arguments presented in this chapter were conceived as initial steps towards filling this gap.2 At that time, making the argument that the CPN-M must be taken seriously as a political force capable of mobilizing large numbers of Nepalis through ideological rhetoric—not just coercion and fear—was often at best greeted with skepticism and at worst treated as evidence that the author harbored Maoist sympathies. Thankfully the analytical climate has changed substantially since then, with the CPN-M now recognized by most observers as “one of the three 2 The first version was published as Shneiderman (2003). I thank Himalaya for permission to republish this updated version of the article here. The second version of the paper was presented at the “Agenda for Transformation” Conference in Kathmandu in 2003, and is still awaiting publication in the conference proceedings.

62 Windows into a Revolution major parties”,3 and as a prime mover in pushing Nepali political discourse far to the left, making possible previously unimaginable goals such as the transformation of Nepal into a federal republic.4 Yet despite this change in attitude towards the Maoists in particular—which was unavoidable after they came aboveground and became public political figures in Kathmandu in 2006—comprehension of the dynamics of political consciousness at the grassroots level in general remains superficial on the parts of both the Nepali political elite and the international community. Instead, “villagers” or “Nepal’s people” are seen as victims of various kinds of false consciousness. The Maoists may no longer be demonized as the only propagators of false consciousness among Nepali villagers—madhesi, janajati and other identity-based groups dominated by bourgeois members of their own communities may now equally be judged as such—but the fact remains that many observers imagine rural Nepalis to be somehow beyond the range of political discourse. A detailed look at local histories of politicization in general, and Maoist mobilization in particular, shows that nothing could be further from the truth, and that there is a continued need for in-depth analysis and public discussion of the dynamics that have shaped political consciousness in a range of locales over time. For these reasons, I have decided to let the theoretical structure of this article remain intact as it was initially written. In some sections I have added additional detail and insights gleaned from individual interviews conducted during more recent periods of research. However, I have not attempted to update the narrative of events in Piskar substantially, since the focus of the article remains the early phases of politicization which fostered the forms of political consciousness that later contributed to Maoist mobilization.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Many observers of the early phases of the Maoist movement in Nepal treated it either as an incomprehensible, anomalous rupture in a generally peaceful political field, or as a case of political party splits gone awry at

3 4

As described in multiple newspaper articles in early 2008. Nepal was declared a federal republic on 28 May 2008.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 63 the structural level.5 Absent from these analyses was an in-depth consideration of the roles that rural citizens themselves played in fomenting the insurgency.6 I argue instead that the Maoist movement is deeply embedded in Nepal’s violent history of state formation, and is a contemporary manifestation of the long-term interplay between politics and consciousness created by that history. In order to understand the movement’s tenacity, particularly in an ostensibly post-communist world order, we must address the question of motivation on the part of those who have formed its rank and file, and examine the historical conditions that presaged their participation. Nepal’s ongoing political crisis meets all three of Gramsci’s conditions for a “crisis of hegemony”: “a crisis at the top, one of political and party representation; a serious economic situation…; and a crisis ‘at the base’, marked by the entry of the masses on to the historical stage and their ability to organize themselves and lead a process of alliances.”7 Here I focus on the third point: the formation of political actors at the “base” level. Gramsci’s concept of “practical ideology”, which describes the way in which hegemonic discourse is understood by common people through the idiom of economy and production, is central to this endeavour. Part of why it took so long for scholars to recognize the gravity of Nepal’s political situation was because the “regional ethnography traditions”8 in Nepal have focused on describing small-scale villagebased communities at the expense of examining state structures.9 Initial attempts to address this bias in analyses of the Maoist movement perhaps stepped too far to the other side, primarily examining state and party-level dynamics. My intention is to steer a middle course that both focuses on local experience, and situates it in the broader framework of national processes. Such an analysis must also have an historical aspect which can, in James Scott’s words, provide the long-term background of “slow, grinding, quiet struggle over rents, crops, labor 5 By “early phases” I refer to the period before the November 2001 deployment of the army and imposition of a State of Emergency by the Nepali government. 6 New publications began to fill this gap only after 2003. See especially Gellner (2003); Hutt (2004); Karki and Seddon (2003); Thapa (2003); and Thapa with Sijapati (2003). 7 Buci-Gluckmann (1980): 95. 8 cf. Fardon (1990). 9 cf. Pfaff-Czarnecka (2004).

64 Windows into a Revolution and taxes…”10 that underlies any explosive revolutionary movement. Indeed, in the Nepali context, “what is missing from the picture of the periodic explosions is the underlying vision of justice that informs them and their specific goals and targets, which are often quite rational indeed”.11 Ranajit Guha’s seminal work on peasant insurgency in colonial India provides a useful but as yet largely untapped model for analyzing recent history in Nepal. Guha argues against the term “pre-political”, as used by European historians such as Eric Hobsbawm to “describe a state of supposedly absolute or near absence of political consciousness or organization”12 that characterizes so-called peasant movements. On the contrary, Guha suggests that “there was nothing in the militant movements of its rural masses that was not political”13 and that the Indian peasant rebel, “obviously knew what he was doing when he rose in revolt”.14 As a corrective, Guha introduces the category of “rebel consciousness” as a subject of analysis, suggesting that the true dynamics of insurgency can only be understood from this perspective. Although we cannot elide the temporal, spatial, and political differences between colonial India and contemporary Nepal, Guha’s work still holds many relevant lessons. The Hobsbawmian position that peasant movements are “pre-political”—which Guha critiques—sounds awfully like the early responses to the Maoist insurgency from both Western and Nepali analysts that characterized the movement as a law and order problem without an ideological agenda, which “duped” poor villagers into participating. Observers wishing to understand Nepal’s conflict might benefit from a Guha-esque shift in attention towards rebel consciousness, situated within a larger Gramscian framework in which the emergence of political consciousness at the base level is understood as one of the three crucial conditions which contributes to an ongoing crisis of hegemony.

10

Scott (1985): 37. Scott (1985): 37. 12 Hobsbawm (1999): 5. 13 Guha (1999): 6. 14 Guha (1999): 9. 11

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 65

COLLECTING LOCAL HISTORIES

A 2001 Newsweek article on Nepal’s growing Maoist insurgency shows a mass meeting taking place in Piskar’s village square.

Since 1998, I have conducted research in areas of Dolakha and Sindhupalchok with a predominantly Thangmi ethnic population.15 Early in my research, I began to notice that open-ended questions about how villagers became politically conscious always led back to the same event: the 1984 Piskar hatyakand, or massacre. As recounted in publications of the various Thangmi cultural committees16 and Amnesty International,17 15 The Thangmi, known as “Thami” in Nepali, are an ethnic group of approximately 40,000 who speak a Tibeto-Burman language. They are one of the poorest and the least represented ethnic groups in Nepal within political, developmental, and scholarly discourses. 16 Niko Pragatisil Thami Samaj (hereafter NPTS) (2054 VS); Thami Bhasa Tatha Sanskriti Utthan Kendra (hereafter TBTSUK) (2056 VS). The Nepali calendar Vikram Sambat is indicated with the abbreviation VS. This calendar is approximately 57 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar, with each year running from April through March of two Gregorian years. 2054 VS is therefore 1997–1998 AD, while 2061 VS is 2004– 2005 AD. 17 Amnesty International (1987).

66 Windows into a Revolution the basic storyline of the Piskar Massacre runs as follows. On the festival day of Maghe Sankranti of 2040 VS (15 January 1984), around 2,000 villagers from Piskar and the surrounding area gathered at the Piskar Mahadevsthan, a local temple, for their annual jatra, or cultural festival. The program included songs and skits which criticized local landowners and advocated just treatment of the poor. With the help of the Chief District Officer, the District Superintendent of Police, and the wealthiest regional landowner, Devi Jang Pandey, the local police forces ambushed the festival and opened fire. Bir Bahadur Thami and Ile Thami were instantly killed, and were quickly anointed martyrs in Thangmi narrations of the story. Five other villagers died soon thereafter, while fifteen sustained serious injuries. Numerous arrests were made on the day of the jatra, and a wide-ranging police dragnet in the aftermath arrested approximately 300 others on the charge of being present at the event. Many of those arrested spent upwards of three years in jail without trial. Some years later, the Piskar residents finally lodged a formal complaint with the central government then led by Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand. Promises of compensation were made, but nothing was ever paid. This event shaped the political consciousness of the entire area, and was in part responsible for making Piskar a Maoist stronghold some years later. I do not want to suggest that the 1984 events in Piskar led inevitably to sympathy for the Maoists in this region. On the contrary, I argue that the political consciousness generated in relation to these events could have had many other potential outcomes had it been viewed as a positive national asset rather than as a threat to be subdued by force. By looking back to 1984, and tracing the subsequent development of political consciousness in this area, we can see how Maoist ideological arguments made a certain amount of pragmatic sense to many of Piskar’s inhabitants. Once this history is acknowledged, participation in the Maoist movement for some of those involved may be understood as a logical reaction to earlier experiences of state violence and oppression rather than as an anomalous break precipitated by outside forces beyond their comprehension or control. Piskar’s history provides a microcosmic example of the development of political consciousness at the village level in relation to regional and national events. Yet, the experience of Piskar should not be reified as the master narrative for all of Nepal; instead, it should be seen as one example

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 67 of the diverse, and often conflicting, narratives from across the country, which must all be documented if we wish to piece together the full story. While it is now commonly acknowledged that state efforts to wipe out far-left groups with military offensives such as Operation Romeo in 1995 and Kilo Sierra in 1998 played a large part in fomenting the insurgency, these events should not be given sole credit for the creation of political consciousness. Rather, we need to look beyond their temporal and geographical limits to events like the 1984 massacre in Piskar to understand how the vectors influencing the insurgency have been much longer in the making.

THE ARGUMENT FOR FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS Focusing on the political experience at the base level is particularly urgent because most analyses of the Maoist movement in Nepal have focused on the other two aspects of a Gramscian crisis: the breakdown of political legitimacy on the part of the ruling parties at the top, and the economic problems of poverty and lack of development.18 Although these are both key pieces of the puzzle, they alone cannot explain the political transformation that Nepal has experienced over the last several years. The missing piece lies in the third component of Gramsci’s crisis: the process of consciousness formation among individuals. For a number of reasons this crucial element was largely ignored in initial analyses.19 Instead, Nepalis who participated in the Maoist movement were often represented as victims of a sort of false consciousness, or worse, of no consciousness at all. This was linked to a general sense of disbelief that, for some individuals, participation in the Maoist movement may have been a conscious decision. Western observers with extensive experience in Nepal writing about the conflict suggested early on that participants were, “dragged 18 cf. Hachhethu (2003); Onta (2003); Roka (2001); Thapa with Sijapati (2003); and Thapa (2004). 19 Gautam, Banskota and Manchanda’s discussion of women’s agency within the Maoist movement is a notable exception (2001). Substantial new work focusing on the question of agency as well as other particulars of local experience began to appear only after 2003, although this late date may be partially due to the slow speed of academic publishing. See especially Ogura (2004); Pettigrew (2008 [2003]); Pettigrew and Shneiderman (2004); Sharma and Prasain (2004); Shneiderman and Turin (2004).

68 Windows into a Revolution into”20 the Maoist movement, which was, “spreading like a virus through this fragile Himalayan nation”21 leaving “the poor people of Nepal … even more oppressed than they were before”.22 These writers all draw attention to important dimensions of the conflict by emphasizing the grim reality that many non-aligned villagers faced.23 However, their approaches do not adequately address those individuals who have actively chosen to participate in the movement, instead casting all local people as passive participants. These examples indicate a tendency on the part of Western observers to seek explanations that would forestall the unpleasant realization that “peaceful” Nepali villagers were also capable of extreme violence. For the Nepali elite, acknowledging participation in the Maoist movement as a rational decision on the part of many of its members would have required recognition of the insurgents’ potential to claim power at the state level. As long as Maoist supporters were portrayed as uneducated villagers who did not understand the Maoists’ true intentions, the movement’s unanticipated momentum could be seen as an accident that would come to an end as soon as the villagers in question could be shaken out of their false consciousness. Furthermore, an elitist form of nationalism made it difficult for many city dwellers to believe that such a violent movement could be orchestrated by their own countrymen, that Nepalis could commit such acts of violence against Nepalis. During the early years of the conflict, rumors circulated in the Nepali press that numerous Maoist bodies recovered by security forces were very tall and dark—both physical features that would suggest the fighters were not in fact Nepali. Claiming that the Maoists were non-Nepali mercenaries was structurally comparable to claiming that the Maoists were Nepali victims of false consciousness. Either way, they were not agents acting in the conscious interest of the Nepali nation. Whatever the structure of disbelief, assumptions of false consciousness provided an easy way out for both Nepali and Western observers to avoid conceptualizing rural Nepalis as political agents, Maoist or otherwise. 20

de Sales (2000): 41. Moynihan (2002): A21. 22 Anonymous, from an online discussion group, September 2002. 23 I am grateful to Kathryn March for pointing out that those villagers who remain “non-aligned” make an equally weighty and agentive choice as those who join the Maoists or other political parties. 21

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 69 Although many villagers were unwittingly caught in the crossfire, as Judith Pettigrew24 has shown, many also made an active choice to participate in the Maoist movement. The large number of Maoists involved in several attacks just before the Emergency was imposed in 2001 showed without doubt that thousands of Nepalis were indeed actively participating in the movement. While there are no reliable statistics for the earlier years of the movement, 2001 estimates suggested there were 11,000 combatant fighters, with a support base of approximately 20,000 local militia members.25 After the Comprehensive Peace Accord was signed in 2006, over 30,000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) members were registered in the cantonments, approximately 19,000 of whom met criteria for verification as genuine combatants.26 Other participants have included sympathizers who provided food and lodging, non-combatant local-level informers, and armed local militia men or women. As has often been argued, many people may have participated out of fear, but that is not the whole story. The proclamation of a jan sarkar (people’s government) at Rakhe Danda, Dolakha District, on 23 July 2001 is a case in point. According to numerous independent estimates, 10,000–15,000 local people attended the meeting at which the jan sarkar was announced.27 For an area not stereotypically thought of as a Maoist base up until that time, where the largest religious festivals rarely attract over a few thousand people, this number is significant. Ten thousand people do not attend a meeting purely out of fear. In order to understand why the Maoist movement succeeded in gaining so much ground in Nepal, it is necessary to establish who the people attending meetings like the one at Rakhe Danda were, and why they participated.28

PISKAR AS A “BASE AREA” IN THE MAKING29 Cultural performance and religious ritual have long been understood as primary arenas for political expression in rural Nepal, and constitute a 24

Pettigrew (2004). Luitel (2001). 26 Those who failed verification were primarily child soldiers under the legal age of 18, and individuals who had joined the PLA after the set deadline. 27 Anonymous (2001); Popham (2001). 28 See Shneiderman and Turin (2004) for a detailed description of the establishment of the Dolakha jan sarkar. 29 Parts of the following two sections are also published in Shneiderman (2010). 25

70 Windows into a Revolution key site for observing and analyzing the production of political consciousness.30 It is therefore not surprising that the Piskar jatra had an explicitly political agenda, regardless of whom it was initiated by, or upon which particular ideological lines it was performed. The Amnesty (1987) and Informal Sector Service Centre or INSEC (1995) reports on the incident suggest that the politically contentious aspects of the 1984 Piskar festival may have been the result of intervention from outside political agitators. As the Amnesty report explains, “The authorities of the Piskar area are understood to have been concerned for some time about the influence and activities of radical groups who … were ‘defaming’ local landowners.”31 However, Thangmi–authored descriptions present the festival as a local event evolving out of long-term frustration: “From the year 2037 VS [1981] onwards, in [the area] the people’s discontent against the exploiters had begun growing quickly. The suffering village community was becoming conscious of their own fundamental rights and welfare.”32 In fact, the festival itself, as well as Piskar’s ensuing political evolution, was an example of the marriage of “conscious leadership” and mass “spontaneity” in Gramscian terms.33 The “radical group” active in Piskar at the time of the massacre was the then CPN (Marxist-Leninist) (hereafter CPN (ML)). After a series of splits and reunifications, the party eventually became the center-left CPN (UML), which provided the primary opposition to Nepal’s dominant center-right Nepali Congress party throughout the 1991–2005 democratic period.34 But in the 1970s and 1980s, the CPN (ML) operated entirely underground, and its cadres were treated as terrorists by the panchayat state much like their Maoist successors were decades later.35 CPN (ML) cadres first traveled to the Piskar area in the late 1970s, as part of the party’s program to identify suitable “base areas” and develop support there. According to political scientist Krishna Hachhethu: “While exploring potential base areas, the ML had considered 30

cf. Holmberg (2000); Pfaff-Czarnecka (1996). Amnesty International (1987): 15. 32 TBTSUK (2056 VS): 65. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Nepali are mine, with guidance from Shambhu Oja, and I bear responsibility for any errors. 33 Cammett (1967): 199. 34 The CPN (UML) led their own government for 9 months in 1994–95. 35 See the chapter ‘Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal’ in this volume for more details on the history of communism in Nepal. 31

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 71 two factors, one was proletariat people like the landless, agricultural labourers and poor peasants, and the other was area—the remoteness of the villages from the headquarters of the districts.”36 Piskar met both of these criteria. Its population overwhelmingly comprised poor farmers who owned little or no land. They served as indentured labourers to a tiny group of landlords who owned the majority of productive land. The village was located in the eastern corner of Sindhupalchok District close to the border with Dolakha, far away from the district headquarters of Chautara.37 Although it felt quite remote due to the hilly terrain, poverty and lack of infrastructure, Piskar was also relatively close to Kathmandu (3–4 days’ walk, or one day’s bus journey once the Arniko highway opened in the mid-1960s), so cadres could travel back and forth relatively easily between the political nerve centre in the city and this model “village of the masses”. Piskar’s Thangmi villagers had suffered from various forms of exploitation at the hands of predominantly Bahun, Chhetri and Newar landholders. Highly inequitable landholding relations were at the root of other forms of exploitation, such as indentured labour and usurious money-lending practices, with interest rates up to 60 per cent cumulative per annum. At the time cadres began working in Piskar in the late 1970s, 6.58 per cent of the population owned 47 per cent of the land, while 71.68 per cent of the population classified as poor or landless altogether owned only 31 per cent of the land.38

THE ROLE OF ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS Another important factor that led to the choice of Piskar as a base area was that the CPN (ML) counted among the ranks of its leadership an “organic intellectual” from Piskar itself: Amrit Kumar Bohara.39 Gramsci’s 36

Hachhethu (2002): 59. Areas near district border lines have always been popular choices for political activity in Nepal. Until 2003, Nepal’s security forces were commanded from district headquarters with jurisdiction over only one district. If the situation got tense and party cadres expected punitive action from the state, they could simply cross the district border to buy time. This loophole was closed when the security forces first introduced the Unified Command, under which certain companies of police, military police, and army were commanded from the centre and could cross district lines. 38 Himali Prakasan Parivar [hereafter HPP] (2041 VS). 39 Bohara was most recently Acting General Secretary of the CPN (UML) for a 37

72 Windows into a Revolution definition of the term describes Bohara well: “Organic intellectuals are agents who tend to represent and direct the interest of subaltern populations who are being exploited and to provide them with a counterhegemony to resist their exploitation”.40 Bohara was just this. Born in Piskar in 1950 into a land-holding Chhetri family which was part of the caste Hindu rural elite, Bohara became an angry youth determined to challenge the exploitation he saw around him while growing up in the village. He was particularly struck by the plight of Thangmi sharecroppers, who were intentionally kept illiterate by the landlords they worked for so that they could not understand land use and loan documents they signed. As Bohara put it, “We abhorred from deep inside the feudal exploitation and injustice. But how were we to liberate the people?”41 His maternal uncle had been an early social worker in the area—although not affiliated with a political party, this uncle was devoted to educating villagers and raising social awareness, against the wishes of his own family and other village elites. Bohara had long been influenced by his uncle’s activities, and when he came into contact with CPN party workers in Dolakha District while completing his secondary studies there, he felt that he had finally found the answer to his burning questions about injustice and exploitation. In 1966, at the age of 16, he became a party member. He was soon assigned to a village-level cell and sent to “organize the people” from his home area. By 1980, he was the top CPN (ML) party leader for the Bagmati zone.42 Bohara returned to his home village in 1978, accompanied by his soon-to-be-wife Asta Laxmi Shakya, who was also a CPN (ML) activist, and a third cadre from Lalitpur, Madhav Paudel. They found that there was already “smoldering class hatred”43 among Piskar’s Thangmi farmers, which could be harnessed to serve the broader purposes of the nascent communist movement. My research confirms that Thangmi villagers short period after the party’s poor showing in the April 2008 Constituent Assembly elections. 40 Kurtz (1996): 108. 41 All direct quotations from Bohara are cited from an interview conducted on 10 November 2004 in Kathmandu. It was transcribed by Bir Bahadur Thami and translated into English by Manesh Shrestha. 42 Nepal is divided into 14 administrative zones and 75 districts. Bagmati is a particularly influential zone as it includes the urban area of Kathmandu. 43 HPP (2041 VS): 7.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 73 had long been aware of their exploitation at the hands of landowners, and that there is a substantial corpus of songs, poetry, and stories in the Thangmi language that articulates these issues and calls for justice. Many older Thangmi also told me that they were involved in small-scale acts of resistance against their landlords long before they had ever heard of communism.44 However, their frustrations had never before been linked to a clear ideological agenda that extended beyond the village, nor expressed in a manner that incurred the wrath of the state and implicated the villagers in a much broader web of political intrigue. Two publications on Piskar’s history put out by Thangmi ethnopolitical organizations link the emergence of political consciousness in the area to the arrival of the CPN (ML) cadres in the year 2034 VS, or 1978. For example: “The communist minister Amrit Kumar Bohara, who was born in Piskar, returned to the Bhumi at his birthplace and became active. The local people gave him support from their hearts. The people were becoming aware of natural rights, human rights, justice, equality, sovereignty and so forth. They were becoming organized.”45 Both of these sources mention with pride Bohara’s stint as a minister within the CPN (UML) government of 1994–95. The people of Piskar apparently saw him as a local boy made good—he is said to have returned to Bhumi, the local territorial deity—whose visibility at the national level increased their sense of representation in a democratic system. Elsewhere, these publications display ambivalence about the abilities of the central government to follow through on its promises to local people, and increasing disillusionment about the participation of local heroes like Bohara in such questionable ruling structures. Although these publications recognize local people’s agency in agitating against exploitation, the causal relationship between the appearance of CPN (ML) cadres on the scene and the beginnings of these activities is made clear. The project was not just about agitating for their own rights, but about “supporting” Bohara as well—which I interpret to mean supporting his larger political agenda and aspirations for personal advancement within 44 The other common reaction to the high level of oppression that Thangmi villagers experienced was to leave the area entirely and migrate to India, primarily to the northeastern areas of Darjeeling, Assam and Sikkim. Many Thangmi who settled in India did so because they could no longer stand the exploitation they experienced in their home villages. 45 TBTSUK (2056 VS): 67.

74 Windows into a Revolution the party. Villagers’ frustrations were genuine and were already being expressed through other means, but a broader political consciousness that deployed communist ideology to counter hegemonic powers at the local and national level was Bohara’s creation. The extraordinary effort he put into politicizing the village appears to have emerged partly out of his genuine concern for the well being of the villagers and his belief in the power of class struggle to transform their situation, and partly as an attempt to increase his own political stature. Bohara and his colleagues first focused on teaching basic literacy in the village, which they saw as one of the fundamental prerequisites for building political consciousness, along with teaching basic hygiene and sanitation. However, these were not easy tasks: … they said that they could not understand such things, and could not understand the lectures of big people (thulo manche).46 They said that it was their fate to be poor and lead difficult lives… They wouldn’t listen to us. When we said something they would say, ‘Yes, yes’, but later they would say that they would not get to eat without working, and therefore they would not come for the literacy classes. They felt that we were trying to disrupt their lives and that we scolded them. It was only much later that they began to trust us.

These details complicate the story of immediate understanding and easy trust between Bohara and the Thangmi villagers recounted elsewhere. Many Thangmi villagers first saw the activists as “big people” from outside, who could not understand their situation and might be trying to take advantage of them like the other “big people” with whom they were familiar. Bohara may have been a Piskar native and a communist, but he was not a Thangmi.47 Until he proved otherwise through his actions, villagers had no grounds on which to believe that he was not out to exploit them like his forefathers had. Interviews with Thangmi villagers confirm this view of events. As one man put it: We had no reason to trust them. When people like him (Bohara) left the village 46 The connotation of thulo manche, which literally means “big people”, is of highcaste, high-status outsiders. 47 This was more an issue of cultural, rather than political, difference. Compared to other indigenous groups in Nepal, the Thangmi made a relatively late entrance on the stage of ethnic politics. This may be due in part to their relatively high level of participation in party politics based on the ideology of class—rather than ethnic—struggle.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 75 we said farewell happily, when they came back we worried what they would do next… They didn’t understand our way of life and even though later I understood that he was trying to help us, at first I thought he was like all of the others. Eventually I became interested in communist ideas and I learned to read through the classes Bohara started.

For this particular individual, Bohara’s literacy classes were the beginning of a life-long commitment to the CPN (ML). The Thangmi man quoted above went on to become a ranking member of the party’s district committee, and was imprisoned for three years after the Piskar massacre, during which time he refined his understanding of communist ideology. He is now sought out by young party members from all caste and ethnic backgrounds as a mentor: one of several indigenous organic intellectuals who emerged in Bohara’s wake.

THE MASSACRE: ONE SQUAD ACTION AND BEYOND As early as 1978, Piskar’s villagers had begun taking action against landowners and facing retaliation by state security forces. The massacre of 1984 was not the beginning of a movement, but rather the culmination of a long series of encounters between villagers and the police. The actions in which villagers were engaged, such as “stealing” property and grain from the wealthy landlords, refusing to work for them, and tearing up loan documents, conformed to the broader CPN (ML) policy of “escalat[ing] its one squad action ... in some of its base areas in Ilam, Sankhuwasabha, Sindhupalchok, Mahotari and Dang districts in 1978–79.”48 One of the Thangmi publications recounts three different events in the late 1970s in which Thangmi activists pillaged landlords’ houses and property, and consequently experienced police retaliation.49 Often it seemed that the police had been called in by the landlords, and that it was these local big men who were using their influence to command the state authorities rather than the other way around. In response to the last incident, 105 Thangmi villagers were listed as “terrorists” by the government, and warrants were put out for their arrest.50 In late 1979, a 48

Hachhethu (2002): 59. NPTS (2054 VS). 50 NPTS (2054 VS): 68. 49

76 Windows into a Revolution company of 80 police came to arrest these individuals, but the villagers resisted them violently. Three Thangmi protesters were badly injured in the incident, and the stakes were further raised. The villagers of Piskar were not alone in incurring the state’s wrath in reaction to their nascent protest movement. The CPN (ML) had been instigating similar kinds of actions in other rural base areas throughout the country, and often the results were violent. Ultimately, this compelled the party leadership to rethink their tactics, and a policy change was made at the central level. As Hachhethu explains: ... the ML was unable to resist when the government used suppressive measures in areas where the party’s one-squad action had disrupted the law and order situation. The Khalsa belt of Dhankuta was an extreme case in which the government used the army with a major operation for 11 days in November 1979 in which 15 persons were shot dead, 200 women raped, 55 arrested and the rest of the villagers left their homes. Consequently, the ML’s central leaders were compelled to review their dogmatic strategy.51

But despite this change at the central level, the local unit in Piskar did not follow suit. Bohara and his colleagues continued with their “one squad action” throughout the early 1980s, even though they knew they were under increased government surveillance, and were receiving warnings from within the party to desist. So when the annual Thangmi festival of Maghe Sankranti came in January 1984, it was no surprise to anyone that it contained a political element, or that it was brutally suppressed by the police. As Bohara explained: “We made arrangements for a cultural programme on 15 January and talked about a progressive type of programme that would make the people conscious, in which they would sing songs against feudalism and stage plays.” Bohara and Paudel were making strategic use of a traditional festival day to communicate communist concepts to a large group of villagers beyond the already politicized core individuals that they had been working with closely for several years. About 2000 people turned up at the festival, and according to one of the Thangmi publications, it was a joyous cultural event—albeit with a not-so-subtle political element—that went sour:

51

Hachhethu (2002): 60.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 77 On the day of the jatra [festival], around 2000 villagers and devotees from all around the vicinity as well as other places were present...The audience was deeply engaged in the appealing program of dancing, skits, plays, songs, and so forth. The freezing cold of Magh didn’t bother them at all. Those who were hungry were busy enjoying soybeans and yams distributed by the organizers. Piskar’s environment was enchanted by the rhythm of the madal [drum] and the melodious sound of the bamboo flute. By around three in the morning the program had finished peacefully, but the festival continued … … No one had any idea that the conspirators had been encircling the site of the program from all directions with lethal arms, and they were moving forward. According to the pre-meditated plan, the bloodsuckers were marching briskly on the paths from Chitrepati and Changtha [nearby villages]. The group of police who had come along with the DSP [Deputy Superintendent of Police] had arrested Madhav Paudel and Tara Pant [another cadre], but Madhav was successful in escaping from the police grip. Immediately after he skipped out like that, the police called the attack on the jatra. Overturning all of the lamps, destroying the stage, and randomly lathi charging, the situation became more and more frightening. Bir Bahadur Thami and Ile Thami stepped forward to take control of the terrorized trembling masses. The bloody attack went on and on for about half an hour.52

Both Bir Bahadur Thami and Ile Thami were killed as the police opened fire on the villagers, and were subsequently declared martyrs by the CPN (ML). Fifteen others were injured, five of whom succumbed to their wounds and died in the following weeks, during which several hundred villagers were also arrested and held for up to three years without charges. These events constituted a massive rupture in the daily life of Piskar’s villagers. Families were torn apart, as those who had been present at the festival (and many who weren’t) were branded as “extremists” or “terrorists” and went into hiding to avoid arrest. Strangely, Amrit Bohara was not there on the day of the massacre. He had returned to Kathmandu just a few days before, and heard about the events there. Bohara rushed back to the village to hold “condolence meetings” for the new Thangmi martyrs. Even so, many of the villagers became suspicious that the party leaders had been tipped off about the impending police action, and had saved their own skins by leaving, while putting Thangmi lives on the 52

TBTSUK (2056 VS): 63–64.

78 Windows into a Revolution line in the name of communist revolution. For some local Thangmi who had become CPN (ML) activists, the massacre only hardened their resolve to fight against exploitation and the violent state through communism. Others, however, began to worry that the revolution was not so much about them as about the politicians fighting for power at the center. As one young man from Piskar whose father was arrested put it, “It was Bohara’s fault that innocent people suffered, and we cannot forgive him for that.”

COMPETING NATIONAL HEGEMONIES The massacre and its after-effects put a temporary end to political activism and one squad action in the Piskar area. Most of the village leaders were in jail, and the rest were afraid for their lives. Bohara stopped spending much time in the village and began to focus increasingly on building the party at the central level, especially as the movement for the restoration of democracy began to heat up in Kathmandu in the late 1980s. Although many Piskar villagers remained CPN (ML) members, they became increasingly skeptical of the limited role the leadership envisioned for them within the party as village-level cadres rather than key party members at the national level. Furthermore, it seemed that the very party leaders who had taught the villagers about the value of violent class struggle were beginning to lose their ideological edge, as the CPN (ML) joined the United People’s Front (UPF) and adopted “multi-party democracy” (bahudaliya janbad ) as their goal, in place of the Maoist-inspired concept of “new democracy” (naulo janbad ). As one Thangmi villager who had been an active CPN (ML) cadre through the early 1980s put it: That was the moment when we knew they were not thinking of us anymore. We had come to believe in the value of new democracy through violent class struggle, and suddenly those who had got us involved in the first place deserted us. It looked like they were only interested in gaining power in Kathmandu and had forgotten our suffering. That’s when I left the party.

The concept of “democracy” in particular seemed to have delivered little to those who had worked so hard for it. Given the growing frustration with the sense of exclusion from democratic processes felt by many villagers, by the mid-1990s, emerging Maoist demands made even more sense than those which had been voiced by the earlier communist democracy activists. As one villager summarized the situation:

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 79 In Nepal, democracy has only come to people in the towns and district headquarters and then only to those with loud voices. In the villages and remote areas, people have no idea what democracy is or how it should feel. How can they know? Even though it eventually reached the villages, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy was something that started in Kathmandu and spread outwards. But the Maoist movement is exactly the opposite: it started in the villages.53

This statement highlights the conflicting notions of national hegemony perceived to be held by the state and the Maoists respectively. The ostensibly democratic state was viewed by villagers as alienated from the aspirations and needs of rural individuals, while conversely the Maoists were at first perceived to be attentive to those same concerns. Continuing on this theme, in a version of the Piskar story published by a politically centrist Thangmi cultural committee, the two Thangmi “martyrs” from the village are initially represented as sacrificing their lives in the interest of national democracy.54 By the end of the polemic, however, a clear sense of frustration emerges with the central government’s refusal to acknowledge their contribution to the democratic struggle. At the outset, the martyr Bir Bahadur is described as follows: “Poor village boy, fiercely defending himself against the enemy, he proudly sacrificed his life for his country as a true nationalist.”55 The closing sentence of the article, however, poses the question, “Isn’t it an insult that the country has hesitated to put the names of these heroes who sacrificed their lives for democracy on the list of national martyrs?”56 Leaders of the CPN (UML) like Bohara had taken on ministerial positions and become part of the state apparatus, yet they still failed to secure adequate compensation for Piskar’s villagers. While democracy was the ideology of choice for as long as it appeared to promise positive change in villagers’ lives, when the democratic system was perceived to fail the very villagers who had fought for it, the space was open for other alternatives. A quotation from another, more radical Thangmi publication from 1997 drives this point home: “Was the intention of these patriots (the Piskar martyrs) to establish a multi-party system instead of the Panchayat? Why then are the same old 53

As cited in Shneiderman and Turin (2004): 86. See Lecomte-Tilouine (2006) for a detailed analysis of the role of martyrdom in Maoist rhetoric. 55 TBTSUK (2056 VS): 65. 56 TBTSUK (2056 VS): 68. 54

80 Windows into a Revolution leeches sucking the poor dry? This is absolutely wrong, so to fulfil the lack of representation in the common interest, in the coming days we will definitely see the blood of the people of Piskar people flow again”.57 The emphasis here is on an alternative nationalism, one which recognizes the value of local participation. By proposing a counterhegemonic national vision where the needs and sacrifices of individuals and communities are honored, the Maoists cleverly deployed the symbol of the nation to take advantage of existing sentiments at the grass roots level. Indeed, the CPN (UML)’s shift to the center had created a serious ideological and political vacuum, which the CPN (M)—the Maoists— stepped in to fill from 1996 onwards.

THE EMERGENCE OF NEW REVOLUTIONARIES By early 2001, Piskar was a regional Maoist base, or adhar ilaka, and it had even become a show village where Maoist propagandists took foreign reporters.58 The village’s history had produced a heightened political consciousness which meant that when the Maoists finally arrived on the scene, their ideology was seen to be essentially congruent with the existing agendas of many villagers. In short, CPN (ML) activists had done the difficult work of politicizing the populace, and then disappeared to pursue their own paths to power at the center, leaving the villagers of Piskar a perfect target for Maoist recruitment. When the Maoists held their first meetings in Piskar in 1998, their agenda sounded very much like the CPN (ML) platform had twenty years earlier. Despite everything the village had been through in the 1970s and 1980s, very little had changed on the ground in terms of economic or social structure, and it is hardly surprising that the same type of people who had reacted positively to the CPN (ML) rhetoric in an earlier era—and then felt let down by the party’s shift to the center—would be attracted by this new version of hard-line communist ideology. Some prominent villagers who had supported the CPN (ML) in the early days remained party members, especially those who had been involved at higher levels in the districtlevel party committee. But others were disillusioned, particularly the younger generation, who had watched their parents get arrested after 57 58

NPTS (2054 VS): 68. Liu and Roberts (2001).

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 81 the massacre in 1984, and who had no personal allegiance to the earlier generation of CPN (ML) activists. Many of those individuals began to support the Maoists, either by directly joining their People’s Liberation Army, or acting as local militia and informers. The first act of violence in the area ascribed to the Maoists was the murder of Devi Jang Pandey, the same wealthy landowner who was complicit in organising the police response to the Piskar jatra. The suggestion that the Maoists were responsible for politicizing the people of Piskar and mobilizing them for revolutionary action was anathema to CPN (ML) activists like Bohara. It was difficult for him to acknowledge that in fact a substantial number of the villagers who had originally comprised his party’s base might have now defected to the new revolutionaries: “The Maoists are calling the Piskar area and the Thangmi settlement in Dolakha their base area. There is no truth in this. They may be staying there by force but it was not they who made the people there socially and politically conscious.” There is no question that it was indeed the CPN (ML) activists who first built a communist consciousness in the area, which the CPN (M) took advantage of later. The Maoists were nonetheless unashamed of using the Piskar Massacre as a propaganda tool. “Piskar” was a rallying cry in their mass meetings throughout the region—they claimed that the massacre was “their” event and that they would avenge the Thangmi martyrs’ death through their revolutionary actions.59 Although the first part of this statement is historically unfounded, the second part of the statement has proven to be a winning gambit with disillusioned Thangmi villagers in the area. It is telling that the sons of both Bir Bahadur and Ile, the two martyrs of the Piskar Massacre, became involved with the Maoists, one as a high-level area commander. The Maoists were able to rekindle interest in communism by promising a revolutionary social transformation that the mainstream wings of the CPN could not deliver.

THE POWER OF PRACTICAL IDEOLOGY After the initiation of the People’s War in 1996, the CPN (M) capitalized upon the CPN (ML)’s earlier efforts to create political consciousness in 59 Personal communications from Gabriele Tautscher and Deepak Thapa, both of whom observed such meetings.

82 Windows into a Revolution Piskar and elsewhere by basing their campaign on the communist cornerstone of “practical ideology”. As Christina Buci-Glucksmann explains, “Practical ideologies and modes of living and feeling have their roots in the economic base: the relation between civilta [civil society] and production is a pivotal point in Gramsci’s whole problematic of capitalism, and of socialism too.”60 In the context of Nepal’s Maoist movement, “practical ideology” refers to the concrete economic reforms, relevant to the daily lives of villagers, which undergird the Maoist agenda. Practical ideology is the necessary complement to “theoretical ideology”, a category which contains both abstract notions of class struggle and revolution articulated in elite language, and the international trajectory of Maoism as a historical force. Practical ideology is just as ideological, or hegemonic, as theoretical ideology, and therefore can play an equal, if not superior, role in fostering local political consciousness. Both are necessary for the long-term success of any hegemonic movement; their relationship might be seen as analogous to the relationship that Gramsci posits between “spontaneity” and “conscious leadership”. Spontaneity is the unpremeditated political action of the masses, while “conscious leadership” refers to the premeditated strategies of educated leaders. For Gramsci, “the union of ‘spontaneity’ and ‘conscious leadership,’ or ‘discipline,’ is the real political action of subaltern classes, since it is mass politics and not simply an adventure of groups who address themselves to the mass.”61 Similarly, recognizing the distinctive qualities that come together in the union of “practical ideology” and “theoretical ideology” helps to bridge the gap often perceived between Maoist intellectual leadership and grassroots practice.62 Such a strategic relationship between the leadership and the masses is also explicitly articulated in orthodox Maoism’s principle of the “mass line”, as exemplified in Mao Tse-tung’s 1943 directive to local 60

Glucksmann (1980): 89. Gramsci, as cited in Cammett (1967): 199. 62 Guha also discusses the congruence and necessary complementarity between practical and theoretical consciousness in any such movement: “Insurgency was indeed the site where the two mutually contradictory tendencies within this still imperfect, almost embryonic, theoretical consciousness—that is a conservative tendency made up of the inherited and uncritically absorbed material of the ruling culture and a radical one oriented towards a practical transformation of the rebel’s conditions of existence— met for a decisive trial of strength” Guha (1999): 10. 61

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 83 leaders to: “take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action ...”63 With this in mind, we can see that the emphasis on practical ideology may have been a conscious strategy on the part of the Nepali Maoist leadership. Although those villagers sympathetic to the Maoists may have remained unaware of the political complexities of the movement’s goals at the national level, let alone its international and historical context, they were attracted by Maoist rhetoric and action surrounding concrete issues such as land reform, bringing exploitative landowners to justice, driving out the police, and claiming political power for the disenfranchised. Their earlier experiences with the CPN (ML) and the fallout from the Piskar Massacre meant that Maoist ideology was nothing new; it was simply attached to a new leadership structure which promised to follow through on its ideological promises in a way that the CPN (ML) had failed to do. The argument that most Maoist fighters didn’t understand theoretical ideology and therefore joined simply out of fear or desire for future grandeur—“false consciousness”—begins to falter if we acknowledge the very profound level at which people like those who experienced the Piskar traumas could understand Maoist practical ideology. In 1984 such villagers understood democracy in the very same way, so that some years later they knew precisely when the system had failed to fulfil its ideological promises. For many who were disillusioned by corrupt and factionalized political parties which made empty promises, the perceived objectives of the Maoist movement made a great deal of sense. Many villagers stated clearly to me that they considered the Maoist movement a worthwhile experiment in a context where other such experiments had failed. However, they did not hesitate to withdraw their support when the Maoist experiment no longer appeared to be fulfilling its stated goals. One Thangmi ex-Maoist combatant I interviewed made the decision to leave when it became clear to him that the hierarchical

63

Mao (1965): 119.

84 Windows into a Revolution social structures the Maoists professed to deplore were in fact replicated within the structure of the party itself.64

CONCLUSION In the long run, practical ideology alone is unlikely to provide an adequate framework for building a truly egalitarian and functional “civil society” (in the Gramscian sense) in Nepal. Disaffection akin to what many villagers felt with democracy in the mid-1990s had already appeared to set in for several ex-Maoist fighters with whom I conducted interviews between 2003–05. After the Maoists signed the CPA in November 2006, and combatants were confined to cantonments, we can only surmise that many of the rank and file may have been disillusioned with the apparently concessionary approach of their leaders. The formation of the Young Communist League in 2006—which is supposedly the youth wing of the Maoist party, but often seems to take independent positions noticeably more radical than the official party line—and other apparent strains within the CPN (M) party lend credence to this supposition. In James Scott’s words, “The revolution, when and if it does come, may eliminate many of the worst evils of the ancient regime, but it is rarely if ever the end of peasant resistance. For the radical elites who capture the state are likely to have different goals in mind than their erstwhile peasant supporters.”65 Ironically, by creating an alternative national discourse of inclusion, the Maoists have emerged from their counter-hegemonic stance to become in many ways more hegemonic than the state—in the positive Gramscian sense of “hegemony” as the ability to engage with existing political consciousness at the base level in a productive manner. But this is not an inevitable result, nor necessarily a lasting one. As consciousness continues to evolve, individuals will find new means of resistance to both Maoist and state hegemony, and the crisis of hegemony is likely to continue.

64 We find similar sentiments in the statements of many women who left the movement after joining because they wanted to transform gender relations, only to find the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) equally hierarchical as other extant social structures. Judith Pettigrew and I have discussed this phenomenon at length elsewhere (2004). 65 Scott (1985): 302.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 85 So how can Nepal move beyond the crisis? I suggest that local political consciousness could have, and still can be, harnessed at the national level by ideological formations other than Maoism. We need to look closely at why the Maoists succeeded in doing this to a greater extent than the other predominant discourses of social change operative in rural Nepal during the same time period: development and ethno-activism. Saubhagya Shah has convincingly argued that the development rhetoric of “participation” creates “a paradoxical subject position of agents without an agency”,66 a state of affairs which may well have contributed to the Maoists’ appeal.67 Furthermore, development rhetoric has consistently focused on participation at the “community” level, which although essential, has created a framework which pigeonholes rural actors as local only, rather than casting them as national actors working on a local level. Similarly, the janajati agenda which dominated an important corner of 1990s politics had the effect of stereotyping indigenous political consciousness as ethnic only, rather than including ethnic individuals as national actors with particularly ethnic interests. Several articles and reports argue that the Maoists in part co-opted the janajati agenda,68 but to the extent that this is true, they did this by subordinating ethnic interests to national ones, and thereby empowering their cadres as national political actors in a way that ethnic politics alone could not. In short, Nepali discourses of inclusion must move beyond the fragmented agencies offered by both development and identity-based formulations of political consciousness to acknowledge local individuals as national actors—who have pressing community, ethnic, gender, class or caste concerns—but are above all included as equal actors at the national level. Arjun Appadurai has argued that the human “capacity to aspire” at the individual level should be treated as a key resource in nation building attempts, particularly among the poor in the developing world.69 This “capacity to aspire”—to envision alternative local and national orders and one’s own agentive role in building them—is a central feature of the political consciousness I have sought to describe here. This concept works 66

Shah (2002): 145. Leve (2007); and in this volume also argues that the rhetoric of “empowerment” as propagated by countless development projects may have contributed to the politicization of rural Nepali women. 68 Sharma (2002); Lawoti (2003). 69 Appadurai (2004). 67

86 Windows into a Revolution against Hobsbawm’s depiction of peasant rebels as “pre-political” actors, “unable to express aspiration” as cited in Guha. Appadurai characterizes the development of the “capacity to aspire” as an absolutely necessary aspect of the democratization process. In Nepal, both the Maoist movement and the 2006 jan andolan may be seen as evidence that this capacity is alive and well. Following Appadurai’s lead, I suggest that in order to resolve the ongoing crisis of hegemony in Nepal, any government that comes to power must recognize existing forms of political consciousness at the grass roots level to create a national discourse of political inclusion that harnesses the country’s great capacity to aspire. BIBLIOGRAPHY Amnesty International. Nepal: A Pattern of Human Rights Violations, New York: Amnesty International National Office, 1987. Anonymous. “Yasari Ghosana Gariyo Jilla Jan Sarkar”, Jan Bhavana National Weekly, 19 (41), 30 July, 5, 2001. Appadurai, A. “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition”, In V. Rao and M. Walton (eds.), Culture and Public Action, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 59–84, 2004. Buci-Glucksmann, C. Gramsci and the State, London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1980. Cammett, J. Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1967. Fardon, R. (ed.). Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1990. Forgacs, D. (ed.). The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935, New York: New York University Press, 2000. Gautam, S., Banskota, A., & Manchanda, R. “Where There Are No Men: Women in the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal”, In R. Manchanda (ed.), Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 214–51, 2001. Gellner, D. (ed.). Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, Delhi: Social Science Press, 2003. Guha, R. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Hachhethu, K. Party Building in Nepal: Organization, Leadership and People, Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 2002. Hachhethu, K. “The Nepali State and the Maoist Insurgency 1996–2001”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: Hurst & Co., 2003. Himali Prakasan Parivar (HPP). Piskar: Daman Ra Pratirodhko Katha, Varanasi: Janata Press, 2041 VS, 1984–85. Holmberg, D. “Derision, Exorcism, and the Ritual Production of Power”, American Ethnologist, 27 (4), 927–49, 2000.

The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal 87 Hutt, M. (ed.). Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: Hurst & Co., 2004. INSEC. “Appendix 3: Peasant Movement in Nepal”, In Human Rights Yearbook 1995, Kathmandu: INSEC, 1995. Karki, A. & Seddon, D. The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, Delhi: Adroit, 2003. Kurtz, D. “Hegemony and Anthropology: Gramsci, Exegeses, Reinterpretations”, Critique of Anthropology, 16(2), 103–35, 1996. Lawoti, M. “The Maoists and Minorities: Overlap of Interests or a Case of Exploitation?”, Studies in Nepali History and Society 8(1), 67–97, 2003. Lecomte-Tilouine, M. “ ‘Kill One, He Becomes One Hundred’: Martyrdom as Generative Sacrifice in the Nepal People’s War”, Social Analysis, 50(1), 51–72, 2006. Leve, L. “ ‘Failed Development’ and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empowerment”, Anthropological Quarterly 80(1), 127– 72, 2007. Liu, M. and P. Roberts. “Nepal’s Maoist Threat”, Newsweek, 18 June, 26–7, 2001. Luitel, A.R. “Legal Hurdles in Red Army, RNA Merger”, The Himalayan Times, 17 February, http://www.thehimalayantimes.com, 2001. Mao, Tse-tung. “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership”, In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Vol. III, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 117–22, 1965. Moynihan, M. “The Terror in Nepal”, The Washington Post, 7 May, A21, 2002. Niko Pragatisil Thami Samaj (NPTS). “Piskar Hatyakand”, In Nan ni Patuko, Kathmandu. 65-85, 2054 VS, 1997–98. Ogura, K. “Realities and Images of Nepal’s Maoists After the Attack on Beni”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 27, 67–125, 2004. Onta, P. “Democracy and Duplicity: The Maoists and Their Interlocuters in Nepal”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst & Co., 136–51, 2003. Pettigrew, J. “Guns, Kinship, and Fear: Maoists Among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)”, In D. Gellner (ed.), Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences. Delhi: Social Science Press, 305-25, 2008 [2003]. Pettigrew, J. “Living Between the Maoists and the Army in Rural Nepal”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst & Co., 261–83, 2004. Pettigrew, J. & S. Shneiderman. “Women and the Maobadi: Ideology and Agency in Nepal’s Maoist Movement”, Himal Southasian, 17(1), 19–29, 2004. Pfaff-Czarnecka, J. “A Battle of Meanings: Commemorating the Goddess Durga’s Victory Over the Demon Mahisa as a Political Act”, Kailash: A Journal of Himalayan Studies, 18 (3–4), 57–92, 1996. ___. “High Expectations, Deep Disappointment: Politics, State and Society in Nepal After 1990”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: Hurst & Co., 166–91, 2004. Popham, P. “Nepal Year Zero”, The Sunday Review of the Independent, 12 August, 17– 19, 2001. Regmi, M.C. Land Tenure and Taxation in Nepal, Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1978. Roka, H. “The Maoists and the Nepalese Left”, Paper presented at the seminar on the Maoist Movement at SOAS, London, November 2001.

88 Windows into a Revolution de Sales, A. “The Kham Magar Country, Nepal: Between Ethnic Claims and Maoism”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 19, 41–71, 2000. Scott, J. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Shah, S. “From Evil State to Civil Society”, In K.M. Dixit and S. Ramachandaran (eds.), State of Nepal, Kathmandu: Himal Books, 22–83, 2002. Sharma, M. and D. Prasain. “Gender Dimensions of the People’s War: Some Reflections on the Experiences of Rural Women”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst & Co., 152–65, 2004. Sharma, S. “The Ethnic Dimension of the Maoist Insurgency”, Unpublished report. Kathmandu, Nepal, 2002. Shneiderman, S. “Violent Histories and Political Consciousness: Reflections on Nepal’s Maoist Movement from Piskar Village”, Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 23 (1), 38–48, 2003. —— “Creating ‘Civilized’ Communists: A Quarter of a Century of Politicization in Rural Nepal”, In D. Gellner (ed.), Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, Delhi: Sage Publications, 46–80, 2010. Shneiderman, S. & Turin, M. “The Path to Jan Sarkar in Dolakha District: Towards an Ethnography of the Maoist Movement”, In M. Hutt (ed.), Himalayan ‘People’s War’: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: C. Hurst & Co., 77–109, 2004. Thami Bhasa Tatha Sanskriti Utthan Kendra (TBTSUK). “Thami Jatiko Ragatle Lekhieko: Piskar Parba”, Dolakhareng, Jhapa, 63–8, 2056 VS, 1999-2000. Thapa, D. “Radicalism in the Left and the Emergence of the Maoists”, In Hutt. M (ed.), Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, London: Hurst & Co., 2004. Thapa, D. (ed.). Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal, Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2003. Thapa, D. with B. Sijapati. A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996– 2003, Kathmandu: The Printhouse, 2003.

SMOULDERING DALIT FIRES IN BIHAR GEORGE J. KUNNATH

INTRODUCTION

T

he village I call Dumari in South Bihar1 has been at the centre of the Maoist armed struggle in the 1980s. It was from Dumari that the CPI (ML) Party Unity,2 which later merged with the Andhra-based CPI (ML) People’s War, spread its influence in Bihar and Jharkhand.3 In Dumari and the surrounding villages, the activists of the PU organized the landless Dalit labourers against the landlords, especially from the Kurmi caste, around the issues of land, wages, caste discrimination and sexual abuse of Dalit women. The heightened period of Dalit mobilization and struggle of the 1980s, however, gave way to a period of their demobilization in the late 1990s. Why did this transformation take place? In this chapter I explore the Dalit experience 1 After the bifurcation of Bihar into Jharkhand, the region formerly known as Central Bihar has now become South Bihar. 2 Henceforth PU. 3 A further unification took place when the CPI(ML) People’s War and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) came together to form the CPI(Maoist) in September 2004. In this chapter I refer to the struggles carried out by the PU.

90 Windows into a Revolution of structural cleavages that gave rise to their initial support of the Maoist Movement as well as analyze the reasons for their later demobilization. Central to this discussion is an analysis of the Maoist trajectories of armed struggle and mass mobilization, and their implications for Dalit participation in the Maoist Movement. Since the majority of Dalit men and women participated in the Maoist Movement through its “mass action”—strikes, meetings, demonstrations, economic and social boycotts of landowners—I have sought to address a significant point raised by some scholars4 who argue that an increased reliance on armed action by the Maoist guerrilla squads contributed to a shrinking space for mass participation in the movement. Gupta, for instance, points out that in the context of severe state repression the Maoists, “find it extremely difficult to launch large-scale mass movements and demonstrations even in areas where they still have considerable popular support”.5 Similarly, Bhatia6 argues that since the armed squads operate “underground”, state repression results in the activists of mass organizations, the only “visible actors” of the movement, being arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the police. Dubey7 observes that the Maoist “military perspective”—armed action and armed squads—has trapped the movement in a “bullet for bullet” type of engagement with the state security forces. As a result, all energy, money and personnel were concentrated in buying arms, building squads and battling the police. While the above assertions highlight the apparent problematic relationship between “mass” and “armed” actions, which I shall further discuss in relation to the experience of the PU in Bihar, my main argument is that the shrinking space for Dalit participation in the Maoist Movement was not the outcome of its increased reliance on armed action, but its failure to work for Dalit interests in a sustained manner. For many Dalits, as I shall demonstrate in this chapter, both armed and mass actions were central to their participation in the Maoist Movement, but only in the context of the Maoist Party’s commitment to Dalit concerns and conditions.

4 Bhatia

(2006); Dubey (1991); Gupta (2006). (2006): 3175. 6 Bhatia (2006). 7 Dubey (1991): 228. 5 Gupta

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 91

REVOLUTIONARY BEGINNINGS IN DUMARI Dalit participation in the Maoist Movement in Dumari was closely linked to Dalit experience of structural cleavages on the one hand, and on the other, to the PU’s twin strategy of organizing mass and armed actions against landowners. The dominant caste here, as in various other villages of Jehanabad District, was the Kurmi.8 Some elements that made a caste dominant in a village—numerical strength, economic power, political patronage, ritual status, education and occupation9—could easily be identified in relation to the Kurmis in Jehanabad. Out of 270 households in Dumari, 118 were Kurmi, the largest for any single caste in the village. The Kurmis owned more than 95 per cent of the total land in the village. According to my Kurmi and Dalit respondents, there were seven households which owned land in excess of 40 bighas.10 The average holding among the Kurmis was between five and ten bighas. There were no landless households among the Kurmis. Those with small holdings entered into sharecropping arrangements. From the 1970s, with a high school in the village, many Kurmis gained access to education and government employment. Among them were three engineers, some clerks and several government teachers. A steady income from stable jobs allowed the Kurmis to invest more money in cultivation of their land. They became beneficiaries of new agricultural technologies introduced during the Green Revolution.11 Furthermore, in the absence of Brahmins, and with just two households of Bhumihars and Rajputs, the Kurmis were also at the top of the hierarchy of ritual status in the village. Thus, through the 1960s and the 1970s, the Kurmis acquired socio-economic and political dominance in Dumari through their land ownership, high ritual status, numerical strength, education and employment in government services. In contrast, Dalits in Dumari and other villages lived at the bottom of caste and class hierarchies. None of the 134 Dalit households comprising five Dalit castes in the village—Ravidasi (Chamar), Dusadh, Musahar, Dhobi and Dome—owned any land in the 1980s. They worked 8 The

Kurmi along with the Yadav and Koeri castes belonged to the upper layers of the Backward Castes in Bihar. 9 cf. Srinivas (1987). 10 A bigha =1/3 of an acre. 11 Das (1983); Jeffrey (2001); Prasad (1980).

92 Windows into a Revolution as agricultural labourers in the Kurmi fields. Their daily wage consisted of sava ser kachi12 of kesari, a coarse grain with little nutritional value. Many Dalit men were bonded to the Kurmi landlords. The mechanism of bondage worked in the following way: the landlord advanced loans to the labourers and thus secured their services, including those of their households, for one agricultural season. The labourers were unable to repay the loans because of fresh debts incurred in order to meet consumption needs and other expenses like sickness, marriage or emergencies. The bondage thus was perpetuated from one agricultural season to the next and from their lifetime to the next generation. Most Dalits thus lived in chronic debt and bondage. Dalits narrated caste-based discriminatory practices that were prevalent in the village until the beginning of the Maoist struggle in the 1980s. They said they were not allowed to sit on a kattia13 when a Kurmi malik14 passed by. For them, the most humiliating aspect of this practice was when their relatives visited the village as even they had to get up if the malik passed by. Dalits were not allowed to wear watches or sandals. They were discouraged from keeping animals. If they did, animals were often stolen. The Kurmis also punished Dalits for plucking chana saag15 often served with rice. One Dalit labourer said his wife was fined twenty rupees for plucking chana saag. Dalits had to depend on Kurmi land not only for their own food, but also for fodder for the few cattle they still managed to protect from thieves, and even to attend to the call of nature. The Kurmis once even created a desperate situation for Dalits by preventing them from using their fields for the latter purpose as a punishment for supporting the Maoists. Like most villages in India, in Dumari also, relations of dominance and subordination were often expressed through the idioms of purity and pollution because purity and power are intimately linked in castebased discrimination.16 In my conversations with Dalits, they identified common sites in which practices of purity and impurity underpinned the Kurmi-Dalit relations in the village. As labourers they all shared a

12 Three-quarters

of a measure. Cot. 14 Landlord. 15 Chickpea leaves. 16 cf. Dirks (1987); Mosse (1994); Raheja (1988a). 13

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 93 common experience of being served food in plates kept separate for Dalits in Kurmi households. The bhoj17 in Kurmi households was yet another site where the practices associated with purity and impurity constantly reinforced caste hierarchies. Only when the Kurmis and other upper castes had eaten, were Dalits served food. The spatial arrangement of the village itself was another marker of Dalit subordination. Dalits lived in the southern periphery of the village. The Kurmis and other upper castes lived in the centre and in the north of the village. The road leading to the village ended at the north side and only small alleyways led to the dakhin tola.18 The dakhin tola was synonymous with Dalit settlement in every village and such spatial expressions of subordination are prevalent all over rural Bihar and many other states in India.19 One of my Dalit respondents pointed out that the direction in which the wind blew in this region is usually easterly or westerly and rarely southerly or northerly. Therefore, according to him, by placing Dalits on the south side of the village, there was little danger of the “polluting” air blowing from the Dalit settlement to the upper caste section of the village. The jajmani relations, a village-based tradition of exchange of goods and services,20 further reinforced Dalit subordination. In the Magadh region it was called jajman-paunia (also jajman-kamin) relations. The jajmans were the dominant cultivating castes of the village, which paid in grain for the services rendered by the paunia or kamin (from Barber, Ravidasi, Dhobi, and Kahar castes). In Dumari, the jajmani exchanges both reflected and reinforced the existing hierarchy and power relations. The pauni castes often had to carry out caste-specific, menial jobs for the Kurmi and other dominant castes. The Ravidasis had to perform the 17 Ceremonial

meal. southern settlement or quarter. 19 Daniel 1984; Deliege (1982); Moffatt (1979). In Tamil Nadu, for instance, the upper caste and Dalit settlements are known by different names. Uur is the upper caste area of the village, while ceeri or colony is where the Dalits live (Moffat) 1979; Daniel (1984). Further, upper castes impose various restrictions and exclusions on Dalits in relation to accessing the upper caste settlement. 20 Much has been written about jajmani relations: Wiser (1939); Beidelman (1959); Kolenda (1963); Parry (1979); Dumont (1980); Raheja (1988b); Fueller (1989); Mayer (1993). Many scholars stressed the harmonious aspect of the exchange Wiser (1939); Dumont (1980), while others saw the jajmani relations as exploitive Beidelman (1959); Kolenda (1963). 18 The

94 Windows into a Revolution “unclean” job of removing the dead cattle, and their women21 who worked as village midwives, had to handle the “impurities” associated with childbirth. The Dhobis had to wash “impure clothes” from Kurmi households where death or childbirth had occurred. The Kahar women were employed to do the “low work” of removing used-leaf plates during ceremonial meals. Dalits often referred to the Kurmi landlords as zamindar or malik. In this region, these were generic terms used for all the landowning classes, which employed the landless Dalits as labourers. The use of the term zamindar was, of course, related to the ownership of land; however, it was not always associated with the size of the holding but rather with the landowner’s power to employ labourers on the one hand, and the landlessness and dependency of Dalits on the other. Dalit labourers, among themselves and their sympathizers, referred to their maliks as samant (feudal lords). They referred to the aggressive and intimidatory attitude of the maliks in relation to the labourers and in particular to Dalit women as samanti vichar (feudal mentality). When I asked one of my Dalit respondents which caste he considered the most oppressive, he first replied: “The Brahmins. The Brahmin boys never greet even elderly Harijans.” But after some reflection he added: “The Kurmis are the most oppressive caste. When you do battiah (sharecropping) with the upper castes, they take into account the fertilizer and water used by the sharecroppers and accordingly allow them to take a larger share of the produce. But the Kurmis never do this.”22 He quoted a saying prevalent among Dalits to emphasize his point: “kurmi ke panjahri mein sinh hei.”23 The saying implies that the friendliness of the Kurmi is merely a façade, as they might stab you when you are locked in an embrace with them. It is within the context of such deeply-felt, structural cleavages and exploitation that we can locate Dalit response to the Maoist Movement in the 1980s. Although, the struggle has been primarily between Dalits and Kurmis, some Kurmi youths who sympathized with the Maoist ideology joined the Dalits. It is significant to note that the Maoists first arrived in Dumari in 1979 on the invitation of a young man from the Kurmi caste who had previously been a member of the Socialist Party. 21

Chamain.

22 Interview 23 “The

with Rajubhai, a Dalit labourer, in Dumari in March 2003. Kurmis have horns by their side, literally in their ribs.”

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 95 He said he invited the Maoists because there were some very oppressive landlords in the village who were exploiting both Dalits and the poorer members of their own caste. He pointed out that when the Maoists took up the issue of oppression by Kurmi landowners in Dumari, every Kurmi household in the village barring twelve came together against the Maoists and their sympathizers. Many Kurmi landowners, however, claimed that the Maoists had come to the village not due to caste or class oppression but because of the infighting among the Kurmis in Dumari. According to them, there were two factions among the Kurmis, one of which had brought the Maoists to the village in order to establish their supremacy. They asserted that the kisan24 and the mazdur25 lived together peacefully until the Maoists arrived in the village. Their slogan during the height of the struggle was: “mazdur kisan bhai bhai; Naxali beech main kahanse aayi?”26 In contrast, none of the Dalits I interviewed ever mentioned the factional feuds among the Kurmis as the reason for the arrival of the Maoists in the village and the subsequent outbreak of violence. For them, the Maoist Movement represented their struggle for izzat,27 land, better wages and an end to Kurmi exploitation in the village. They recalled their secret meetings with the Maoist activists in the paddy fields outside the village under the cover of darkness. Gradually the venue of these meetings shifted to the mud houses of the Dalits. The growing Dalit mobilization eventually led to open confrontation between Dalits and their supporters on the one hand and the Kurmi landowners, on the other. The Maoist activists who came to Dumari belonged to the Central Organizing Committee (COC), one of the many Marxist-Leninist factions that emerged due to the continuing split within the CPI (ML) in the 1970s. Some of the Maoist leaders, who were released after the national Emergency was lifted in 1977, sought to unify the CPI (ML) splinter groups. In 1978, the COC merged with the Unity Organization and came to be known as the CPI (ML) Party Unity.28 This party, while 24 Landowning

peasants. Labourers. 26 “The landowners and the labourers are brothers; how did the Naxalites come between them?” 27 Dignity. 28 Louis (2002). 25

96 Windows into a Revolution upholding the positive, historical role of the original CPI (ML) under Charu Mazumdar, acknowledged past failures and tried to correct the theory and practice of the revolutionary struggle.29 The PU adhered to the policy of armed struggle, but rejected Charu Mazumdar’s emphasis on the “battle of annihilation”—the killing of class enemies—as the highest form of class struggle.30 As an alternative position, this party followed a policy of “selective annihilation” in relation to oppressive landlords in Jehanabad, and placed greater emphasis on building mass organizations based on the popular support of landless labourers and marginal peasants, while the party itself remained an “underground” organization. The Mazdur Kisan Sangram Samiti (MKSS), a front organization of the PU, was launched in 1980 to represent peasants and agricultural labourers. The MKSS played a significant role in mobilizing Dalit labourers in Dumari by explicitly addressing those issues which directly affected them. The organization’s program included campaigns aiming to lower the land ceiling area; seize and redistribute among the landless peasants land in excess of the ceiling area including government and gair mazurua31 land in the possession of the landlords; effectively implement bataidari32 laws; eliminate usury, begari33 and bonded labour; demand housing schemes, safe drinking water, health care provision and other essential services from the government; ensure regular employment and the enforcement of a minimum wage; end all forms of oppression against women and ensure equal wages for equal work; and organize a rakshadal34 to protect the vulnerable and the marginalized against theft, abduction, rape and other feudal atrocities.35 People often referred to both the MKSS and the PU by the same name—the Sangathan (organization or collective). They did not draw any difference between the two organizations, although the membership 29

Bhatia (2005). (1969a; 1969b; 1970; cf. Banerjee (1980). Mazumdar (1970) pointed out that the “New Man”, who will defy death and will be free from all thoughts of selfinterest, can only be created through class struggle—“the battle of annihilation”. 31 Common land. 32 Sharecropping. 33 Forced labour. 34 Defence force. 35 MKSS Report (1987): 16–21. 30 Mazumdar

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 97 and activities of the two often differed. The PU maintained its armed squads and operated “underground”. The members of the armed squads were drawn from different caste groups, but the majority of them were Dalits. In the 1980s, several Dalit men from Dumari worked in the armed squads. The commander of a Maoist armed squad was a Dalit from Dumari named Rajubhai. Most Dalit men and women, however, joined the Maoist struggle through the MKSS. Apart from its President, Dr Vinayan, who was from Uttar Pradesh, and Vice-president, a Kurmi from Jehanabad, most of the local leaders during the struggle were Dalits from Dumari. The MKSS organized large mass demonstrations and strike actions, as well as economic and social boycott of oppressive landlords in various villages. In some villages, where there was armed resistance from the landowners, the PU supported these mass campaigns through the mobilization of its armed squads, indicating a close interaction between the armed squads and the front organization of the PU. The PU made its first armed intervention in Dumari in 1981 during a strike organized by the MKSS, which marked the beginning of a prolonged armed struggle against the Kurmi landowners in the village.

MEMORIES OF A REVOLT IN DUMARI The incident that triggered open confrontation in the Dalit collective memory of Dumari occurred in May 1981 when the labourers called for a strike at the brick kiln owned by Munna Singh, a Kurmi landlord. He had a notorious reputation among Dalits and had been accused of raping two Dalit women as well as ill-treating the labourers. Dalits claimed that he was a person of samanthi vichar.36 Prior to the strike, the Dalits had demanded a wage rise from ten to twenty-five rupees for every thousand bricks they made. This was the maximum number one person could make in a day. On Munna Singh’s refusal, the MKSS mobilized the laborers to strike. In response, Singh brought labourers from other villages and employed gunmen to ensure that the work at the brick kiln was not interrupted. When the Dalits from Dumari protested and tried to stop the labourers from working, the gunmen opened fire. Armed Maoist activists returned fire from Dalit houses. In the ensuing gun battle, a Kurmi landlord who was part of Munna Singh’s entourage was injured. 36 Feudal

attitude and behaviour.

98 Windows into a Revolution As he was being taken to the hospital, the Maoists killed him and hung his head on a tree at the entrance to the village. The first blood was thus shed in Dumari and this marked the beginning of a series of killings in the village. In November 1981, the PU cadres killed Munna Singh. Killing him was part of the Maoist policy of “selective annihilation” targeting the most oppressive landlords in the region. This policy, according to a Dalit Maoist activist, increased the confidence of the Dalit labourers in the Maoist Movement. Subsequently, and in spite of the police repression and the Kurmi retaliation, the Dalits from Dumari actively took part in various programs of the MKSS. In another village close to Dumari, the labourers defied a ban on Dalits grazing their cattle in fields owned by the Kurmi landlords. In a subsequent exchange of fire, the Maoists shot dead a Kurmi landlord. The Kurmi landowners, alarmed by the killings of prominent landlords and the widespread incidence of strike action, seizure of surplus land, and campaign for fishing rights by the Dalit labourers, formed the Bhumi Sena in 1982 in the Punpun–Masaurhi area of Patna District. This caste militia collected arms from landlords and recruited Kurmi youth. It tried to gather the support of the Kurmi caste by making the following appeal: “The life, liberty and property of the Kurmis are at stake. What remains in our life if there is no prestige and dignity?”37 The Bhumi Sena raised the following war cry: Naxaliyon ki ek dawai, chhah inch chotta kar do bhai.38 The Sena operated in Patna, Jehanabad, Nalanada and Nawada Districts. During the period of four years, 1982–85, the Bhumi Sena murdered sixty-five people, set ablaze 216 houses, and drove 325 families out of thirteen villages from the Punpun, Naubatapur and Masaurhi blocks in Patna District. It targeted not only Dalit labourers but also members of the Kurmi caste who were part of the Maoist Movement. All Kurmi households were forced to give protection money and food to the Bhumi Sena.39 Immediately after its formation the Bhumi Sena arrived in Dumari to take on the Maoist challenge. With the exception of twelve Kurmi 37 CPI

(ML) Document (1986): 74. “One remedy for the Naxalites, cut them down by six inches/decapitate them” (Louis) 2002: 167. 39 Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Document (1986): 75. 38

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 99 households, who were poor and sympathized with the Maoists or had suffered some oppression at the hands of dominant landlords in the village, all the Kurmis rallied against the Maoists and their sympathizers. The Sena activists killed many Dalits. By the end of 1982, the violence perpetrated by the Bhumi Sena forced a mass exodus of Dalits and Kurmi Maoist sympathizers from Dumari. Some Dalits said that they left because the Sangathan asked them to, so that its armed squads would be able to fight the Bhumi Sena without putting Dalits in danger. Whether the Sangathan had asked them to leave or they left out of fear of the Kurmis, this mass exodus stands as the most significant landmark in the Dalit collective memory in Dumari. With both the Bhumi Sena activists and the police patrolling Dumari, the Maoists were forced to go underground to regroup. The armed squads of the PU and the MKSS adopted a twin strategy of killing Bhumi Sena members and imposing aarthik nakebandi40 on the landlords who supported the Sena. In Dumari alone the Maoist guerrillas killed more than sixteen Bhumi Sena activists. The economic blockade consisted of labourers and share-croppers boycotting the landlords on the one hand, and the MKSS members burning the standing crops of Sena leaders on the other.41 One night in November 1984, the Maoist cadres burned the entire harvest which the Kurmis had stored on the village kalihan.42 According to my Dalit informants, it was this incident which finally broke the Kurmi resolve to fight the Maoists. The Kurmis agreed to cease all support to the Bhumi Sena. A public meeting was held in the mango grove just outside the village in November 1984 during which the Kurmis gave in writing that they would not fight the Sangathan again. The Sangathan then imposed fines ranging from ten thousand to one lakh rupees on some Kurmi landlords, depending on the level of their complicity with the Bhumi Sena. In total the activists and supporters of the Bhumi Sena paid a fine of A 13,68,000 and surrendered nine rifles. After the surrender, the Sangathan sent word to different places asking Dalits to return. Some returned immediately; others waited to see if there was any further violence, and returned later.

40 Economic

blockade. (2002): 182–3. 42 Threshing floor. 41 Louis

100 Windows into a Revolution

CONTESTING POWER: DALITS AND CHANGING POWER RELATIONS The events of the 1980s set in motion a gradual shift in power relations in Dumari. Although the initial Dalit assertions of their emerging political consciousness resulted in failure and exile, their experiences and memories drove them into greater mobilizations and collective assertions. After their return from exile, Dalits openly contested Kurmi hegemony and the Sangathan became a major player in the region. Due to the active role of some Dalit leaders and supporters of the Sangathan, the Dalits for the first time became significant actors in the changing power relations. It took a while, however, for the ordinary Dalit men and women in the village to comprehend the impact of the struggle on everyday relations of dominance and subordination. Rajubhai pointed out an interesting instance of this slow response: After the return [from the exodus], the Sangathan had set the wages at three kilos of paddy or wheat, replacing the earlier daily wage of sava ser kachi of kesari. Fearing a Kurmi backlash, some labourers, however, were too scared to accept the increased wages. They continued to work for sava ser kachi. Then the Sangathan had to step in not only with the assurance that there would not be any Kurmi retaliation but also employ threat of force to make them accept higher wages.43

Other initiatives were also set in motion by the Sangathan: for instance, along with the increase in wages, the rules governing sharecropping were modified. The village ponds now came directly under the control of the Sangathan. Fish was to be distributed equally. More significantly, the sexual abuse of Dalit women and other instances of caste discrimination mentioned above came to an end. Further, during the course of the struggle, Dalit leadership emerged in Dumari that challenged Kurmi dominance in the village. Pradeep Das, a leader from the Ravidasi community, handled the terms of the Kurmi surrender in 1984. Rajubhai was commanding a Maoist armed squad during the exile period. After the exile, he became the head of the village committee organized by the Sangathan and handled various disputes between the Kurmis and the Dalits. Shanti Devi, meanwhile, a woman from the Musahar caste, became a driving force in organizing Dalit women. Along with the emergence of Dalit leadership, the other factor that 43 Interview

with Rajubhai in Dumari in October 2002.

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 101 symbolized the shifting power relations in the region following the struggle in the 1980s was the organization of village committees by the Sangathan. The majority of committee members were from the Dalit and the lower castes. In Dumari, ten out of the fifteen members of the village committee belonged to the Dalit castes, including three Dalit women. Rajubhai was the head of the village committee which handled local disputes and grievances for several years, and under his leadership even Kurmis now appeared before the committee either as the accused or as the victims of dispute. The village committee had wrested from the Kurmi landowners some of their power to punish and make decisions on village matters. The Maoist Movement, however, could not meet the rising expectations of Dalits. I shall discuss in a short while the Dalit critique of the movement and the reasons for their feelings of alienation since the late 1990s.

THE PARTY UNITY AND ITS MASS FRONT: OPEN CONFRONTATIONS The tension between the PU and the MKSS came out into the open when twenty three of its supporters were massacred by the police at Arwal44 on 19 April 1986, and the subsequent banning of the MKSS by the state government in August in the same year. This tension became irreconciliable due to the differing positions taken by two of the founding members of the MKSS, Dr Vinayan and Arvind Singh. Dr Vinayan, the first president of the organization,45 disagreed with the PU’s “meaningless violence and undisciplined manner of peasant struggle”.46 He accused the PU of indulging in violence in the name of the MKSS, and argued that as a result, the members of MKSS were exposed to police repression and the organization was banned. He claimed that he had to go into hiding because on one occasion when the PU activists seized guns from the police near Dumari, he was implicated in the incident and an arrest warrant was served on him. Dr Vinayan also pointed out that MKSS activists were arrested and imprisoned when the PU carried out their “selective annihilation” of certain landlords in Jehanabad. He demanded a complete separation of the MKSS from the PU. 44 Then

part of Jehanabad District. interviewed Dr Vinayan in June 2003 in Jehanabad. Vinayan died in 2006 after having worked in rural Bihar for about three decades. 46 Dubey (1991): 124. 45 I

102 Windows into a Revolution Arvind Singh, on the other hand, wanted the MKSS to be working in close relation with the PU and its armed squads. In consultation with the PU leaders, he expelled Dr Vinayan from the MKSS. Singh then made the following press statement in Patna: “Samiti [MKSS] has dismissed its founding president Dr Vinayan due to his anti-party and reformist activities.”47 Along with Dr Vinayan, a few other members were also dismissed from the organization for the same reason. The PU accused Dr Vinayan of taking a “wrong class direction”.48 The MKSS then split into two factions in June 1987, with Dr Vinayan and Singh becoming leaders of their respective factions. Both factions kept the old name MKSS, although the one led by Dr Vinayan came to be known as Vinayangutt49 and the other as Arvindgutt.50 The former moved away from the PU while the latter continued to work within its framework. Justifying the split, Dr Vinayan said that the MKSS earned a bad name for the killings by the PU’s armed squads. He admitted that the MKSS had accepted its help, but did not approve its killings.51 There were armed clashes between the groups led by Vinayan and Singh. One such armed action took place in Dumari when five supporters of the Vinayangutt took shelter in the village. In the subsequent exchange of fire, one of its members was killed while the others “surrendered”.52 There were further splits in the Vinayangutt. When I interviewed Dr Vinayan in June 2003, he was leading an organization called Jan Mukti Andolan53 in Jehanabad, which he himself had formed. By then he had completely moved away from the Maoist politics. The MKSS under Singh, after it was banned by the state government in 1986, was renamed the Mazdur Kisan Sangram Parishad.54 During my stay in Dumari, all the demonstrations, village meetings, people’s courts and strike actions were organized by the MKSP. The organization worked in close conjunction with the Maoist Party. 47 Dubey

(1991): 123.

48 Ibid. 49 Vinayan’s

group. group. 51 Vinayan’s statement appeared in the article “Naxals Butcher 19 Harijans” in Indian Express (Delhi) on 18 July 1988. 52 Interview with Rajubhai in Dumari in February 2003. 53 People’s Liberation Movement. 54 Henceforth MKSP. 50 Arvind’s

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 103

A gathering at a Maoist People’s Court, July 2003 (Courtesy: George Kunnath).

In their works on the Maoist Movement Urmilesh and Dubey55 observed that the split in the MKSS resulted more as a consequence of the personal interests of the actors involved than the question of choosing between armed struggle and mass action. According to Urmilesh, although Dr. Vinayan was an effective organizer and a leading Marxist intellectual in Bihar, he wanted to be in the “limelight of Naxalite politics”.56 Dubey claimed that Dr Vinayan had no qualms in seeking the PU’s armed assistance whenever it suited him.57 He cited Dr Vinayan’s interview in the Illustrated Weekly of India, in which he acknowledged that the initial success of the MKSS was made possible by the armed squads of the PU.58 However, in the face of state repression, he came to denounce armed struggle.59

55 Urmilesh

(1991); Dubey (1991). Urmilesh (1991): 124. 57 Dubey (1991): 253. 58 Illustrated Weekly of India: 252. 59 Ibid: 253. 56

104 Windows into a Revolution The personal interests of leaders might have led to the split in the MKSS, but it still places the problematic relationship between armed struggle and mass mobilization under scrutiny. Bhatia60 points out that the Maoist Movement’s reliance on armed action had negative impact on mass mobilization. She cites a common scenario in rural Bihar, in which the peasant front (mass organization), while engaged in open struggle against any landlord for surplus land or higher wages, becomes the target of state repression due to the Maoist Party’s armed action against such landlords. In such situations, the members of the mass movement often paid the price for the actions of the underground party. Thus it became impossible for the mass organization to carry out open and legal struggles. Bhatia further argues that no empowerment of the masses took place while the struggle was too dependent on its armed strength. The reliance on arms might create an appearance of giving “power” to the masses, but when arms were withdrawn, they became more vulnerable than they were before. The arms made people dependent on external agencies and did not prepare them to carry forward the struggle on the basis of their own strength.61 Dalits whose everyday life was directly linked to the Maoist-led mass action and armed struggle, however, had other views. One activist, who was instrumental in establishing the Maoist Movement in Dumari, told me that when the party cadres made their first contacts in the village, Dalits wanted to know whether the party had hathiyar.62 Dalits were aware that any open challenge to the domination of the upper and the middle castes would eventually and inevitably result in armed violence, as it did. There was a long and entrenched martial tradition primarily associated with the upper and the middle castes in this region. Men from these castes were recruited by zamindars, local rajas, bandit chiefs, as well as military contractors to serve in the Mughal and the colonial armies.63 Even long after the demilitarization of the region in 1857, the impact of the martial ethos on rural life continued into the twentieth century as every zamindar maintained a posse of armed men “to keep his tenants in order”.64 They were called lathial or lathait and were experts 60

Bhatia (2006). Bhatia (2006): 3182. 62 Arms. 63 Kolff (1990): 190. 64 Hauser (2004). 61

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 105 in wielding lathi—a bamboo club or truncheon, six feet in length, sometimes bound at short intervals with iron rings, forming a formidable weapon. Violence or the threat of violence carried out by these armed men undoubtedly aided the dominance of landlords in the region. These martial traditions, linked to land, played a significant role in the birth of the private militias formed by the landowners in the 1980s in response to the Maoist-inspired Dalit challenge. For the majority of Dalit castes, an armed option to defend themselves and collectively challenge the upper and middle caste dominance became a possibility only through the Maoist struggle. I never heard them objecting to the armed struggle or the armed action conducted by the Maoists against the police or the landlords. They wanted the Maoist armed squads to remain in the area as they feared that the landlords would re-establish their domination if the Maoist arms were withdrawn. Their feelings of alienation from the movement and demobilization were not, then, based around the question of armed struggle, but rather on the failure of the Maoist Movement to work in the interest of the Dalits.

BEYOND ARMED STRUGGLE AND MASS MOBILIZATION: A DALIT CRITIQUE The Dalits in Dumari shared with me the reasons for their discontent, and there were many. They raised the matter of compensation for the damages they had suffered during their exile from the village in the 1980s. After the defeat of the Bhumi Sena, one of the surrender clauses included paying compensation to them. At that time the Sangathan had made an assessment of the damages. However, the question of compensation was not pursued further, because, as a gesture of compromise, the Kurmis withdrew the cases they had filed against the Dalits. One of my informants pointed out that the Sangathan collected a fine of A 13,68,000 and seized nine rifles from the Kurmis who had been accomplices to the Bhumi Sena activities. He said that the Sangathan could have kept the rifles, but the money should have been used to compensate their losses. Many Dalits said that they felt neglected by the Sangathan in numerous ways. They reiterated that after the initial struggle and success against the Kurmis, the Sangathan did nothing to raise wages, which for the last twenty years had remained a dismal three kilos of rice or wheat. They questioned what one could do with three kilos of rice, which fetched

106 Windows into a Revolution only eighteen rupees in the village market, and pointed out that the minimum wages should have been at least five kilos of grain, which would have marginally improved their economic condition. They also expressed their disappointment with the lack of development in the region. An educated Dalit man said the Sangathan completely neglected education, and that it should have put pressure on the teachers, local government and parents to provide better education in the villages. He further pinpointed that the party never used its power and influence to stop corruption at the panchayat or block level. The local government officials and middlemen took 50 per cent commission from the various financial schemes extended to the poor peasants. He said that the Sangathan itself took “commissions”, even from the projects sanctioned for village development such as building roads, schools and community centres.65 Most significantly, however, the current state of Dalit discontent with the Maoist Movement is associated with the party’s changing policy towards the middle castes. In Dalit perception the movement established itself in Jehanabad by addressing the basic contradictions that existed between the landless Dalits and the landowning middle caste peasants, especially the Kurmis in the 1980s; however, in the 1990s, the party sought to enter into a strategic alliance “with the middle peasants” in the struggle for state power.66 From the Maoist perspective, apart from creating a wider political formation for the capture of state power, in practical terms the movement sought to neutralize the pressures from the contending middle caste peasantry by this alliance. As a result the party has now changed its earlier aggressive policy towards this segment of the peasantry. It has also sought to incorporate the interests of the middle caste peasants—in government subsidies, remission of rents, and protection from the demands of the classes below them—in the Maoist agenda. Although the above change in the Maoist policy has not resulted in the Kurmis joining the rank and file of the party in a major way, they do not oppose it anymore. More Kurmis now support the movement by providing food and shelter to the party cadres. Dalits, however, contrasted the present Kurmi support to the party with the committed Kurmi cadres 65 Similar

concerns have also been discussed in the studies on the Maoist Movement by Bhatia (2006) and Shah (2006). 66 CPI(ML)People’s War (1995): 9.

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 107 of the 1980s who fought alongside Dalits in Dumari. They claimed that the majority of Kurmis now supported the party not due to any ideological commitment to the poor peasants, but to re-establish their dominance in the region. Dalits accused the Sangathan of protecting the interests of the Kurmis. Rajinder Das, a middle-aged Dalit labourer in Dumari, said: Now nobody is sure about the politics of the Sangathan. Earlier it was very clear to everyone that the Sangathan belonged to the Harijans and it worked for the Harijans. The class identity of the Sangathan was very clear then. When it fought against the Kurmis, we knew the Sangathan was with us. Now the Sangathan might kill us also. It does not want to annoy the Kurmis by raising the issues of labour, wages and land re-distribution anymore. The Kurmis do not give mani-bataia67 to us. They have decided in their meetings to give manibataia only to their own caste members. Even the Kurmi man who has only one bigha of land, takes ten bigha as bataia and keeps a Harijan as harvaha.68 The Sangathan does nothing about it. And because of all these reasons, courageous Dalit leaders like Rajubhai are no more very active in the movement and Dalits in general have become non-cooperative.69

Similar sentiments were expressed by many other Dalits. An elderly Dalit woman from a neighbouring village, who held membership of the Maoist Party,70 was critical of the Maoist dasta71 which often stayed and ate in the Kurmi households. She said the Dalits in her village felt much neglected. She was very kind to me whenever I visited her. Everyone called her chachi,72 and so I also addressed her in the same way. I heard from some people the legendary stories about her participation in the struggle against the Bhumi Sena in the 1980s. Once in a nearby village, when the Maoist cadres had engaged the Bhumi Sena activists in a gun battle, chachi moved on all fours to bring food and water to her comrades. Now chachi was greatly saddened by some Maoist cadres’ attachment to the comforts offered by the wealthy Kurmi landlords. And this was a common complaint I heard from many Dalits in the region. Rajubhai was rather reserved in expressing his criticism in this regard. He said: “It 67

Sharecropping. bonded labourer. 69 Interview with Rajinder Das in Dumari in June 2003. 70 Party membership was given only to the select few who have proved their loyalty and commitment over a long period of time. 71 Armed squads. 72 Aunty. 68 A

108 Windows into a Revolution is okay if they stay and eat with the Kurmis. But at least they should come to visit us.” Then referring to me he added: “It is after a long time someone from the Sangathan has come to the Dalit tola and even spent time with the Doms. We are happy that you are staying with us.”73 One evening, my friend Gola Paswan came in drunk. So he appeared unusually courageous. He said: “The Sangathan has become the party of the badjan.74 I had predicted that it would happen. Now the Kurmis have become so arrogant again that ve aasman main dhoti sukhatha hai.”75 Gola went on to claim that the Kurmis were not faithful to the Sangathan. They might give food and shelter to the comrades. But they might also act as informers to the police. They had mobile phones and could call the police anytime. “That is why,” he pointed out, “the Sangathan has lost more men and weapons in recent years.” He was angry when he said: “Till yesterday we were fighting the Kurmis. And today all of them are in our organization.”76 Rajubhai once introduced me to Murari Singh, one of his former comrades-in-arms. Murari Singh hailed from a different village and belonged to the Bind community, a lower Backward Caste group. He was a member of the armed dasta during1980–85. Murari Singh said: “Earlier the labourers were totally with the Sangathan. Now they do not feel at home in the organization because the party workers stay and eat with the rich. All the leadership is from that class.” I asked him why he left the dasta. He replied: The dasta members from the kisan77 families were given more remuneration and I was given less. The Sangathan held the view that the landless labourers are given remuneration according to the wages they received. Whereas the squad members from the landowning classes were given remuneration in accordance with the income they would have received from their land. I protested that it violated the principle of equality which the party professed. Since I did not receive a positive response, I withdrew from the dasta. There are also caste feelings within the Sangathan now. Recently, Manish Pandey78 in my village, who is a supporter of the Sangathan, sexually assaulted a Musahar woman. But the 73 Interview

with Rajubhai in Dumari in January 2003. people, in reference to the Kurmis. 75 “They dry clothes in the sky”, a phrase that referred to their arrogance. 76 Statement by Gola Paswan in Dumari in May 2003. 77 Landowning peasant. 78 Of Bhumihar caste. 74 Big

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 109 Sangathan took no action against him. However, if a person from the landless class had done something of that sort against an upper caste woman, the party would have taken immediate action against him. Moreover, these days the accused persons approach their caste men in the party to sort out their problems.

Murari Singh wondered what he could do to revive the party and added that he was always thinking about it. He asserted that Dalits were still faithful to the Maoist Party and would never join another organization. They were aware that if the Sangathan disappeared, the old rule of the landlords would be back again.79 Many Dalits agreed that the Sangathan had failed to prepare them to become responsible for themselves. Further, they felt that it should have included the poor and the landless peasants when formulating policies for the inclusion of the middle caste peasants such as the Kurmis into the Maoist Movement. However, they were quick to add that it was through their participation in the movement, that they contested Kurmi domination and exploitation. Dalits contrasted their present confidence and boldness with their earlier attitudes of submission to the Kurmi zamindars. One Dalit labourer who had been active in the Maoist Movement, summed up this new disposition in the following words: “Earlier we used to say to the zamindars ‘huzur peet par mariye magar pet par nahin.’80 We pleaded with the landlords that they might do anything they wished, but not take away our livelihood. And now we say, ‘tamiz se pesh aaieye, nahi to zaban kheech lenge.’81 Now we live with izzat82.”83

CONCLUSION In this chapter, by exploring Dalit participation in the Maoist Movement in Bihar and the reasons they gave for their mobilization in the 1980s as well as their later demobilization, I have attempted to address the apparent problematic relationship between large scale mass mobilization and armed struggle. While acknowledging the significance of the assertion made by

79 The interview with Murari Singh was conducted in Rajubhai’s house in Dumari in June 2003. 80 ‘Hit on the back but not on the stomach please’. 81 ‘Speak with respect, otherwise we will pull out your tongue’. 82 Dignity. 83 Interview with Rajinder Das in Dumari village in March 2003.

110 Windows into a Revolution Bhatia and others that the Maoist Movement, when it relies primarily on its armed strength may alienate the masses from the movement, I have argued that Dalit participation in the movement in Bihar is directly related to the party’s commitment to Dalits’ interests. From a Dalit perspective, therefore, the real debate is not one of mass mobilization versus armed action, but one about the Maoist Movement representing the experiences and aspirations of Dalit communities. I have argued that the Maoist failure in practising a “mass regarding” politics—the central element of Mao’s revolutionary praxis—contributed to its failure in building a mass movement. For Mao the “mass regarding” politics is based on the objective of immersing political activists into the everyday concerns and conditions of the masses. Mao developed a revolutionary program centred on the concept of the Mass Line, which he summed up as “from the masses to the masses”. He insisted that the party cadres develop action plans combining the concerns, conditions and ideas of ordinary people with the revolutionary theory and goals, and return to them to test their relevance in the context of the everyday life of ordinary men and women.84 In the context of Jehanabad the practice of a “mass regarding politics” clearly meant the Maoists giving priority to a “Dalit regarding politics”. In the 1980s, the PU and the MKSS activists stayed and worked among Dalit communities. The Maoist Movement tried very specifically to address the caste and class based exploitation of Dalits. The result was an en masse mobilization of Dalits. However, in the 1990s, the movement’s failure to address the grievances of Dalits in a sustained manner, especially in the aftermath of its strategic alliance with the landowning middle castes, together with its failure to meet the rising economic, political and social aspirations of Dalits led to their current feeling of alienation. When Rajubhai and others said that the Maoist Party now had little time for Dalit concerns and that it was primarily concerned about protecting middle caste interests, they were pointing to the party’s failure to practise a “Dalit regarding politics”.

84

Tse-tung (1967 [1943]): 120; (1977[1957]). Mao’s theory and practice of Mass Line was intended to create a party leadership immersed in the everyday world of the ordinary men and women as well as to raise their consciousness beyond the narrow or short-term self-interests to that of a political consciousness, which aimed at a revolutionary transformation of society (Tse-tung (1967 [1943]): 120.

Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar 111 To conclude, I argue that the Maoist reliance on arms on the one hand, and state repression as well as state incentives aimed at weaning Dalits from the Maoist Movement on the other, had only partially contributed to the failure of the Maoists in building a large-scale mass movement among Dalits. For my Dalit respondents, it was the absence of “Dalit regarding politics” that led to the shrinking of the active Dalit support base for the Maoist Movement. From a Dalit perspective, therefore, an appropriate balance between armed struggle and mass mobilization can only be maintained in a revolutionary praxis that incorporated Dalit concerns, conditions and ideas. BIBLIOGRAPHY Banerjee, S. In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1980. —— “Beyond Naxalbari”, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(21), 2006: 3159–63. Beidelman, T.O. A Comparative Analysis of the Jajmani System, New York: J.J. Augustine, 1959. Bhatia, B. “The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar”, Economic and Political Weekly 40(16), 2005: 1536–49. ——. “On Armed Resistance”, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(29), 2006: 3179–83. CPI (ML) Document. Report from the Flaming Fields of Bihar, Calcutta: Prabodh Bhattacharaya, 1986. CPI (ML) People’s War. Party Programme & Constitution, All India Special Conference, 1995. Daniel, V. Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Das, A. Agrarian Unrest and Socio-Economic Changes in Bihar, 1900–1980, Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1983. Deliege, R. “Replication and Consensus: Untouchability, Caste and Ideology in India”, Man, New Series, 27(1), 1992: 155–73. Dirks, N. The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Dubey, A.K. Kranti ka Atma Sangharsh: Naksalwadi Andolan ke Badalte Chehre ka Adhyayan (Hindi), Delhi: Vinay Prakashan, 1991. Dumont, L. Homo Hierachicus, London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Fuller, C. “Misconceiving the Grain Heap: A Critique of the Concept of the Indian ‘Jajmani System’”, In J. Parry and M. Bloch (eds.), Money and the Morality of Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 33–63. Gupta, T. “Maoism in India: Ideology, Programme and Armed Struggle”, Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (21), 2006: 3172–76. Hauser, W. “From Peasant Soldiering to Peasant Activism: Reflections on the Transition of a Martial Tradition in the Flaming Fields of Bihar”, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient 47 (3), 2004: 401–34.

112 Windows into a Revolution Jeffrey, C. and J. Lerche. “Dimensions of Dominance: Class and State in Uttar Pradesh”, In C. Fuller and V. Benei (Eds.), The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. London: Hurst & Company, 2001: 91–114. Kolenda, P.M. “Towards a Model of the Hindu Jajmani system”, Human Organization, 22 (1), 1963: 11–31. Kolff, D. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Louis, P. People Power: The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar, Delhi: Wordsmiths, 2002. Mayer, P. “Inventing Village Tradition: The Late 19th Century Origins of the North Indian ‘Jajmani System’”, Modern Asian Studies, 27(2), 1993: 357–95. Mazumdar, C. “On Some Current Political and Organizational Problems” (Electronic Version), Liberation (July), Accessed 25 March 2008 on http://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/mazumdar, 1969a. ——. “March Forward by Summing up the Experience of the Revolutionary Peasant Struggle of India”, Liberation (December), 1969b. ——. “Hate, Stamp and Smash Centrism” (Electronic version), Accessed 25 March 2008 on http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar, 1970. MKSS Report. Report of the Third Bihar Conference, 30 August, MKSS Provincial Committee of Bihar, 1987. Moffatt, M. An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Mosse, D. “Idioms of Subordination and Styles of Protest Among Christian and Hindu Harijan Castes in Tamil Nadu”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 28 (1), 1994: 67– 106. Parry, J. Caste and Kinship in Kangra, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Prasad, P. “Rising Middle Peasantry in North India”, Economic and Political Weekly, 15(5), 1980: 215–19. Raheja, G. “India: Caste, Kingship, and Dominance Reconsidered”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 17, 1988a: 497–522. ——. The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988b. Shah, A. “Markets of Protection: The ‘Terrorist’ Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India”, Critique of Anthropology, 26(3), 2006: 297–314. Srinivas, M.N. The Dominant Caste and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. Tse-tung, M. “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership” (1 June 1943), In Selected Works, Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1967 [1943]: 117–22. ——. “The Situation in the Summer of 1957”, In Selected Works, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977 [1957]: 473–82. Urmilesh. Bihar ka Sach: Krishi Sankat aur Khetihar Sangharsh, New Delhi: Prakashan Sansthan, 1991. Wiser, W. The Hindu Jajmani System, Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House, 1936.

113

REFLECTIONS OF A ONE-TIME MAOIST ACTIVIST SUMANTA BANERJEE

INTRODUCTION

T

he Maoist Movement in India articulates a deep sense of estrangement that pervades the vast backwater of the country— alienation of the peasantry from land; rupture between the oppressed indigenous people and depressed castes on the one hand, and the oppressive upper caste/class feudal-vested interests on the other; uprooting of the urban poor from their socio-cultural moorings. The movement can be divided into three phases—the first from 1967–75; the second covering the 1980–90 period; and the present phase from the late 1990s onwards. In the course of these three periods, the Indian Maoists have been able to mobilize large sections of alienated populations in certain parts of the country, and empower them with both moral and military strength to recover their land, assert their rights and reinvent themselves as dignified human beings in their quotidian existence. At the same time, the exigencies of armed struggle against the ruthless suppression launched by the security forces of the Indian state have quite often brutalized the Maoists themselves, and led them to violate the human rights of the people inhabiting the areas under their

114 Windows into a Revolution control.1 The Indian Maoists therefore represent alienation at two levels— at one level they give voice to the alienation of the deprived poor, and at another level they themselves tend to alienate the very people whose support they need. Their experiment harks back to the old disturbing tussle between the moral basis of revolutionary ideology and the practical compulsions of revolutionary action that has dogged—and distorted— the communist movement in other parts of the world. How will the Indian Maoists reconcile the two in their on-going struggle? This is a challenge that faces not only the Maoists, but also other sections of Indian society—including the middle-class intelligentsia—which seek to intervene in efforts to radically transform the present deplorable socioeconomic order towards an egalitarian direction that would help the people overcome their sense of alienation and provide them with the basic facilities for individual and collective development in their everyday life. In this chapter, I reflect on my own changing involvement with the Maoist Movement in South Asia as an active participant, an intimate observer and then as a distant onlooker. I thus offer my retrospection, reappraisal and prognosis through my personal experiences of the movement. Like some other Bengali middle-class intellectuals, I was an active participant of the movement in its first phase during 1967–75, which inaugurated perhaps one of the most significant radical changes in modern India. In the movement’s second phase during the 1980–90 period, I took on the role of an intimate observer reporting developments in the movement in my capacity as a working journalist. In the present phase—due to a number of imponderables, both physical and political— I am reduced to a distant onlooker speculating about the future of the movement, depending on secondary sources like reportage by journalists who visit the Maoist guerrilla zones and official publications by the Communist Party of India (Maoist),2 which describe the changes that the Maoists have brought about in the daily life of the villagers living in these zones. In a sense, my narrative may reflect my gradual distancing from the dangers and the perils I once shared with my comrades in the movement, and which are still being faced by those who chose to stick 1

For example, killing of innocent villagers as suspected spies; extortion of money from traders; destruction of public transport. 2 Henceforth CPI (Maoist).

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 115 to their guns, as well as a new generation of fighters in the hills and jungles of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. In the course of my narrative, while admiring their courage and sacrifice, I also seek to interrogate their present strategy and tactics at the political level. In conclusion, I touch upon some of the changes in the Indian rural scene that have taken place during the last four decades since the Naxalbari uprising, the new challenges and options that are being faced by the Maoists, and attempt a prognosis of the course that the movement is likely to take in the future. As a historian of the Maoist Movement, I may also appear to represent alienation at yet another level—talking of the future of the movement while remaining estranged from the personal experiences of the ground reality. But then, distance also helps to dispassionately look at the past as well as the future contours of the movement.

THE CONTEXT A brief recapitulation of the history of the Maoist Movement in India is necessary to provide the historical background. The movement can be traced back to the Communist-led armed peasants’ struggle in Telengana in Andhra Pradesh in south India, which began from the preIndependence era of 1946 and continued till the post-Independence period of 1951.3 The continued exploitation and oppression of the peasantry by feudal landlords, usurious moneylenders, unscrupulous government officials and a rapacious police force after two decades of independence, sparked the first rebellion led by a group of communist revolutionaries. It took place in May 1967 in Naxalbari situated in the northern tip of West Bengal. Adopting the Maoist strategy of agrarian revolution and the tactics of guerrilla struggle, they led an armed uprising of the peasants against the local landlords. The protest soon spread to 3 Sundarraya (1972). The Indian Communists who led the Telengana struggle were influenced by Mao Tse-tung’s strategy which stressed the role of the peasantry in leading the revolution in agrarian countries—as distinct from the traditional Marxist strategy which allotted that role to the proletariat in the industrialised countries. The difference that led to the formulation of the ideological concept of a people’s democratic revolution as an intermediate stage (aimed at destroying feudal relations in the countryside) on the way to the final stage of a socialist revolution which would end bourgeois relations, as envisaged in the original Marxist strategy.

116 Windows into a Revolution parts of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, and inspired popular action in other parts of rural India. It came to be known as the Naxalite Movement— led by the communist revolutionaries who formed the CPI-Marxist Leninist Party4 in 1969.5 The Indian state’s savage suppression of the Naxalites from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and the imposition of Emergency by the Indira Gandhi-led Congress Government all over India in June 1975, snuffed out all opposition activities and smothered the last embers of the Naxalite Movement, bringing to an end its first phase. The second phase followed the lifting of the Emergency in 1977 and the election of a non-Congress coalition government at the centre. This initiated a process of re-thinking among the survivors of the earlier phase of the movement and led them to spread out in two different directions— the first favouring participation in parliamentary elections and trade union activities, and the other returning to the policy of resorting to the old path of armed struggle to seize power. By the end of the 1980s, several Naxalite groups following the latter course succeeded in building a militant peasant movement with strong bases in Andhra Pradesh (south), Madhya Pradesh (centre), Maharashtra (west) and, Bihar and Orissa (east). In the course of the next two decades, they extended their influence to nearly 160 districts in at least ten states of India, spanning around 400,000 sq. km.6 with effective control of a long corridor of both forests and plains, stretching from the State of Bihar bordering Nepal in the north through Jharkhand further south and, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in the west, to Orissa in the east and, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the south. The corridor is twice the size of the geographical region of the other two insurgency-affected areas—the five states of the northeast (Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura) and Jammu and Kashmir in the northwest. The population inhabiting the Maoist corridor is five times as much. Little wonder then that the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, at a conference in New Delhi, in July 2006 described it as the “single biggest internal security challenge”!

4

Henceforth CPI-ML.

5 Among the books written on this first phase of the Maoist Movement, the following

can be of interest to the concerned scholar: Banerjee (1980), Ghosh (1974), Samanta (1984), Ray (1988), and Mukherji (2007). 6 Equivalent to one-eighth of the total Indian land mass.

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 117 The spread of the movement opened up the third phase of its history. On 21 September 2004 the leaders and cadres of the various scattered Naxalite groups, which had been leading the movement for the last two decades, met in one of their guerrilla zones, and decided to form a single revolutionary party called the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In its programme, it reaffirmed its main political agenda—agrarian revolution through protracted people’s war to capture state power and set up a “people’s democratic state”, develop their guerrilla squads into a people’s liberation army, wage struggles against the Indian Government’s latest plans to set up Special Economic Zones,7 and resist the displacement of tribal people and forest-dwellers due to mining projects. The Maoist leadership had remained consistent in stressing the role of the poor and landless peasantry as the leader of the projected people’s democratic revolution during all the three phases of the movement. But the interrelationships between the learned middle class, urban Maoist leaders8 and the peasantry9 had always been fraught with tensions between symbiosis and dissonance. From the ideological perspective, the Maoist leaders’ theoretical concept of a future “people’s democratic state” as an intermediary stage in the long drawn out revolution for the establishment of socialism10 remains a somewhat distant bookish dream for the local leaders of the peasants’ movement. It is, in fact, the immediate tactics in the Maoist programme of guerrilla struggles to throw out the oppressive landlords and moneylenders and set up alternative units of governance to benefit the rural poor through radical land reforms that had attracted the local peasant leaders in the areas of struggle. By resorting to these tactics in the course of their struggle they have succeeded in changing the power relationships in village society by overturning the patron-client network, and enabling the rural poor and oppressed marginalised groups11 to rediscover their collective self and reassert their rights. These achievements hearken back to the old Marxian concept of class formation—the transformation from class in itself to class for itself. However, the structure of the Maoist Movement also raises the crucial question of the extraneous influence of the Maoist vanguard (mainly 7 SEZs. 8 In

the role of ideological vanguard. the role of political leaders. 10 According to their programme. 11 i.e. Indigenous people and women. 9 In

118 Windows into a Revolution urban, middle-class intellectuals) in making the peasants take on a role that at times broke down when their interests were in dissonance with the Maoist strategy. I shall come to this issue later in the course of my retrospection. The Maoist experiment also sheds light on the complex relationship between the moral base of the ideology, which initially impelled the Maoists to launch the movement on the one hand, and the excesses committed by them in the course of their armed struggle against encirclement by a repressive state apparatus on the other, that threaten to erode that moral base. While acting as a catalytic agent in Indian rural society, the Maoist Movement has also undergone a transformation— both in a positive and a negative sense.

IN RETROSPECT—SNIPPETS FROM A PERSONAL MEMOIR The Maoist vanguard in the early phase of the movement primarily consisted of members of the urban, educated middle class which went to the villages to ideologically initiate the peasantry into the strategy of agrarian revolution and organize them through the tactics of guerrilla warfare. A few personal remarks may be of interest in this connection, since as a participant in the movement in that phase12 I can claim to be a typical representative of that urban middle class from Bengal. Born and brought up in Calcutta in a communist family, I almost automatically drifted into the communist movement in the early 1950s as a student activist in the then undivided Communist Party of India. I remained a member of that party till 1964 when it split with one faction breaking away to form the Communist Party of India-Marxist. Since I could not agree with either of the two parties politically, I withdrew from active politics.13 Following this, after a stint as a teacher in a college, I joined as a reporter in the newspaper, The Statesman, in Calcutta. Paradoxically, while The Statesman was run by conservative interests,14 it offered an opportunity to me to visit rural areas in the course of my assignments and opened my eyes to the sufferings of the poor peasantry. As a communist activist in the past, I had mainly worked among urban students and middle-class people. But now, The Statesman sent me to 12 In

the early 1970s. a fuller account of the causes of the split and the differences in the political agenda of the two parties, see Banerjee (1980). 14 British business houses. 13 For

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 119 cover droughts and floods in the countryside, and I became exposed to the rural reality of continuing exploitation by the landlords and the oppressive feudal hierarchy in social relations. The 1966–67 period, when I worked as a reporter, saw an intensification of the agrarian crisis in Bengal and other parts of India, with widespread incidents of starvation deaths and pillaging of food stores by people in rags and tatters—the outcome of years of negligence of land reforms. There was a popular movement in West Bengal against the Congress Government’s agrarian policies, following which a coalition government of opposition parties (including the two communist parties) was elected to power in March 1967. I was again drawn to politics—and came to share this time the ideological viewpoint of the Maoists who led a peasants’ uprising at Naxalbari in May that year. I got closer to some of their leaders and activists. In September that year, I was transferred to the Delhi office of The Statesman, which helped me to watch the administrative policies that were being adopted by the government to control the widely-spreading Naxalite Movement at close quarters. The opportunity to meet ministers and senior policemen who were entrusted with the task of suppressing the Naxalites was gained in the course of my journalistic assignments— thanks to The Statesman again. I continued to remain in touch with my friends in the movement in West Bengal and received their underground political literature,15 which kept me informed of the armed struggles that were breaking out in different parts of India. In 1972, I was commissioned to write a book on the Naxalite Movement by the publishers Orient Longman. To explain the circumstances, let me quote from the preface to the book:16 Writing the first draft was an important lesson for me. Even after the completion of the manuscript… I continued to be nagged by certain doubts that had crept in while I was working on the draft. Was my journalistic fund of information and type of specialization adequate to enable me to do justice to the events and people about whom I was writing? Is it enough to write about a cause and praise it from a distance? A curiosity to probe deeper, as well as a desire for further commitment brought about by the pressures of the surrounding political reality, 15 e.g.

The CPI (M-L) organ Liberation. was brought out for the first time by another publisher, after a gap of eight years in 1980, following a series of interruptions, including my imprisonment during the 1975–76 Emergency. 16 This

120 Windows into a Revolution soon drove me in the direction of the CPI (M-L), and threw me in the company of its cadres. The unforgettable experience of sharing their adventures and living among poor and landless peasants, provided me with the invaluable opportunity of understanding their problems…. All these helped me to look at the entire history of the CPI (M-L) and related movements from a fresh angle. I soon came to realize that my draft manuscript lying with the publishers was an incomplete and erroneous account of the movement. I withdrew it and started rewriting the entire book in the light of my new experiences and recently acquired information…17

I resigned from The Statesman in 1973 and went underground joining several of my journalist colleagues who had in the meantime left their jobs to participate in the CPI (M-L) movement. The party leadership assigned to me the task of accompanying party organizers in villages, translating and typing party literature in English for their organ Liberation, and I often acted as a courier to carry messages from one underground shelter to another. While carrying out this new assignment—another type of journalism that involved political activism this time—I had the opportunity of staying with poor peasants in Bengal and Bihar, and with the tribal Girijans in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. Later, my imprisonment in 1975 also threw me into the company of Naxalite peasant activists and their sympathizers who became my comrades in jail. This helped me to understand their varied perspectives better in a certain measure, to realize how responses differed from one section of the rural poor (the tribal people) to another (the Dalits), and to comprehend what Maoist messages they accepted or rejected. In the process, certain beloved myths about the peasant “psyche” that were commonly nourished by romantic middle-class communists like myself were also demolished. These questionings of received wisdom, nevertheless, did not destroy my fundamental belief in the Indian peasantry’s need, and my confidence in its power to put an end to its present status of deprivation through a revolutionary transformation.

SOCIAL PRIORITIES IN A PEASANT SOCIETY Let me first take up some of the social problems that were of concern to the peasants, and were identified by the Maoist ideologues and organizers. 17

Banerjee (1980).

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 121 It was not merely the economic demands of right to land and increase in wages, but also issues like justice and equal treatment in the daily existence of the peasantry that formed the leitmotif of Naxalite propaganda and action. The Naxalites gave voice to the sense of izzat18 of the downtrodden peasantry19 who had been historically subjected to a system of social discrimination and exploitation in a hierarchical and patriarchal society. This was a system where the upper-caste landlords treated them as “untouchables” and denied them their civic rights, and had no compunction in abducting their women and raping them. The spread of Naxalite politics inspired these sections of the poor to assert themselves as equal human beings and resist the humiliating code of conduct that had been imposed on them by the upper classes. Let me give an example: while visiting a village in Burdwan in West Bengal in 1969, I met an old Bauri20 peasant, whom I asked whether he felt any difference after the Naxalbari events. He said: “Yes! I can now walk with my head straight up, and do not have to make way when I cross the path of my landlord.” One has to put oneself in the shoes of this peasant to understand what he meant. In the Indian countryside, the poor from the depressed castes had been compelled to bow their heads whenever they came across their upper caste neighbours—a sign of subservience rather than everyday respect. How such social customs and extra-economic pressures of a feudal society can be viewed differently by the downtrodden and their violation can become a gesture of protest were demonstrated by events in Bhojpur in Bihar during the Naxalite Movement there in the 1970s. The leaders of the movement were peasants who came from the backward and depressed castes.21 Their own experiences in their search for human dignity, protection of their homes and womenfolk from the depredations of the upper-caste gentry, and demand for equal rights, rather than the cold and abstract theories of political science, initially motivated these people and drew them towards Naxalism. We can take a few typical representatives of the Bihar Naxalite Movement of those days who emerged and developed from among their 18 The

term for dignity. those coming from the depressed castes known as Dalits. 20 A depressed caste. 21 Many among the latter considered “untouchables”. 19 Particularly

122 Windows into a Revolution own communities. Jagdish Mahto,22 for instance, a teacher in his village, was hated by the local upper-caste Bhumihar landlords because he refused to get up from his cot in his courtyard when they passed his house. This was, in the landlords’ eyes, a heinous crime. When he tried to resist an upper-caste Bhumihar landlord from intimidating voters in his village during the 1967 general elections, he was beaten up and left half dead. He soon went underground to join the communist armed revolutionaries who had started propagating in the Bihar villages following the events in Naxalbari. Son of a poor peasant, Rameshwar Ahir was regarded by the Bhumihar landlords of his village as an upstart since he did not bow down to them— an unpardonable sin for a backward caste youth! He was implicated in a case of dacoity and sentenced to imprisonment. In jail, Rameshwar became a changed man, reading books and learning about what was happening in Vietnam. On his release in 1970, he joined Jagdish Mahto, went underground and began to build the organization in his area. Butan, belonging to the so-called “untouchable” Mushahar caste, was the first to complete matriculation from his community. Yet, he was denied a job because of his caste. He watched his kinsmen in his village living for years in fear of the local landlord who raped the women of his caste with impunity. Butan finally decided to retaliate. He got in touch with his other kinsmen in neighbouring villages who had already joined the newly-formed CPI (M-L) party and formed guerrilla bands to seize power from the landlords. People like Jagdish Mahto, Rameshwar Ahir, Butan Mushahar and others have become folk heroes among the peasants of Bhojpur who still narrate tales of how they fought the police and faced death.23 The actions in Bhojpur reveal the priorities that the peasants had in their mind. They formed dastas,24 killed notorious landlords and moneylenders, occupied their land and planted red flags on them. Then they set up Krantikari committees25 which distributed land and set up people’s courts to decide disputes among the villagers and impose fines on recalcitrant landlords. These practices continue to run like a major thread through Maoist activities in the areas under their influence. 22 From

the backward Koeri caste. Mukherji and Yadav (1980). 24 Armed guerrilla squads. 25 Revolutionary committees. 23 Re:

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 123

DEMYSTIFYING PEASANT MILITANCY The Maoist ideology of stressing the revolutionary role of the peasantry somehow led the urban-based, Bengali middle-class Naxalite organizers to stereotype and valorize them as a fixed entity of ingrained revolutionaries. My experiences—limited though they might be— unfolded a more complex and multifaceted world of the peasantry on which I would like to shed some light. Wriggling out of all attempts to flatten them out into one uniform mould, the peasantry assumed multiple identities to struggle and survive in a hostile environment. First, I was led to question the unity and homogeneity of the peasantry that were usually held as axiomatic by the Naxalite leaders. Different perceptions born out of differing experiences by individuals or groups within a peasant community, and the tensions generated thereafter, could split the community on issues like gender. This was brought home to me on one particular occasion: in the early 1980s26 I accompanied a team of Maoist activists and trekked through a long stretch of villages in the Gaya–Aurangabad region of Bihar. The landlords had fled from those villages, their houses taken over by the Maoists, and their lands distributed among the peasants. We reached a village one morning, where we found a Maoist people’s court in session. The issue before the court was a charge brought by a peasant woman against the local Maoist party organizer— also from the same poor peasant background—whom she accused of molesting her. What I found interesting was the multiplicity of opinions that were voiced by the villagers who had assembled there, particularly the women. They appeared to be divided—one section supporting the woman’s charges and accusing the Maoist organizer of behaving in a similar fashion with other women in the past; another section alleging that the woman herself had a dubious moral reputation and could not be trusted; while the others taking a neutral stand. We could not wait to hear the final verdict of the people’s court. But what struck me was the heterogeneity of the rural poor, which we often assumed to be monolithic and would respond in a uniform manner.27 Second, I was led to question the assumption that mere poverty could 26 During the second phase of the movement, by when I had resumed my journalistic career as a freelancer, writing for newspapers in India and abroad, 27 For an analytical account of women’s role in the Maoist guerrilla zones see New Vistas Publications (2004) and Kannabiran, Volga, Kannabiran (2004).

124 Windows into a Revolution produce the revolutionary consciousness and capacity of self-sacrifice that are anticipated by the Maoist ideologues. In fact, I found that the conscious activity of many peasants I met was shaped more within the established order and aimed at ensuring two meals a day, a home, and a few amenities by any means available to him or her. I remember, when spending a few days in an underground shelter of a Naxalite peasant comrade of mine, his mother said to me one evening: “Son, don’t ever worship the peasantry! Like you babus, we also have in our villages poor peasants who are dishonest, congenital liars, flatterers, thieves…” She then whispered to me: “Thanks to your party, this son of mine has become a revolutionary. But my other son is a dacoit—on whose earnings I live!” Her confiding the secret to me also made me aware of a third point: that there is in fact only a thin line between a potential revolutionary and a potential criminal. This point was made sharper during my days of imprisonment in 1976. The jail authorities often employed poor rural convicts—petty criminals—to beat up imprisoned Naxalite activists. They came from the same peasant class whom the Naxalites had been trying to mobilize for a revolutionary change in their conditions. Yet, these convicts were willing to terrorize the Naxalite prisoners for immediate benefits like fringe concession or remission of their sentences as promised by the jailer. A fourth issue to consider is that of the militancy of the peasantry. Contrary to the impression created by the media that the peasantry’s brutal reprisal is peculiar only to the Maoist Movement, historical records suggest that the peasantry, while often passive sufferers for years have, nevertheless, also participated in violent retaliation against their oppressors. “Memories of past oppression,” as the anthropologist, Verrier Elwin,28 said, “die slowly.” These violent histories of peasant retribution, which attributed a kind of inherent rebel savagery amongst the downtrodden peasantry, were to a certain extent used by the Maoist activists to rationalize and institutionalize the violence of their movement. For instance, there was the example of Santhali tribal peasants in eastern India, during the 1855–57 rebellion, who were reported to have chopped off the limbs of a usurer shouting, “With these fingers you counted our money. With these hands you snatched away our food.”29 Or, there was 28 Verrier 29 Kali

Elwin (1950). Kinkar Datta, quoted in Banerjee (1980: 274).

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 125 the example that I remember hearing, of a ghastly incident in a village in Bangladesh, where I went as a reporter in 1972, immediately after liberation. The villagers were suffering from starvation, although there were enough food grains arriving from foreign donors. But, the local landlord-cum-trader had cornered them and stacked away sacks of rice in his warehouse, hoping to sell them in the black market. The desperate villagers were reported to have raided his house, looted the rice, tied him up, slit his stomach, and then stuffed into it a sack of rice, shouting: “This is for your greed!” Such examples formed a key part of the Maoist stereotype of an inherently violent peasantry that was further emphasized by reports in Liberation. For instance, in the early 1970s, in the people’s courts set up by Naxalites in villages in Birbhum in West Bengal and some other strongholds, oppressive landlords and moneylenders were brutally killed by the peasants, and the gory details used to be published in Liberation.30 In these representations, the tribal people adivasis, in particular, have been stereotyped by the Maoist literature as a revolutionary class that has also, in part, led to their focus on the tribal populated states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Maharashtra where they have built their revolutionary base. The image of the vengeful tribal also reproduces the impression that having had a long history of anti-colonial rebellion,31 the tribal people are particularly prone to violence today in the face of the new threat of incursions into their territory by industrial interests under India’s neoliberal policies. These popular representations of peasant violence, and especially tribal peasant violence that is very much a part of Maoist rhetoric, need to be both contextualized and questioned. At a point of time, violent acts are expressions of belligerence of an insulted self-respect and innocence that had been violated and brutalized over years by oppressors. This should not lead us to generalize that the peasantry is inherently violent and ready to join a revolution at any moment. Even at heights of militancy, the peasants never directed violence indiscriminately. Their actions were dictated by a canny awareness of the traditional rural socio-economic life support system. Let me give an instance of their decision to refrain from violence on certain occasions. Sometime in 1973, I was living as a 30

Liberation (1969–72). in eastern India in the nineteenth century.

31 Particularly

126 Windows into a Revolution party activist among poor peasants in a village in Hooghly in West Bengal. At a meeting of their revolutionary committee they decided to raid the house of a usurious landlord and set fire to it to burn all the promisory notes that they had signed when borrowing money from him, and which were growing as an incubus upon them with the rising annual interest. On a particular night, a guerrilla squad of poor peasants went on the raid. I was asked by the guerrilla commander to stay behind. Being an urban, middle-class newcomer to the scene, I was not considered fit— quite rightly—to join them. I waited with bated breath for the signs of fire to appear from the corner of the village where the landlord’s house was situated. To our surprise, the guerrilla squad returned a few hours later. When I asked them what happened, they admitted rather sheepishly that they did not carry out the task. Why? A pair of bullocks belonging to the landlord was tied in the cowshed, they said. So what, I asked? The guerrilla squad leader—himself an agricultural labourer—said: “But the bullocks are innocent! They would have died if the house was set on fire.” I asked them why they did not set them free. He reprimanded me: “Stupid! If we disturbed the bullocks, they would have bellowed like hell! The landlord would have woken up.” If we rethink some of these widely-held assumptions, it is clear as well that Maoist perspectives and tactics were not blindly accepted by the peasants everywhere. Individuals—whether peasants or workers, even when a part of a community that had become a “class for itself ” (in the Marxian sense)—developed their independent personalities and formed their own opinions in the course of the struggle. Not all poor peasants were willing to go the whole hog with the Maoists in their objective of capturing state power through armed revolution at every stage. If immediate economic and social benefits32 are offered in their everyday life by any government—irrespective of its political hue—some Indian peasants may rather opt for that in exchange of a long-drawn out armed struggle in pursuit of a distant ideological dream of a “people’s democratic state”. Only the politically committed among them would remain steadfast in that arduous path of struggle. In Naxalbari in West Bengal, the rural poor, who joined the armed 32 Like a plot of land, a home, higher returns from labour, improvement in civic facilities, schooling for their children, better medical services, end to caste discrimination and oppression.

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 127 Maoist insurrection that broke out there for the first time in 1967, have dropped out of the movement today and accepted instead the status quo of a government ruled by parliamentary Leftists, since the latter has provided them with a modicum of economic benefits like small plots of cultivable land, higher wages for labour, and a partial voice in local decision making through self-government institutions known as panchayats. When I travel by train or bus through the Bengal countryside, I listen to a new generation of rural people who nurture dreams of a better future within this system rather than changing it through an armed revolution. Srikakulam, in Andhra Pradesh, is another example of the neutralization of the Maoist followers by the state. Here during 1969– 70, along vast stretches of hills and forests, the Maoists rallied the poor and oppressed tribal Girijans and set up guerrilla zones in their villages. The Congress Government, after suppressing the movement, undertook a few development projects in 1972 among the tribal Girijans—who formed the backbone of the insurrection—and advanced loans to them for agricultural improvement. These beneficiaries gradually distanced themselves from their erstwhile Maoist leaders. There is hardly any Maoist base in Srikakulam today. One final issue that I want to raise in this section is the suspicion of the peasants about the vanguard (from outside) that was generated by class differences. It was evident that in order to sustain their bases, the Maoists had to make their peasant followers politically conscious of the larger ideological goal of socialism that goes beyond the temporary satisfaction of their immediate material needs. But this task of politicizing the peasants and transforming them from a class in itself to a class for itself, became more difficult due to the class character of the interventionist vanguard which took up the task—namely the urban, middle-class ideologues. The deeply-entrenched suspicion of the citybred outsider among the peasantry was the biggest hurdle that the Maoist vanguard faced. 33 I remember an incident in a village, where I accompanied our party leader (of middle class origins) who addressed a 33

In Nepal, I am led to believe from talks with observers there that the mismatch between the peasants and the middle-class Maoist organizers was less because the latter were students who originally came from the same villages, went to Kathmandu or other cities for studies, got imbued with Maoist ideas, and returned to their villages to organize the peasantry.

128 Windows into a Revolution small gathering of poor peasants. After explaining the objectives of the agrarian revolution and the need for setting up guerrilla squads, he urged the youth to be prepared for leaving their homes and sacrificing their lives. An old woman from among the listeners asked him: “Do you have a family, wife and children?” He replied: “Yes, but I’ve left my home to devote full time to the cause of liberating the peasantry of my country from their present plight.” The woman retorted: “Son, if you can’t look after your own little home and family, and remain indifferent to their plight, how can you shoulder the responsibility of taking care of all the peasant homes and leading them to a revolution in this vast country of ours?” Her question not only reflected the down-to-earth concerns of the peasantry, but also exposed to some extent the dichotomy between the lack of individual responsibility in personal lives on the one hand and the sincerity of collective commitment to a wider ideal on the other, that usually marks the participation of middle-class activists in the Maoist Movement. The conflict between a sense of guilt for failing one’s own family and the urgency of responding to the larger claim of a political movement had plagued the souls of all revolutionaries throughout history.

GLIMPSES OF MAOIST MOVEMENT TODAY As I explained at the beginning, my perception and analysis of the present phase of the Maoist Movement may be constrained by the distance that separates me today from the ground reality of the Maoist base areas. The peasant experience and perception, glimmerings of which I could capture during my participation in the Maoist Movement in the early 1970s, must have changed after three decades of socio-economic transformation in India. As I mentioned earlier, there is a difference in the perception of the tribal Girijans, who joined the Naxalite Movement and with whom I spent some memorable evenings in the forests of Srikakulam in 1974 and that of their children who had grown up in different circumstances. Among the oppressed, the far-reaching theoretical understanding of capitalist or feudal exploitation in Marxist or Maoist terms can be blunted by the mitigation of the effects of such exploitation in terms of temporary material concessions and benefits by the ruling powers. But then again, the Indian peasantry, as I have been trying to describe, is neither a fixed monolithic nor a frozen changeless category. While some may remain quiescent in certain parts of the country, others are

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 129 bursting out in revolts in different areas. Partial beneficiary measures by the Indian state—as in the earlier Maoist-affected areas of Naxalbari or Srikakulam—are mere transient healing touches on a rural society that is afflicted by a fast-growing cancerous disease.34 Even when contained in one corner of the country, peasant unrest invariably breaks out in some other areas. It is fuelled by the economic policies of the Indian Government which, as we shall describe later, are creating more and more epicentres of upheavals. It is from this perspective that the expansion of the Maoist Movement assumes importance in present-day India. Significantly, the Maoists particularly control effectively those areas of long stretches of territory that are inhabited by the most deprived sections of the India’s rural poor, including tribal people, who had been living in a limbo, left out of all the altruistic programmes of the government. The Maoists stepped into the vacuum, mobilized the poor, formed guerrilla squads to drive out the oppressive landlords, moneylenders and forest contractors and to fight the police which came to protect the latter. They then set up parallel administrative units in their “liberated zones” to govern these areas. It is this deeply-entrenched sensitivity to the rural existential concerns that helped the peasant Maoist leaders and cadres to take roots among the poor and the underprivileged in the backward areas of India and carve out guerrilla zones there. Loss of this sensitivity will alienate them from their followers, divest them of the enclaves that they occupy and deprive them of the moral sympathy that they enjoy among sections of Indian civil society.35 Reports about the changes brought about by the Maoists in the living and working conditions of the people in areas which they control today— as culled from the mainstream media and the CPI (Maoist) pamphlets— indicate a record of mixed sorts. In some of the guerrilla zones, the poor 34 Such land reforms or official measures to help the agricultural poor have, however, remained incomplete and failed to cover the marginalized segments of rural society— especially the tribal and Dalit (depressed caste) sections. Thus, in the Left Front ruled state of West Bengal, in the backward tribal belt of Bankura, Midnapur and Purulia Districts, the underprivileged communities have been bypassed by the Left Front’s land reforms, and continue to lead a miserable existence. Significantly enough, today it is in this belt, which borders the Maoist dominated areas in Jharkhand, where the Bengal Maoists have become active again. For a fuller discussion on this aspect, see Banerjee (2006). 35 e.g. Liberal intellectuals, human rights organizations.

130 Windows into a Revolution peasants and the agricultural labourers appear to have gained by way of occupation of land, better wages for labour, recognition of their social rights, and protection from oppressive landlords, corrupt forest officials and predatory policemen. But at the same time, while assuming the role of protectors the Maoists often appear to some people as bullies— extorting money from contractors who are engaged in development projects in their areas; brutally killing minor offenders—even innocent people—on the mere suspicion that they are police informers; destroying government-run public services36 and assaulting their employees holding them as symbols of the Indian state. Such acts can be explained—not excused—by the existential conditions faced by the Maoists in the beleaguered zones within which they are confined. The urge for revenge against the oppressor, spurred by Maoist propaganda often explodes into such brutalities. That apart, because of constantly facing raids by the police and security forces, the Maoists have grown up with a persecution complex, which leads them to suspect everyone who may differ from them. As a result, quite often they resort to indiscriminate force, giving up patience for democratic methods to spread their movement. But in the long run, this will alienate them from the people for whom they fight.37 We cannot deny however that much of the cruel streak in Maoist activities is due to the Indian state’s militarist intervention in their guerrilla zones. Had they been left to themselves to run their parallel administration and follow their model of economic development and social reforms in their narrow zone of influence, over a period of time they could have proved themselves either as failed adventurers, or as providers of a viable alternative. It could have been left to the Indian people to reject, or accept their model. Instead of democratic tolerance, the Indian state has resorted to militarist methods to suppress the alternative socio-economic experiments that are being tried out in the Maoist strongholds. In Chhattisgarh, for instance, the state has created armed vigilante groups by recruiting mercenaries from among the tribal population to counter the Maoists.38 This has led to further dehumanization of day-to-day life 36 For

example, railway stations. For detailed accounts of Maoist governance see Banerjee (2003) and A Biplabi Yug Publication (2000). For a critique of their activities, see Committee of Concerned Citizens (2002: xix). 38 For example, the Salwa Judum. 37

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 131 in this area, with one tribal group, owing allegiance to the Maoists, fighting another, which is armed by the state. It has unleashed an unprecedented internecine warfare with far-reaching consequences in the daily life of the tribal population there. In such a situation, it behoves both the Indian state and its Maoist opponents to rethink their respective strategies and plans of action. The Indian state still refuses to recognize Maoism as a strong ideological force based on the genuine popular grievance about economic inequity and social injustice. The Maoist objective of setting up a secular and socialist society in India39 is more in consistency with the spirit of the Indian Constitution’s commitment to that goal than the programmes of the various terrorist outfits40—which follow the design of dividing the Indian people along religious, regional and linguistic lines. A dialogue between representatives of the Indian state and the Maoists seems to be more in the fitness of things—given their proclaimed faith in the twin objectives of socialism and secularism.41 If the Indian Government can engage in talks with the armed secessionist National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muvia42 group, and open its doors to the insurgent United Liberation Front of Asom43 for talks, what prevents it from taking up the threads of an interrupted dialogue with the Maoists which the Andhra Pradesh Government entered into in 2004?44 But a dialogue can succeed only when both sides are willing to give up their maximalist positions and meet half-way. In order to begin a dialogue with the Maoists, the state must stop using the police to restore the feudal rule of landlords in villages where the Maoists have already established a parallel socio-economic order that allows the rural poor to enjoy rights to their land and forest produce, and offers them educational and medical facilities. As for the Maoists, they will have to establish norms that conform to the well-established code of human rights and 39

As outlined in the party programme issued by the CPI-Maoist on 9 September

2004. 40 With

whom the Indian state brackets the Maoists. differences they might have over their interpretation and practice. 42 NSCN. 43 ULFA. 44 For a history of efforts to initiate a dialogue between the Maoists and the government in Andhra Pradesh, see Committee of Concerned Citizens (2002) and Banerjee (2005). 41 Whatever

132 Windows into a Revolution values as part of their political perception and practice. A ceasefire is necessary—not only in their enlightened self-interest of preserving their cadres from the ruthless attack by the state, but mainly in the humanitarian interest of the thousands of poor and innocent families who have been caught in the crossfire between the police and the Maoists in the affected areas.

THE FUTURE The battle between the Indian state and the Maoists is being fought over two basic demands which should have been solved years ago—land reforms and social justice for the rural poor. Instead, by following the neoliberal model of growth, the Indian state is creating newer and newer explosive points of dispute between an expansive corporate sector and a shrinking habitat from which vast masses of the poor are being displaced. Establishment of SEZs on agricultural land, introduction of commercial crops45 by multinational corporations, increasing exploitation of forest reserves for industrial expansion are claimed by the state as signs of economic growth in statistical terms. But for those at the receiving end, in bread-and-butter terms, they mean growing impoverishment. Peasants ousted from their lands by SEZs in West Bengal, Orissa, and farmers victimized by the inequitable terms of free market economy46 are swelling the ranks of the disgruntled. Reports of starvation deaths and outbreaks of popular demonstrations against the government’s economic policies hark back to the explosions of peasant discontent in the late 1960s which heralded the Naxalite Movement. The state has responded to these demonstrations by violent retaliation, resulting in the killing of the poor participants in the agitations.47 45 With

fluctuating market value. Which are driving many among them to commit suicide in Vidharba in Maharashtra, and parts of Andhra Pradesh. 47 To cite a few recent cases in 2007: a movement against nuclear reactors in Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu; peasants’ demonstrations demanding land redistribution in Khammam in Andhra Pradesh; agitation against a proposed steel project in Kalinganagar in Orissa; popular resistance against industrial projects in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal. As evident from the above cases, the established parliamentary political parties (whether Left, Centrist or Right in the states they rule) follow the same neo-liberal model of growth that ends with the marginalization of the rural poor. 46

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 133 This vast disaffected spectrum of Indian society is crying out for an alternative programme of radical transformation, and a responsive political leadership that will be different from the present crop of parties which are rich and consummate in crime and corruption, and barren of any humanitarian ideology. Will the Maoists be able to fit the bill and respond to their cry in this political vacuum in the Indian heartland? The conditions are opening up new possibilities for Maoist intervention in areas outside their hitherto strongholds in the backward, underdeveloped districts, and call for a new set of operative tactics in the plains of the developed districts, as different from their cloistered hideouts in forests and hills. Till now, the Maoists have been generally absent from the movements of the industrial working class, the agitations against environmental pollution and gender-discrimination, the day-to-day struggles of the large sections of urban slum-dwellers for better living conditions, the protests of the middle class against corruption and crime. That apart, their major failure has been their powerlessness in putting up an effective resistance to the Hindu religious fascist forces which have imposed a reign of terror over members of the Muslim and Christian religious minorities. The indifference of the Maoist leaders to these major flashpoints of popular grievances and resistance indicates to some extent the alienation that they are prone to—an inadequacy to which I had pointed out at the beginning of this article. This alienation is also reflected in the isolation of the Maoist guerrilla zones which are confined to a narrow corridor of inaccessible forest and hill areas. These zones are vulnerable to attacks and destruction by the Indian armed forces which besiege them from all sides. The confinement of the Indian Maoists thus stands out in contrast to the expanse of the Nepalese Maoist fighters who could extend their control over almost two-thirds of the country and surround the capital Kathmandu. While acknowledging that the geographical terrain and the anti-monarchy popular sentiments48 favoured the Nepalese Maoists to a large extent, the Indian Maoists can still learn from their comrades in Nepal how to fine-tune their strategy to the needs and sentiments of the wider segments of the population—the urban poor, the retrenched industrial workers, and the disgruntled middle classes among other disaffected sections. More 48 Different

from the Indian situation.

134 Windows into a Revolution importantly, there is the need to recognize democratic rights. This latter terrain is where the Maoists have failed everywhere. They have set an atrocious record, whether in China or in Kampuchea, or even the few guerrilla zones that they occupy in India today. Painful and heartrending incidents of intolerance in their practice have caused confusion and bewilderment among their sympathizers. They are yet to recognize their mistakes and correct them in direct consultation with the population. All this calls for an imaginative Indian Maoist leadership that can formulate a multi-layered strategy and flexible tactics for replacing the present inequitable structure by a socialist system, while at the same time recovering the original moral ideals, and renewing the springs of humanitarian impulses at every stage of their struggle. In the end, however, the Indian Maoists cannot remain alienated from the new trends that are emerging in the global Left Movement in response to the challenges posed by the march of globalization by neo-liberal economic forces. It is being felt that the old tools to fight capitalism that were valid and successful in the twentieth century, need to be replaced by more modern and sophisticated mechanisms that have to be rooted in a post-Marxian ideology of socialism that is suited to the twenty-first century. An alternative model of economic development from a socialist perspective as opposed to hegemonization by a neo-liberal economy is being tried out through various experiments in Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American countries, where a combination of both armed struggles and participation in parliamentary elections has paved the way for the emergence of a new generation of socialist leaders. Indian Maoists can contribute to this on-going struggle for a new socialist alternative by reformulating their own strategy and tactics to respond to the needs of the complex Indian reality. BIBLIOGRAPHY A Biplabi Yug Publication. New People’s War in Dandakaranya, Kolkota, 2000. Banerjee, A. Inside MCC Country, Kolkotta: K. Das, 2003. Banerjee, S. In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India, Calcutta: Subarnrekha, 1980. ——. “All Quiet on the Maoist Front?”, Economic and Political Weekly, 5 February 500–02, 2005. ——. “Beyond Naxalbari”, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 July, 3159–63, 2006. Committee of Concerned Citizens. Third Report 1997–2002, Hyderabad, 2002. Elwin, V. Maria Murder and Suicide, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1950.

Reflections of a One-time Maoist Activist 135 Ghosh, S. The Naxalite Movement: A Maoist Experience, Calcutta: Mukhopadyay, 1974. Kannabiran, V., Volga, & Kannabiran, K. “Women’s Rights and Naxalite Groups”, Economic and Political Weekly, 6 November 2004. Mukherjee, A.P. Maoist ‘Spring Thunder’, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 2007. Mukherjee, K., & Yadav, R.S. Bhojpur: Naxalism in the Plains of Bihar, Delhi: Radhakrishnan Press, 1980. New Vistas Publications. The Revolutionary Women’s Movement in India, Delhi, 2004. Ray, R. The Naxalites and their Ideology, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Samanta, A. Left Wing Extremist Movement in West Bengal, Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukopadhyay, 1984. Sundarayya, P. Telengana People’s Struggle and Lessons. Communist Party of India (Marxist), 1972.

RADICAL MASCULINITY MORALITY, SOCIALITY AND RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH RECOLLECTIONS OF NAXALITE ACTIVISTS HENRIKE DONNER INTRODUCTION

T

his chapter explores the changing ideals and norms of masculinity among middle-class activists, who were involved in the Naxalite Movement in urban Bengal during the 1970s. Ideals and norms of femininity, and the participation of women in the movement, have received considerable attention, partly because the movement promised women agency beyond the narrow limits of family and village.1 Thus

Research in Calcutta was carried out between 1999–2005 and was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Suntory and Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines. I am greatly indebted to those who shared their experiences and views with me, in particular Gautam Banerjee. For obvious reasons the identities of former activists are anonymised. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the annual conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Bristol and the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh and I am grateful for critical comments by Radhika Chopra, Sharika Thiranagama and John Hutnyk. Parts of this article have been published earlier in Donner, H. The Significance of Naxalbari: Accounts of Personal Involvement and Politics in West Bengal, Occasional Papers Series, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, Vol. 3, No. 2. 2004. 1

Mitra (2004); Bandopadhyay (2008).

Radical Masculinity 137 scholars and activists have criticized the gender blindness of the movement and the sexism of male activists. But by taking up a gender-sensitive approach with a focus exclusively on women’s agency, they have failed to take men’s experiences seriously.2 Implicit is the assumption that men who joined the Maoist struggle in the 1970s did not question patriarchal practices and gendered stereotypes, failed to construct alternative gender roles for themselves, and remained largely unreconstructed. My material stems from interviews with former activists, who were involved in the movement in the late 1960s and in the early 1970s. The activists concerned were at the time of the interviews in their late fifties to eighties, and had formed part of the inner circle of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).3 They took part in urban campaigns before the movement was forced underground, and witnessed a huge number of comrades either being killed, while many were imprisoned themselves. Radhika Chopra, Caroline Osella and Filippo Osella4 suggest that anthropological approaches to the study of masculinity in South Asia usually reiterate a rigid opposition between the ideals of the renouncer and that of the householder. This opposition has been particularly powerfully employed in relation to political biographies that emerged from the colonial period onwards. However, as the authors cited above show, far from being moulds for male behaviour, such models are open to interpretation. To make sense of the complex realities of gendered identities, ideological elements need to be situated in concrete relationships and situations and while gender relations are crucially important in this endeavour, the roles of masculine persons encompass more than relationships between men and women. In this chapter I focus on identities that are more often than not excluded from debates about South Asian masculinities, but even more neglected in the writings on the Naxalite Movement. These identities address relationships beyond heterosexual partnership and marriage, and focus particularly on kinship roles and relations and friendships between men. After a brief introduction of the Naxalite Movement in the 1970s and a summary of the way it is represented and remembered in vernacular discourses, this chapter discusses relationships between men and within 2

See for instance Panjabi (1997); Roy (2007); Sinha-Roy (2007). Henceforth CPI (M-L). 4 Chopra, Osella and Osella (2004). 3

138 Windows into a Revolution a patriarchal environment that produced male activists, shaped their involvement with the movement, and determined the afterlife of these experiences.

THE MOVEMENT Arguably, West Bengal was until recently one of the most politically stable states in India, so much so, that the clashes over land allocations for Special Economic Zones5 in Singur and Nandigram came as a surprise to many casual observers.6 But until the Left Front Government headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)7 came to power in 1977, West Bengal had been a hotbed of widespread unrest and campaigns challenging the status quo. These were mainly carried out by the then Communist Party of India,8 which led mass mobilization drives in the rural areas, and destabilized consecutive governments already struggling with the massive influx of refugees in the aftermath of Partition throughout the 1960s. The lively cultures of protest came to a head in the late 1960s, when the armed uprising in Naxalbari, a rural site in North Bengal, which was fronted by activists Kanu Sanyal and Charu Majumdar, provoked the State Government, including its Communist faction, into direct confrontation. By 1967 the Central Government imposed special administrative powers, “President’s Rule”, in Bengal for the first time, an act repeated after the CPI(M) won a large number of seats in fresh elections in 1969. It is important to note that the Naxalbari uprising and the rise of the Maoist Movement named after it did not signify a sudden outburst of peasant resistance, but resulted from long-term communist agitations in different states, where communists had organized peasants from the 1930s onwards.9 In Bengal, the movement drew on the experience and personnel of mass struggles like the Tebhaga sharecropper mobilization, but a further precondition for the rise of the Maoist groups was the history of 5

Henceforth SEZs. Naxalites are actively involved in the protests against the SEZ (Paitnak 2007). 7 Henceforth CPI (M). 8 Henceforth CPI. 9 See Ray (1988); Basu (2000). 6

Radical Masculinity 139 factionalism within the Communist Movement, which first resulted in the split between the all India Communist Party (CPI) and the CPI (M) and later the breakaway Maoist factions, some of which came together under the umbrella of the CPI (M-L). The latter process gave birth to the Naxalite movement, which is seen today as an essential part of these wider post-Independence currents of Left-wing politics.10 Following the clashes in the districts, the formation of the Maoist Party proceeded as seasoned comrades joined the All India Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCR) in 1968. This committee was boosted when the Chinese Government embraced the “spring thunder of revolution” it saw in the Naxalbari uprising. The committee transformed itself into the CPI (M-L) as more and more organized communists sided with the rebel faction among the Bengali communists, and in the few years during which the movement was active, students, landless labourers and peasants were recruited. Calcutta became engulfed in urban guerrilla warfare, as thousands of educated and mostly male middle-class youths were recruited directly in schools and colleges. During the brief period the party was fully operational many students were sent to politicize villagers, but equally important were the campaigns to boycott elections, examinations, and attacks on class enemies, which included urban activism. Street battles with political opponents were organised parallel to campaigns in schools and colleges, and study circles focussing on the writings of Mao and Charu Majumdar encouraged young activists to follow the example of the Red Guards, with what became known as the “annihilation line” the most obvious result of these agitations.11 The movement was brutally oppressed by the army and police, now under the control of the Central Government and equipped with special powers. The West Bengal Prevention of Violent Activities Act of 1970 and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) introduced “antiterrorist” measures, including detention without counsel and the common shooting of suspects during their arrest.

10 For detailed discussions see Franda (1971); Nossiter (1988); and Basu (2000). For accounts of the ideology, structure and repression of the Naxal Movement itself see Dasgupta (1974) and Ray (1988). Charu Majumdar’s writings on strategy are provided by the Maoist Documentation Project at http://www.maoism.org/misc/india. 11 This term is taken from the writings of Charu Majumdar, who encouraged the activists to identify and eliminate “class enemies”.

140 Windows into a Revolution By 1971 most of the leading Naxalites had been arrested and after Charu Majumdar’s death in custody in 1972 the CPI (M-L) ceased to exist as a significant political organization in West Bengal, though many comrades remained active. In the aftermath of Majumdar’s death, the intense pressure of counter-insurgency measures and factionalism saw the gradual decline of militant politics in Calcutta. However, the “restoration of law and order” in the aftermath of a period of intense urban unrest took years and many activists remained imprisoned until a general amnesty was granted when the CPI (M) came to power in the general elections in 1977.12 Over the next ten years the Communist Party of India Marxist, which had been involved in anti-Naxalite politics, established itself as the most powerful political player in West Bengal, and its hegemony has only very recently been seriously challenged. Their populist politics have won them every election with the help of rural vote banks, and they have built and managed the most well-functioning party apparatus in the country under the banner of the “revolutionary” Left Front, though recently they have facilitated neoliberal reform.

REMEMBERING NAXALBARI The CPI (M) came to power in 1977 because the electorate demanded a regime change after the preceding period of disruption and political violence. With the general amnesty for political prisoners, Naxalbari turned into a synonym for political crisis and chaos, and a potent symbol for regional revolt against the Central Government. Pockets of continuous Maoist activity notwithstanding, a revival of the movement seemed unlikely for decades. Whilst CPI(M) cadres had been involved in hunting Naxalites down in many neighbourhoods, the official appropriation of the revolution by the CPI(M) took off once they came to power. However, public silences about the Naxalite Movement did not make it disappear, and its legacy has been haunting the local political scene ever since. 12 By 1977 about 18,000 arrests had been made under the infamous Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) in West Bengal alone (Nossiter 1988:136). All these special measures were expanded during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi, when opposition was suppressed nationwide.

Radical Masculinity 141 Apart from the obvious interest any sociologist of the current movement would have in this history, the repression of Naxalbari has had a major impact on Calcutta in general, and the Bengali middle class in particular. The violence unleashed by Naxalite activists and the counterinsurgency forces, the number of those killed, imprisoned, and those who vanished or were forced to go underground, prevented these events from sinking into oblivion. But, at the same time as individuals and families started to come to terms with the aftermath, the politics of protest were formalized into a state affair by the CPI(M), and personal as well as collective memories of Naxalbari were suppressed and streamlined. The words of a friend spoken in the mid-1980s, ten years after the amnesty took place, resonated in many conversations I had much later: “Every Calcutta middle-class family has lost someone, either a son, a brother, or a cousin.” In the meantime, activists and sympathizers began to successfully and extensively eulogize the movement as part of vernacular cultural production, which reflected its sentiments and aspirations. Thus, “Naxal literature” (naxal sahitya) has been canonized as a distinctive genre presenting a mixture of fiction and “testimony”. These stories, autobiographies and poems present a symbolic reconstruction of this violent past, and provide a fertile ground for coherent, readily available and appealing collective memories of these traumatic social events.13 In the absence of official memorials, books, plays and films form a major source for the re-construction of “Naxalbari” in the public sphere.14 But such works of art also perpetuate various myths, for a most powerful one is the notion that most students who joined the movement belonged to elite institutions and that the movement thus wiped out “the best” of a whole generation, whereby the contribution of less-privileged students is minimized. This bias towards elite readings does, not surprisingly, also inform scholarly representations, including the accounts of historians and social scientists.15 The everyday legacy of the movement is to an extent found elsewhere, as it is transmitted as part of family histories and recollections of political involvement among ordinary people in various, often surprising forms. In the course of my fieldwork it became apparent that official and 13

Iguarta and Paez (1997). For instance Banerjee (1987); Devi (2001); Mitra (2004). 15 See Franda (1971); Dasgupta (1974); Ghosh (1974). 14

142 Windows into a Revolution

Naxalite texts, like this 1971 issue of ‘Liberation’, played a prominent role in recruitment and were distributed across the city by secret couriers (courtesy Henrike Donner).

canonized accounts of Naxalbari differ significantly from personal recollections of those who were actively involved in different capacities, be it as activists, friends, family or opponents.16 After a brief sojourn into such instances of personal recollection by non-activists, I will focus primarily on interviews with male activists, which took place thirty years after the events they are referring to, occurred.

PERSONAL MEMORIES Given that the CPI(M) regarded the Naxalites as dangerous enemies and its cadres’ engagement in counterinsurgency measures prevented any formal acknowledgment of Naxalite presences in Indian politics, so while 1977 brought an amnesty for all political prisoners, communist rule precluded any attempt to get justice. However, “Naxalbari” figures as an important part of autobiographical representations in Calcutta. 16 The Naxalites through the Eyes of the Police edited by A.K. Mukhopadhyay explores the role played by the police during this period (see Mukhopadhyay 2006).

Radical Masculinity 143 One such instance was my conversation with Shankar Moitra, a middleaged Bengali engineer, who had lived in Germany since 1967, but had been born as the eldest of four siblings into a middle-class Calcutta family. Talking about his younger brother, a former Naxalite activist, who unlike him had remained in Calcutta when the first signs of trouble at his college became apparent, Shankar revealed that the unrest in educational institutions was one reason why he was sent abroad. While Shankar dutifully completed his engineering degree and got himself a job, his brother left school and ended up in the districts organizing peasants. Lucky to escape to the villages, his brother lived many years in hiding, which, as Shankar pointed out, created problems for his parents and siblings, as clandestine meetings, surveillance and harassment by police and constant worry marred the memory of these years. Though Shankar’s brother did not fall into the hands of the police, who would have no doubt tortured and possibly shot him, Shankar spoke eloquently about the grief his brother’s activism caused. While he regretted not to have been in Calcutta during that important period of politicization, Shankar was also clearly very angry with his brother, who interrupted his education, disappeared for years, and left his mother heartbroken without a son at home. The harassment his parents endured at the hands of the police, and the fact that his brother did not marry and only barely managed to keep the family firm afloat after he returned home in the early 1980s, left other family members very bitter. A very different conversation took place with Sharmila, a married mother of two in her forties, whom I met during fieldwork in 1995. We were discussing love marriages and were going through some family albums with her daughter, when she casually pointed out a young man with a long beard wearing a khadi kurta, and explained “This is your mama, the one who had become a Naxal and was shot during an encounter with the police.” She then turned to me, adding, “If he had not become an activist, things would have been different for me, we were very close and I may not have married [my husband], but since he had left things were not the same at home and I just wanted to get out.” For activists, and also for many non-activists, the present is clearly a result of the Naxalite period, whether this is a metaphor for law-andorder problems, or a marker of rupture in their personal lives.17 17

See Mitra (2001).

144 Windows into a Revolution While these examples go to show how the movement comes up in conversations about a range of subjects in the private lives of the people of Calcutta, the role highlighted in the narratives is that of brothers, or better, absent brothers, who turned into activists and failed to provide support to a sibling and their parents. But the role of siblings, and especially of brothers, is only one in a set of important relationships for South Asian men, which contribute to the kind of hegemonic bourgeois masculinity that is socially acceptable and aspired to in urban Bengal. The vignettes presented above provide a window into popular representations of the Naxalite Movement, and also open up the discussion of what being an activist meant in the everyday lives of various actors. The following section takes a closer look at how activism emerged from, but simultaneously challenged, expectations and transformed relationships, which constitute middle-class masculinity in urban Bengal.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MEN: FAMILIES AND COMRADES Chopra et al. suggest that in order to analyse masculinities we have to situate them not only within the wider framework of gender relations, but also within relationships between men.18 In the Naxalite Movement young men formed very strong bonds not only with comrades their own age, male and female, but also with older men. Younger activists were often recruited by a teacher or professor, and in the process many turned their back on their families whilst entering into close relationships with these figures of authority. While the “key paradigm that encodes forms of hierarchy between men” is here, as elsewhere, the father-son relationship,19 we need to unpack prevalent stereotypical notions of what this shift implied in order to see the significance of personal relationships in political activism. Contrary to the singular focus on the very authoritarian character of the Maoist organization predominant in public memory of the movement, which was no doubt being exacerbated by the pressure of counterinsurgency measures on families and communities, former activists emphasized that the everyday reality of relationships within the movement was often significantly different from their experiences in other spheres 18 19

Chopra et al. (2004: 28). Ibid.: 31.

Radical Masculinity 145 of life. Among those I interviewed, a significant number were recruited as cadres straight from school, and it was often these men who were adamant that although a certain respect akin to that for a teacher was paid to leaders, the reality of such close relationships developed over time did not always conform to the ideal of the clearly hierarchical and very formal guru-shishya (teacher-pupil) model.

CHALLENGING PARENTAL AUTHORITY But relationships within the movement were not the only significant relationships activists were eager to talk about; equally important was their representation of relations with men in their families, especially fathers and older siblings. In order to explore the way activists were made, let me first introduce the background of these young cadres through the written account of Subroto, who joined the movement as a teen: I was born in a middle-class family of Calcutta in 1952. We were not affluent, yet we had a smooth lifestyle. My mother was thoroughly a nationalist and had a genuine love for literature that had influenced us all to come out of the narrow domestic boundary. Even after a day-long hard domestic labour, she used to read some sort of literature. In this connection, I had to go to the local library quite often to bring books for her. And whenever I brought some books of inferior standard she would certainly rebuke me in that context. I can remember, I used to argue with her. And this process had ultimately injected some literary taste in me as well. The life of us—myself, my brothers and sisters—six in all— moved around our mother. My father served in a British firm—he was a meticulous professional, and remained aloof to household affairs. My elder brother is an engineer, he was a brilliant student and was never involved in politics. After graduation he had founded a small-scale industry. Hard labour and professional skill brought success to him. The next is a lecturer in philosophy in a Calcutta college, who once was involved in fancy politics, and at present keeps a distance from politics. The third born was deeply involved in Naxalite politics, had great potential and resigned from service for the cause of politics. At present he leads the life of a private tutor—and that’s all. His, as well as my participation in the Naxalite movement had invited oppression by the administration on our family, which virtually destroyed normal life. And as a consequence, my mother died an immature death of infinite mental stress. From my early boyhood days I was a sort of romantic fellow, who has a mystic world of his own. This compelled me to get thoroughly involved in the political whirl in such a boyhood state. Browsing different Leftist journals, I had a hazy idea of socialism. There was the influence of my brothers on me. Above all, the food movement in Bengal and

146 Windows into a Revolution the Leftist movement in support of the heroic struggle of the great Vietnamese people had allured me to join a popular political movement.20

Young men like Subroto very consciously placed themselves within the social framework of a stratified middle class. This implied that the remote chance of getting a job hinged on his successful completion of higher education. Once he was recruited, parents like his, who struggled to provide for relatively large families, gradually began to realize that students involved in the movement were prepared to forego careers for the sake of the revolution. While many of the theoretical ideas, for example questions of inequality, a critique of existing nationalist history, aversion against authority, formed part and parcel of Bengali political identities from the colonial period onwards, children were, of course, not brought up to join an armed struggle. As the disruption of college life became more severe, better-off families decided to send their sons abroad, while less-affluent families like Subroto’s tried to muddle through. Most of the parents realized too late that the educational institutions were unable to bear the pressure and that the students were in a permanent state of revolt and unrest. This realization was followed by months of uncertainty, with more and more students immersing themselves in politics, and many dying at the hands of paramilitary forces. Not surprisingly the rupture associated with “Naxalbari” is thus also depicted as a source of conflict within the family. Here, as elsewhere, education was seen as a contractual arrangement which formed part of reciprocal flows between generations.21 When a son discontinued his education to join the movement he not only sacrificed his own career prospects, but also the possibility of fulfilling filial roles and expectations. The related notion of sacrifice, has been carried over into the movement from nationalist rhetoric,22 but gained an even broader currency in the context of the 1970s. Former activists I interviewed employed it as a raison d’être that linked political and family relationships with their life histories. Many depicted their own fathers as distant, authoritarian figures, whilst mothers were described as “worrying”, “suffering” and vulnerable, which made their self-sacrificing sons feel very guilty. All students would experience their engagement with the movement as a shift from the 20

English in the original. See Lamb (2000). 22 Ray (1988). 21

Radical Masculinity 147 guardianship of their parents into the guardianship of leaders. The authority of the leaders seems to have substituted not so much parental authority but supplemented it, and was often initially accepted by parents in the spirit of shared parenting.23 In this context, teachers can take on quasi-parental roles and are expected to support former pupils identified in this way later on in life. The emotional involvement in these relationships and the influence of teachers over their charges beyond the school or the campus was therefore not unusual, and initially may have even been encouraged by parents. Such acceptance of his close relationship with his teachers was certainly felt by Suresh, who was recruited into a small group of cadres early on in the struggle. A gentle and soft-spoken man in his early fifties when I met him, Suresh was the youngest of three sons, and lived at the time with his parents and brothers in the North Calcutta home, he and his family still share. Like many others, he interpreted the movement and his own involvement almost entirely in terms of personal relationships—the betrayals encountered, the friendships formed, and his marriage to a fellow activist. His personal narrative started with his father, a brute, who ran his house in an authoritarian manner and who was especially abusive towards servants. The latter’s “semi-feudal” mindset led to permanent conflicts between father and son, which culminated with Suresh running away from home. In Suresh’s account, his father’s attitude had a strong impact on his moral development and led him towards joining a group of politicized students. He described the various campaigns he took part in, like the destruction of a school laboratory and the smashing of statues, and hinted at violent clashes with staff at school before he revealed that he was also involved in the stabbing of a “class enemy” in his locality. While he was in the party, Suresh regarded the leaders with great respect, and as suggested earlier, for him the line between the authority of the family and the authority of the party became blurred. Emulating the Red Guards, Suresh wanted to leave school only months before his final exams. However, although the CPI (M-L) promoted the boycott of examinations, the local leaders forced Suresh to rethink his decision when they found that his mother had threatened to commit suicide. Suresh’s seniors persuaded him to accept that it actually was a sign of strength to 23

See Das (1976); Kurtz (1992); Trawick (1992).

148 Windows into a Revolution fulfil his filial duty before joining.24 He later followed his comrades into a more adventurous life and was ultimately imprisoned in 1971. When he went underground, Suresh, like many of my informants, was involved in the publication unit of the CPI (M-L). Though very much their junior, he felt that the interaction with party leaders, including Charu Majumdar, enhanced his own development as a “human being” since the unit not only published regular issues of various magazines but also facilitated training for the young men involved. In 1977 Suresh returned from prison and married a fellow activist, the sister of another local Maoist. The couple moved in with Suresh’s family. But apart from the problems of adjusting to domestic life, Suresh found that without a university degree white-collar employment was difficult to come by. Financial hardship and his dependency on his father drove him to despair. He decided to return to life as a political activist, and joined a newly formed Maoist unit in Madhya Pradesh. There he struggled for two years, but when the experiment failed Suresh returned to his wife, and later they had a son. Suresh’s account testifies to the importance of the process through which activists were politicized, which was often triggered by personal experiences and the way the movement allowed them to reinterpret these predicaments in a specific way. In his case, this included his critique of his father’s “semi-feudal” attitude, but also his submission to the authority of the leading cadres. However, while family conflicts may have facilitated political involvement in his and other cases, life “outside” after release from prison made many activists more dependent on their families. Most of the younger activists lacked qualifications and the vast majority were physically and psychologically scarred. Suresh himself told me, “This was the hardest bit, I had already been back to ask my father for money to support myself, and it was still not enough to survive there, so we had to give up.” He took up employment as a clerk and found it difficult to adjust to the everyday humiliation of such an inferior position. But picking himself up again, in a move that he shared with others, he decided to go against the grain and challenge what seemed to him unbearable conditions, partly by renegotiating given roles in his own home: 24 This and similar instances demonstrate how the CPI(ML) established a hold over the personal lives of its members.

Radical Masculinity 149 One day the supervisor said: You are just a clerk, you are not even a graduate (…) that hurt me and I felt that I should do something about it. So I joined college and studied English—my wife was supporting us during that time—we managed somehow. After completion of the course I found employment in a research institute and we had a son—since then all these problems are much easier to bear.

In a very unusual twist, Suresh and his wife agreed that while he was enrolled for a full degree (and after she had a baby) she would take up employment. This decision was in his view a direct result of his experience and the kind of person he had created as a former Naxalite. And his was not an exceptional case—Subroto, whose life history is presented above, worked out a comparable arrangement with his wife. When he was released from prison he was suffering from debilitating depression. Since he joined the movement as a teen he could not enrol for a university course. At the time his elder brother, with whom he stayed, made an effort to find him a placement in business, as his attempts at self-employment failed miserably. Shortly afterwards, Subroto grudgingly agreed to marry the niece of a Congress Party leader and has since then been in and out of different jobs. Like Suresh, Subroto found it extremely challenging to adjust to formal hierarchical relationships with employers and had to quit various jobs. In the meantime, he and his wife had a son, and in spite of this new commitment she was forced to take on on a job outside Calcutta, where the family could afford to lead a modest life. While Subroto finds it much more difficult to accept his failure to provide for his family, like Suresh he is well aware of the sacrifice his wife and his son are making. Both men had different kinds of marriage, as one chose a comrade, and the other agreed to an arranged match. However, their wives were forced to take on paid employment outside the home, and both husbands owned up to this extra commitment on their wife’s part, which they agreed has also had an influence on how they were bringing up their respective sons.

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS In the accounts of former activists the history of their political recruitment is, of course, not limited to their recounting of family problems and conflicts with parents. At least among the younger generation of Naxalites

150 Windows into a Revolution the figure of the teacher usually played an important role in the way the movement transformed their ideas about what it meant to be a man. All the young cadres were recruited while they were still at school or college, often located in suburban townships, but a number of the more prominent institutions, whose students did stand a good chance of acquiring a job, were also hotbeds of Naxalite activism. Prior to the political unrest, most graduates had only minimal chances of finding employment, and thus their future looked bleak. In the accounts I have recorded it appears that the way education was imparted differed from school to school, and from college to college, but students generally found themselves in an educational landscape dominated by chronically underfunded institutions whose success depended largely on the congeniality of specific headmasters and teachers. Thus, students who wanted to pass the notoriously unpredictable exams had to foster close personal relationships with members of staff, and often it was this “special” teacher who recruited his charges into the movement. The example set by these senior men, and their relationships with their pupils, are another route to explore radical masculinities, and the multiple ways in which the experience of the Naxalite Movement posed a challenge to hegemonic models. During my fieldwork I had intensive conversations with men belonging to both generations of activists, that is those who joined as young students, and those who were already seasoned cadres and broke away from the existing parties. The latter’s political life did obviously differ from that of the younger generation, but old hands often saw it as ideologically and practically productive to work with young cadres. I have outlined these inter-generational differences seen from the perspective of these seasoned cadres elsewhere,25 so I will limit myself here to a general discussion of the relationship between the two groups of men as reflected in the accounts of younger cadres, who joined the movement without any previous experience. While the interdependence between the older generation and the young students was seen by wider society as comparable to the paradigmatic bond between a father and his son, or a guru and his disciple, everyday life in the movement did change some of the parameters and behaviours expected in such hierarchical relationships. Unlike what the

25

Donner (2004).

Radical Masculinity 151 testimony of the Red Guards in China suggests, the Naxalites did not address inter-generational conflicts formally, and the former activists did not suggest that the “new era” politics they wanted to establish necessitated a direct attack on their elders, although they despised the values of bourgeois society. However, the movement did promote challenges to parental authority in terms of recruitment, through its open acceptance of sexual freedom, as well as the more subtle egalitarian practices encouraged among male comrades. In the context of the organization itself, the overlap of teacher/leader categories allowed the older generation to downplay inter-generational tensions, and especially Charu Majumdar was greatly revered and seen as an inspiring father figure, as a quote from another interview with a man, who was 19 years old when he joined, suggests: I got myself associated with the new organization in 1967, which was formed right after the incident of Naxalbari, to assist the struggle and promote the ideas it upheld. (…) To be specific, the committee was dedicated to organize the peasants’ struggle and propagate the politics of Naxalbari and to unite the communist revolutionaries of India. It was the moment that I met comrade Charu Majumdar for the first time at a meeting where his overwhelming personality thoroughly inspired me. It was then, I decided to dedicate myself to the cause of revolution. I started working with the local unit of the committee.

Conflicts between professors and students shaped the emergence of the movement, but with involvement of young cadres and under conditions of constant repression teacher-student relationships were reaffirmed on a more egalitarian basis through everyday practices. In the words of one former activist these differences were as subtle as they were truly “revolutionary”, given that they occurred in a context within which reverential treatment of all middle-class elders is the norm. The role that the leaders played in getting the younger generation involved has been much criticized, and the alleged authoritarian character of the movement is legendary. Within this discourse, the younger generation activists are depicted as innocent and ignorant victims of their superiors, while the leaders are said to have acted ruthlessly and irresponsibly to raise their own profile. No doubt, the difference in age and skills and experience formed the basis for the ubiquitous hierarchy within the party, and a number of the former members I interviewed openly blamed the leadership for misjudgements that put many young cadres at risk. At the same time, the leaders were depicted as inspiring

152 Windows into a Revolution role models and are still often treated with formal respect by the younger cadres, many of whom have kept in touch with them. Taking a more processual view, it appears that the practices the elders established within the movement crucially not informed by the morality of the hierarchical sphere of kinship.26 Instead, they drew on the more egalitarian ideals that characterizes friendships between men. While the younger activists fully expected hierarchies reflecting difference of age and experience to prevail, the commitment to the cultivation of personal integrity among the Naxalites did challenge such notions. And unlike the established communist parties, in which leaders were respected for the sacrifices made in the course of earlier political campaigns, it was predominantly the way the older generation related to the younger cadres at the time that made these bonds persuasive and durable. This remarkable opposition between the structural differences in age and the experience of the intimate relationship within the small groups operating in Calcutta, and later on in prison, dominates the accounts of former activists. While the younger cadres blamed the senior leaders for tactical mistakes some also emphasized that they had become close friends. Many described in detail how the older comrades mixed freely with young activists, and highlighted how the sharing of everyday tasks and facilities signified the truly revolutionary spirit among the leaders. The egalitarian discourse around sharing played a major role in the accounts of the younger cadres and the following example presented by Suresh related the importance of such practices: I always respected the leaders and admired them because although they were older than we were, some of them were in their fifties, it was about the way they spoke to us and the way they sat with us, sharing cigarettes. They offered us cigarettes and we smoked together, that was a taboo of course, and still is—just today I met a former teacher when I went out to buy a packet of cigarettes and we both pretended that we did not notice the stand with cigarettes in front of us—though he clearly knew what I was doing there. That is still embarrassing, and so it was special that these older communists smoked with us.

As far as the older cadres and leaders were concerned, some of these practices had been part of their earlier training as members of the CPI, but even they conceded that the Naxalbari experience was different from

26

i.e. father and son relationships or the stress on hierarchies between brothers.

Radical Masculinity 153 their earlier politics. This, they alleged, was partly a result of the counterinsurgency measures and the sheer number of young people mobilized. Given the loose organizational structure of the CPI (ML) and the need for secrecy, mutual trust and clandestine operations, leaders depended as much on their junior comrades as on the older generation. The need to share not only ideas and expertise, but also food and shelter, facilitated close bonds between the younger and the older cadres, and the relationships formed through formal teaching sessions initially attended by students from their homes became even more intense through such everyday practices as common meals during periods spent in safe houses and imprisonment. No doubt intimate relationships between these men must have existed as well, but while the sexual freedom enjoyed by heterosexual couples is a running theme in relation to this phase of the movement, same-sex relationships were never discussed in the course of the life histories I collected. But what activists were prepared to reveal was that some of the former comrades still utilize their activist network for specific purposes. I was first told about the “extended families of activists” when I was on my way to visit one of the most senior Naxalites still actively involved in politics. Then an octogenarian living alone in a remote suburb, this former CPI (M-L) member was during the movement, according to the friend who accompanied me, among the most influential in the party. In spite of his illustrious past, he had lost touch with most of the younger activists once all of them returned from prison precisely because he had never publicly taken responsibility for sending young men on dangerous and sometimes fatal missions. However, now old and ailing, the party he still served had offered some support towards daily expenses and rising medical costs. My interlocutors saw this kind of support as an extension of the earlier networking activities developed underground when sympathizers and family members cooperated. For young activists, who unlike their senior comrades had no jobs and nuclear families to return to, family and party soon overlapped and so did the morality of support. In the period after their release, those with proper jobs looked after their comrades, while the younger cadres were called upon to do their seniors favours. The morality of mutual dependence has supported the repression of any public debate on the ambiguity many young cadres felt towards the organization and its leaders.

154 Windows into a Revolution This lack of self-criticism was brought to the fore by a very bitter former activist, who—like most others—found himself at the mercy of his family when he was released from prison. Throughout our conversation, he actively sought “to set the record straight” and to lend a voice to those who like him despised the leaders and their actions, which he described in terms of their “hunger for prestige”. When I related that I had nevertheless observed that former leaders were treated with respect, he quoted a proverb which translates as “when you eat mangoes don’t drink water to avoid stomach pain”. In his view it demonstrated that party members were linked through a common morality like “the members of a joint family”, and so they would never wash their dirty linen in public. Examples such as this highlight that it was not hierarchy or coercion that created the type of loyalty displayed by the Naxalites in the course of the movement and often beyond, but the morality of reciprocity which is commonly found among kin that informed relationships that were in the view of the general public opposed to the domestic sphere. Such relationships with other Naxalites were chosen individually, and younger comrades spoke very emotionally about them. Often their bonds with the older cadres were still close, and they were prepared to take responsibility for the older generation in the aftermath of the movement in the course of our conversations. However, issues of support are also crucial for many of the younger generation as party funds will not be offered as readily to them as to former leaders. In most instances, young men who had gone underground or had been imprisoned until the 1980s relied on their families for help after their return home and many never managed to secure a proper job. The rage of some younger comrades has not abated; while the older generation managed to reintegrate themselves into certain reciprocal relationships, many former students are still stuck in inferior jobs and depressing domestic situations. With reference to the masculinities embodied here, two related traits attributed to the Naxalites more generally are highlighted in their accounts: personal integrity and unpretentious behaviour, an ideal generally associated with the morality of political activists, but more particularly the Naxalite movement. This ideal, as far as local idioms are concerned, is difficult to realize in the life of a married man, and activists who did start a family after prison often expressed frustration about the

Radical Masculinity 155 pressures and compromises life as a householder entailed. But those who remained single, either because of their commitment to political work or because their families did not find a suitable match, face a different set of problems, especially as they are getting older and their position in the local community remains unstable. Avoiding attachment, the bonds of the householder’s life, is a theme that runs through the literature on renunciation in South Asia, and informs political autobiographies on the left and the right. Apart from Gandhians, early communists did often remain unmarried and gave up family life to serve the cause. Interestingly, not only many former activists, but also members of the general public, pointed out that in today’s day and age only the Naxalite cadres command the self control necessary to live according to the high moral standards of an idealized political life course and could therefore be trusted. As Ray argues, an emphasis on trust “not in its theoretical or strategic capabilities or perspectives, but its morality”27 drew young men into the movement. This ties in with a notion of politics, which associates trust and personal integrity as a prerequisite to successful leadership, though not to politics per se.28 The fact that such a morality is crucially attributed to former Naxalite activists in public discourse even today has not only allowed the younger cadres to reconcile their bitter experiences during and after the movement, but has also enabled some, mostly the older cadres, to play hugely influential roles in local politics. In their neighbourhood, for instance, these established political activists are often well-known and command a certain clout in public life. But it is the younger generation that in my view really makes a difference, because as my fieldwork has also shown these Naxalites have managed to carve out a different kind of personal politics for themselves by questioning existing norms of masculinity.

CONCLUSION The stereotypical opposition of the renouncer and the householder does clearly play an important role in South Asian constructions of ideal masculinity,29 but it does not account for the multilayered Naxalite 27

Ray (1988: 117). See Banerjee (1999); Ruud (2000). 29 i.e. Madan (1988); Fuller (1984). 28

156 Windows into a Revolution experience, or indeed the real lives of the vast majority of non-renouncers in South Asia who draw on related notions. Though the contradiction shaped the nationalist rhetoric, the former activists interviewed consciously highlighted very different historical trajectories, primarily ideals of politicized masculinity present in militant anti-colonial struggles like the Anushilan Samiti and the Jugantar groups.30 The Naxalite students of the 1970s modelled themselves on these secret revolutionary organizations, but did not subscribe to the latter’s open association with Hindu cultural forms, rather, they presented such militant activism in the vocabulary borrowed from the Red Guards. But unlike the Red Guards, their membership in the movement’s organizations did not imply an attack on kin and a denouncement of the older generation. In urban Bengal, existing norms were challenged through the conceptual rephrasing of relationships between the generations in the mould of male friendships. The values guiding such relationships were those of reciprocity, sharing and exchange, and to a degree brotherhood—which are clearly constructed in contrast to lineage and filial bonds dominant in the domestic and kinship domains. The life histories and interviews presented here provide insights into the various aspects of the movement that activists deemed relevant. While most emphasized the morality associated with all members of the movement, these men also drew attention to specific silences in public accounts—about sexual exploitation, about hierarchies and the failure of leaders to own up to their responsibility. Obvious and legitimate practices appeared side by side with other equally relevant experiences, which official discourses and politically correct representations have relegated to the multiple kinds of “privatized memory” of a movement that ultimately failed to deliver a revolution. The personal testimonies that I have analyzed here can help us to reconsider the value of experience in debates within the social sciences. To solely see the life histories on which this article is based as examples of South Asian political hagiographies would limit their value as testimony or historical work by means of personal accounts.31 As Arnold and 30

Both groups were formed by Bengali students during the anti-colonial agitation and had an explicitly militant agenda. 31 Arnold and Blackburn (2004).

Radical Masculinity 157 Blackburn observe, life histories can assume the form “of an unnarrativized social memory, transmitted through anecdotes or other expressions of popular consciousness”.32 The autobiographical sketches of former political activists that inform the ethnography here provide such an alternative view on gender roles and idealized constructions of a past dedicated to a progressive ideology, and highlight the emancipatory effect of political involvement for men from middle-class backgrounds. In this sense, life histories can reveal political subjectivities and sensibilities, which are excluded from canonised accounts. Naxalite testimony contributes to the growing body of work on political memory, historical crisis, and state policies in South Asia.33 Given that the subjects of these accounts are male middle-class activists, they sit rather uneasily with those scholarly reworkings that represent marginalized groups and subaltern voices, including those by women and peasants within the same movement. However, the ethnography suggests that men who were active in the movement challenged hegemonic discourses as much as their female comrades did. By contesting ideals of filial duty and the acceptable male life course, these activists not only provoked the rupture of kin relations but also the formation of very different relationships between men, experienced as empowering. For many, this process provided the space for a rethinking of everyday politics, and in particular their choice of networks, which often pushed the boundaries between moralities applicable within the family, and “outside”. Unlike other persecuted groups, my interlocutors did not focus on their own role as victims, but in the course of the interviews reflected on the way their involvement shaped their personal lives and the lives of the people around them. As is apparent from the accounts, not all the Naxalites carved out positive new roles for themselves in terms of practices as well as representations, and only a few allowed a radical political masculinity to enter and inform the private sphere. But reading the Maoist experience as a challenge to hegemonic ideologies regarding relationships, even within the wider kin group, allows us to reinsert the revolutionary content of practices into the history of the everyday. Last but not least, a “life history” 32

Arnold and Blackburn (2004: 11). Butalia (1988); Chatterjee (1992); Tarlo (1995); Ahmad (1995); Panjabi (1997); Menon and Bhasin (1998); Kaul (2001). 33

158 Windows into a Revolution approach shows that new social visions emerged through the bonds the movement fostered, which is equally true for men as it is for women. These affinities were in many cases maintained beyond the lifespan of the movement, and did not simply replicate historical patterns. They still bind the former comrades together in complex ways, resting as they do on shared experiences and values as well as the necessity of social support. Drawing on culturally specific notions of relatedness, they reframe the morality of kinship in other spheres, and are thus a constant reminder of a radical past that keeps challenging the present. BIBLIOGRAPHY Amin, S. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri-Chaura 1922–1992, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Arnold, D. and Blackburn, S. (eds.). “Introduction”, In D. Arnold and S. Blackburn (eds.), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004: 29. Banerjee, M. “Mamata’s Khomota”, Seminar, Vol. 480, 1999: 30–5. Banerjee, S. Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry, Calcutta: Thema, 1987. Basu, P. Towards Naxalbari (1953–1967): An Account of Inner-Party Ideological Struggle, Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 2000. Butalia, U. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Delhi: Penguin, 1988. Chatterjee, N. “Midnight’s Unwanted Children: East Bengali Refugees and the Politics of Rehabilitation”, Ph.D. Thesis, Brown University, 1992. Corbridge, S. and John Harriss. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Democracry, Cambridge: Blackwell, 2000. Dasgupta, B. The Naxalite Movement, Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1974. Dasgupta, S. “Recalling Naxalite Terror”, Indian Express, 29 June, 1996. Devi, M. Mother of 1084, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2001. Donner, H. “The Significance of Naxalbari: Accounts of Personal Involvement and Politics in West Bengal”, Occasional Papers Series, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2004. Franda, M.F. Radical Politics in West Bengal, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1971. Fuller, C.J. Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South Indian Temple, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Ghosh, S. The Naxalite Movement: A Maoist Experiment, Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1974. Iguarta, J. and Dario Paez. “Art and Remembering Traumatic Collective Events: The Case of the Spanish Civil War”, In Pennebaker, J.W., Paez, D. and Bernard Rimé (eds.), Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives. Mahway, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997: 79–101. Kaul, S. (ed.). The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001.

Radical Masculinity 159 Kurtz, S. All the Mothers are One: Hindu India and the Cultural Reshaping of Psychoanalysis, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992. Kohli, A. The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Lamb, S. White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Madan, T.N. Way of Life: King, Householder, Renouncer: Essays in Honour of Louis Dumont, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1988. Menon, R. and Kamla Bhasin. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Mitra, A. Calcutta Diary, Calcutta: Circa, 1985. Mitra, J. Killing Days: Prison Memories, Delhi: Kali for Women, 2004. Mitra, T. “Winds of Change”, The Telegraph, 22 April, 2001. Mukhopadhyay, A.K. The Naxalites through the Eyes of the Police: Selected Notifications from the Calcutta Police Gazette, 1967–1975, Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 2006. Nossiter, T.J. Marxist State Governments in India: Politics, Economics and Society, London: Pinter Publishers, 1988. Paitnak. P. “In the Aftermath of Nandigram”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 21, 2007: 1895–98. Panjabi, K. “Probing ‘Morality’ and State Violence: Feminist Values and Communicative Interaction in Prison Testimonies in India and Argentina”, In Alexander M.J. and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies and Democratic Futures. London: Routledge, 1997: 151–69. Ray, R. The Naxalites and their Ideology, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Roy, S. “The Everyday Life of Revolution: Gender, Violence and Memory”, South Asia Research, Vol. 27, 2007: 187–204. Ruud, A.E. “Talking Dirty about Politics: A View from a Bengali Village”, In Fuller, C. and Véronique Benei, (eds.), The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2009: 115–36. Chopra, R., Osella, C. and Filippo Osella. Masculinities in South Asia, Delhi: Kali for Women, 2004. Sinha-Roy, M. “Gender and Politics in Bengal: Women’s Participation in the NaxalbariMovement in West Bengal (1967–1975)”, Unpublished Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. Tarlo, E. “From Victim to Agent: Memories of Emergency from a Resettlement Colony in Delhi”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, 1995: 2921–8. Trawick, M. Notes on Love in a Tamil Family, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND RURAL REVOLUTION RETHINKING “FAILED DEVELOPMENT” LAUREN G. LEVE

Humanity is a modernist figure; and this humanity has a generic face, a universal shape. Humanity’s face has been the face of a man.1 If the question of female subaltern consciousness is a red herring, the question of subaltern consciousness as such must be judged a red herring as well.2 I am worried about my own country. In our country, nothing has happened Research for the project was funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the INGO that appears in this paper as Development for All (DFA). The first draft of this paper was written and presented while I was a fellow in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. A longer version appears in Anthropological Quarterly (Leve 2007). I wish to thank Ilana Gershon, David Graeber, Gita Karki, Keith Leslie, Udaya Manandhar, Kay Mansfield, Katherine Rankin, James Scott, Chandika Shrestha, Buddhiman Shrestha and my cohort in the Agrarian Studies Program for assistance and support at different stages of this project. I must also, of course, thank the interview team (themselves, all women who grew up in or married into Chorigaon—several of whom themselves learned to read in the classes discussed and transitioned to governmentrun schools afterward) and the many other Gorkhali women who so generously shared their time, stories and ideas. 1 2

Haraway (1992). Spivak (1988).

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 161 besides murders and killings. Our country is our home. If the country is destroyed, our village is disturbed, and if the village is disturbed, our home is disturbed, and if our home is disturbed, then we’re destroyed too.3

O

n 13 February 1996 a homemade bomb exploded at the Agricultural Development Bank in rural Gorkha District. The blast damaged the building and its furniture; more importantly, the attack destroyed all records of the bank’s agricultural loans. Within hours, almost simultaneous attacks took place at police posts in Rolpa and Rukum Districts, further west. Together, these assaults announced the commencement of an armed Maoist revolt against the Government of Nepal, and what their instigators defined as over 200 years of feudal exploitation of Nepal’s peasantry, the beginning of the jana yuddha or the “People’s War”. The insurrection took urban Nepal by surprise. Less than six years later, however, it had penetrated almost all of Nepal’s 75 districts, and 70 per cent of the countryside was under Maoist control by 2006. When the war officially ended in 2007, over 14,000 people were dead in connection with the uprising and counter-insurgency; rape, disappearances and other human rights abuses had become commonplace; schools, clinics, bridges and other elements of the development infrastructure had been crippled, destroyed or forced to close; and over 200,000 people had fled their rural homes.4 The speed and intensity with which the insurgency took hold has inspired abundant literature on rural life and the roots of the rebellion.5 Almost immediately, four factors were identified as motivating popular support: disillusionment with the failure of the Nepal state to deliver the expected democratization of local social relations and political authority after the victory of the first jana andolan6 and the establishment of multiparty democracy in 1990; continuing poverty and a widening gap between rural and urban quality of life despite decades of intensive development; 3 Padam

Kumari, Gorkha. See Kernot (2003). A 2004 study by the Community Study and Welfare Centre (CSWC) raises that to 350,000 to 400,000. 5 Recent anthropological and historical works alone include Hutt (2004); Karki (2003); Onesto (2005); Thapa (2003); Thapa (2003); Gellner (2003). Not to mention a virtual industry of reports commissioned by security concerns, aid organizations and NGOs 6 People’s Movement. 4

162 Windows into a Revolution widespread frustration with corruption at all levels of government; and a backlash against the brutality of police, and later army, counter-insurgency campaigns. The first three factors are often linked to a single cause: that of “failed” or “incomplete” development. Pointing to the fact that the Maoists’ western strongholds were among the poorest and the most marginal districts in Nepal, analysts have singled out the uneven distribution of aid benefits and political power as a development failure and a threat to the newly liberalized state. The common prescription for this malady— advanced at academic conferences, non-governmental organization7 seminars, political summits, and in a host of books, articles and working papers on the topic—has been more and better development aid. All these factors are real and important. Yet, they are also gender blind—a remarkable oversight, given women’s extraordinary visibility in the revolt. One of the most noted features of the Maoist insurrection was the unprecedented degree of women’s participation, and the rebels’ own emphasis on women’s liberation, this has been widely discussed.8 One-third of all foot soldiers in Maoist strongholds were said to be women. Women held leadership positions in the Maoist hierarchy, participated actively in village defence groups, and worked as couriers and guides. Indeed, Rita Manchanda has suggested that Gorkhali women’s support for the rebels reflects not the absence or failure of development activities there, but, to the contrary, their surprising success. In a 1999 essay entitled “Empowerment With a Twist”,9 she proposes that, in Gorkha District, the insurrection has benefited from two decades of development work, and particularly, the women’s literacy programs run by an American International Non-governmental Organization10: In Gorkha district, it is literate women and men who are joining the struggle. Ironically, it is the success of the [INGO] adult literacy campaign which has paved the way for women to become active in the public life of the community, for girls to go to schools and for girls politicized in school to be drawn into the armed struggle.11 7 Henceforth

NGO. for instance Parvati (1999); Pettigrew (2004); Shakya (2003); Gautam (1999); Gautam (2001); Manchanda (1999); Onesto (2005); Maycock (2003). 9 Rita Manchanda (cf. 1999). 10 Henceforth INGO. 11 Gautam, Banskota, and Manchanda (2001). 8 See

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 163 By this theory, far from discouraging violence, development activities have actually helped catalyze it: “Literacy campaigns … designed to promote the empowerment of women inadvertently encouraged many conscientised young women to choose subsequent empowerment through armed struggle.”12 The contrast between this analysis and the “failed development” account raises questions about the relationship between women’s empowerment and rural revolution that cannot be resolved by theory alone. Indeed, careful consideration of the hidden assumptions of each of these hypotheses suggests that they are both problematic—and in similar ways. When we compare these theories to Nepali women’s own stories about self-growth, national development and Maoist struggle, it becomes apparent that there is a disjuncture between indigenous and foreign models for women’s development—a disjuncture that demands critically rethinking conventional understandings of gendered subaltern subjectivity and its relation to oppositional political consciousness. This study focuses on the same Gorkhali women Manchanda referred to above, women who participated in an INGO-run rural women’s literacy and empowerment programme in the mid-1980s. To be clear, the women on whose experiences my reflections are based are not the ones who abandoned their homes to join the People’s Army in the forest, nor are they party activists or even members, on the whole. Yet, they support the rebels by feeding them, housing them, and, not informing the government about their whereabouts or activities. Such help may tax the already stretched food supplies and inspire violent retribution from military forces—and it may be offered more, or less, freely—given that those who demand it carry guns. But without this support, women told me, the insurgents would be lost. Thinking back, even now I am still somewhat surprised that they were willing to tell me this—or anything at all—given the dangerously shifting topographies of trust, betrayal, secrecy and fear that typify daily life in war zones. What made it possible, I believe, were the deep ties that Democracy for All,13 the INGO which conducted the literacy 12 Gautam,

Banskota, and Manchanda (2001). Sharma (2000: 35–6) made a similar argument about USAID programs in the Rapti Zone (Gellner 2002: 21). Karki and Seddon mention this possibility as well (Karki and Seddon 2003: 19). 13 Henceforth DFA. This, as all personal and institutional names in this paper, is a pseudonym I have created to protect the privacy of the people involved.

164 Windows into a Revolution programme, had established in the region and my own longstanding relations with the programme graduates and the DFA. When Manchanda’s essay appeared, I’d known the women from the programme she was talking about for almost a decade and had completed two studies of the project’s long-term impact, one of which was specifically focused on issues of empowerment. So when DFA’s director showed me Manchanda’s paper and asked if I was interested in following up, I was! The data I analyze in this chapter comes from interviews and ethnography conducted in Chorigaon, Gorkha Bazaar and Kathmandu between 2000– 05, and a 100+-respondent survey which I carried out with a talented team of local women, most of whom I had trained and worked with in my previous surveys. The period 2001–05 was one of escalating aggression throughout Nepal, following King Birendra’s murder in June 2001, and his successor’s decision to officially involve the army the following November, a strategy that he “piloted” in select districts, including Gorkha, beginning from July 2001.

Gorkha Bazaar, circa 2004 (Courtesy Lauren G. Leve).

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 165 This chapter tries to bring what I learned in Gorkha to bear on the “failed development” thesis—and the “ironic empowerment” one. One thing I learned observing life in this “conflict zone” is that there is no single reason why so many Gorkhali women sympathize with the rebels; nor do such sentiments preclude identifying with other parties or the state in other contexts, at other times, or even simultaneously. Four years into the war, it was clear that the notion that the conflict had just two distinct sides—such that any given person “was” or “wasn’t” a Maoist— was largely an illusion.14 Another is that empowerment depends on often unrecognized assumptions about personhood and consciousness that are historically and culturally variable. In particular, the stories and reflections I encountered in Chorigaon suggest a very different sort of self than the policy-makers who design most empowerment programmes presume: a self that is not and does not wish to be purely autonomous, but rather defines itself by its relationships and, especially, its commitments. This insight has important implications for both theoretical and policyoriented analyses of women’s empowerment and its possible long-term effects.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN GORKHA DISTRICT It was from a palace that one literally passes on the way to the villages that I will discuss that Prithvinarayan Shah—the so-called “father of the nation”—set out with his armies to conquer and “unite” the territories that now make up modern Nepal. And as the ancestral home to the kings, the district long held the pride of place in the nationalist consciousness. Not surprisingly, then, it was one of the first regions targeted for intensive development when Nepal embraced modernization beginning in the 1960s. And Gorkha Bazaar remains one of only a few district centres in the mid-hills that are accessible by road. Despite all this, Gorkha is also a Leftist centre. A number of senior Maoist leaders grew up here, including the senior leader, Baburam Bhattarai. In the first eight years of the war, no fewer than 21 people from the two Village Development Committees15 in central Gorkha that 14 Leve

(2004). Indeed, evoking different identities in different contexts is a strategy that helps people to survive. 15 Henceforth VDCs.

166 Windows into a Revolution I will refer to as “Chorigaon” left their homes to join the Maoists underground.16 By 2006, the police or the Royal Nepalese Army17 had killed eleven villagers (including three teenagers and two teachers), and two rebels from the area were killed in battles elsewhere in Nepal. For their part, the Maoists had killed more than 40 police or army personnel posted there, including a dramatic massacre of 23 soldiers at one police post. The history of the women’s development programme in Chorigaon dates to 1983 when the DFA organized an evening literacy course for adults. Although the class was technically open to both men and women, the organizers found that women—few of whom had attended school as children—enrolled at a much higher rate. Non-formal adult education was a relatively new concept in Nepal at that point, but the programme rapidly proved to be a popular success. By its final year, 1986–87, roughly two-thirds of the adult women in Chorigaon had attended at least part of the course.18 One of the project’s most notable features was its emancipatory intent. The DFA documents record that two key goals of the course were to “assist programme participants in identifying the problems faced by their families and communities” and to help them “achieve greater selfconfidence so they can shape their own environment through development activities”.19 This ideal was reflected in its curriculum— Naya Goreto20—an innovative pedagogical package inspired by the radical Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s conception of empowerment as “conscientization”—a transformation by which subaltern people become aware of the sources of their own subjugation, and in doing so, re-create themselves as “authentic” and “complete” human beings capable of 16

At the time of the 2001 census, Chorigaon comprised 801 households with a total population of 4234 people spread out in an area of less than ten square miles (25 square kilometres). 17 RNA. 18 The programme ran for three years consecutively. It met two hours per night five nights a week for six to eight months. At the end of the class, graduates opened shops, became Community Health Volunteers, joined local development committees and even joined their peers in the public school system. Five years after the completion of the course, 41per cent reported feeling more confident speaking outside of their families. 70 per cent were still able to read and write their names (Leve 1993). 19 Sob and Leslie (1988: 3). 20 New Path.

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 167 “enter[ing] the historical process as responsible Subjects” and working together to build a “new society”.21 According to its Nepali developers, Naya Goreto sought “to serve as a catalyst for development by exposing participants to new ideas and information and by giving them a vision of what was possible”.22 “In addition to providing information”, it was designed to incite critical dialogue that would “help participants develop problem-solving skills, self-confidence and a realization of their potential both as individuals and as members of a community” through collective reflection and analysis of themes such as poverty, caste, environmental degradation, gender inequality and corruption.23 What happened in this literacy course? And, did it also help catalyze the Maoist Revolution?

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT THOUGH MARXIAN AND NEOLIBERAL FRAMES Before answering these questions, we need to consider some theories of development and its effects, including potentially, empowerment. Scholarly understandings of the relationships between violence and development have tended to fall into either of two broad perspectives. The first—which dominates policy circles in Nepal—sees poverty and poverty-related despair as a powerful threat to social stability, and understands international aid that seeks to reduce poverty as a tool to decrease conflict and defuse uprisings. The very fact of the insurrection, therefore, testified that past work had failed or was still incomplete. Against this, other scholars have advanced the claim that development itself is a form of structural violence—a neo-imperial enterprise through which industrialized northern countries dominate and exploit the socalled Third World.24 This is, of course, an analysis that the Maoists share.25 Opposed as they are, the proponents of both the positions, nonetheless, agree that the solution is to promote freedom. But they have very different ideas about freedom and how it is achieved. 21

Freire (1997/1970: 18, 140, 65, 29). Education (1989: 2). 23 World Education (1989: 1). 24 Cf. Des Chene (1996); Escobar (1995, 1996); Pigg (1992, 1993); Shrestha (1995). 25 A third approach focuses on development’s ironies and contradictions (Grillo and Stirrat 1997, Leve 2001, Li 1991, Pigg 1993). 22 World

168 Windows into a Revolution Throughout the conflict, a major proponent of the “failed development” hypothesis was the United States Agency for International Development.26 USAID’s 2004 budget request makes this clear: “Poor governance and corruption, forbidding terrain and lack of infrastructure all contribute to … development gains being unevenly distributed” in Nepal. The insurgency “has found fertile ground largely in response to Nepal’s poverty, exclusion, and poor governance”.27 To combat this, USAID proposed to increase national wealth by promoting and rationalizing hydropower and the forest and agricultural products sectors, and expanding “good governance” to deepen democracy.28 What is the relation between industrial reform and deepened democracy? This two-part agenda reflects the dominant neoliberal belief that self-governing markets are more effective at producing and distributing wealth than state-led, planned economies—and that they are also privileged spaces for the exercise of liberty. According to a 2002 Presidential memo: The great struggles of the twentieth century … ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise. In the 21st century, only nations that … [guarantee] political and economic freedom … will be able to … assure their future prosperity…. The United States will … actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets and free trade to every corner of this world.29

In this way of thinking, as we can see, freedom is enacted through commercial activity, and democracy (“good governance”) is identified with laissez-faire trade policy. Empowerment becomes a matter of restricting trade regulations and facilitating market participation through credit and income generation schemes, and of challenging customs that restrict oppressed peoples’ access to public space and capital. And since the expected outcome of all of this is heightened economic growth and efficiency, USAID reasoned, development that frees Nepal’s economy and increases popular wealth must necessarily strengthen state security. 26 Henceforth

USAID. http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2004/asia_near_east/Nepal.pdf. 28 http://www.dec.org/pdf_docs/PDABS865.pdf. 29 Prelude to “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America”, released by the President’s office, September 2002. 27

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 169 Hence the need to meet “failed development” with more aid: “by … addressing the underlying causes of poverty, inequality, and poor governance in Nepal, the U.S. is making an important contribution to [resolving the Maoist insurgency]”. Freire takes the opposite approach. He assumes that it is capitalism itself that fuels peasant oppression and that resistance to this is an “indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.”30 Here, however, human freedom is emphatically not a natural by-product of open markets: it is the result of self-conscious action against economic and social inequality. In this, Freirean educators and Maoist rebels share the same assumptions about human nature. In theory, the Marxian and neoliberal positions couldn’t be more different. In practice, however, they have an intriguing ability to slip into one another, as the (now defunct) USAID programme reveals. In 1996, USAID-Nepal declared women’s empowerment an agency-wide objective. In consequence, they enlarged ongoing legal awareness and microcredit lending projects, and recast literacy courses that had been designed to help women recognize and challenge subordination to emphasize instead the way that such programmes “improve[ed] women’s choices” and increased their economic agency by extending market-based forms of subjectivity in previously inaccessible domestic domains.31 Additionally, USAID reported, literate women would often “take jobs which they could not get while illiterate, thereby bringing more income into the household to support their families”, and “seek additional training opportunities”.32 This shift, from the revolutionary empowerment of subaltern subjects to an instrumental empowerment for capitalist citizenship signifies a dramatic shift in the development vision.33 Indeed, from a Freirean perspective, the reduction of conscientization to consumer consciousness is a wholesale reversal of the liberatory goal. How is this kind of slippage possible? One reason is that neoliberal and conscientization models of empowerment share a number of unrecognized assumptions. First, both perceive development as a unilinear 30

Freire (1997/1970). Leve (2001). 32 USAID Congressional Presentation, 1998. 33 Cf. Rankin (2001), Schild (2000). 31

170 Windows into a Revolution progression towards a predefined goal whereby developmental subjects become self-conscious agents, whether they express that through economic activity and disciplined participation in civil institutions or by seeking to overturn existing hierarchies and remake society. Second, both conceive of empowerment as a subjective transformation that will lead to concrete forms of action that reflect each model’s analysis of “objective” reality. Third, in each of these models rural women are imagined as backward or incomplete, whether what is perceived as missing is access to credit, self-consciousness or historical agency. Fourth, all of these ideas rest on the assumption that the human subject is most fully actualized at the moment of greatest autonomy. And finally, neither approach explores gender’s productive power—that is, the way it shapes social and moral identities—or what gendered subjectivity means to particular groups. Instead, both limit their visions and goals to correcting male-female inequalities. As a result, the teleological endpoint of both visions—USAID’s self-supporting capitalist no less than Freire’s peasant rebel—is a subject which is normatively male, even in explicitly feminist analyses. Many of these criticisms will be familiar to feminist scholars. What I wish to emphasize here is that they unite thinkers who would otherwise be perceived as politically opposed—and who would hardly acknowledge sharing foundational assumptions. What we will see next is that these culturally-rooted suppositions about “mature” political consciousness, which presume individuals who naturally desire freedom and autonomy, are critically out of synch with women’s lives in Chorigaon.

EMPOWERMENT AND AGENCY IN CHORIGAON So how did participating in the literacy classes affect social consciousness and political identity? In 2001, when I asked a graduate woman in the programme why her village tolerated the rebels despite the violence the insurrection had wrought, she told me: “The Maoists work for social justice.”34 When I asked her if she remembered where she became acquainted with this ideal, she replied: “In the adult literacy course.” Hearing this, it is not hard to imagine that the DFA’s programmes may have “conscientised young women to choose subsequent 34

Såmåjik nyåya.

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 171 empowerment through armed struggle”.35 But while it is clear that development-sponsored practices and values have become deeply embedded in rural consciousness, these are hardly the only ideals that influence the ways women experience what it is to be female in the world. To the contrary, the women I spoke with in Chorigaon conceive themselves in quintessentially social terms, through relations that are morally inflected, entail material obligations and are deeply constitutive of personal identity. In fact, the forms of self-consciousness that these women express makes me wonder whether the utopian freedom of autonomous subjectivity exists outside the bourgeois modernist imagination at all! Take Nani Maya: a woman in her late twenties, married with two young children and currently living with her husband in Kathmandu. Nanu was in her early teens when she joined the literacy course. She’d never been to school, although all her brothers attended, and she dreamt of studying even as she spent her days fetching water, collecting firewood, cutting grass for the buffalo, and herding the goats—gendered labour on which her household relied. She remembers that she’d often arrive late to the class, hungry and tired. But after three years, she won a DFA scholarship to join the village school, where for the next three years, she was an exemplary student. When she turned 18, however, she said, her parents betrayed her. Despite her known opposition to marrying before her education was complete, her parents agreed to give her in marriage immediately—and to a much older man. “I didn’t want to marry at that time,” she said: But my parents were eager to unburden themselves. [They believe that] parents can only go to heaven after death if their daughters are married. Otherwise there is no chance of paradise. I protested strongly. I didn’t like that man! He was already married and widowed. I was a young girl and I wanted the same.

The night before the marriage was to take place, Nanu took the radical step that she still believes was the best course of action open to her: she eloped with a boy she knew from school. Although his family was poor, he was educated and, like her, he valued her education, even insisting that she continue attending school from his home. “My husband loves me… He said if I thought there could be any future with him, he was 35 Gautam,

Banskota, and Manchanda (2001).

172 Windows into a Revolution ready to accept me… I ran away from my parents’ house for a better future.” When I last met Nani Maya, in 2004, it had been many years since she visited Chorigaon. An event during the last visit made her afraid to return: I was at home cooking. Suddenly Kanchi came running in. “Why are you running inside?” I asked. Then I looked up: there was a man with a gun standing right at the door! “Is this Dil Kumar’s house?” he asked. Then they searched the house from top to bottom. They were from the armed police and they asked, “Where’s Dil Kumar?” They shouted so loudly. (My) father-in-law had been sleeping. The Maoist movement had just begun. I said, “Father-in-law is sick in bed. He (her husband) came from Kathmandu to see his father who is critically ill. He’s gone with our baby to play. I’ll call him.” But the police followed right behind me because they suspected that I might help him run away. [My husband] was at Kaila Ba’s house. After reaching there, the police said, “Come on, let’s go. Who are you—whose son? How long have you been living in Kathmandu? Why did you come here?” [My husband] said, “I’ve been in Kathmandu for ten years and I came here to take my sick father (for treatment), but in vain.” The police were infuriated. When he said he was the only son they said, “You’re lying.” And when I said I lived [with him] in Kathmandu and not in the village, they said, “You’re lying too!” Then Besar Maila’s son intervened and they beat him severely—with their boots, like a football! After beating everyone there, they were about to take my husband. He was carrying the baby and he said to them, “Give the baby to her,” to me. Then I said (to the police), “I told you earlier that our father is sick in bed and I showed you. You’re lying! Are we lying? Or are you lying? Whatever you want to do to him, do it to me!” And I came between them so they couldn’t hit my husband. By then the old men had gathered. They told the police that [my husband] is not like that (i.e., a Maoist). “Who gave you such information? Don’t get angry. He’s not like that; we would have known if he were like that,” they all said. Then the police left, telling him to come to the police post at eight o’clock the next morning. But when we went the next day, none of those armed police were there. They’d already left, beating some tailors on the way … If they had taken him at that time, they would’ve killed him. It had only been 15 days since the teacher, Gunaniddhi Sir—such a good person—had been

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 173 killed. Gunanidhi Sir had never gone for any meeting or done anything… A person like that was taken from his bed and killed near the river. His wife was asked to come the next day with his clothes. She went to the police post and when she asked, “Where is my husband?” they said, “We don’t know.” When she got back to her home she came to know from some cowherd boys who saw him lying dead. He had been shot from behind. After that, she hasn’t received any support from anywhere. The Maoists didn’t kill him and the police deny it… After all that, when I think of the village, I don’t want to go… If they’d taken him away at that time, they would have killed him.

Given this experience, it’s hardly surprising that Nanu trusted the Maoists more than the government or police. After democracy was declared in 1990, she told me, she’d expected “that there would be good facilities in the village, that there would be justice, that working people would be free to do their own work and that there wouldn’t be suppression and exploitation anymore.” However, she observed, “The opposite has happened. Now the ones with power can do anything… There was an idea that people would become free36 following democracy but this has not occurred.” If the King could run the government properly then these problems could be resolved. Or if the Maoists run the government … then people who eat by doing their duty37—there would be no problem of food and clothing for those who do their duty—the government would take care of them. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The poor are dying on every side. But if the conflict could be resolved it wouldn’t have to be like this.

Nanu’s sympathetic mention of “people who eat by doing their duty” suggests her disaffection with, and approbation of, what she perceived as the selfish immorality of the new democracy. In rural Nepal, survival is hard work. And when people live by sweating and struggling and doing what they must—whatever they are obliged to—in order to eat, she believes that the state should help them meet their basic needs. Instead, it seemed that the new democracy was completely indifferent to the suffering of its poor but morally-upright citizens—even as it allowed “the ones with power” to do “anything”. This frustration was common in Chorigaon. “Democracy has done nothing but kill”, one of her neighbours lamented. Another charged, 36 37

swatantra. kartavya.

174 Windows into a Revolution “It’s due to democracy that we have no peace… The multiparty system has not fulfilled anyone’s desires or expectations… We thought there would be development, but now that work has either been stopped, destroyed, or burnt down. Democracy has brought violence and killings, it seems.” In fact, most women held the government responsible for their suffering rather than the rebels who began the war.38 And there was also clear support for rebel values and goals; when asked how best to create a lasting peace, 40 per cent of the respondents answered, in their own words: “The government must meet the wishes of the people.” Jamuna Devi, was particularly adamant on this theme. “People’s oppression and their struggles need to be recognized … Poor people should be on top and the ruling rich below. Only when there is justice for the oppressed will the people trust [the state].” Yet, while echoing rebel sentiments on class, she defended another custom—the observance of menstrual taboos—that the Maoists rejected as discriminatory against women. “I obey this rule very strictly because this is our women’s custom. I will never abandon this tradition,” she declared. When I mentioned the Maoist critique, she insisted that she supported women’s equality absolutely. However, she said, whatever people thought today, this practice did not mark women as subordinate, but made them unique: In the past, we used to eat and wear whatever we were given, but nowadays girls want to eat good food and wear good clothes … Change has come from knowing how to read and write… We came to know that [husbands, mothers-in-laws, and parents are also human beings] and we didn’t need to treat them like gods … [Similarly, we saw that] daughters can study … and stand independently39 on their own feet… But this is our women’s custom and I won’t give it up.

GENDERED SUFFERING AND SOCIAL SUBJECTIVITY I will return to this affirmation of what both the Maoists and the liberal feminists in Nepal regard as an oppressive custom. But let me conclude 38

While I did meet a few people who were critical of the Maoists (including the very aggrieved father of a teenage girl who had run away to join the People’s Army), most people didn’t voice strong objections to the punishment of “class enemies” (humiliation, maiming), which accounted for most Maoist violence against villagers. Some of this could reflect fear of reprisal. However, I heard of many security-force brutalities. 39 swatantra.

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 175 this section by introducing Bina. Unschooled until she joined the class as a teenager, Bina is now married to a policeman with two kids and a paying job at a police academy. Energetic and outgoing, she had been a member of various development committees and a women’s group leader in her village. But after the war started, she feared visiting home: When there was no conflict, I used to go to the village once a month. I love the village. I miss it a lot … I’m living here (in Kathmandu) only because I have to. Otherwise I’d prefer to be there. In our village there are nine people in the police and the army. The Maoists organized a mass meeting in the village and they read out these nine names. “These people shouldn’t serve in the police and army,” they said. “Ask them to leave. Instead, tell us how much salary they need; we will provide it.” I came to know that they said that. “Otherwise, we know where they are and we will kill them.” What can we do? It’s difficult. We have to educate our children. If we’d been well educated we wouldn’t be facing so much trouble,40 would we? Who wouldn’t want to live having fun?41 No one wants to face such pain (dukkha), do they? At night when we sleep in our room, if someone knocks on the door we feel they’ve come to kill us. That’s the kind of fear we live with.

At the same time, she acknowledged a sense of kinship and respect: What they are doing is good. They’re doing it for us… We’re scared because they will kill us because of our jobs and it shouldn’t be like that. We are doing these jobs because we have to. Otherwise, though, they’re not bad. Actually, if police/army recruits die and if Maoists die, it’s the same—all are sons and daughters of Nepal. But they aren’t fighting for personal benefit.42 They’re fighting hoping for something for the future of the country. They’re fighting without any salary, but we’re fighting for our personal benefit. In a way, we’re selfish.43 We’re involved because if we don’t have jobs we can’t feed our kids. But they don’t get a salary. They’re fighting knowing that they may die today or tomorrow. We’re fighting for our own self-interest and they’re fighting for the country.

In these comments, Bina introduces two key oppositions that structure many rural women’s moral thought and shape their attitudes toward 40

chintå. mojmajjå. 42 afno sukha, phaida. 43 svårthi. 41

176 Windows into a Revolution government and the rebellion: self-interest versus being-for-others, and pain and trouble44 versus ease and fun.45 Kathryn March also observes this opposition among rural Tamang women. “Dukkha is suffering,” she says. “It is the physical hurt of illness, hunger, cold, or injury … the weight of knowing the fears, worries, wrongs, and obligations of life; and … the sorrow, sadness, melancholy, or grief ” that comes with hurt and hardship. “Sukha is the opposite: it is the ease and comfort of health, food, warmth, clothing and companionship; it is the feeling of uncomplicated pleasure” and happiness.46 March notes that her informants narrated their lives as hanging in the balance between these emotions and located actions and events in relation to them. Likewise, Bina evaluates experience in these terms. But in her narrative, suffering and joy are also morally inflected. Comparing herself to the rebels, who voluntarily risk death on behalf of their fellow citizens, Bina deems her life selfish. She notes that her involvement in the conflict is motivated by her self-interest, however necessary this may be if she wants to provide her children with an easier life. If the state seemed to have abandoned the duty to care for its poorest citizens, electing instead to pursue its own ease and fun, the Maoists willingly suffered on others’ behalf. And by bearing this pain, as we will see, they established their commitment to “the people of Nepal” and, hence, their worthiness as leaders. There are important differences between approaches to life that interpret experiences in terms of a relative balance of joy and suffering, and those that valorize the unimpeded actualization of an individual’s desires. The Nepali word for “freedom”, “swatantra,” appeared frequently in my interviews as a desirable state of independence, absence of domination or self-sufficiency. Yet, while my friends aspired to, and appreciated, self-determination, they also accepted that meaningful social ties entailed the right to make claims on, and decisions about, other people’s lives and that honoring these claims was part of a broader social ethics. Indeed, it was precisely by fulfilling painful obligations that women expressed respect and love—and signified respectability. Of course, not all suffering is condoned: hunger may be pitied and suffering caused by other people’s greed or selfishness is almost always condemned. But 44

dukkha, chintå. sukha, mojmajjå. 46 March (2002: 36). 45

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 177 inasmuch as social and physical reproduction in the hills is contingent on hard labour and personal sacrifice, painful struggle is considered a normal, even normative, aspect of women’s lives—something fundamental to, and constitutive of, female subjectivity. In Chorigaon, the idea of pursuing personal pleasure to the exclusion of personal duties is not considered empowerment, but selfish individualism. Marriage is often cited as the paradigmatic example of a duty that is both a painful act and the defining experience of Nepali womanhood.47 “In the hills, a daughter has to get married after she grows up,” Bina told me. Like Nani Maya, she had hoped to delay marriage until she finished school because “it’s impossible to study after getting married. You have to work morning and night after becoming a daughter-in-law.” But despite going to such extremes as running all the way to a brother’s home in Kathmandu to avoid a potential match in the village, she found that she couldn’t evade this fate: [Even in Kathmandu] people kept coming to my brother and asking for his sister’s hand. Then my brother said, “Everyone is coming asking for you. You have to marry one.” Maybe my time had come. I couldn’t say no. I got married in Kathmandu and after I’d lived here for a year and I had my daughter in my womb I went back to the village. And life in the village was fun (majjå).

Although parents say it hurts them to send their daughters to a stranger’s home, it is nonetheless recognized as an inevitable part of growing up and becoming a woman. Despite her resistance then, Bina eventually accepts what is widely lamented, but ultimately accepted, as a painful duty to which all girls must submit, but which establishes the relations that will shape her adult life and identity. And, when she finally does agree to give up the relative ease and freedom of childhood for the curtailed autonomy and demanding work of a new daughter-in-law, Bina finds that there can be pleasure—even fun48—in her new life as well.

CONCLUSION: RETHINKING EMPOWERMENT AND POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Returning to the questions about with which I began this chapter, it should be clear now that there are a number of problems with the “failed 47 Cf. 48

Des Chene (1998); Desjarlais (2003); McHugh (2001). majjå.

178 Windows into a Revolution development” thesis as an explanation of why so many Gorkhali women supported the Maoists throughout the People’s War, even as they condemned the violence and bewailed the damage it had done to their communities and their lives. The first problem that this thesis runs into in Gorkha is with the history of development there itself. Relatively speaking, the region was far from “underdeveloped” at the start of the war; there were far poorer and more marginal parts of Nepal where the movement only took hold months or years later. If anything, it would seem that development programmes that hoped to empower rural women by raising their consciousness of the sources of oppression and teaching them skills to use to help themselves, have encouraged these women to claim their rights, or even to fight for them. Given the state’s brutal attacks on teachers and schools especially, it is clear that the security forces, at least, did not believe that more or better education would be a solution to the Maoist threat. 49 Secondly, although the women I interviewed still desired “development”50 and lamented continuing local inequality—the failed development thesis does not explain why almost all of them were skeptical—if not downright cynical—about democracy, which they identified with multi-party governance. It is hardly surprising that almost everyone I knew expressed the desire to see more hospitals, roads, schools and income-generating activities come to where they lived. Who wouldn’t? However, when the women I interviewed described the “development” that they expected to see after 1990, they did not draw lines between 49

Besides the teacher Nani Maya mentioned, who was taken from his home and killed by the armed police, two other instructors at the same school were arrested and each was held for over a month before being released. Another teacher was driven underground early in the war. A few years later, he was betrayed by an informer and killed in the village, running away from his home, to which he had secretly returned to visit his wife and mother. In fact, Chorigaon’s first Maoist martyr was a student who was shot in the school yard by the police just 14 days after the start of the war while he was trying to save a teacher from arrest. Maoist abductions of teachers and schoolchildren for forced “education” and/or induction has been widely reported in other parts of Nepal. However, I did not hear these complaints in Chorigaon, although people there acknowledged that Maoists often visited the schools and staged different types of “programs”. 50 In fact, when I asked what they wanted to see happen in their communities, the number two answer, after “peace”, was development.

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 179 useful infrastructure and rights-based demands. Rather, they spoke of social justice as part of the same process—that is, progress—as electricity, bridges, and better heath care. Given, of course, that aid agencies had promoted democracy as the pinnacle of political development and the lynchpin of modernization as a whole, we might be tempted to see the villagers’ refusal to distinguish between technical inputs and rightsoriented development as a reflection of development discourse, rather than as a contradictory vision. However, the market-based definition of democracy that organizations like USAID pushed throughout the 1990s and comes along with the “failed development” thesis actually undercuts any given programme’s ability to deliver the justice and equality that Nepali citizens expect of an appropriately-developed regime. Inasmuch as the failed development paradigm reduces insurrection to a technical or managerial problem,51 and ignores popular criticism of Nepal’s capitalist democracy and its apparent indifference to the plight of the poor, it seems unlikely that more development will satisfy Gorkhali women’s, or other rebel supporters’, complaints. It’s here—at the point where the failed development paradigm is no longer simply stating the obvious—that I would argue it is genuinely dangerous, because it brings with it a whole host of tacit assumptions about what people are like and what they ought to want from life that have very little to do with these women’s actual lives or what they find important in them. At the same time, however, debunking the marketbased model does not mean that other empowerment programmes prepared them to take up arms either. In “[aiming for] the increasing triumph of individual autonomy” and embracing “freedom from all coercive control”, the conscienticization model also misrecognizes Nepali women’s beliefs and motivations, as we have seen.52 In fact, I would argue that almost everyone vying to influence or understand these women—foreign academics, NGO workers and government counterinsurgency advisors alike—share the same flawed assumptions. What is missing in both these efforts to make sense of the Maoist appeal is an appreciation of the fact that when ideals like development and democracy become part of Gorkhali women’s hopes, expectations and material realities they also enter into and become inflected by local 51 Correctable 52 Asad

by providing more product and/or improving distribution networks. (2003: 71, 79).

180 Windows into a Revolution moral economies. Responding to theories of subaltern rebellion that imagine peasants as naïve dupes who must be made conscious of the real conditions of their lives in order to become politicized,53 James Scott writes: The concept of false consciousness overlooks the very real possibility that the actor’s “problem” is not simply one of misperception. It overlooks the possibility that he may, in fact, have his own durable standards of equity and exploitation— standards that lead him to judgments about his situation which are quite different from those of an outside observer equipped with deductive theory. To put it bluntly, the actor may have his own moral economy. If this is the case, the failure of his views to accord with theory is not due to his inability to see things clearly, but to his values. Of course, one may choose to call these values a form of false consciousness as well. But, to the extent that they are rooted in the actor’s existential needs, to the extent that they are resistant to efforts at “reeducation,” to the extent that they continue to define the situation for him, it is they and not the theory which serves as reliable guides to his sentiments and behavior.54

In insisting that rebellions may be less matters of consciousness and more matters of morality, and that subsistence and politics meet in the realm of values, Scott’s thesis reaches directly to the heart of why the Gorkhali women I worked with give the Maoists their support. Substitute “she” for “he” here and you have a lot of my own argument. However, I don’t think the difference is insignificant. I am not simply—or even particularly—offering a critique of gender-blindness in the failed development hypothesis. Rather, I’m trying to understand how theories of development, empowerment and rural resistance reproduce their own ideological foundations by representing the modernist ideal of the autonomous self who seeks absolute freedom from the sacrifices and suffering associated with social constraints as the essence of human subjectivity. Gender specificity forces us to confront the more general problem of how we understand and theorize people. If our goal is to make sense of “the complexities of the lives and decisions” faced by people who live, or have lived, in the midst of revolution, as the introduction to this volume proposes, we need to clearly understand that rural Nepali women are neither mute victims of socially oppressive traditions, nor naturally blessed with a revolutionary instinct. 53 Or approaches that dismiss the role of human agency in such situations altogether. 54

Scott (1976: 160).

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 181 In Chorigaon, people become themselves through gendered physical and emotional engagements that often involve sacrifice and pain. Suffering being common to all, it is the specifics of each woman’s experience—her chance to study or lack thereof, the hunger she survived, the husband she was given, rejected or chose—that defines her social persona and makes her life unique. Indeed, it’s in the particular ways that each woman manages the dukkha she is dealt that individuals exercise agency.55 What makes this so difficult to see? Asad attributes this misrecognition to the faulty assumption of modernist thought which attributes an “essential freedom” or “natural sovereignty” to the human subject and projects “a conscious agent-subject having both the capacity and the desire to move in a singular historical direction: that of increasing selfempowerment and decreasing pain” everywhere in the world.56 In reality, however, he proposes, “as a social relationship, pain is more than something unpleasant and external that impinges on someone. It is part of what creates the conditions of action and experience:”57 What a subject experiences and how … are themselves modes of living a relationship…. [But] the progressive model of agency diverts attention away from our trying to understand how this is done in different traditions, because of the assumption that the agent always seeks to overcome pain conceived as object and state of passivity.”58

These comments go some distance towards making sense of the problems we encountered above. In fact, as Mahmood writes of her Egyptian informants, women in Chorigaon “did not regard trying to emulate authorized models of behavior as an external social imposition that constrained individual freedom. Rather, they treated socially authorized forms of performance as the potentialities—the ground if you will— through which the self is realized”.59 To be sure, this will not hold true in the same way forever. Nor is it equally true for everyone even today. Arguably, leaving one’s home to join the Maoist cadres in the forests is stepping into a new kind of social

55

Desjarlais (2003). ((2003: 79). 57 Asad (2003: 85). 58 Asad (2003: 84), emphasis in original. 59 Mahmood (2005: 31). 56 Asad

182 Windows into a Revolution identity.60 Indeed, girls who took this route defied social and, usually, parental authority in ways that may be difficult to repair.61 But even here, whatever decisions people make, or perhaps I should say, whatever commitments they decide to undertake, come from thinking of themselves as people who are constituted through relations with others and who value the social outcomes that their sacrifices help create. BIBLIOGRAPHY Asad, T. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Des Chene, M. “In the Name of Bikas”, Studies in Nepali History and Society 1: 259– 70, 1996. ——. “Fate, Domestic Authority and Women’s Wills”, in Selves in Time and Place: Identities, Experience and History in Nepal, (eds.) D. Skinner, A.I. Pach, and D. Holland, 19–50, USA and England: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Desjarlais, R. Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths Among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists, Berkeley,Los Angeles,London: University of California Press, 2003. Escobar, A. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. ——. “Constructing Nature”, in Liberation Ecologies, (eds.) R. Peet and M. Watts, 46– 68, London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum, 1997[1970].

60 Likewise, it may be the outcome of changing subjectivities. Saubhagya Shah has proposed that one effect of the recent development rhetoric of participation is that it has created the “paradoxical subject position of agents without an agency” (2002). Similarly, Judith Pettigrew suggests that “participation in the Maoists enables village youth to participate in a new type of modernity… Young villagers see themselves and are seen as marginal to the “good and proper life” (McHugh 2001) offered by town living and enjoyed by those with the money to re-locate. By taking up the Maoist option, they no longer have to look to the town and “foreign” to be “at the heart of the action”. Membership in the Maoists re-configures perceptions of a consumerist world that excludes them (2003). 61 Hisala Yami, wife of the Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai and former head of the Women’s Front, has been quoted as doubting that women, once radicalized, can ever return to their pre-Maoist homes. “Sons will be welcomed back with open arms, but for the daughters, can there be a return? When they become guerillas, the women set themselves free from patriarchal bonds. How can they go back? That is why the women are more committed” (Gautam, Banskota, and Manchanda 2001: 109). Of the ten or so young women from Chorigaon proper who joined the Maoist army before 2004, at least one is dead and the whereabouts of most others are largely unknown. Only one had returned home to the village before the peace agreement was signed.

Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution 183 Gautam, S., A. Banskota, and R. Manchanda. “Where There Are No Men: Women in the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal”, in Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, (ed.) R. Manchanda, 214–51, London and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. Gautam, S., and A. Shakya. “Maoist Movement: Impact on Women”, in The Kathmandu Post, Kathmandu, Nepal, 1999. Gellner, D. “Introduction: Transformations of the Nepalese State”, in Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, (ed.) D. Gellner, 1–30, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2008 [2003]. ——. Editor. Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2008 [2003]. Grillo, R.D., and R.L. Stirrat (eds.). Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives, Oxford: Berg Press, 1997. Haraway, D. “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inapproprate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape”, in Feminists Theorize the Political, (eds.) J. Butler and J.W. Scott, 86-100, New York: Routledge, 1992. Hutt, M (ed.). Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. Karki, A., and D. Seddon (eds.). The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 2003. Kernot, S., and M. Gurung. Insurgency and Displacement: Perspectives on Nepal, South Asia Forum for Human Rights SAFHR #15, 2003. Leve, L.G. 1983–87 Takukot/Majh Lakuribot Adult Literacy Initiative: Five Year Retrospective Evaluation, Save the Children, US. ——. “Between Jesse Helms and Ram Bahadur: Women, NGOs, ‘Participation’, and ‘Empowerment’ in Nepal”, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 24: 108– 28, 2001. ——. “Nepal’s Missing Middle and the US Search for Global Security”, Paper presented at the conference South Asian Security Challenges for the New Millennium, University of Texas, Austin, 2004. ——. “‘Failed Development’ and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empowerment”. Anthropological Quarterly 80: 127– 172, 2007. Li, T. “Compromising Power: Development, Culture and Rule in Indonesia”. Cultural Anthropology 14: 295–322, 1991. Mahmood, S. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Manchanda, R. “Empowerment with a Twist”, in The Hindu, 1999. March, K.S. “If Each Comes Halfway”: Meeting Tamang Women in Nepal, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. Maycock, M. Whose Revolution: Can the Maoist Movement in Nepal lead to Women’s Empowerment?, School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 2003. McHugh, E. ‘Sliding, Shifting, and Re-drawing Boundaries’, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 20–1: 113–17, 2001. Onesto, L. Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal, London, Ann Arbor, Chicago: Pluto Press and Insight Press Inc, 2005. Parvati, C. “Women’s Participation in the People’s War in Nepal”, in The People’s War in

184 Windows into a Revolution Nepal: Left Perspectives, (eds.) A. Karki and D. Seddon, 165–82. Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 1999. Pettigrew, J. “Guns, Kinship and Fear: Maoists Among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)”, in Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, (ed.) D. Gellner, 305–25, New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2008 [2003]. Pettigrew, J., and S. Shneiderman. “Women and the Maobaadi: Ideology and Agency in Nepal’s Maoist Movement”, in Himal Southasian, Vol. 17, 2004. Pigg, S.L. “Inventing Social Categories Through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34: 491–513, 1992. ——. “Unintended Consequences: The Ideological Impact of Development in Nepal”, South Asia Bulletin, 8: 45–58, 1993. Rankin, K.N. “Governing Development: Neoliberalism, Microcredit, and Rational Economic Woman”, Economy and Society, 30: 18–37, 2001. Schild, V. “Neo-liberalism’s New Gendered Market Citizens: The ‘Civilizing’ Dimension of Social Programmes in Chile”, in Citizenship Studies, 4: 275–305, 2000. Scott, J.C. The Moral Economy of the Peasant, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Shah, S. “From Evil State to Civil Society”, in State of Nepal, (eds.) K.M. Dixit and S. Ramachandran, Kathmandu: Himal Books, 2002. Shakya, S. “The Maoist Movement in Nepal: An Analysis from the Women’s Perspective”, in The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives. (eds.) A. Karki and D. Seddon, 375– 404, Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 2003. Sharma, S. “Caar Jillaa Maovaadiiko Haatma” [Four Districts Controlled by the Maoists], Himalayan Research Bulletin, 10: 30–40, 2000. Shrestha, N. “Becoming a Development Category”, in Power of Development, (ed.) J. Crush, 266–77, London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Spivak, G.C. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, (eds.) Nelson and Grossberg, 271–313, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Thapa, D (ed.). Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal, Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2003. Thapa, D., with B. Sijapati. A Kingdom Under Seige: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency 1996– 2003, Kathmandu: The Printhouse, 2003. World-Education. Naya Goreto: The Nepal National Literacy Campaign, 1989.

FROM ANCESTRAL CONFLICTS TO LOCAL EMPOWERMENT TWO NARRATIVES FROM A NEPALESE COMMUNITY ANNE DE SALES Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.1

T

his chapter concerns the first region that the Maoists declared to be their base area2 in the western part of Nepal. The upper hills of northern Rolpa and eastern Rukum, now known as the “red hills”, have remained the ultimate Maoist refuge, their historical heartland.3 This chapter examines how the ten years of insurrection were reconstructed through two narratives by non-aligned villagers from the same community, some of whom I have known for twenty-five years, since my first period of fieldwork in the area. These narratives concern two different phases of the conflict; they show how the priorities and tactics of the Maoists have changed over the years, and how the community has transformed in response to these developments. Although this region is systematically presented as a Maoist stronghold, reactions 1 Mao

Zedong. Adhar kshetra ilaka. 3 This is confirmed by Kyoko Ogura, who has been covering Maoist activities in the country, and particularly in this area, for the last fifteen years (2007, 2008). 2

186 Windows into a Revolution

Gate to the Maoist heartland in Rukum district: flower offerings to the god of the pass are inserted between the stones (Courtesy Anne de Sales).

of the population to the insurgency were by no means homogeneous. Before proceeding to a detailed presentation of the two narratives, therefore, a few words need to be said about the area as a whole and the particular features of some of the localities it comprises.

NATIONAL HISTORY AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES: THE KHAM-MAGAR MAOIST INSURRECTION

AND THE

The region under scrutiny is the homeland of the Kham-Magar, a minority of about 40,000 people within the larger Magar group, the most populous ethnic minority in Nepal.4 They live in about thirty compact settlements alongside two service castes, the blacksmiths and the tailors-musicians. These Kham-speaking localities are organized into fourteen Village Development Committees,5 which in 2002 were chosen by the Maoists to form a “76th district”6 or “special district”7 with the 4 The

2001 Census reports 1.6 million Magar, about 7 per cent of the population. VDCs. 6 The country was divided into 75 districts following King Mahendra’s 1962 administrative reforms. 7 Bisyas jilla. 5 Henceforth

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 187 aim of developing it into an autonomous region. This project was realized two years later, when the Magarat Autonomous Region8 was declared on 9 January 2004 in the village of Thabang (or Thawang), which features in revolutionary propaganda as the Maoist capital. The first question raised by this situation concerns the specific role of the Kham-Magar in the Maoist revolution. It is tempting to jump to conclusions and see this ethnic population as being at the root of the insurrection. This is no doubt what the Maoist leaders mean when they refer to Magar culture as the cradle of “original communism”, thus providing a label of authenticity for their movement in rural areas. However, recent works show that the implanting of communism in the districts of Rukum and Rolpa started in the 1950s, right after the opening up of the country following the end of the Rana dictatorship, and that until recently, ethnic sentiment has been surprisingly absent in the political mobilization of the KhamMagar.9 As stated above, the commitment of this population to the revolution was far from being uniform within the base area. The media have focussed on Thabang—like the Maoists themselves, who recently published a historical monograph on this village: Krantiko Killa.10 The rebels secured a strong position in a few other VDCs in the region,11 but the situation was much more fluid in the other villages,12 where they confronted daily resistance on a variety of fronts. The Maoists were conceived as outsiders, even though some of them belonged to the village. It seems that a determining factor in the early rooting of the revolutionary movement in certain villages rested on the presence of a charismatic leader who acted as an intermediary between the party and the local community. A brief historical survey of two of the Maoist strongholds in the KhamMagar area will illustrate this assertion. In Thabang, communism was

8

Swayatta Magarat Pradesh. For the historiography of the communist presence in the area see Ogura (2007: 451–66); for a more cursory account see also Gersony (2003: 23–8). The question of ethnic sentiment in relation to Maoism among the Kham-Magar is developed in de Sales 2000 and 2010. 10 The Fort of the Revolution. 11 Uwa in Rolpa District, Mahat and Hukam-Maikot in the south and in the north of Rukum District respectively. 12 Taka-Sera, Kol and Lukum in Rukum District are very large settlements where the situation is far from being homogeneous. 9

188 Windows into a Revolution first introduced in the mid-1950s by a communist leader from a neighbouring district, Mohan Bikram Singh, and his group of activists and schoolteachers who visited the village regularly through the Panchayat period. But the exceptional success achieved in Thabang by the communists in the first general elections in 1959, then by the political wing of the Maoists in 1991,13 was due to a village leader, Barman Budha. Barman succeeded in “growing” communism locally over thirty years of underground activities and creating a consensus among the majority of the villagers at the price of a minority of opponents having to leave the locality during the course of the insurrection. The brutality of the state’s response could not but deepen the villagers’ opposition to the government.14 In Mahat, a neighbouring village located no more than three hours’ walk away from Thabang, a communist activist known as Master Bahadur Shrestha was instrumental in implanting communism in Rukum District. His father was a Newar shopkeeper who had settled in Mahat and had married locally. After finishing school, Master Bahadur studied in India, where he became acquainted with communism. Back home, he was made headmaster of the high school in the district headquarters. His political teaching was also inspired by Mohan Bikram Singh, and he influenced many schoolteachers and students in the district. He is proudly evoked by the inhabitants of Mahat, who claim that they are politically “aware”15 because of him. Here also the random killing of eleven alleged Maoists among the villagers in the course of a counterinsurgency operation by the security forces in September 2002 radicalized the position of the inhabitants in favour of the rebels.

TWO NARRATIVES, TWO PHASES OF THE CONFLICT The two narratives that follow take place in the village of Nakhar16 (south Rukum), where, contrary to the cases of Thabang and Mahat, there is 13 For a good overview of the history of the Communist Party in Nepal see Thapa with Sijapati (2003: 20–32) and Hachhethu (2009). 14 This generally admitted view is developed by Karki and Seddon (2003: 13–37). Concerning specifically the village of Thabang see footnote 3. 15 Cetan. 16 The names of the village and the people—apart from well-known politicians and leaders—involved in the two narratives are pseudonyms.

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 189 no clear leader and where no village headman has ever been elected more than twice. One local schoolteacher, Jiwan, acted as a mediator between the villagers on the one hand and both the state (police, army and development institutions) and the Maoists, on the other. Following Master Bahadur’s teaching, Jiwan was a sympathizer of a revolutionary communist party17 that rejected the Maoist path of violence. His personal convictions did not prevent three of his former students from assuming important responsibilities in the Maoist Movement. One of them, Basanta, led a battalion in the People’s Liberation Army18 and will feature in this chapter in the second story. From this large village of more than three thousand inhabitants, no clear political affiliation had emerged by the time of the event. In an article written soon after the beginning of the insurrection, I suggested that ancestral conflicts made the communities vulnerable to the ambitions of the political parties, who were quick to exploit the situation to their advantage, and that this may have contributed to the swift rooting of the Maoist Movement in the area.19 The first narrative presents a case study of such multilayered local conflicts. Focussing initially on a violent and traumatic intervention in the village by the security forces in September 2002, the narrators were led to retrace the history of these conflicts, suggesting a causal link between the two. This event takes place in the sixth year of the Maoist insurrection and reveals the structural fragility of the community. The second story, by contrast, shows how three years later the population had learned how to question Maoist control, especially over the community’s ritual activities. Once they secured their base areas, the rebels embarked on a Cultural Revolution20 that demanded the eradication of “bad practices” and “blind beliefs”. This was set against the background of a complex articulation of several levels of governance that the Maoists established in this region from 2001. A glimpse into the Maoist politico-administrative organization in turn reveals institutional weaknesses of which the population could take advantage. The two accounts therefore highlight two different phases of the Maoist Movement in the same community, and suggest that in spite of the obvious downfall of the insurrection, 17

Masal.

18 Henceforth

PLA. Sales (2000: 62–5). 20 Samskritik andolan. 19 de

190 Windows into a Revolution which put the population to the test, the villagers also acquired confidence in their ability to stand up to the rebels. I have reconstructed these two narratives on the basis of several accounts that I collected in the course of two visits to the village in 2003 and 2006, and during further meetings with protagonists in Kathmandu, and also in Oxford with an ex-serviceman of the British Gurkha Brigade.21 The narratives are not used here as objective descriptions of the events they relate, but rather as a means of understanding these events as the narrators themselves made sense of them.

NARRATIVE 1: ANCESTRAL CONFLICTS In this case, the history of the village conflicts is presented in the first part. In the second part, the story develops around a more recent and bitter conflict between two protagonists. In the last part, what in normal circumstances would probably have remained an ordinary village dispute takes a dramatic turn in the context of the insurrection. Two factions in the village The landmark of the people’s upheaval of 1990 is often called “democracy”22 in village speech. This is how, I was told that, before democracy, there were two factions in the village. One was led by the village headman,23 Ram Kumar Gharti, and the other by Karka Bahadur Pun, a local schoolmaster. Both belonged to relatively wealthy families, who in the past, before the Panchayat reforms of 1962, were traditional office-holders. Thus Ram Kumar was the son of the last tax collector,24 while Karka Bahadur the son of the last village headman.25 21

The main narrators of the first story are Jiwan, the schoolteacher mentioned above, and his wife, who happens to be the sister of one of the two protagonists of the conflict. The British Gurkha is Jiwan’s younger brother. The other protagonist of the conflict, Ram Kumar, was my host in the village in the 1980s. I met him again in Kathmandu several times, the last time just before his death in 2003. The other narrators include Ram Kumar’s widow; the schoolteacher’s cousin who accompanied me on my trip to the village in 2003; a shaman and his wife, and my porter on the way. They are all Kham-Magar in their forties and fifties. 22 loktantra. 23 pradhan pancha. 24 jimmawal. 25 mukhiya.

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 191 The two families intermarry or, more precisely, the daughters of Ram Kumar’s lineage marry into Karka Bahadur’s lineage. This formerly prescribed form of marriage of a man with the daughter of his classificatory maternal uncle is based on a complementary opposition between the two lineages of wife-givers and wife-takers. It is still valued, and serves to structure the largely endogamous Kham-Magar communities.26 During the thirty years of the Panchayat period, the two Nakhar leaders were courted by politicians competing to occupy the only seat allocated to Rukum District in the National Council,27 the Parliament of the time. The scene was dominated by three descendants of Thakuri kings, through ever-changing strategies of alliances against one another.28 During the ten years preceding the multi-party system, Gopalji Jang Shaha and Druba Bikram Shaha occupied the Rukum seat in turn. Ram Kumar supported the former, while Karka Bahadur supported the latter. There was no reason for the local leaders supporting their respective patrons other than the necessity of belonging to a faction in order to participate in local politics. The parliamentary elections in 1991 shuffled the cards but the same factionalism was at work. The Nakhar leaders withdrew their support for the two politicians, who in the meantime joined political parties: Gopalji in the Nepali Congress and Druba Bikram in the National Democratic Party or RPP,29 which was in favour of the king. Ram Kumar campaigned for the United People’s Front, the political wing of the Maoists, which won one of the two seats that were at that time allocated to Rukum District. Although he used to walk around with a tape-recorder playing revolutionary songs at full blast, he was unable to raise much enthusiasm in his co-villagers.30 Karka Bahadur supported the more popular Communist Party or the United Marxist Leninists,31 and rejected the path of violence. In a radically different political landscape, the two local leaders kept the village divided into two factions. 26 On

this subject see (Oppitz 1988) and my monograph (Sales 1991: 47–80). Rastriya Panchayat. 28 See Ogura on the political competition of the three Shahs in the Panchayat period (2007: 445–50). 29 Rastriya Prajatantra Party. 30 This scene took place in 1994 and is described at the beginning of an article devoted to the study of these songs (de Sales 2003). 31 Henceforth UML. 27

192 Windows into a Revolution Ram Kumar’s arrest and false accusation In 1996, Ram Kumar left the village with a dozen porters from Nakhar, carrying on their backs loads of hashish to be sold in the bazaar of Nepalganj, close to the Indian border. However, just at the point where the mountain trails meet the road, in the southern district of Dangdeukhuri, the convoy was arrested by the police. Asked where his goods came from, Ram Kumar denounced Karka Bahadur as his supplier and gave a dozen other names, all friends of his enemy. Karka Bahadur was subsequently summoned to the police station in Gorahi. Friends and family begged him not to go, seeing in this denunciation a clear sign of revenge on the part of Ram Kumar. They also knew that, quite apart from being involved in the illegal hashish trade, the Nakharles would be suspected of Maoist sympathies—Rukum District was known as the rebels’ heartland—and that the risk of being jailed was high. Karka Bahadur nonetheless turned this into a point of honour and insisted on going to the police with six of his friends. As an educated man, he trusted that he would be able to defend himself. At the moment of departure, a little drunk, he even made a few jokes, convinced that justice would be dispensed and Ram Kumar would be making a fool of himself. However, the villagers’ fears were confirmed: the two parties were both jailed for two years. A large group of Nakharles from Karka Bahadur’s faction subsequently threw stones at Ram Kumar’s house, destroying a part of it. In response, Ram Kumar looked for protection from the RPP—he might have resumed his relationship with Druba Bikram whom he had supported under the Panchayat. In the course of a brief visit back to his village, he even fixed the RPP’s flag on the roof of his house. But he stopped living there, staying instead in the district headquarters or in Kathmandu, where I met him again in 2003. The ex-village headman, son of the last Jimmawal, was a shadow of his former self, having failed in his political ambitions and lost all credibility in the eyes of his community. He died of cancer in 2006 and his funeral took place in Dang, where his brother, who had retired from the Indian Army, had settled with his family twenty years ago. The security forces in Nakhar Karka Bahadur’s fate was hardly any more enviable. Released from jail, he was asked by the Maoist authorities to preside over the first “village

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 193 people’s government”32 during 1999–2000. As already noted, he was a supporter of the communists (UML) and did not share the rebels’ choice of conducting a protracted war, but he felt that he could not refuse. In September 2002, a sizeable detachment of security forces—more than a thousand according to villagers—came to the village, in pursuit of Maoists who had just secured a victory in a clash at the district headquarters of Arghakhanchi. Surprised by the military troop at a bend in the path, four young blacksmith girls ran away. Soldiers fired at them on the grounds that only Maoists would run to escape. One fell down wounded. The story goes that a soldier, seeing that she could not be saved, ended her suffering by finishing her off. Pharki Kamini was 17 years old. After this introduction, the troops settled down in the village for their morning meal. The leaders stayed at Jiwan’s, the largest house in the village. In the meantime Karka Bahadur, who was said to have been a little drunk again, was hiding in a house on a slope overhanging the village. The soldiers summoned a large gathering of villagers and inquired about Maoists: Who were they? Where were they? Sentries with binoculars looked around carefully. The story goes that Karka Bahadur was so nervous that he could not help peeping out of his hiding place. One sentry’s attention was drawn to his strange behaviour; he was caught and then searched. Bills of goods transported by mules from the bazaar were found in his pockets and taken as evidence of his affiliation with the rebel movement. He was then interrogated, beaten and tortured for several hours until he gave the names of three members of the village people’s government. Satisfied with their capture, the soldiers decided to pursue their route towards the villages of Taka and Sera, a short day’s walk towards the north. The four Nakharle prisoners joined two other handcuffed villagers whom the soldiers had previously caught in the village of Jelbang, on their way up. When the troop approached the pass leading to the next valley, the two prisoners were shot dead. Their corpses were left behind without burial. On reaching their destination, the Nakharles were locked up in the school at Sera, while the soldiers went off looking for more “Maoists”: two women coming back from relatives were stopped on the way and four more villagers were arrested. It seems that only one of these new 32

Gaun jana sarkar.

194 Windows into a Revolution prisoners was a Maoist supporter from Taka: a picture of him, his face covered with red powder, was regarded by members of the squad as evidence of his affiliation to the movement. The soldiers decided to leave the village at night with their ten prisoners. From this point, the versions of the story differ, but all agree that the Maoist sympathizer was separated from the group and killed, while the others managed to escape. The favourite version is that one of the soldiers, a Kham-Magar from Rolpa, took pity on the prisoners and at one point suggested to them secretly in Kham, which the other soldiers could not understand, that they run away. Karka Bahadur, who has been seriously afflicted by the bad treatment he had received and was anyway handicapped by poor eyesight, fell from a cliff and died. The others found their way back to their respective villages. The day after these murders, Radio Nepal announced that ten Maoists had been killed while trying to escape. The Nakharles buried their dead: the young blacksmith girl in the cemetery of the village, the two prisoners from Jelbang at the place known as Sungure, where they had been killed, and finally Karka Bahadur at the spot where his body was found by a shepherd a few weeks later.33 Taking advantage of this opportunity to swell their ranks, the Maoists made them “martyrs” of the revolution: the police practice of branding as Maoists individuals with no such affiliation ironically plays into the hands of the insurgents themselves. Whatever the real position of the local population may be on this matter is irrelevant to either side. Local conflicts and national politics This account shows how opposition in the village between two lineages of pre-Panchayat office-holders continued at the level of the district during the Panchayat period. This conflict between the two village leaders was carried on under new labels after the restoration of a multi-party system through opposition between the Maoists and the communists (UML). Factionalism has been analyzed as the modality of political action in the hills; ideological justifications come second to this binary mechanism of affiliation to opposed coalitions.34 However, the conflicts that had been 33 The

Maoist supporter from Taka was buried by his co-villagers. the most recent analysis of such systems in Nepal see Ramirez (2000: 243–64 and 281–9). 34 For

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 195 locally circumscribed were now part of larger networks that lay beyond the control of the local actors. In the first part of the story, Ram Kumar’s accusation against Karka Bahadur made public a village conflict between two factions. In the context of the insurrection, the situation was subsequently used by both the police, as suggested in the second part of the story, and by the Maoists who asked Karka Bahadur to chair the first village people’s government. Following the damage to his house by Karka Bahadur’s faction, Ram Kumar sought protection from the RPP. It is not certain whether his denunciation of his enemy as being the chairman of the Maoist village people’s government was a token of his goodwill, but it is likely. When the security forces stormed into the village looking for Maoists, it is also likely that they knew who to look for; more likely, in any case, than the scenario of Karka Bahadur giving himself away by popping up from his hiding place like an irresponsible drunkard. The ancestral conflicts of which the two local leaders were the most recent avatars opened the door to the greater intervention of both the state and the rebels. This story, involving two prestigious families whose opposition has partly oriented the history of the village, was obviously meaningful for the villagers themselves and was related to me on several occasions. The accounts would be accompanied by contradictory comments: although the division of the village into two factions obviously predated the multiparty system, “democracy” was nevertheless accused of generating conflicts within the community and of causing rifts in lineages as a result of party politics: “Before we were all brothers, now brothers are enemies”. At the same time it was believed that before democracy villagers had no idea of the collective good. They were trying to get by as best they could, their horizon limited to their own family, lineage or locality. Now, by contrast, “people who understand”—meaning those with a little education and interest in politics—knew what opposition35 meant and felt ready to fight for a better world. This opposition is not of the structural kind that characterized conflicts between lineages and factions, but points to a new, emerging form of political action such as activism.36 For some of their covillagers, the deaths of Ram Kumar and Karka Bahadur may have represented the disappearance of a world for which they felt no nostalgia. 35

birod. Gellner and Karki (2007) for a sociology of activism in Nepal.

36 See

196 Windows into a Revolution Others may have preferred to rejoice in the marriage of Karka Bahadur’s son with a daughter of Ram Kumar’s paternal uncle in 2007. In actualizing the ancestral matrimonial alliance between the two lineages, this marriage brought out the traditional resources that the society had for the temporary resolution of the conflicts it had generated. A contrasted use of violence There is a contrasted use of violence by the security forces and by the Maoists. The story recounted shows soldiers on a punitive expedition, searching for almost any victim who would enable them to show their superiors results after their return. Through torture, they obtained a few names and went in search of the “Maoists” who had thus been denounced. Most often the people actually involved in the movement had left before their arrival. The state forces, finding themselves empty-handed, then looked for any alternative opportunity to fulfil their mission. By contrast, villagers can explain, if not exonerate, murders perpetrated by Maoists. These killings are presented as a response to a betrayal. Nobody was killed by Maoists in the village of Nakhar, but the two Maoist executions I was told of were understood as acts of revenge, reprisals against informers who had led the police to murder villagers. In both the cases, it was also specified that the victims had had their throats cut with the emblematic knife of the hill population, the khukuri. The explanation put forward for this particular method is that Maoists were short of munitions and wished to save their bullets for encounters with the army or the police. However, the descriptions of these killings could leave no doubt about the impact they had on the population: one victim had his throat cut only partially, in order to ensure a slow death, while the other first had his thighs skinned. The security forces obtain denunciations through torture, which is notably practised in secret, and their killings are seen as sheer persecution. The Maoists, by contrast, tend to stage torture as part of an exemplary process of dissuasion against spying, and their murders are understood as fair reprisals. Although the Maoists in charge of the killing may be unknown to the villagers, investigations would reveal how much these murders are woven into the social fabric of the communities and therefore make sense to the villagers, in contrast to the killings perpetrated by the security forces. The absurd murder of the young blacksmith girl showed the incompetence of the soldiers in their search for Maoists, their

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 197 nervousness and, most probably, their fear.37 The courage of the Maoist fighters, by contrast, is often praised by villagers. The Maoists do not fear anything; their use of violence is not a reaction to fear but an expression of their power. The first narrative, which concerns the initial phase of the insurrection and its local rooting, is dominated by physical violence or by the fear of physical violence. However, villagers are also subjected to a more subtle form of violence concerning the image that others have of them to the extent of seeing no alternative, if the peace fails, to taking to the jungle or hiding in the city. While they are not rebels themselves, they are convinced that they would be seen as such and persecuted nevertheless. This is why his friends tried to dissuade Karka Bahadur from going to the police station in Gorahi. They knew that, coming from Rukum District, he would be cast as a Maoist and subsequently jailed. The second narrative will illustrate further this resentment in the face of prejudice that characterizes the Kham-Magar’s relationship with the outside world. The episode in question occurred in the later phase of the insurrection when the Maoists, better established in their base area, felt they could undertake the re-education of the “backward peasants” in a more systematic manner. In spite of the lengthy writings on the necessity of replacing the “culture of the oppressors” with a “new scientific culture”, the Maoist cadres in charge of implementing the Cultural Revolution ended up facing ideological contradictions to which they could find no better response than arbitrary sanctions. This second narrative concerns a village festival involving a blood sacrifice that was banned by the village people’s government on the grounds that it was a barbaric activity.

NARRATIVE 2: THE MAOISTS AND THE “BACKWARD” PEASANTS This account is centred on a retired British army Gurkha in his forties who was returning to his village in the summer of 2005, at a time when the Maoists were establishing the Magarant Autonomous Region, and

37 Numerous

reports remark on the poor equipment and the lack of proper training of the police in the first phase of the insurrection. The security forces, involved in the event related here, were better trained, but it shows nevertheless that these counterinsurgency operations were often characterized by panic and unnecessary brutality.

198 Windows into a Revolution holding elections at the village and the district levels.38 Saha is the younger brother of Jiwan, the schoolteacher mentioned above. The Maoists stored munitions in Saha’s old house, which had been empty since he had settled in Kathmandu with his family. One day the house was blown up after someone mishandled the explosives. This accident encouraged Saha to go back to the village: while as a wealthy Gurkha pensioner he had previously feared that the local Maoist authorities would ask him for substantial donations, he felt he was now in an advantageous position to face the rebels, who were willing to organize collective labour to rebuild his house. From the moment of his arrival at the bazaar in Sullichaur, he saw the PLA parading through the streets with their guns, as if they were in a conquered land, while the Nepalese Army was garrisoned in a camp no more than half an hour away. On his way to the village, he had to pass two Maoist checkpoints in Kasala and Uwa. The rebels let people go to the villages freely but travellers needed to show a pass from the local people’s government in order to leave the district or to go to the headquarters. Identity cards and passports are obtained at the headquarters and the Maoists’ concern was to prevent outmigration. Concerned by the history of his village and aware of its cultural wealth, Saha had a retirement project to record local ceremonies and festivals. He organized his visit to coincide with two important festivals that he wanted to film with his new camera. The first was in honour of the god of the soil, Bhume, under the patronage of a notable, while the second was said to drive away the witch of white clay, under the aegis of the shamans. Both the festivals are celebrated in order to secure the prosperity of the place. The “boycott” of the dances It is customary for young boys and girls to spend the night at the top of the hill that overhangs the village before the sacrifice to Bhume. They bring down pure water and wild flowers with which the sacrificial ram will be worshipped before being beheaded as an offering to the god of the place. This is not the place to provide a symbolic analysis of this festival,39 but it is worth adding that after the sacrifice, villagers of all 38 See 39 See

Ogura (2008) for a detailed description of these elections. de Sales (1998).

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 199 ages start dancing the famous Bhume steps and keep dancing until it starts raining. The dances, which are performed to the accompaniment of the drums and oboes of the Damai40 may last several days, and are the pride of the villagers. When the young people came down from the pastures that morning, numbering more than a hundred, the village people’s government banned the sacrifice to Bhume on the grounds that the ritual killing of animals was a barbaric and backward practice, though dancing was allowed. A long debate took place, and the president of the village people’s government ended the villagers’ protestations by threatening that the ram sacrifice would be at their own risk. The villagers decided to ‘boycott’ (sic) the festival: no sacrifice, no dancing. A few days later, Santos Budha, the chief of the People’s Government of the Magarat Autonomous Region, came to visit. A native of Thabang, he had been a schoolteacher in Nakhar and knew Saha. When he apologized for the loss of the house, Saha seized the opportunity to question him about the banning of the festival: “Why do you destroy our culture? How shall we be recognised if we lose our festivals? Why don’t you let people enjoy themselves?” Santos explained: “We tell our cadres to overcome bad habits and bring about a cultural revolution. We give them some power to do this. But they do not understand, they are not educated and instead of frightening the sheep they kill it [instead of acting gently, they are too harsh]. More competent people are given higher responsibilities in the party.” Santos agreed that the villagers would be allowed to honour Bhume as usual the following year. The village festival called rankhe41 or jhankri mela,42 which is held a month later, should feature an assemblage of about twenty shamans, one per lineage, to drive away the witch of the white clay. However, the Maoist rule was that no more than three shamans could perform together and for no longer than a day. The reason given for this was that having a large number of ritual specialists involved unnecessary expenses, a high consumption of alcohol and many chicken sacrifices. The celebration of the shamanic ceremony was therefore seriously questioned when a brigade

40 Tailor-musicians. 41 Torch. 42

Shamanic gathering.

200 Windows into a Revolution commander of the PLA, Basanta, alias Marshal, arrived in Nakhar to spend a few days with his family, having left his troops to the south of Rolpa. Basanta or the beginning of a legend Basanta had been a former pupil of Jiwan and was now in his late twenties. His father was educated and used to act as the village treasurer. His elder brother, Cinte, was a sub-inspector in the police and was posted in TakaSera after the launching of the People’s War, while he himself joined the rebels. Cinte had retired and was back in the village where he had the reputation of being a good-for-nothing. By contrast, Basanta was both respected and feared. He was said to be brave, hard, “like Hitler”, but fair. He had taken part in numerous battles with the army and the police, and had often been wounded, needing to take analgesics to soothe his chronic pain. I was often told how clever Basanta was and how he could escape under any circumstances. Once he was captured and taken to the police station in Mahat—this was before he joined the PLA. Although he was handcuffed, he managed to jump from the first floor and hide among the tall stems of maize. He threw one of his shoes in one direction to attract the attention of the police, leaving him time to run away and evade his pursuers. On another occasion, seeing the police approaching the village, he ran towards the river and threw his jacket into the water, then his shirt, then his trousers and all his clothes until he was left with only a pair of underwear. A group of women were on their way to the field and gave him the opportunity to hide among them. He then found the favourable moment to disappear safely into the forest. These anecdotes are the elements of a legend in the making. Saha joined Basanta in a game of chess and told him about the conversation he had had with Santos and the latter’s promise to let the villagers celebrate the festival as usual. Basanta agreed on the need to protect local customs, but added: “Nobody from this village is going to join the party. The party does not think much of the Nakharles and blames me for not recruiting more people. Several times I have had to save the village from the party’s anger. The Maoists could have been much harsher with the people here. I argue that our villagers give good support when it is needed.” Before he left, Basanta summoned a meeting at which the president of the People’s Government apologized publicly

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 201 for the ban on the sacrifice to Bhume, and Basanta announced that rankhe would be performed as usual. That day seventeen shamans and their assistants gathered at the place known as the Bhume path. While they were singing and beating their drums, members of the militia were walking up and down, carrying their guns across their shoulders, but they did not interrupt the performance. Seeing Saha filming the scene, a militiaman started a conversation and explained that he and his colleagues had been sent by the “area-in-charge” of the party to make sure that the shamans would not perform their ceremony, but that the order had been changed to let them gather as usual. Commentary The first narrative revolved round the rooting of the Maoist Movement in a community made vulnerable by ancestral conflicts. Saha’s account, by contrast, reveals the overwhelming Maoist presence weighing on the everyday life of the villagers and the intransigent response of a population that ended up sticking together. It may be appropriate to recall here the quotation from Mao that provides the epigraph to this chapter: if indeed oppression elicits resistance, it also helped the community to paper over its cracks when confronting what was perceived as an outside threat against its traditions. The complex articulation of several levels of governance This second narrative clearly depicts an occupied country: check posts, travel passes and armed soldiers parading in the bazaar offer ample evidence that this was the case in 2005. To this should be added the taxes levied on all sources of income. These were mainly provided by the trade of natural resources: hashish, honey, hemp and wild herbs such as the famous “life plant”.43 A specific analysis of the tax system would show how what was previously organized along kinship rules (such as the collection of honey by lineages) was now reorganized on a village basis—or more precisely on the basis of wards, small units into which large villages are subdivided. Individual businesses are also reorganized, with a system of turnover on a ward basis. This allows the village people’s 43 Cordyceps sinensis. In Nepali jiwan buti, and in Tibetan yartsa gumbu or “Summer grass winter worm”.

202 Windows into a Revolution government to maintain efficient control over local trade through the imposition of fixed taxes. Other taxes were imposed on the three small shops of the village and on the mules necessary to carry the goods from the southern bazaars. The economic burden imposed on the villagers by the Maoists and their guerrilla war is far from negligible.44 However, the Maoists’ use of the sums of money deducted from the village wealth was not questioned, in stark contrast to the profound distrust that the villagers had of government institutions. Although most of the Nakharles did not agree with the Maoist path of violence, they would contrast the hardship endured by the PLA soldiers with the cosy lifestyle of the politicians in Kathmandu. It was the methods, not the morality, of the Maoists that were criticized. It seems that fairness or equity is the virtue that villagers most value. “Basanta is hard but fair”: in this case it means that he did not blindly apply the Maoist rule banning shamanic gatherings—unlike the village people’s government, he listened to the people and bent the rules. He also had the power to do this as a legitimate leader. Again, this is unlike the president of the village people’s government, Bahadur, an uneducated blacksmith from the neighbouring village of Mahat, who, in this story, looks like a loser: the “area in charge” asked him to eradicate superstitions and carry out the Cultural Revolution, but he ended up having to apologize for what a PLA commander had in the meantime considered as a mistake. The village people’s government is subject to the orders of the party, which is the highest authority, but the story above illustrates that the army may have the last word. Basanta’s decision here is in accordance with yet another authority—Santos, the chief of the Autonomous Region. The latter did not hide the fact that the party was short of competent people, a fact which explains that the village people’s government is the weak link in the Maoist administrative structure.45 Moreover, the village people’s government had also to negotiate with 44 Jiwan put the amount of the Nakharles’ donations to the party at twelve thousand rupees per year and the average number of Maoists whom they had to feed in the course of a year at 400 or 500. When a large number of rebels settled in the village for several days or even weeks before a military operation (as was the case before the Beni attack in March 2004), they used to take care of their own food, but rely on the villagers for water, wood and shelter. 45 This conclusion corroborates Ogura’s observations (2008).

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 203 villagers who were organized in what was loosely called the “village council”. This council was not in any way a formal institution and was composed of “interested” villagers revolving around Jiwan, who was known for his diplomatic qualities. The president of the village people’s government would often come and discuss village matters with Jiwan. As a blacksmith sitting at the fireplace in the house of a “master”,46 the term by which the Magars were until recently called by the service castes, he never seemed quite relaxed. One may wonder why both Santos Budha and Basanta showed so much clemency towards the Nakharles. As the president of the newly elected people’s council of the Magarant Autonomous Region, Santos might have been in a position to show that although the party provided ideological guidance, local governments had the authority to make their own policies, notably in respecting local customs. The villagers knew how to take advantage of the overlapping spheres of influence—village people’s government, regional in charge, the PLA, people’s council of the Magarant Autonomous Region—within the newly-formed Maoist political and administrative organization in their area. Basanta is a son of the village and may become a local hero as the stories of his escapes suggest. He acted as a leader, knowing what he could and could not ask of his people if he wanted to keep their support. It is a fact that villagers may accept economic restrictions, forced donations in cash and kind and even forced labour—as subjects of the king of Nepal they have been submitted to these hardships for as long as they can remember. However, ritual activities seem to belong to a domain that is closed to negotiations. The Maoists’ contradictions How are we to understand this particular sensitivity of the population on religious matters? Anthropologists have put a great deal of effort into showing that in Nepal religion is not a separate domain of social life. If a few urban Nepalese may gradually convert to a more modern attitude that tends to limit religion to the private sphere, this is not the case of rural Nepal. The sacrifice to Bhume and the shamanic gathering mobilize the community as a whole and activate principles that lie at its foundation: clan organization of the society, political history of the community and 46

bista.

204 Windows into a Revolution mythical representations of the relationships with nature. I once asked why, during rankhe, the shamans had to gather at the house of a notable where they were fed. “In the past, chiefs would both lead people and secure their food for the year,” was the answer. This encapsulates the political morality that used to preside over the life of the communities, according to present-day villagers. Feeding the population and securing the prosperity of the community implied maintaining good relationships with the supernatural owner of the place. In this perspective the villagers’ strong reaction against Maoist intervention in their village festival could simply be seen as a refusal of social change. As a matter of fact, this is how the Maoists themselves see the villagers—conservative prisoners of their erroneous beliefs. However, the situation may be more complex. The young people who strongly opposed the Maoists’ ban on the sacrifice to Bhume would be the first to express doubts that offering blood and dancing would bring monsoon rain. They would also deny fearing that the non-observance of the prescribed ceremony would automatically bring about a cosmological catastrophe. And yet, dancing without sacrifice would deprive the festival of its transcendental dimension and therefore of its purpose. Reducing this ritual system of thought to irrational reasoning, and blood offering to a barbaric activity, was seen by the villagers as the Maoists’ condemnation of what was specific to them, the cultural language through which they interpreted the world. The anger that they manifested in “boycotting”—although applied to religious activities, the use of this term is accurately borrowed from the political repertoire—their ritual dances, in spite of the fact that these were allowed by the village Maoist authorities, may be better understood as the rejection of the image of backward peasants that the Maoists imposed on them through their ban on the blood sacrifice to the local god. They denied the rebels the right to trim their culture and transform it into one of the folkloric performance that features in Maoist cultural programmes. Their boycott is an ethnic claim that puts the Maoists in the paradoxical situation of repressing the people for whom they are meant to be speaking.

CONCLUSION: TOWARDS LOCAL EMPOWERMENT One common feature emerges out of the two stories recounted above: the game of hide-and-seek that villagers have to play with both the security

From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment 205 forces and the Maoists. This is literally the case in situations of danger, when they have to escape to save their lives. The nascent legend of Basanta put this predicament in pleasant terms, but oral tradition may have focussed here on what is actually the villagers’ perception of these ten years of insurrection. Showing oral tradition at work, the figure of the escape artist evokes the happy dénouement of a story characterized by uncertainty and fear. The game of hide-and-seek continues with the representations that each has of the other. Villagers are taken for Maoists even when they are not, and this may lead them to feel that they have no alternative to becoming Maoists. They are also seen as peasants blinded by wrong beliefs, and escaping this prejudice involves violence, even if this means turning this violence partly against themselves, as they did when they refused to dance. The objective of this chapter was to reveal the parameters at work in the historical process of social change that are not always apparent if the observation remains at the level of the national events. In concentrating on the area known as the historical heartland of the insurrection, we observed first that the conditions of penetration of the Maoist Movement varied considerably according to the localities. The presence of communist activists or leaders, previous to the People’s War, explains the closer engagement of certain localities. In other villages such as the one under scrutiny, the situation is more fluid, although the arbitrary violence of the counterinsurgency appears to have radicalized the population in all the communities in the base area. The two narratives aimed at showing the transformation of a community that had been under Maoist control for ten years. In the first account, the violent irruption of the security forces into the village turned the spotlight on the structural features and historical conditions which made the community vulnerable to the outside intervention, whether by the rebels or by the state. The second narrative illustrated the obverse side of the same community: its capacity to stand up to oppression. This capacity was mobilized on the occasion of a Maoist ban on a sacrifice to the local god. This took place during the Maoist local government’s elections within the newly proclaimed Autonomous Magarant Region. Although, as stated in the introduction of this chapter, ethnic politics did not develop at the outset in the Kham-Magar area, the fact that the confrontation took place in defence of a ritual activity suggests a gradual politicization of local culture in response to the imposed

206 Windows into a Revolution Maoist ideology. Whatever path the Kham-Magar pursues in order to participate in national politics in the future, the active resistance of the villagers who confronted the Maoist People’s Government provides evidence of the empowerment of the community. The heavy toll taken by ten years of violent insurrection cannot be neglected. The juxtaposition of the two narratives nevertheless reveals a process of political maturation characterized by a critical analysis of the past and a nascent confidence in the expression of needs and rights. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bhandari, K.B. Krantiko Killa Thabang, Kathmandu: Offset Press, 1996. Gellner, D. & Karki, M.B. “The Sociology of Activism in Nepal: Some Preliminary Considerations”, In H. Ishii, D. N. Gellner & K. Nawa (eds.), Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal, Delhi: Manohar, 2007: 361–97. Gersony, R. “Sowing the Wind: History and Dynamics of the Maoist Revolt in Nepal’s Rapti Hills”, Report submitted to Mercy Corps International, October 2003. Hachhethu, K. “The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): Transformation From an Insurgency Group to a Competitive Political Party”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 33–4, 2009: 38–71. Karki, A. & Seddon, D. “The People’s War in Historical Context”. In Karki, A. & Seddon, D. The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 2003: 3–48. Ogura, K. “Maoists, People and the State as Seen from Rolpa and Rukum”, In H. Ishii, D.N. Gellner, K. Nawa (eds.), Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal. Delhi: Manohar, 2007: 435–75. ——. “Maoist People’s Governments, 2001–05: The Power in Wartime”, In D.N. Gellner and K. Hachhethu (eds.), Local Democracy in South Asia: Microprocesses of Democratization in Nepal and its Neighbours, Delhi: Sage, 2008: 175–231. Oppitz, M. Frau für Fron. Die Dreierallianz bei den Magar West-Nepals, Francfort: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988. Ramirez, P. De la Disparition des Chefs, Une Anthropologie Politique Népalaise, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2000. Sales, A. de. Je Suis né de Vos Jeux de Tambours, Nanterre: Société d’ethnologie, 1991. ——. “Dieu Nourricier et Sorcier Cannibale. Les Esprits des Lieux Chez les Magar du Nord (Népal)”, Etudes Rurales, 1998: 143–4, 45–65. ——. “The Kham-Magar Country, Nepal: Between Ethnic Claims and Maoism”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 2000: 41–71. ——. “Remarks on Revolutionary Songs and Iconography”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 2003: 5–24. ——. “The Biography of a Magar Communist”. In D. Gellner (ed.), Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia, London: Sage Publications, 2010: 17–45. Thapa, D. with B. Sijapati. A Kingdom under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2003, Kathmandu: The Print House, 2003.

207

TERROR IN A MAOIST MODEL VILLAGE IN MID-WESTERN NEPAL MARIE LECOMTE-TILOUINE

D

eurali, a village in mid-western Nepal, was considered to be a Maoist bastion, and was declared a model village by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)1 in September 2005. It is a village that I know well as I had resided there for several months in the late 1980s, and visited it every year until 1996. This chapter is based on my research during a two-week period in 2005 when I returned to the village after nine years, which corresponded to the intensification of the People’s War. I visited it again in 2006 and the situation had changed considerably between autumn 2005 and 2006. However, I have chosen to reflect on what I observed in September 2005, in order to fuel our limited knowledge of the Maoist policy in the villages of western Nepal. I will focus on the climate of terror which characterized the locality at that time.2 “Terreur” was defined by Montesquieu as the despotic government’s 1 Henceforth

CPN (M). For a description of collectivization and an analysis of the political changes introduced by the Maoists in Deurali, see Lecomte-Tilouine (2010). For a detailed account of the People’s War by several villagers of Deurali interviewed in March 2009, see Lecomte-Tilouine forthcoming. 2

208 Windows into a Revolution principle in 1748, and the term was later used to designate the regime initiated by Robespierre in 1793 after the French Revolution, as well as in the form of “white terror”, the royalist violent actions of 1795. In the English-Nepali dictionary edited by P.S.J.B. Rana in 1936, the word “terror” is defined as atyanta krås or åtas, which can be translated as “intense fear”. If I have chosen to describe the climate in Deurali as “terror”, it is precisely because this term, expressed as åtas, was used by an inhabitant of Deurali to qualify the Maoist action in his village. He did so in a particularly explicit manner, since at that time he was correcting my use of the term æar, meaning fear. The villager’s subjective perception of the political situation in his locality finds echoes in the Nepalese conception of some forms of politics as åta´ka.3 This notion which first referred to fear, phobia and panic is now4 widely used to designate political terror and/or terrorism. During the People’s War, åta´ka was used by the authorities to qualify the revolutionary side only, while the

The fear to speak in Deurali, September 2006 (Courtesy Marie Lecomte-Tilouine). 3 In discourses, åta´ka is often opposed to ånanda, happiness, peace of mind, delight. 4

Åta´ka is not an entry in Turner’s Nepali-English dictionary published in 1931 and is not found as a definition of “terror” in Rana’s English–Nepali dictionary published in 1936, suggesting that its use in Nepali is posterior to the 1930s.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 209 revolutionaries themselves not only described their enemies’ actions using this term but also their own, and thus distinguished between two forms of terror: the white one, and the red one. “White terror”, svet åta´ka, was often referred to by them with other apparently synonymous expressions such as “royal military terror”, “fascist terror”, “state terror”, etc. In Maoist writings, it is mostly a question of this type of terror, which includes the accusation of terrorism directed at their party, the CPN (M), after 11 September 2001. As for “red terror”, written references to it by the Maoists ceased after 11 September 2001, which corresponded to their refusal to be classified as a terrorist group; but, prior to that event terror was commonly used during the first phase of the People’s War. Yet, while the Maoists officially distanced themselves from the internationally reproved mode of operation known as “terrorism”, the feeling of terror within the population heightened after 2001 with the declaration of the state of Emergency.

RED TERROR: A SYSTEM A definition of the revolution by Engels, frequently quoted by the Nepalese Maoists,5 states that red terror’s source of inspiration is white terror.6 However, if we follow the way things were presented by the Nepalese Maoists, red terror was indeed viewed as a response to white terror, but of a quite different nature. The first violent actions were indeed presented as a people’s uncontrolled reaction to white terror. Thus a Maoist journalist describing a general strike, bandh, on April 6, 1998 as a “protest against state terror, genocide and repression” notes that two persons were killed and hundreds injured. He comments on this result as follows: “In other words, contrary to the usual white terror, ripples of ‘red terror’ were felt …”7 5 It appears in the first two issues of The Worker: the first quotation is included in the fundamental article announcing the programme of the People’s War: “Political Line of the CPN (Unity Centre)”. The Worker, no. 1 February 1993; the second one appears at the end of The Worker, no. 2, June 1996. 6 It reads as: “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles …; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” Frederick Engels, “On Authority”. 7 Anonymous. “Historic ‘Nepal Bandh’ on April 6”. (1998b).

210 Windows into a Revolution Once the revolutionary movement became more organized, however, red terror differed from ordinary violence, and also from white terror, in its form, nature and effects. It was then no longer a reaction, but a political tool, which was presented by the chairman of the CPN (M) as instrumental on various registers. First of all, it was depicted by him as a means of provoking a kind of “open” white terror, in order to reveal the real nature of the state. [W]hen the exploited and oppressed masses of the people hoist the revolutionary flag against exploitation and atrocities in order to build their fortune by themselves, then the exploiting ruling classes resort to state of terror and brutal killings, throwing their own ‘democracy’, ‘constitutional state’ and ‘human rights’ into the rubbish bin. The history of Nepal on the last three years has proved this scientific truth. The proclamations of ‘parliamentary democracy’, ‘constitutional state’ and ‘human rights’ have been converted into the massgenocidal campaign of arresting and shooting down the starving people on the pretext of encounters.8

In the Maoist view, human rights and the parliamentary system represent a mere façade used by the exploiting class to legitimize oppression. Faced with violence, this collapses and reveals the real face of the social order. Simultaneously, red terror exposes the reactionaries as well as the revisionists among the Leftist political actors, and forces them to show their “true self ”, by falling in line with the government and consider the People’s War as terrorism. [R]evisionists have become more terrorised by the ghost of the People’s War than even the old reactionaries.... They exposed their true self by lending their voice to the reactionary state and by trumpeting the charge of terrorism and extremism against the People’s War.9

Acts of terror are not only revelatory at a conceptual level, but also at a more down-to-earth one, for they drive away the reactionaries, who

8 The passage then continues: “The real nature is manifested in the frantic dance of torturing, looting and burning the shelters of thousands and lakhs of poor peasants, displayed in a series of brutal atrocities and gang rapes of labouring women, expressed in rampant arrests and opposing revolutionary conviction with torture by sword” Prachanda (1999a). 9 The passage then continues: “It is not only the leadership of UML that has degenerated into reaction, but also the new revisionist ringleaders who claim themselves as the upholders of ‘New Democracy’ and ‘Mao Thought’…” Prachanda (1998).

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 211 are chilled by them, and bring in those whose morale is boosted by them. Some of the actions … have sent chills down the spine of the reactionaries and highly boosted the morale of the labouring masses all over the country. … [M]ost of the local tyrants fled to the district headquarter and a large number of poor peasants were attracted towards the Party. In Rolpa district about a dozen local goons and six police informers were punished with amputation of their limbs, which spread a reign of terror among the reactionaries throughout the district and adjoining districts.10

The benefit of red terror is thus immediate: driving away the enemies who take refuge in urban areas, and bringing new recruits into the revolution. In the Maoist view, the game of terror was in fact far from being reciprocal, as white terror was seen as the final blow by a degenerated class and government, whereas red terror represented the outset of central power’s capture by the vivid forces of the nation: hence white terror’s victims were portrayed as red devils, whereas those who spread white terror were, by contrast, often said to be terrified: “The reality is that because of the exercise of new people’s power through the medium of People’s War, the feudal and imperialist forces are terrorized...” 11 10 The full passage reads as: “Within three weeks of the initiation and appeal, about 5,000 actions had taken place in about 65 districts of the country. … Some of the actions … have sent chills down the spine of the reactionaries and highly boosted the morale of the labouring masses all over the country. One such case is that of Deep Bahadur Singh, a former Assistant Minister and a notorious feudal tyrant of Jajarkot district, whose house was raided by the peasant and youths … After this case most of the local tyrants fled to the district headquarter and a large number of poor peasants were attracted towards the Party. In Rolpa district about a dozen local goons and six police informers were punished with amputation.” “The Historic Initiation and After”. Anonymous. (1996). 11 Prachanda adds in the same text: “When the fascist Girija Prasad Koirala seated on the Prime Minister’s chair after sucking the blood of hundreds of revolutionary warriors and mass of people had arrogantly announced the Maoist movement to be under control through a press conference, right the very next day the reactionaries and revisionists met with a deadly blow from hundreds of successful actions in the form of ambushes, raids, sabotages and propaganda actions planned nationwide, as special bang. This successful blow responded to the state terror with red terror ... After a few days, demonstrating another model of skill of guerrilla warfare, guerrillas ambushed a contingent of police force which was out to terrorize the people at Jhelneta in Dang, forced to surrender and seized all rifles and bullets but granted amnesty to the police force after educating them” (1999b).

212 Windows into a Revolution The instrumentation of violence legitimizes it, so that it ceases to be considered as violence.12 It then becomes a necessary political means, and as such it has to be organized. In effect, in contrast with white terror, which was described as frantic, red terror was not meant to be an unorganized outburst, as Chairman Prachanda made it clear: “It should be strictly expressed in both our policy and practice that red terror does not mean anarchy.”13 Violence has to be controlled, and unnecessary destruction should be avoided, he added, because “this raises the danger of increasing people’s grievances against us and the enemy’s capitalization of it.”14 There was thus no question of ethics, but merely of the good usage of violence in terms of strategy. In the same way, the chairman of the CPN (M) advised that the liquidation of class enemies and spies be practised “in a selective way” and “by informing the masses and obtaining their consent as far as possible”, while “a system of punishing and taxing the enemy should be developed”. In this formulation, the revolutionaries punish or get rid of the “enemy” who are not a precise category of people such as reactionaries or feudalists, thereby revealing the warlike nature of red terror, as well as the lack of determination of the category of people who were fought against into which anyone could fall notwithstanding their social position by his or her mere animosity towards the Maoist Movement. On the other hand, I will argue, the fact that no specific group of population was targeted, combined with the need to obtain the consent of the masses, minimized the construction of class enemies, and hence violence directed against civilians. Yet, the fact that Prachanda advocated the formation of a punitive system, of which one principle was to obtain the consent of the masses, manifested in practices aiming to implicate people in the party’s violent actions. Observations of everyday life in the village of Deurali and conversations with its inhabitants bring some elements to explore the mechanisms whereby people were forced to participate in the revolution as well as the strategies they used for distancing themselves. It must first be said that to describe daily life in a revolutionary context, such as Nepal, is 12 Michaud

(1978): 54. “On Annihilation of Class Enemies and Spies”, (2003). 14 The use of “increasing” suggests the existence of people’s grievances, though the masses were usually said to be enthusiastic about the revolution. 13 Prachanda.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 213 necessarily partial if we consider the diversity of the viewpoints that one can adopt and the variety of the situations that prevailed, even within quite a homogeneous region such as the hilly part of western Nepal. In order to balance my description, I have tried to take into account, as far as possible, the local Maoist viewpoint, but space is lacking to address the variety of situations in the region studied and I will merely situate Deurali in a wider context. Among the various places of this region that I have visited since the onset of the People’s War,15 all of them were affected by the revolution, but the only locality in a state of terror was Deurali. Yet, it had not witnessed intense acts of violence by the Maoist or the government side, like the village of Harjung in Rolpa District where the Maoists set fire to a house, killing nine of its occupants16 or Dhaku in Achham District where armed police shot at the crowd during a meeting, killing seven villagers and two Maoist activists.17 Deurali was just experiencing a very oppressive situation, which prevailed elsewhere

15 I visited the following districts: Syangja, Gulmi, Pyuthan and Rolpa in 1996; Palpa in 1997; Makvanpur in 1999; Dailekh in 2000 and in 2003; Palpa, Syangja and Gulmi in 2005; and, Syangja and Gulmi in 2006. 16 According to “Harjung Massacre: Let Us Ask, What was Their Crime?”: “One day Maobaadi painted their slogans on the wall of a public house. The police forced an eighty three year old woman Khirmati Pun to erase their wall paint. The Maoists next day came and broke her hands and ribs blaming her for supporting reactionary police … Thus, the situation compelled villagers to reach a realisation of the urgent need of self-defence. They formed a Village Defence Volunteer’s Committee headed by Puste Pun to safeguard their place from both of the extremism … Actually the Maoists were furious with villagers for their stand against them as they denied to accept their reign. They decided to exterminate the villagers and an attack was set for the night of 2055/ 11/27 (second week of March, 1999). A large number with full of cruelty attacked Harjung hunting each and every house in search of village-leaders. After midnight they approached the house of Kamara Rokka. The members of Volunteers committee were sheltering in this house. The house was set under fire. Villagers were burned to death in this massacre were—Pusta Bahadur Giri, age 65, Dhante Pun, age 60, Amrit Bahadur Giri, age 55, Aaiman Pun, age 50, Man Bahadur Giri, age 42, Tirkhu Giri, age 35, Begum Bahadur Pun, age 33 and Chaite Pun, age 14. Gopal Giri burnt severely passed away after 5 months. 83-year-old Mrs. Khirmati Pun seriously injured by Maoists also expired after a few months … Shiva Shankar Pun, elected chairperson of the VDC and grass-root leader of UML was kidnapped and kept under savage torture for seven months for forming volunteers committee in the village.” www.gefont.org. 17 According to the villagers of Dhaku, with whom I talked when visiting Achham in October 2007. They say that following the massacre, 45 people joined the CPN (M). A report of the events can be read at www.humanrights.de.

214 Windows into a Revolution at the fringe of the base region, where Maoism came from ‘elsewhere’, and was forcibly introduced by outsiders.18 One of the first things that was explained to me in Deurali was that the villagers felt constrained in their freedom of speech and action due to fright. It is the factors that create this “paralyzing fright”, which resembles approbation, rather than the effective violence or the absence of laws in the perpetration of violence, which characterized the state of terror in this village. More generally, Maoist violence created fright throughout the country because if it was indeed “selective” as advocated by Prachanda, it had the peculiarity of being very cruel and thus more terrorizing than what large-scale, but less painful, brutality might be. Terror was thus not only or principally spread by physical violence but by narratives about violence, and a culture of violence which was expressed in slogans painted on buildings, which, in some places, took the form of the setting up of dreadful mises en scène. Thus a picture taken by some trekkers in a village near Lukla shows a wooden wall spotted with blood, and a bloody handkerchief placed on a bench. Above the bench a flyer reads: “May the great martyrs and central members of the party Ka. Bishal (Serman Kunwar) and Ka. Kumar (Mohan Chandra Gautam), and all the great martyrs be immortal. Death to the old regime. We will take our revenge for the murder.” As the two persons referred to in the message were killed in Siraha, the blood was probably not theirs and the composition was thus clearly a mise en scène addressed to the villagers and passers-by rather than a memorial. Many other places, such as Dullu in Dailekh District had been the object of visual (and verbal) violence in 2003; all the buildings had been defaced by huge black or red slogans covering entire walls, the temples and even the medieval steles. The old royal palace stood in ruins after its destruction by the Maoists at the heart of the locality. It created quite a sinister framework to live in.19 By contrast, in Deurali, very few visible signs of the Maoist presence were noticeable in 2005. But the atomisation of society, the decomposition of institutions, and the disappearance of the former social norms formed a disturbing social context in which the climate of terror and the villagers’ claimed inertia developed. 18 On the particularity of these margins during the People’s War, see LecomteTilouine: “Maoists Despite Themselves: Through the People’s War in a Maoist Model village, north-western Gulmi”, forthcoming. 19 On Dullu, see Lecomte-Tilouine (2008–2009).

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 215 If we accept that violence is identified as such by individuals, and more so by the community, only when it goes against the social norms, then perceived violence is by definition a transgression.20 Apart from abduction, financial extortion and forced labour, cases of physical violence were apparently rare in Deurali, and terror arose there from the process of propagating transgressive values as the new norm. This cannot happen in a passive way and therefore requires not only everyone’s laissez-faire or consent but also their participation. This dimension was clearly expressed by the Maoist system of appointing people to various positions within their organization, without consideration for their willingness to play this role. This recalls, mutatis mutandis, the French Terror’s revolutionary “Loi des suspects”, which concerned, among others, “those not having done anything against liberty, have not done anything for it”.

TERROR IN DEURALI AND PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION IN THE REVOLUTION The fact that the villagers of Deurali lived under a reign of “terror” was not denied by the Maoist woman in charge of the locality in 2005. The situation was described by her as a regrettable, but necessary, transition before people got used to new customs and stopped suffering. As a Magarni native from Rolpa, she illustrated her point by taking the example of the village of Gam in Rolpa District, where she claimed peace now reigned. Indeed, in the discussion we had had just prior to that about the places I knew in Rolpa, I had told her that when I visited Gam in 1995, women were complaining about the daily violence among villagers. I remember them telling me that no festival ended without men brandishing their khukuri knives. The woman explained, “Now, we have established peace there,21 people are happy, they eat in groups of twenty 20 This aspect is strikingly illustrated in the Nepal People’s War by the participation of women and children in the political and warlike spheres, which were up to then occupied by adult males only. This transgression is said to be particularly terrorizing and energizing: “The sudden outburst of the fury of women has given a qualitative leap to the development of the People’s War … A large number of children in the rural areas are now contributing substantially in the guerrilla war by way of collection and exchange of information, etc … [T]hese little ‘red devils’ hold immense potentials for the future of the revolutionary People’s War.” Anonymous (1998 a). 21 As remarked by Y. Michaud: “Terror produces all the appearances of calmness.” (1978): 101.

216 Windows into a Revolution houses, they cook together, they work together, they like it. It will be like that at some stage here too,” and as proof, she invited me to visit Rolpa and see for myself. I did not have enough time to go and see if, as she claimed, collectivization had indeed brought peace and happiness in Rolpa, and shall thus restrict my observations to the “transitional stage” in the model village of Deurali on the path of the Cultural Revolution. Deurali was considered to be a Maoist bastion both by its neighbours and its inhabitants, as well as by the Maoists who selected it to play the role model on the northern fringe of a district which was otherwise not under full Maoist control.22 This clustering was very striking and led to ambivalent and contradictory feelings among villagers, and sometimes from the same person. Most commonly, the contrasted situation was viewed as a form of injustice: “It is only here, down to the south they live in peace, ånanda” but there was also the idea that the Maoist presence might be beneficial to the village in the future. Although it is one of the remotest and the poorest ones in the district, the villagers explained, “The Maobadis say that our village will become like the district headquarters (i.e. the small city of Tamghas).” They often compared it to this city, which was at the other extreme, the only clear seat of government power: a place where “the Maoists” could not openly enter, and where they themselves had difficulty in going, since they were perceived as Maoist villagers. The inhabitants of Deurali described the process which led to the establishment of a People’s Government or janasakår in their village in 2003. For several years, and especially after 2001, Maoists coming “from the west”, i.e. northern Pyuthan and north-eastern Rolpa, used to hold meetings at Deurali at which at least one member from each household was required to attend. A few young educated men, grouped around a local schoolteacher, were sympathetic to their movement. They helped with the appointment of the first janasakår. The major role played by the schoolteachers and pupils led to transforming the school as the most manifest seat of political power. As in most villages in the hills, all the administrative buildings had been destroyed in Deurali, and only the 22

On my return from Deurali, several persons from the district expressed surprise at my description of Deurali, especially the restriction of religious activities and the frequency of child abduction, which were not prevalent elsewhere.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 217 school was left; it became a political meeting place, with the pupils as the prime audience for the revolutionaries. During the meetings they were seated in the front rows, and even asked to take part and deliver speeches using the megaphone. Parallel to the empowering of the teenagers was the disempowering of the elders, and the Maoist rule clearly took the form of a generational war. Thus during the ceremony to inaugurate Deurali as a model village (namuna gajasa), the respected elders, the socalled »hulo månche or “big men” who in the 1980s regularly discussed village affairs seated in a circle in the headman’s courtyard, despite the fact that the latter had officially lost his position several years before, were now scattered here and there among the crowd, at the back. The relegation and dispersal of those who represented the “old regime”, puråno sattå, manifested the fact that their authority was based on principles that had to be eliminated by the revolutionaries. They themselves apparently withdrew from the political scene without being brutalized, as happened elsewhere. Indeed, most of them were “protected” by having younger relatives in the Maoist Party, and they were treated just as old persons whose opinions were “rotten”, as in the saying I heard several times, uhileko kurå kuhile, i.e. “things/discourses of the past are rotten”. The family situation of some local political leaders from the Panchayat era was extremely complicated. One of them had a son whose father-inlaw had been brutally killed by the Maoists in a nearby village and was therefore living in the district headquarters with his wife as a refugee. Another of his sons was in the police, and for this reason the headman had to pay the Maoists an annual fine of ten thousand rupees. But two of his daughters living in the village had husbands who were members of the CPN (M). Next to his house, the Maoist flag flew on the roof of his elder daughter’s house. This type of situation was common and made the construction of class enemies very complicated, which contributed to tempering violence. The most important reform introduced by the Maoists in local political life was the systematic attribution of positions of power by appointment and not by election or free will. I have no detail about who exactly decided on the appointments, but when talking with some persons who had been appointed, I realized that many of them were not particularly interested in politics or sympathetic to the CPN (M). They kept repeating: åphno khu›ðle hoina, i.e., “it was not our wish”, and explained that once appointed, to refuse the position would make them susceptible

218 Windows into a Revolution to being considered a class enemy. Class enemies were judged in the village itself by a People’s Tribunal, so the villagers said. Although, I did not witness any during my stay, I was told that the Dalits were active in trying to have their neighbours judged for ostracizing them. However, the only serious case of a People’s Tribunal reported to me involved that of a Dalit who was accused of immorality. He was sentenced to six months forced labour and required to carry stones for the school. This punishment was meted out just because he flirted with a married (and upper caste) woman. Forced appointment to an official position was apparently a generalized strategy aimed at involving people in the Maoist organization. It was reported in several places. Thus in Dullu in Dailekh District, western Nepal, where no one agreed to stand as a candidate in the district-wide elections organized by the CPN (M) to fill the position of the head of the People’s Government, a man was subsequently appointed against his will to the head of a ward and then killed by the armed forces.23 A diary written in English by a schoolteacher living in Khotang District “special base area” in eastern Nepal provides a clear outline of the pervasive dimension of the “Maoist appointment system” in this region and the anguish it created. Entitled, “The Ground Reality of Khotang District” and written in October 2005,24 a passage reads: Now, the committee making programme is being highlighted. Farmers, teachers, government personals [personnel], students, each and every person has to be included their [there]. No one can escape from it. Perhaps our name [was] also selected respectively. One [once] the process of making the committee [completed] the related group i.e. teachers, students, farmers, etc. [are] called in a certain safe place and are requested to stay in a certain position. If they are ready it is O.K. If not they become very strict and anyone must stay [say?] what they want. And the name is written under the position like president, secretary, members, etc … If it is taken by the Royal Nepal Army, it kills us without a single question, so we are the persons between two guns. Because of this fear the

23 On the subject, see for instance K. Nepal, “‘We Couldn’t Take It Anymore’, Dailekh’s Defiant Mothers Rise Up Against the Maoists”. Nepali Times, 223, 26 November–2 December 2004. www.nepalitimes.com, Lecomte-Tilouine (2008–09). 24 That is, during the same period as my observations. Interestingly this diary was given to a foreign visitor at the time of his departure by a person who introduced himself as a Maoist during his stay. It is another example of the need to inform evoked at the end of this chapter.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 219 young people are leaving the village nowadays. The persons like me here is always full of fear and anxiety … Nowadays there is not a single person who is not inside the Maoist union here.

Forced appointment supposed a context constraining enough to be uncircumventable. The case of Deurali displays a double impetus to the authoritative setting up of the People’s Government, janasakår: a small core of sympathizers within the village on the one hand, and the existence of a powerful and frightening organization, which supports them, but which location was not defined, on the other hand. In fact, once a climate of terror settled in a given place, a local core of sympathizers no longer seemed necessary for implementing other People’s Governments around it. They were then likely to be propagated by “capture”, kabjå. Thus, in one of the neighbouring villages of Deurali which I visited, people told me that their locality had been captured in such a way by “Maoists from Deurali”, who came with weapons, gathered the entire population and appointed some persons as members of the janasakår. In the same manner, the Red Army and the People’s Tribunal did not have to be present in order to be effective. In the village itself, physical violence was hard to document in 2005. Older people often expressed their anger towards those who have come to power by calling them “those who beat”, pi»ne månche, while this aspect was not mentioned by the younger people. Even the elders would elude any question asking to be more precise. Only one “informant” had been killed by the Maoists in the next hamlet, “in a horrible way”, I was told, but with no eyewitness. “They did not even return his body,” villagers told me. Thus the fear of punishment did not only stem from direct experience, but also from imagination, and was perhaps amplified because of this. Once when I was invited for dinner, my host who was a Maoist target for being the father of an army man explained: “We have held a council, and we were planning to revolt (against the Maoists). But there is no way, for if we say something, the Red Army will come and cut out our tongues.” This type of event never happened anywhere, but the repeated attacks on police posts and army camps had demonstrated the party’s destructive capacity to the villagers who imagined that it might be used against them. Thus in the people’s imagination, the limits of the Maoists’ possible actions were boundless. The fear of refusing a position was much greater than that of being a likely target for the security forces on accepting it, which has been reported

220 Windows into a Revolution in other areas (such as Khotang, in the diary mentioned in footnote 24). Indeed, the district headquarters is located at ten hours’ walk away from the village, and in 2005 the nearest army camp was six hours’ walk away south of Deurali. And, except for one helicopter attack against a group of People’s Liberation Army25 fighters in 2003, during which “bombs fell in Deurali”, the army has rarely ventured into this area. Deurali was thus not really in the situation which has so often been reported by the media, i.e., suffering both at the hands of government security forces and the revolutionaries.26 However, the villagers’ perception, as well as their rare experiences outside the village, was marked by this dual oppression. It concerned all villagers equally. For instance, when Dor, a very respectable and conservative man from Deurali, went to the district headquarters, he forgot his Identity Documentation card. He told me how the policemen threatened to make him drink two litres of petrol. His daughter, who had recently become overweight, recounted a similar experience on her way back from the city: “‘They (the policemen) made me walk very fast, I almost fainted.’ ‘Why?’, ‘Just like that (tyesai)’.” The opposition of the two conflicting political forces thus attributed everyone with a clear-cut political colour and stamped the Maoist label on all villagers coming from a so-called Maoist village. When talking to a member of the Maoist District Committee on a visit to Deurali, I raised the point that a people’s democracy cannot be implemented by appointing people against their wishes. This cadre acknowledged it, but appointment was a necessary transition towards elections according to him. The future thus had a determining dimension motivating the idealist Maobadis in their present authoritative actions and the hopeful villagers in their acceptance of it. In this context, hope justified the unjustifiable, both for the revolutionaries and the people. Interestingly, paralyzing fright was much more developed in Deurali, where almost no actual physical violence took place than in Dullu in western Nepal, though brutal killings have happened there. During my stay there in 2003, I was already struck by the fact that the villagers openly denounced Maoist violence. They later organized a major 25 Henceforth

PLA. the role of the army and of the police became much more important in the villagers’ narratives in March 2009, see Lecomte-Tilouine, forthcoming. 26 Interestingly

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 221 demonstration against it. The two situations suggest that the proximity of physical violence is not more constraining than induced participation in the violent organization.

WATCHING THE VICTIMS Soon after my arrival in Deurali, I went to the forest for a walk where I met an old acquaintance who was grazing her cattle. As soon as she saw me, she burst into tears: “They took my girl away two months ago, and I cry and cry all day long. In the morning I don’t feel like waking up. I want to flee, but no one will even buy my buffaloes.” My friend’s daughter was among a group of seven schoolchildren who had been abducted from Deurali two months earlier and who had not returned. Among them was another girl whom I knew well and whose father was now a member of the janasakår, but who told me about this: “What can I do? The Maobadis took her away,” as if he was not part of their movement. During my two-week stay in 2005, three other teenagers were taken away by the Maoists and the abduction of children was clearly the most painful and fearful event for the population. They did not hesitate to send their children to a distant location at an early age, without any guarantee of what their fate there would be, or in marrying their daughters off as early as possible to the few older males still living in the village.27 Yet, at the same time, a small “cultural group” was stationed in the village for five or six days during my stay. It was formed by three musicians playing the harmonium and drums, and one dance teacher, all of them 27 The teenagers, according to the local people, were susceptible to be taken away from class seven on (they are then 13 years old or more) and were designated by the headmaster, a native from the village who spent his youth in India and was said to be Maoist. Like most of the schoolteachers, he raised his fist during the meetings, but if I can judge from my conversations with some of his colleagues, it was above all a matter of conformism. Other teachers who delivered revolutionary speeches at the meetings I attended, came to tell me that their situation was hopeless, that they had to give a quarter of their salary to the party, and that they dreamed of finding a way to escape from their village. Nevertheless, all teachers were paid by the government, but the villagers said that the headmaster could not go to the district headquarters, even to pick up the results of the national exams, because of his political engagement. Once married, girls are no longer abducted and one of the most striking consequences of this rule was the increasing frequency of early weddings arranged by their frightened parents. The same was not true for the boys, who were sent around the age of sixteen to the Terai or to India.

222 Windows into a Revolution very young. They were teaching revolutionary songs and dance to three teenagers: they were three schoolchildren from elsewhere who had been abducted to be trained by the party and brought there. Although the villagers of Deurali knew that their own children were in the same situation, no one tried to approach these youngsters, or to find out from where and when they had been abducted. They were always accompanied by the cultural team, none of whose members were from the village, which made access to these youngsters difficult. Gathered on the field above the ex-headman’s courtyard where the training was taking place, people just watched in silence, as I did myself. After two days, we learned that the abducted teenagers had been brought to Deurali to perform a dance during the ceremony to declare it a model village, which was to take place shortly. Like all the villagers, I attended this ceremony and noted that the dance formed its climax, the only moment when all the schoolchildren who had gathered for the occasion stood up and stopped chatting or reading their textbooks to watch. They watched with interest and pleasure the spectacle of three terrified teenagers offering a glimpse into their possible fate. The fact that they related to the scene is not my own interpretation, as within the tightly-knit group of children who surrounded me, one boy whispered: “‘Last year they came to our house, and took my elder brother. It was at night and they blindfolded him.’ ‘And then what?’ ‘He did not know where he went, but he came back one week later and my parents sent him to India the next morning’.” This example displays some of the mechanisms used locally to ensure collective participation in terror. Any child from the school was susceptible to be abducted, from class seven onwards and even the children of those who represented the party, at the village level at least were not spared. Terror was maintained permanently by the principle of uncertainty: no one knew who was going to be abducted, when, where, for how long, what for, or to be sent where. It happened regularly enough to keep the fear permanently alive. On the other hand, the village was host to such children abducted from elsewhere, and nothing in its inhabitants’ behaviour could lead them to think that the latter disapproved of what was happening to them. The most respectable courtyard was chosen for the training sessions, that of the headman, thus involving the traditional representative of authority and conferring some legality to the abduction. A crowd of silent watchers surrounded the place. No interaction took place.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 223 What puzzled me when I learned that the abducted children had been brought here for the performance was: why choose to show them during the meeting and not dance teachers or other activists? The setting of the inaugural meeting provided me with the answer. In the village where all religious festivals had been banned, the Maoist meeting reminded me vividly of the sacrificial assembly during the Dasain festival, the celebration of royal power, which had been forbidden by the Maoists. Both were staged at the same place, gathering the same multicoloured crowd under their umbrella. The long revolutionary speeches were comparable to the preliminary Brahmanic rituals in preparation for the sacrifice. In the Maoist mise en scène, the abducted children’s dance occupied the space filled by the decapitation of the buffaloes in the past. Both were accompanied by the same sudden intensity: music, attention, people standing around, moving nearer. The choice of “victims” to perform the dance reinforces this comparison. Whereas in the royal bloody sacrifice of Dasain, the sovereign’s expression of power was symbolized by the sword and the execution of a human being’s substitute (an animal), in the dance of the abducted teenagers, the victims were real human beings, but the expression of the power over them was a substitute for death. Abduction indeed turns the subject into an object that one can manipulate according to one’s own will, with making them dance its clearest manifestation,28 and it thus forms an expression of supreme power over a human being. The two forms of collective sacrifice strikingly express the kind of power it celebrated: the animal victim belongs to a specific category of negative beings, and is thus born a victim. This is how, in Deurali, as in most places in Nepal, all male buffaloes without exception used to end their days by being sacrificed during Dasain. Interestingly, the demonized male buffaloes were often presented as a social metaphor as they were supposed to be the lower castes’ substitute in their opposition to pure castes. The existence of evil animals, born-to-be victims, linked to individuals born impure and to serve others was part of the social norm and hence not clearly identified as violence, but as fate.29 The new form 28 Let

us recall that in Nepal itself, shamans used to make witches dance in public to reveal their identity before the custom became illegal in the code and that in seventeenthcentury France, villagers revolted against the obligation to dance on certain occasions, which was imposed by some landlords; see M. Grinberg (2006). 29 In some localities, such as Dullu in western Nepal, impure castes used to cry

224 Windows into a Revolution of ritual celebration of power was sacrificial in the way that it expressed the same absolute power of the CPN (M) over the individual with the difference that it applied to everyone, and was thus democratic or totalitarian. The “victims” could be chosen from any family, at any time, for no apparent reason. Their selection was set up in a sort of ritual mise en scène evoking the void, by taking place at night, and using blindfolding. The victims then lose all their familiar bearings: not only their family, clan or village ties, but also their sense of orientation and more importantly the control over their own destiny. Some were released a few days later, others months later, and a few never returned. They were turned into puppets for the party, simply doing what they were told to do. This power over the individual was then orchestrated during meetings and formed their climax, the most exciting part in the eyes of villagers. In fact, the dance performed by the victims, and more generally child abduction, was not fully perceived as violence by the Maoist activists. They pointed out that children return “safe and sound”. Like sacrificing buffaloes, training children seemed natural and could legitimately include some trauma. Though the practice was extremely widespread, it was often treated without much concern by the Nepalese media too.30

THE VILLAGE’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION Dispossession of the individual was expressed in several other spheres, such as the obligation to follow the party’s edicts, which was described by the villagers as very time-consuming. “Meetings, and meetings, they organize meetings every day. We don’t have enough time to work. If you don’t attend, then they send you to a meeting very far away, two days’ walk from here.” More importantly, the festival calendar followed the party and its history, which thus formed the temporal framework for

during the buffalo’s sacrifice, whereas pure castes rejoiced and laughed. Violence was thus perceived in a stereotyped way, in a mise en scène of the social order. 30 In the French penal code, the abduction of an under-aged person is punishable by life-term imprisonment. In Nepal by contrast, the seriousness of child abduction was minimized. Instance in a Human Rights Watch’s report (http.hrw.org), which reads: “Govinda’s story, and accounts of similar kidnappings, are the stuff of many persistent rumors in Nepal.” It is surprising to call “rumours” thousands of direct testimonies— including the few published in the report.

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 225 rejoicings and celebration instead of collective rituals, which were mainly based on the agricultural calendar. The latter disappeared or became clandestine. Rituals which included animal sacrifice were forbidden, and given that most of them included such sacrifices, collective religious life ceased to be. Temples remained closed for the most important ritual of the year, Dasain, but some people celebrated it at home and I was told that an old man went to sacrifice his goat in front of the closed temple. No rituals or dances were allowed on the fifth day of Tij, the women’s collective festival, though it does not include sacrifices, because it celebrates “polygamous Rishis (sages)”. The sraddha, rituals addressed to ancestors, were also forbidden, “because it is superstitious”, and even death rituals were limited to three days instead of the thirteen usually required. As a consequence, and also because several people in the neighbourhood had been killed in a violent manner, people had the feeling that there were more dead spirits, bhut, wandering around. Among them, fifteen PLA fighters said to be buried in a pasture near Deurali have the specific form of soldier ghosts, lahure bhut.31 For this reason, and also because the night was associated with the displacement of the Red Fighters, doors were locked at night and nocturnal visits to neighbours stopped. Isolation was thus not limited to the village in its relation to the south, but concerned every household, as evenings were a privileged time for socializing with neighbours. Forbidding ancestor worship contributed to social atomization as it loosened lineage solidarity which is consolidated on these occasions. The party’s draconian management of religion surprised me, since it was not reported elsewhere at the time and it did not follow the official party line on this issue. I was thus curious to know who dictated all these rules and ensured that they were followed. According to the villagers, they all emanated from the lady who was in charge of the area, whom they called the “in-charge”, and the village’s janasakår had almost no decisional role. She was a Maoist political activist from Rolpa sent there to control five localities, including Deurali, which

31

The nine persons who were killed by Armed Police at the primary school of Dhaku, Achham District, also turned into bad spirits. When I visited the place in October 2007, the villagers had organized a costly Brahmanic ceremony to pacify their souls which tormented the school children. A Brahman from the holy place of Vaijanath conducted it.

226 Windows into a Revolution constituted an area. A number of new socio-religious rules concerned caste-related practices: limiting sharing of food or banning entry to private houses became forbidden. It was said that in such cases a report to the “in-charge” was sufficient to alter people’s behaviour, since they were frightened of being taken to the People’s Tribunal. In the villagers’ discourses, the “in-charge” was described as omnipotent. Rather than the militia, who were elderly men appointed to this job, it was she who went from house to house and made inquiries about reactionary practices. I was at a house when she came for this particular purpose; she asked a lady whose husband had married a second time and had been in the army some years before: “People say that your husband is in the army…” “No, no it was long before, he quit.” “Where is he now?” “See, he left me when my second daughter was just born, he does not send us any money or any news.” “Bring him to us then.” “How can I bring him?” The “in-charge” left, and the woman told me: “I don’t want them to do him any harm, I just want him back, but he cannot return even if he wants to.” In her mind, her husband would leave his second wife and return to her if the Maoists were not in the village. I wondered why the “in charge” came to enquire when I was there at the house of a lady who in many respects supported the revolution. Suddenly seized by the same suspicion as the other villagers, I wondered if the “in-charge” knew that I was still in contact with this person, and was thus indirectly sending me a signal. Among village youngsters, matrimonial alliances between pure and impure castes were encouraged and practised. Parents were forced to unconditionally accept the new in-laws and the party organized the (wedding) party. Although I do not know how it happened so fast, or if it really happened on that scale, but I was told that most of the artisan castes and the Magar families now ate beef and that even the high castes did the same. Locally, no one was forced to do this publicly as happened elsewhere and the few Magars who referred to this subject laughed when they said: “Look, I cooked cow in this pot,” and almost cried, explaining that given

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 227 their present situation, nothing mattered anyhow. In this most sacrilegious sphere, the principle of hope was again perceivable: “See, you don’t have a caste, you eat cow, now we are becoming like you,” was a frequently heard phrase, sometimes accompanied by the idea that economic improvement will go hand in hand with such “westernization”. A striking effect of institutionalized transgression was that it also made people transgressive towards each other. Thus the women of the house where I was staying, and who had no beer left for dinner, served large glasses of beer to me and the previous headman of the village whom they had invited. Once the headman had left, I curiously asked them where they actually got this beer. They confessed with a laugh that it was from their Dalit Damai neighbours, but that the headman, who was the last member of his clan to still secretly follow Hindu laws of purity, should not be told. These women apparently no longer cared about his purity and his anger if this came to his knowledge. The same women, accompanied by others from the neighbourhood, showed their transgressive disposition on another occasion when they started to dance in an obscene way in their courtyard, in the middle of the day, just to make me laugh. Normally this type of dance is restricted to a very specific occasion, the wedding of a son, råtauli, and is performed at night with no male witness. They explained that as they were not allowed to dance for Tij, they would now perform råtauli whenever it pleased them. In this completely new context, resistance was thus displayed through derision, which was already the women’s way of criticizing male political action and discourse in the 1980s. It was also displayed by dance, which expresses one’s freedom of action. The Dullu villagers also used dance as an act of resistance against the Maoists before organizing their famous mass protest. But it acquired a more important dimension there, for the simple reason that dance is collective in far western Nepal, while it is usually individual or performed by a couple in the rest of the country. In many ways, as the most frequently quoted example of dialectics attributed to Chairman Prachanda says, the villagers of Deurali were indeed “laughing while crying and crying while laughing”, although the quotation is usually cited to express the feelings of the Red Soldiers at war. The villagers’ ambivalent attitude was due to the impossibility of openly transgressing the new laws and their need to express their feeling of oppression. This situation was possible because they did not fear the local militia or the members of the janasakår who were in the same

228 Windows into a Revolution position as them. Of course, anthropological observations are always biased by the foreign observer’s presence, and in this case, I clearly had the feeling that my presence provoked and made possible the expression of grievance against the new values. Both were true because my presence probably guaranteed a kind of impunity and I was associated with the period of the ancient regime when I resided in Deurali. Thus, on my arrival, as is the custom, my “family” killed a goat. Several neighbours came to join this welcome party, and sat down to a meal of meat and alcohol. Among them were some members of the janasakår, though at the time I was not aware that they were. What struck me then was that in the midst of the very tense atmosphere, as I perceived it, the former “big man” of the village who gave me my share of meat said loudly, “Take little sister, take your prasåd.” It was unusual how he insisted on the word prasåd, meaning “sacrificial offering”, obviously so that the others would hear him. I immediately understood that it was a form of provocation, though I did not yet know that animal sacrifices were forbidden. As I started to enquire in a very diplomatic way about the changes in the village, the same man started to recall the time when “even the little sister knew that eating buffalo was degrading”. In the presence of the assembled men of the janasakår, he reminded me lightheartedly: “You remember when we went to the hamlet of Bukicaur together and visited those Magars who eat buffalo meat, you commented then, ‘So they are a little below you’.” Embarrassed, but also amused by this role reversal (since I clearly remembered how he frequently made sure that I respected the local rules, especially towards the impure castes), I realized that I was now the sole representative of past social rules he could refer to in his need to reiterate these rules publicly. Frequently, my presence was also used to make insinuations at the Maoist activists. Thus, one evening when I was invited for a drink by a good friend of mine, a young man suddenly entered her house and immediately asked for beer and food. Then, seeing me in the dark corner of the room, he felt it necessary to justify his presence (and manners?), by saying that he was the son of my hostess’ maternal aunt. I raised my eyebrows because I knew that she had no maternal aunt, and he then corrected this by explaining that to be more precise his mother was her mother’s ritual friend, mit. I just said, you mean her såino, since the word for ritual friendship between women is not the same as between men. My hostess

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 229 then smiled, and addressed the youth saying: “You see, she knows everything,”32 a statement which provoked his swift departure, for it was clearly a way of telling him “Don’t make a thing of it, she knows who you are.” The new complicated communication strategy was, it must be said, often based on lies. The same question had to be put to at least three or four different people to get some idea of the true situation, and not only with regard to politics like the first day when I tried to find out who the head of the Village People’s Government was and received all types of answers until the head came to introduce himself to me but also on very ordinary issues as well. It was as if the revolution had entirely blurred communication, since at the opposite extreme, a complete stranger you met on the path would directly address you with important information such as: “Our village has just been captured by the Maoists of Deurali,” and then suddenly disappear. In Deurali itself it was only at night or in the forest that people started to open up, to express their deepest anguish about the two opposing dangers hanging over them. “One day, army helicopters will throw bombs over our village, because we have a janasakår,” a Damai lady told me. Or as in this conversation with a Magar elder, who commented: “How will it end? One day ‘they’ will come and take us all as their human shield. You know, ‘they’ don’t have bulletproof jackets…” He used the English terms, which I was not expecting, and I asked him to explain. He went on: “I met people from Baglung who were used as human shields. They place one person in front of each soldier to protect them, because they don’t have these jackets like the army. Then these people are used to carry the corpses, because they kill their wounded friends, i.e. comrades.” He stopped for a while, and added a typical counter-balancing remark: “In the army, they shoot those who try to escape. It happened once in Wami (a nearby locality)…” Those excerpts provide a good illustration of the culture of terror that had spread through Nepal in the form of anecdotes or second-hand information. Of course, the foreigner was perhaps more likely to be assigned the role of listener than anyone else, for the splitting of society into comrades and enemies had as a consequence created a climate of suspicion. This is why one would hear of horrible stories from complete 32

Hernos, sab thåhå cha.

230 Windows into a Revolution strangers, whereas my best friends in the village would answer many of my queries with lies. People feared that their close relations would pass on “reports” to the Maoists and denounce them as “informants” as my presence was naturally suspect. At the same time, there was also an extremely strong need to inform the foreigner of the local situation, as I realised when some of my friends took the risk of sending me clandestine publications or even of recording Maoist commanders in secret. In Deurali, like in many other places I visited in western Nepal, villagers were hoping to receive help from outside and complained that no one came to report on what was going on. Indeed, apart from numerous Maoist activists, only two strangers visited Deurali during the whole period of the People’s War: both of them were Mormon missionaries who left some booklets, and then left the next day. At the end of this brief description, one is tempted to ask how a single person could manage five localities or a population of ten to fifteen thousand persons. We have seen that the “in-charge” had local relays in the members of the janasakår and the militia, though she could not put total trust in those who had been forcibly appointed to their positions. Two other factors came across as being central. First, the “in-charge” was not from the area or even from the district she governed. Her externality protected her against traditional pressure groups formed by kinship or friendship ties. Secondly, she was symbolically backed by a powerful and frightening organization that she represented, and in fact received more support from the party than suggested by local discourses, which all simply focussed on her. Thus, on my second day, I was led to the teashop where, I was told, a “big leader”, »hulo netå, was waiting for me. I am still not quite sure if he was the head of the district or just a member of the district committee, but his presence, as short as it was (he left the next day), was a clear sign that the “in-charge” was not an isolated element but a part of a wider, hierarchical organization. In addition, many people came and went. For villagers, Deurali became a kind of refuge for young Maoist activists who wandered from house to house, eating freely here and there, because, as they said, they cannot go back to their houses, being originally from villages not under Maoist control. During my stay, in addition to the cultural team which had come for the inaugural meeting, I spoke to at least five of them and the villagers did not know their exact occupation. In their interaction with the villagers these strangers would ask questions, while in the past it was usually the strangers

Terror in a Maoist Model Village in Mid-western Nepal 231 who were questioned.33 In addition to the loss of control over themselves as individuals (who could be abducted or appointed anytime) and over their houses (where Maoist activists could enter, eat and sleep), the villagers had also lost control over their political territory: they were managed by outsiders and had little knowledge of the administrative network into which they were incorporated. Some believed they were part of the Magarant Autonomous Region, while others denied it. At the same time, they permanently received snippets of information proving the existence of a parallel “new government”, to employ an expression used by the CPN (M), which officially governed them, but of which they had almost no knowledge and in which they were made to participate, in spite of themselves. This combination of a maintained ignorance about the actors of the parallel government and its operating rules, forced participation in the application of transgressive rules, dispossession of one’s fate through abduction and forced appointments as well as encouraging denunciation created a climate of terror. Those who dared to manifest (timidly) their discontent were the less-exposed members of the community: the elders and women who could not be enrolled in the PLA and whom it would have been quite unpopular to punish. Collective action thus became unthinkable and under the circumstances approbation was the only way to avoid trouble. However, it was impossible to remain neutral forever as one would be one day or another appointed to a position within the Maoist organization, be it the People’s Government, the militia or a Maoist committee; appointment acted as a test to check people’s leanings and played an important part in involving the population in the revolutionary movement. Deprived of any alternative structure, people did not resist but placed their hopes in the future, while the present was conceived as a mere transition both by Maoist activists and villagers: a transition towards victory and the end of oppression for the former, a tunnel towards the unknown for the latter. This came to an end with the April 2006 Movement and the active participation of the Maoist Party in its success. In autumn 2006, a third of the houses in Deurali were 33

I had a similar experience when visiting Achham District in 2007 with a large camera tripod on the top of my bag that people mistook for an automatic weapon and thought that I was a Maoist. I clearly felt their mixture of fear and excessive politeness until I said that it was just a tripod in every place I went through.

232 Windows into a Revolution flying the Maoist flag including the woman who had cried in the forest. Her abducted daughter had joined the CPN (M) and her mother was quite happy. BIBLIOGRAPHY (The website www.cpnm.org is accessible via http://www.archive.org/) Anonymous. “Political Line of the CPN (Unity Centre)”, The Worker, 1 February 1993, www.cpnm.org. ——. “The Historic Initiation and After”, The Worker, 2 June 1996, www.cpnm.org. ——. “Report From the Battlefield: Fury of Women is Unleashed”, The Worker, 4 May 1998a, www.cpnm.org. ——. “Historic ‘Nepal Bandh’ on April 6”, The Worker, 4 May 1998b. www.cpnm.org. Grinber, Martine. Ecrire les Coutumes. Les Droits Seigneuriaux en France, Paris, PUF, 2006. Lecomte-Tilouine. Marie “What ‘Really’ Happened in Dullu”, EBHR 33–34, Revolutionary Nepal, Autumn 2008-Spring 2009: 143–70. ——. “Political Change and Cultural Revolution in a Maoist Model Village, MidWestern Nepal”, The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Dynamics and Growth in the TwentyFirst Century, M. Lawoti & A. Pahari eds., London: Routledge, 2010: 115–32. ——. “Maoist Despite Themselves: Through the People’s War in a Maoist Model Village, North-Western Gulmi”, The People’s War in Nepal: Anthropological and Historical Approaches, M. Lecomte-Tilouine ed., Forthcoming. Michaud, Yves. Violence et Politique, Paris, Gallimard, 1978. Prachanda. “Two Momentous Years of Revolutionary Transformation”, The Worker, 4 May 1998, Reprinted in Problems and Prospects of Revolution in Nepal [A Collection of Articles by Com. Prachanda and Other Leaders of the CPN (Maoist)], Nepal, Janadisha Publications, 2004: 148–63. ——. “An Appeal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on the Historic Occasion of the Third Anniversary of the People’s War”, 13 February, The Worker, 5 October 1999a. www.cpnm.org. ——. “Third Turbulent Year of People’s War: A General Review”, The Worker, 5 October 1999b, Reprinted in Problems and Prospects of Revolution in Nepal [A Collection of Articles by Com. Prachanda and Other Leaders of the CPN (Maoist)], Nepal, Janadisha Publications, 2004: 164–80. ——. “Let’s Concentrate Total Force to Raise Preparations for the (Strategic) Offensive to a New Height Through Correct Handling of Contradictions”, Maoist Information Bulletin, 6 October 2003. www.cpnm.org. Rana, Pushkar Samsher Jang Bahadur. ed. Angreji-Nepâli Kosh, Nepal, Nepalibhasha Prakashini Samiti, (1993 VS) 1936. Turner, R.L. A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1931.

FEAR AND EVERYDAY LIFE IN RURAL NEPAL JUDITH PETTIGREW and KAMAL ADHIKARI

INTRODUCTION

A

lthough the ethnography of political violence has received considerable attention over the last decade, the study of conflictrelated fear has received relatively limited consideration. 1 Our chapter makes a contribution to this area by analyzing fear in a Tamu (Gurung)2 village in central Nepal during the “People’s

For comments on earlier versions of this chapter we are grateful to Brandon Kohrt, Don Messerschmidt, Andrea Nightingale, Alpa Shah and Sara Shneiderman. We would also like to thank the participants of the 2007 British Academy workshop Everyday Life and Maoist Movements. A British Academy Small Grant awarded to Pettigrew provided financial support. 1 For exceptions see Green (1995); Lysaght (2005); Skidmore (2004); Suárez-Orozco (1992). 2 “Tamu” is the singular of “Tamu-mai”, the term that the people who are better known as “Gurungs” apply to themselves when they speak their own language Tamu Kyui (a Tibeto-Burman language indigenous to the Tamu-mai). As this chapter is based on research carried out in a predominantly Tamu village and conducted primarily through Tamu Kyui we use the term “Tamu” throughout. Most conversations in this chapter

234 Windows into a Revolution War”.3 By presenting a chronological analysis of fear over time we draw attention to the interrelationship between fear, temporality and sociality, and show that fear is always contextual, differently experienced through time and related to personal circumstances. For the purpose of analysis we have divided the Maoist insurgency into four different phases. Phase one corresponds to the late 1990s when the Maoists first entered the village of Kwei Nasa.4 With their arrival, non-aligned villagers became frightened of what the changed political realities might mean. Some feared that pre-existing conflicts would become superimposed onto Maoist agendas, and this period marked the beginning of conflict-related suspicion of intimates People were influenced by what had happened elsewhere, and what they feared might happen in Kwei Nasa. The situation changed markedly with the escalation of the insurgency in 2001 and the imposition of a State of Emergency. In this second phase the Maoists went underground and the Royal Nepalese Army5 actively engaged in counterinsurgency. Villagers were deeply fearful of being accused by the Maoists of acting as army spies, and of being viewed as Maoists by the army. People feared the Maoists but they were much more frightened of the army which remained aloof. In the violent aftermath of a soldier’s killing, non-aligned civilians from neighbouring villages were killed, and Kwei Nasa villagers feared for their lives. The third phase spanned the years 2003–06 when the area was de facto under Maoist control. The army visited rarely but the Maoist culture of surveillance penetrated deeply. Villagers supported and betrayed each other and people’s fear focused on who was an “insider” and who an took place in Tamu Kyui (and non-English words included in the text are Tamu Kyui unless otherwise indicated). Pettigrew is responsible for translating them into English. Both authors are responsible for translating Nepali conversations into English. 3 Our work is based on more than twenty field trips ranging from two days to two weeks conducted between 1999–2008 which builds on Pettigrew’s earlier work which commenced in 1990. For the purpose of analysis we have broken the conflict into four different periods that we witnessed in the village. Some of these phases correspond to different nation-wide phases, others do not. 4 All personal and place names are pseudonyms. We have chosen to give the village a Tamu Kyui pseudonym rather than a Nepali one, as although official names are in Nepali, all Tamu villages have a Tamu Kyui name that is always used when speaking Tamu Kyui. 5 Henceforth RNA.

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 235 “outsider”. Some concealed their fear because of their gender and social position, whereas others suffered from such a degree of structural violence that they saw fear as a privilege that they could not enjoy. The conflict ended in late 2006, and the fourth phase covers the post-conflict era up until the elections of 2008. People were no longer frightened, but some found it difficult to forget what had happened, and remained distrustful or afraid. Others experienced intense fear during the conflict but this did not prevent them from later becoming Maoists. Kwei Nasa appears to have been a good place to live during the insurgency. No one was killed, although Maoists beat people for perceived misdemeanours, and others were briefly abducted or forced to leave. However, between 1999–2006, and especially post-2001, most Kwei Nasa villagers experienced periods of deep fear. In this chapter we consider how fear was understood, expressed and concealed. We draw attention to the manner in which public conversations concealed inner concerns about disruptions to the social fabric, and the transformation of social relations and cultural practices. The Tamu Kyui term for fear is nghiba and the word for terrified is nghinghinghan. The latter, however, is archaic and rarely used. Instead most people use the word lhe (very) nghiba to describe extreme fear. When people stated they were lhe nghiba we translated this into English as “very frightened” and when they stated that they were lhe, lhe nghiba we translated this as “terrified”. In interviews conducted through Nepali in April 2005 we used the Nepali term dar for fear and the words dheri dar lagyo for “very frightened” and besari dar lagyo for “terrified”. By focusing on fear we run the risk of over-privileging it at the expense of other emotions. This attention is justified, however, as fear (or lack of fear) was the main characteristic which people used to differentiate the insurgency from the pre- and the post-insurgency periods. Our aim here is to provide a nuanced discussion that shows how fear was contextually situated and differently experienced, expressed and concealed through time and social experience. Conflict-related fear co-existed, interacted with, exacerbated and diminished other fears. People were also frightened—in different measures, in different intensity and in different ways—of vengeful neighbours and kin, ghosts, witches, political opponents, their enemies, indebtedness, impoverishment and destitution as well as the havoc created by hailstones and landslides. Villagers had strongly developed coping strategies which they drew upon to support

236 Windows into a Revolution themselves and decrease their fear. Some of the strategies used to deal with the more “everyday” fears listed above were also used to address the fears of the “People’s War”. Other strategies, however, evolved specifically to manage conflict-related fear. As our work shows fear is not permanent in communities that have experienced conflict. It is strongly tied to the social world and social expectations. For a majority of individuals who felt that the social world became more predictable and who felt that they had agency, fear subsided after the conflict. A small number, however, remained fearful as they continued to feel that social relations remained unpredictable and the political situation gloomy. Even when fear shifted, however, the impact of the changed social relationships remained—the increased suspicion around social interactions—and would not rebound as easily.

KWEI NASA The village of Kwei Nasa contains several hundred households located along the upper slopes and the top of a ridge in the Himalayan foothills. It has a health post, rice mill, teashops that serve as general-purpose stores, and a kerosene distribution centre. In 2010 it became the last village in the area to get electricity. Kwei Nasa was founded by Tamumai who continue to be in a majority, but about 20 per cent of the population is Dalit (previously “untouchable”). The outlying hamlets are home to other ethnic groups (Tamang and Magar) as well as Bahuns6 and Chhetris.7The primary occupation is farming and the staple crop is rice, but maize and millet are also grown. Many villagers have relatives in foreign armies or working overseas, and remittances make a significant contribution to the local economy.8 Vegetable sellers visit weekly and other merchants come less regularly to sell dry goods, glass bangles and sundry items. For everything else people make shopping trips to the town, which is half a day’s walk away. 6

Hill Brahmins. Both are relatively privileged “high” caste groups. 8 Particularly in the Gurkha Brigade of the British Army and in the Indian Army. The largest proportions of those outside the country are migrant workers employed in India, the Gulf states, East Asia or South East Asia. In recent years significant numbers of ex-Gurkhas have settled in the UK. However, it is unclear what direct contribution these people make to the village economy as they would have previously relocated their families to the city. 7

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 237

PRE-CONFLICT FEARS Prior to the conflict people feared thieves, ghosts and otherworldly beings, destruction of crops by hailstones, lightning, landslides, wild animals and the spirits of the forest. People were especially frightened of witches who were believed to be women from families with secret traditions of witchcraft. Villagers supported and depended on others but they also feared them, their snubs, jealousy, anger and their consequences. People feared giving offence and making social transgressions. They feared being humiliated and they feared social exclusion. Failure and its related loss of prestige, along with indebtedness, incapacitating illness, lack of access to health care and the loss of loved ones were primary village fears. While the spirit world and fellow villagers were objects of fear, people also feared strangers: outwardly friendly people, who might abuse their hospitality, steal and deceive them. They also feared the police whose heavy-handed behaviour often characterized their occasional visits to the village. It was acceptable to talk about some of these fears but not about others. Fear of wild animals, thieves, landslides and hail were openly discussed, but social fears about the anger of others, about witchcraft and its accusations and counter-accusations were considered norbe ta (“inner talk”) and only discussed with trusted confidantes. The Tamu emphasis on communal solidarity means that there are powerful restraints against the expression of difficult feelings. The situation is similar to Robert Desjarlais’ account of the social constraints on the communication of distress among the Yolma Wa of Helambu. He states that villagers: … value the ability to “hold” one’s heartmind—to “hide” ones’ thoughts within the body and not let on, when faced with grief, pain or anger, that one is hurting. … Yolma Wa evince a “rhetoric” of silence, holding that they must hide their sorrows ... Just as … [they] disapprove of the social expression of personal turmoil, so they learn to shun it privately. A villager realizes … that it is an entirely sensible strategy to avoid emotional distress and so keep the heartmind “clear”.9

Fear and its concealment have always been part of village life. People hide emotional distress and in doing so attempt to self-support themselves

9

Desjarlais (1994) [1992]: 142.

238 Windows into a Revolution and cope with turmoil by “smoothing” their heartminds.10 Not talking about fear enables people not to think about it.11

THE ARRIVAL OF THE MAOISTS Armed Maoists first appeared in Kwei Nasa in the late 1990s. Initially they made speeches, gave cultural performances and asked for financial donations and guns. While most of the Maoists were not local, there were Maoist activists in nearby hamlets where families with long histories of communist activism live. There were also Maoist sympathizers in the village, although the degree of sympathy was difficult to gauge, especially once the conflict escalated. The majority of villagers, however, were nonaligned. The middle-aged and the elderly, predominantly middle-income, nonaligned female villagers Pettigrew spoke to in 2000 saw the Maoists as a threat, which increased in relation to relative wealth. People with large houses, guns, money and gold felt more at risk than the poorer with less resources. Human danger in the forest was not new—the lower trails that lead to the town are perceived to contain thieves and other categories of “bad people” like murderers. Villagers minimized their risks by travelling in large groups, avoiding carrying large sums of money, and not wearing expensive jewellery. “Maoists” were a shifting expanding category, which included the insurgents and a frightening mixture of thieves and bandits who masqueraded as Maoists. Pettigrew frequently heard villagers comment that, “Maoists want money and guns but they speak politely and explain their ideas and their programmes whereas the others just want money.” “Fear of Maoists” was also fear of what people thought could be done in the name of the Maoist Movement. As a villager explained: Anyone could kill you these days and say it was the Maoists and nothing would be done about it. You could be killed by your enemies or by people who are angry with you for some reason and want revenge. 10 The sai (“heartmind”) governs emotions, volition and cognition and morality. People talk of having a “full (happy) sai” (sai toba), a “small (unhappy, sad) sai” (sai chyoba), a “crying (unhappy, sad) sai” (sai kroi), a “full (satisfied) sai” (sai mrei). The sai is also the place of memory, thought and competency. 11 Monique Skidmore (ibid: 41) notes the use of a similar strategy to manage fear in Burma.

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 239 These comments were manifestations of fear, rather than actual occurrences. They reflected the new uncertainties and people’s concerns that the changed political realities could become entangled with preexisting conflicts. When asked why they were frightened of the Maoists, people replied, “Because people have died”. What was also shocking and unexpected to many older and middle-aged villagers was that locals, including young women, were among the Maoists. When Maoists ran a cultural and propaganda programme in a friend’s village, the images that she and her relatives emphasized were those concerning the membership of the group and their behaviour. It was local, young Tamu women with guns who threatened them. With Tamu youth involved, previous understandings of social relationships based on a relatively orderly progression of age overlaid with ideas of gender-appropriate behaviour—men join armies, women stay at home—were undermined. The middle-aged and elderly non-aligned villagers we spoke to feared this new uncertainty.

ESCALATION OF THE CONFLICT By 2001, a Maoist training camp was a day’s walk above the village. Propaganda and cultural events, which included dancing, were held in Kwei Nasa and some villagers visited the camp in the high pastures. The number of Kwei Nasa Maoist activists, however, remained low and most people were sceptical about the rebels, viewing them with a mixture of fear and fascination. The “People’s War” reached new heights in November 2001 when the Maoists withdrew from a ceasefire and initiated a series of attacks across the country, including the ones targeted at the Royal Nepalese Army barracks. This was the first time the Maoists directly challenged the army, rather than just the poorly armed police. In response, the Government of Nepal imposed a State of Emergency, called out the army, and put into place an ordinance granting the state wide powers to arrest people involved in “terrorist” activities. During the first month-and-ahalf of the Emergency the Nepali human rights organisation, the Informal Sector Service Center12 reported that 687 people were killed by the security forces, and a further 184 killed by the Maoists. In the following 12

Henceforth INSEC. INSEC (2002): 65, 67.

240 Windows into a Revolution months, the conflict deepened with the Maoists launching several largescale attacks on the security forces. Following the introduction of the State of Emergency the camp above Kwei Nasa was disbanded, and the Maoists now deemed to be terrorists changed their relationship with the village. As their camps became targets for army raids, they moved out of the jungle and into the villages requesting daily food and shelter. Their movements became clandestine and their arrival and departure, although primarily timed for late afternoon or early morning, were less predictable. Villagers’ fears were realized as the deployment of the army meant that their homes became a target when the Maoists were present and after they left. Both sides unrestrainedly operated in the public spaces of paths, schools, fields and teashops, and in the private spaces of courtyards, verandas and homes. As an elderly woman explained, “There was no hiding place”.13 Upon arrival in the village in July 2002 a neighbour, Purna Kumari, and her husband Kancha, invited us for tea. Pettigrew asked them about life in the village. “How are things? Are there Maoists around?” she asked. “Yes, almost all the time,” replied Purna Kumari. “Does the army come?” she asked. “Yes, they come,” replied Purna Kumari and continued: A couple of months ago Kancha and I were working in the fields below the village. We were alone, just the two of us. Suddenly I saw the helicopters coming, there were two of them. I watched them from the time they were like tiny moving ants in the distance until they landed. As they came closer and closer I nearly fainted with fear and I said to myself, “Maybe this will be the day I die.” I was terrified that the soldiers would behave as they had behaved in other villages where they hit and killed people. The soldiers stayed one night and patrolled the village and the surrounding area. They asked us if the Maoists come and if we feed them, and we said that we hadn’t seen the Maoists and that we don’t feed them. We had no choice but to lie. We didn’t want to be beaten and we didn’t want to die. They left, we were lucky. Terrible things have happened in my friend’s village. Some months ago Maoists killed an army officer. Shortly afterwards the army came to search the village

13

Writing about Northern Ireland, Lysaght (2005) draws attention to the interrelationship between political violence, space and fear. In the Northern Irish case relatively safe spaces existed (segregated enclaves). This is in contrast to villages like Kwei Nasa where there were no safe spaces during the insurgency. This significantly contributed to the degree of fear experienced in rural Nepal.

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 241 and hit everyone with rifles. They hit the old and the young alike, and they even hit people in the stomach. During the search a helicopter circled overhead and fired into the village and the nearby forest. The firing was aimed at houses where the soldiers thought they saw smoke. A few days later somebody told the army that Maoists were eating a meal in the next village. By the time the soldiers arrived the Maoists had left and only the family remained. The soldiers came in with their guns firing and killed the newly-married daughter and her husband who was home on leave from his job in Saudi Arabia. She died with her hand full of rice. The Maoists escaped but they were arrested the next day … They were apprehended in the school grounds but they were not killed in front of the children, they were taken a little way into the forest and killed there. The radio said that they were killed during a fight but this wasn’t true—they were killed after they were caught. One day shortly after that a lato [a man with a hearing impairment] was shot dead by the army as he ran away when he saw them. He didn’t understand and couldn’t speak to them and as he was frightened he ran. They killed him because they thought that he was a Maoist. The army killed a friend of my mother’s when she was cutting grass for her buffalo in the forest. They heard something moving and they just shot, they didn’t bother to check who it was and so my mother’s friend died. Nowadays we are very frightened of going into the forest …

The army was waging a counterinsurgency, and this was our introduction to the type of fear they evoked which was based on aloofness and seemingly callous randomness, and was of a different nature to the fear evoked by the Maoists (see below). Several hours later we chatted with Dhan Kumari, Pettigrew’s village “sister”. Pettigrew told her that she was thinking of visiting nearby villages to get details of recent army killings. Dhan Kumari looked horrified; she did a quick scan of the veranda and courtyard, and told Pettigrew in a hushed and hurried voice: You cannot go there, it is terribly dangerous, and you cannot talk about the killings. They are secret things. It is very dangerous to talk about what the army does. Do you not know that the Maoists are here nearly every day? They come and force villagers to feed them, there is no choice. And then the army comes and they blame people because they fed the Maoists. It is a very dangerous time now…

This brief “inner talk” was communicated in a whisper. Dhan Kumari considered it to be dangerous to even talk about “secret things”, whereas Prem Kumari talked openly about army killings. Dhan Kumari was more fearful than her neighbours and friends, and so interpreted situations as being more dangerous.

242 Windows into a Revolution On the second morning of our stay Pettigrew visited one of the teashops to have a chat with the owner. In hushed tones Man Maya told her about a recent visit of the Maoists: In the early evening a group arrived. They were heavily armed and they wore belts with bullets around their waists. One of the girls was very young—she couldn’t have been more than thirteen. It upset me to look at her as she was about the same age as my eldest daughter … The leader of the group told me that they wanted food and to stay the night. I told them that I could feed them but I pleaded with them not to sleep in the house. I said “If you stay here and the army arrives then all my family will be killed.” One of them laughed and replied, “Then we’ll die together.” I begged them not to stay and they left after they had eaten. It is such a frightening time, things that we could never have imagined are now happening on a regular basis.

Later that day Man Maya saw us, and laughingly told us that the first time Adhikari had visited her shop she assumed that he was a Maoist (this was his first trip to the village). She explained that on seeing him she felt frightened but tried to appear calm while struggling inwardly to conceal her fear. This approach to “smoothing” the heartmind was a common coping strategy. It described people’s inward struggle to control their fear so as to prevent it from increasing. It also referred to an attempt to hide fear from the Maoists so that people could maintain their dignity and not let the insurgents see how much power they in fact held.

FEAR OF THE ARMY The security forces were viewed as distant, terrifying and unpredictable, and were deeply feared. As they sometimes visited by helicopter there was little opportunity for people to be forewarned about their arrival. They brought an intimidating array of military hardware, and although the Maoists also carried the paraphernalia of war the army were more heavily equipped. The soldiers maintained a physical and spatial distance (in contrast to the Maoists who spoke to people and ate with them). Villagers commented, “It is impossible to speak to them; they only ask questions and give orders.” The soldiers’ physical presentation, combined with their aloofness, distanced them from the local population in a manner that was in contrast to the Maoists. The Maoists were also frightening but less so as they fitted into the social fabric in a way that

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 243 the army did not. It was partly the sociality of otherness that made people so frightened of the soldiers. While the security forces were present, people feared that they would learn about villagers’ relations with the Maoists. After the army left, villagers worried that the Maoists would interpret their interactions with the army as traitorous. Several people in the locality had been punished by the Maoists for allegedly spying.

LATE 2002 The State of Emergency ended in August 2002. On a cold December morning in 2002, we set out for Kwei Nasa. We met a group of people from a nearby village who explained that they were going to take a path that avoided travelling through the forest, since the Maoists were there. They suggested that we walk with them. As we followed a barely discernible path that traversed the open fields, the middle-aged woman dressed in her best going-to-town clothes looked towards the forest and commented, “They have been in the forests for the last three days. They must be hungry and hungry people are angry people, so they could be dangerous.” A few minutes later she added, “Don’t worry; we are just ordinary people so they won’t hurt us.” This combination of fear followed by self-reassurance was a common coping strategy. Several hours later we parted company with our companions and walked the last half hour up to the village. On arrival we were told that 400 Maoists had been in the area a few days before, but had left. In another village they had ransacked the development project’s office, and had slaughtered and eaten the pet deer. The small project office in Kwei Nasa was untouched, but the staff had fled. As she served us tea Dhan Kumari said, “When you were here in the summer we were frightened of them. Now we aren’t frightened anymore. We had 400 of the Red Army to stay and we are not frightened any longer.”14 When she discovered that some researchers she knew were visiting the nearby town she commented, “As you can see it is perfectly safe here. Why didn’t you bring the others with you?” Pettigrew explained that they hadn’t come as

14 Dhan Kumari, who knows a few words of English, inserted the English words “Red Army” into this sentence.

244 Windows into a Revolution they felt worried about the situation in the village and she replied, “Why? There are no Maoists and no army.” She then returned to telling stories about the Maoists. Sometime later the conversation turned to Christmas, which was in three days’ time. Laughing, Dhan Kumari who grew up overseas in a Gurkha military family said, “Let’s have a party tomorrow. They have Coke in new plastic bottles at the shop and we could have some of them with the biscuits and sweets you brought.” Pettigrew commented, “I’m really thirsty, let’s go to the shop now and buy some of those new bottles of Coke.” She stopped weaving for a moment and said forcefully, “No. You can’t go there, that’s where the Maoists sit; they are always at the shop. You are not to go there.” Instead, she told Raju—a seven-year-old relative—to go and buy the drinks. He was to, “come back immediately and not to talk to anyone”. Dhan Kumari returned to talking about how safe it was in the village and how there were no Maoists. When Raju returned she took the bottles out of his bag and as she began distributing them, she quietly asked him, “Did you see anyone?” With an almost imperceptible nod of his head he signalled that he had. Comments about not being frightened were a reflection of what people felt, but at other times they were part of a process of denial. While familiarity with the Maoists had apparently decreased Dhan Kumari’s fear, or so she said, she was in fact deeply fearful. Struggling to manage the situation, she convinced, or attempted to convince herself and others, that she was not frightened. Concealing fear was a coping strategy, and the public denial of fear helped it subside. As the sun faded and a wintry chill came over the courtyard, our neighbour Aasha appeared. Walking purposively towards us she said, “There are 500 Maoists walking into the village.” One of the women looked up at the path above our hamlet and said, “Look, here come some of them.” We turned quickly to see the silhouettes of two men and a woman walk past the water tap carrying large packs with guns over their shoulders. The group in the courtyard scattered, some to return home and others to pass the news on to neighbours and kin. Earlier in the afternoon we had mentioned that trekking permits were no longer being issued in certain areas, and recalling this information, Dhan Kumari said in a panicky voice, “Perhaps they will think that you [Pettigrew] are a spy. Go into the house quickly and hide in the bedroom. I am going to lock it and sit outside cutting vegetables. If they come I

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 245 will try to get them to go to another house.” Adhikari muttered under his breath, “All this is unnecessary, they won’t bother us,” but complied nonetheless. People experienced fear differently and some were more fearful. These variations related to personality, the impact of particular experiences and life situations, coping skills and available resources including degree of support. Most of Dhan Kumari’s closest relatives were dead and she felt very alone. She had chronic health problems, which had been diagnosed by doctors in the town as being mainly anxiety-related. Dhan Kumari was more frightened than her neighbours and friends, and as a result, evaluated situations as being more dangerous. Fear was embedded within relationships and because Dhan Kumari was somewhat “disconnected” socially she was more fearful. Sometime later, Dhan Kumari unlocked the house and let us out. Then she told Raju to “do sentry duty”, while she went to the kitchen to begin cooking dinner. This meant that he was to sit at the edge of the courtyard and inform her if the Maoists arrived. Holding his catapult in his hand Raju perched casually on the courtyard wall while surreptitiously observing the goings-on and ascertaining the risks. Dhan Kumari was nervous and irritable, but doing small things like cooking, grinding spices and stirring the saucepan eventually calmed her down. After the meal we sat around the hearth and chatted about everyday matters, but the Maoists were not mentioned. Everyone was aware that they had “closed” the village and that it was impossible to enter or leave until they “opened” it the next day to allow people to work in the fields. Talking in low tones, we sat close to the fire and to each other. Raju held a puppy in his arms, and Dil Maya hugged them both. The usual glass of paa (millet wine) turned into two, and then three and four. Dhan Kumari observed: “We drink a lot these days.” Then, making the only reference to the events of the day, she added, “What else can we do?”

LIVING WITH THE MAOISTS 2003–06 In August 2003 a five-month-long ceasefire broke down when the Maoists withdrew from the negotiating table. The end of the ceasefire was greeted with resignation in Kwei Nasa. Most of the villagers we spoke to in the spring of 2003 had anticipated the return to conflict, fearing that neither side was really ready to talk. It was during this ceasefire that we first

246 Windows into a Revolution heard people talk about “forgetting fear”. With the Maoists and the security forces out of the village, people talked about having “forgotten” their fears. With the resumption of hostilities fear returned. By mid-2003 the Maoist parallel administration had become very influential. Used to administrations that exerted limited or minimal influence, locals found themselves under a shadowy regime characterized by what they experienced as random and unclear policies enforced by violence or the threat of violence. To complicate matters, the Maoist administration had only partial control, as the village remained officially under the remit of the Nepal Government, whose security forces could appear at any moment to search for the Maoists and scrutinize villagers for signs of collaboration. The soldiers, who in reality visited rarely, were terrifying, unlike the Maoists who were both “frightening” and “not frightening”. As “frightening” people, the Maoists threatened, intimidated, demanded food and shelter at gun point, extorted money, abducted and killed people. They subjected villagers to a regime of surveillance in which accusations for perceived misdemeanours were frequent. As “not frightening” people, the Maoists showed themselves to be open to negotiation, they made efforts to ingratiate themselves to villagers, helped in the fields and around the house, washed their dishes, swept the floor, took on the government and advocated a new Nepal in which people would enjoy greater equality and opportunities. They explained their programmes to villagers and dispensed a type of quick justice that some admired. For the majority, who did not fall foul of them or were not targeted, the Maoists were simultaneously “people who could kill and people who won’t harm you (provided you did what they wanted)”. Zealous propagandists, cold-blooded killers and benevolent “guests”, they were feared, derided and admired.

FEAR AND AUTHORITY The Maoists forced the outreach workers from the urban-based development project to discontinue their work and the Village Development Committee secretary relocated to the town, as did a number of politically prominent villagers (this group included people whom the Maoists had labelled as corrupt and who had fled in fear of their lives). The only Nepal Government representatives remaining in the village

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 247 were the health workers and the teachers, and both groups came under scrutiny and pressure.15 The central figure in the local Maoist administration was the political commissar locally referred to as the “commander”.16 Daily life in the village was heavily influenced by the commander’s interpretation and enforcement of Maoist policy. Two commanders were particularly noteworthy. Moti Lal was a Bahun from a well-known local Maoist family. Despite the general lack of support in the village for the insurgents, Moti Lal, an organic intellectual17 was extremely popular. He had a reputation for being fair, non-punitive and genuinely concerned about people’s welfare. His local affiliations were particularly important. One evening, an elderly neighbour commented: He went to school with my son and he used to be around the village a lot. You [Pettigrew] have probably met him before. He loves his own people and so he does not give dukha [Nepali] [trouble] to us. Recently the army destroyed his house, he is often out of the area, and so we fear commanders who do not know us and give us dukha.

In early 2004 Moti Lal was killed. Many people were deeply upset by his death and even those who were most fervently anti-Maoist expressed real regret. Villagers had to adjust to the new commander, Jitendra, a Tamu from another district. Villagers were especially interested in Tamu Maoists. This was partly normal inquisitiveness as people wanted to know what familial or clan relationship they shared, and from which district and village they originated. Their interest was also motivated by a perception that, as they were joined by kinship, language, culture and place, they could bring them under their sphere of influence. 15

Teachers and health workers were vulnerable to threats and intimidation from both sides. Historical links between teachers and Left-wing ideology made them suspect in the eyes of the security forces while the Maoists thought them to be government spies. Caught between the demands of the Maoists to comply with their requests, and the demands of the security forces not to do so, they faced extreme pressures. Teachers and health workers were required to give a proportion of their salary to the Maoists. How much they gave varied but was often between five per cent and fifteen per cent. These professionals were frequently reluctant to reveal how much they gave, and sometimes denied or downplayed the amount demanded. 16 In other areas referred to as the “in-charge”. See Lecomte-Tilouine in this volume. 17 See Shneiderman in this volume.

248 Windows into a Revolution Jitendra’s ethnicity mattered little. Although he emphasized outer markers of Tamu identity like clothing and language, he de-emphasized the elements that mattered most to locals. He was immune to kinship pressures and allegiances, which non-aligned Tamu villagers often attempted to manipulate, unusually unsuccessfully, with visiting Tamu Maoists. For example, it took some time for people to discover his clan membership and he did not use clan-based kinship terminology or interactional patterns. While Jitendra was a Tamu and an “insider” to the Tamu majority, in fact, he was much less of an insider than the Bahun Moti Lal. Kinship relations are used to decrease the social distance and fear of others, but in this case they did not work. It was the type of authority that the commander used and the type of social relationship that he formed that was significant. Moti Lal had intimate knowledge of the village and made judgements based on detailed contextual information. This was important but what was more important was his consistent, non-punitive, sociable style of leadership which was much less frightening than that of distant, authoritarian, unfriendly and unpredictable Jitendra.

THE FEAR OF NOT KNOWING WHO PEOPLE WERE As the conflict continued, insecurity increased. Strangers moved in and out of the village on a daily basis. Some were Maoists, some were soldiers masquerading as Maoists, others were spies masquerading as villagers, and others still were thieves masquerading as Maoists. The usual talk of ghosts and witches was overshadowed by talk (and reality) of armed groups moving along the village paths at night. The Maoists were said to sometimes crawl while the soldiers always walked. Doors were banged at night and people were unsure if the perpetrators were human or supernatural, locals or strangers. There was a perceived and real increase in lawlessness. People feared criminals who masqueraded as Maoists. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish them. One day as Pettigrew walked through the village, a woman, who lives with her elderly sister called her over. She leaned close and said: Last month I nearly died of fear. One evening a handsome young man who spoke nicely and looked like a Tamu came to our house. He said “Last time I came I was with the Maoists. I have now left the movement and am going

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 249 home to my village.” I am not sure if we met him previously as so many of them have visited our house. I gave him tea and snacks and he left … in the evening he re-appeared as we were getting ready for bed. He had an alarm clock, which he held up to his mouth and pretended to be talking on a mobile phone. He told me that I should sleep inside the house instead of sleeping in my bedroom off the veranda. He said that four heavily armed Maoists were in the nearby shop and were coming to the house. They were very dangerous and could steal everything. I was a bit worried but I thought that he was exaggerating and said that I was going to sleep in my usual place. I left for bed. After that he entered the house and told my sister not to make any noise and to give him her necklace. She had already taken it off and hidden it, as she was suspicious of him. He pretended to talk on the phone again; she was unsure what he was doing as he talked about calling the heavily armed Maoists to the house. He pulled out a gun, which may or may not have been real. After a long while, my sister managed to leave the room and shouted for help from the neighbours. They came and he ran away … When we told the Maoists what had happened they said, “That’s alright, when we went to your house last month she (my sister) wouldn’t give us food so that’s fine.” They didn’t support us at all, and even though the thief had not travelled far they didn’t chase him and punish him. There is no security now and there are so many groups of people wandering around—the Maoists, thieves who pretend to be Maoists, soldiers who pretend to be Maoists. How can we work out who they are? It’s so frightening.

Through a mixture of naiveté, social uncertainty and an attempt to depend on non-existent kinship ties these elderly women allowed a thief into their house. However, they managed to redeem themselves and demonstrated that they had learnt how to live in unstable times. They fell for the ruse, but not entirely, as they concealed their jewellery and alerted their neighbours. Although daily life involved a degree of unpredictability, vulnerability, and danger that was in contrast to the pre- or post-war era, people focussed as usual on undertaking agricultural work, running households, arranging ritual practices, organizing and attending life-cycle celebrations, and so on. They managed these activities, however, in conditions that were sometimes dramatically transformed and at other times were not. One of the ways that chronic fear worked was through uncertainty. Not knowing what was going to happen (and having enough evidence that the worst could and did happen) was deeply troubling and contributed crucially to the experience of fear.

250 Windows into a Revolution

COPING WITH FEAR When questioned about fear, villagers responded that they were frightened “of being killed”, “of being injured during fighting”, “of children been abducted or forcibly recruited by the Maoists”, and “of Maoists, thieves and the security forces”. The fears they listed were extreme: people were primarily frightened of “death”, “injury” or “abduction”. Behind this focus on the body was a more deeply felt and concealed concern with the “death”, “injury” and “abduction” of the social fabric, of “wounds” and “injuries” which transformed social relations and cultural practices. Villagers always said that they survived with the support of others, and while this was true, the conflict created social fragmentation. People feared strangers but they also feared each other. They were less sure of each other. Outwardly, the idea of a mutually supportive society endured, and in many ways, people were quick to support and assist others. However, people knew that the Maoist surveillance-society was perpetuated by local collusion. People supported each other and betrayed each other. This generated suspicion, mistrust and insecurity. There was increasing uncertainty about who could be party to “inner talk” and the allegiances and motivations of even the most trusted confidantes came under suspicion. These lines were not firmly drawn in the past of course, as allegiances and affiliations were always fluid, but the degree of uncertainty was less extreme and the stakes lower.

TALKING ABOUT FEAR IN JEST Fear was dealt with in different ways and sometimes “lightly”. Some older women in particular spoke about it in jest. Instead of downplaying their fears, they presented themselves as people entirely overwhelmed by fear. One day, sixty-seven-year-old Prem Kumari, a single woman who lived alone, came to visit. A few weeks ago, she recounted, she had returned home to find six Maoists encamped in her courtyard. They had asked for food and shelter. She had served them tea and while they were having it, she had locked her house, saying that she would be back soon. Instead she had run along the village path and gone to her sister-in-law’s house to hide. She didn’t return to her house for a week, “In case they were still there!” she added jocularly. As Prem Kumari told her story she chuckled, pleased with herself for being so cunning. Pettigrew asked

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 251 why she had behaved this way. “Fear,” she replied loudly, and instead of speaking about it in a whisper, she stated that she was totally overwhelmed by fear. Throwing back her head she retorted, “Of course, I was terrified. We only have fear; we are terrified! That’s all we have … fear! I am frightened all the time!” Fear was also managed by exaggeration. This had a parallel to the “smoothing” of the heartmind as in both the conceptualizations the emotion was trivialized. Through the parodying of fear, villagers challenged the notion that fear was the dominant—and only—emotional experience in their lives. The parody, in contrast, suggested that there was actually more to life. Ultimately, the parody decentred the supremacy of fear.

MASCULINITY, FEAR AND FEARLESSNESS There was a tension between fear and masculinity. Although people downplayed and concealed fear, men especially denied that they were afraid as part of their performance of manliness. Fear may have been acknowledged, minimized or denied depending on the context, on who the audience was and what was personally at stake. While women also used this strategy, men used it more frequently. In late 2005, Maoists arrived at the home of Chandra Bahadur, a thirty-three-year-old social activist and local leader. They told him that he had to attend a meeting of the Tamu Mukti Morcha18 in Khoda, a village a day’s walk away. They accompanied Chandra Bahadur to the village. When he arrived at Khoda he discovered that local leaders from all across the area had been assembled. In front of thousands of people, Chandra Bahadur was garlanded as a member of the Tamu Mukti Morcha Central Committee along with 11 other unsuspecting people. Chandra Bahadur was very taken aback, and subsequently asked if he could resign. He stated that he would help informally, but did not want to be an official member of the front. The event at Khoda was broadcast on radio, as was his name, and he had to report to the army to explain what had happened. Chandra Bahadur became frightened and relocated to the city. He occasionally visited the village. During one of his visits, Pettigrew and a colleague, who is trained in conflict negotiation, spoke to him secretly. Our colleague tried to assist Chandra Bahadur in 18

Tamu Liberation Front.

252 Windows into a Revolution developing strategies to negotiate with the Maoists. He was so afraid, however, that he felt unable to approach them to begin negotiations. His usual joie de vive was gone and he only left his house accompanied by a “bodyguard”. Fortunately the peace process started six months later and Chandra Bahadur returned to the village. In subsequent conservations about fear, he stated that he was “not frightened of the Maoists”, and we have overheard him tell others that he was not afraid. By denying his fear, Chandra Bahadur had presented himself as a macho man who had mastered his emotions. Thus he differentiated himself from “the frightened women”. However, this tactic denied his terror of late 2005, which was clearly evident (and which he acknowledged) at the time.

FEAR AS A PRIVILEGE Some people expressed fearlessness. Sanu, an impoverished Dalit woman, who was dressed in rags and looked much older than her stated age told us that she had “no fear”. “I have so much sorrow, how can I have fear? There is no place for fear in such a life. I don’t care if I live or die, so why should I be frightened?” she said. Here fear was seen as an emotion that those less encumbered with sorrow had the privilege to experience. Thapa and Hauff, who worked among internally displaced people in western Nepal, found that post-traumatic stress disorder (an experience centred on fear) was actually more common among Bahun/Chhetris than among Dalits.19 Sanu’s comments illustrate that fear and anxiety implies a threat to the positive experiences or positive status of one’s life. Experiencing fear was seen as a privilege implying that there was actually something to lose, whereas an extremely marginalized person like Sanu had nothing to lose, and so nothing to fear.

2006–08: NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED? Fear of death, injury and abduction were fears of events that were relatively unlikely to occur. No one in Kwei Nasa was killed during the conflict (although people in nearby villages were); the Maoists beat some villagers for minor misdemeanours, others were abducted briefly and then released, some were publicly humiliated and others were forced to leave. Children 19

Thapa and Hauff (2005).

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 253

A female Maoist ex-combatant (wearing trousers and carrying a pack) in Kwei Nasa after the signing of the 2006 Peace Agreement. For the first time in years it was possible for people to talk openly with Maoists without danger of repercussions (Courtesy Judith Pettigrew).

in nearby villages were abducted for Maoist education programmes, but not in Kwei Nasa as parents were forewarned by local party members. No village children were recruited by the insurgents. When viewed from this perspective, Kwei Nasa was a good place to live in during the insurgency. However, between 1999 – 2006—and especially post-2001— most of the villagers of Kwei Nasa experienced periods—albeit sporadic and of differing intensity—of deep fear. How did fear work in Kwei Nasa and what transformation did it bring? We returned to the village in December 2006 following the signing of the peace accord between the Maoists and the government in November 2006. The first indication of change came as we drove through the outskirts of the town. The check-post was gone, along with the soldiers who manned it, there was no barbed wire in sight, and the roof of the house above the check-post where a soldier with a machine gun had stood behind sand bags was once again a flat-roof house with a chicken coop. On arrival in Kwei Nasa the bamboo Maoist martyrs gate was gone.

254 Windows into a Revolution Dhan Kumari had extended her evening radio listening hours, and discovered new and enjoyable programmes that she was avidly following. She often went to bed just before midnight, much later than before the conflict. The Maoists moved around openly, a jan sarkar, Maoist village People’s Government Committee, had been formed, and the committee meetings held openly. Dances were frequently organized and extended long into the night in contrast to the abbreviated versions of previous years. People visited family, friends and neighbours and returned home late. Young people often stayed out all night. Chandra Bahadur commented: During the conflict we couldn’t move around freely. The Maoists told people, and especially the young people, to stay at home at night and not walk along the paths as they said that they could not guarantee their safety. They told us that we might be mistaken for soldiers and killed. Now people are walking around the village all night. They are visiting family and friends. They are dancing and singing and often the young people stay up all night. They are making up for what they missed.

The villagers were free to socialize with each other and through community-wide social events they were also beginning to re-socialize with strangers. With a peace agreement signed, the mystique that surrounded the Maoists was shattered. For the first time in years, it was possible to talk openly with them without the danger of repercussions. People who were used to thinking of the Maoist as “other” began to find that they were surprisingly like themselves. A woman in her early thirties commented, “Before I was frightened of both the Maoists and the army … If we did not provide food and accommodation they could become angry … Now there is no fear because now we know that the Maoists are also people like us.” The difference between fear and lack of fear was the social relations. However, it was more complicated; though they previously ate with and talked to Maoists they were seen as “outsiders”. What was different was that they could interact with Maoists without fear of violence. The social relations are balanced in a way that they were not during the insurgency. Although some villagers were positively re-evaluating the Maoists, others remained wary. A forty-five-year-old mother of two stated: There is less fear because of the peace agreement… Previously when I went to

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 255 the forest I was frightened that the children would be taken while I was away. I was frightened of sending the children to school. I was frightened of being killed by the army. Now we can move around freely but I am suspicious … and I am still frightened of being killed by the Maoists. The Maoists and the government might not agree in the future …

A shopkeeper hoped that the future would bring peace as well as greater equality between rich and poor, an end to corruption and opportunities for her family. However, she was also worried, and added, “Sometimes I think that the future will not be good and the situation will become worse than it was before.” Chandra Bahadur was very relieved that the Maoists had joined the political mainstream. He explained: There is a huge difference between the past and now. Before it was difficult while having a meeting and organizing sports events. If we took permission from one side, the other side didn’t agree … The school used to have to close. The students were frightened when a helicopter came. We were frightened when a helicopter or the Maoists came. We even had to stop reading the newspaper when either side came. I am hopeful that the political situation is getting better. People have become active and they have hope …. We can have discussions. We need freedom … The leaders could make some mistakes and if that happens the corrupt and feudal people can re-appear. The conflict can return. We have to work together. … If we share with others what we have experienced during the conflict we can recover.

What did Chandra Bahadur mean when he talked about recovery? What was there to recover from? Armed Maoists or soldiers no longer forcibly entered people’s homes, villagers did not have to pass through check-posts or be searched, they questioned strangers on the paths and they unrestrainedly danced, sang, visited and stayed out all night. However, Chandra Bahadur was not talking about reclaiming space. He was acknowledging the social transformation brought about by the conflict. The nights might be filled with dancing and the bamboo martyrs’ gates dismantled, but the changed social relationships—the increased suspicion around social interactions—would not rebound as easily. A certain amount of suspicion and mistrust remained, but as the examples above show, most individuals were able to recover previous patterns of movement and return to expected activities such as field and forest work or sending their children to school. Despite the fear expressed

256 Windows into a Revolution during the conflict, the people of Kwei Nasa recreated expected life patterns. This contrasts with assumptions that conflict produces chronic fear impairing individuals from resuming so-called “normal” lives after political violence.

FORGETTING FEAR We were struck by comments we first heard during the ceasefire of 2003 when people talked about having “forgotten fear”. Although this is the literal translation, it should also be described as “not remembering” or more specifically, no longer having intrusive memories. Since the end of the insurgency people have talked a lot more about forgetting fear. While people sometimes talked about past fears, fear was not a currently experienced emotion in the sense that it was during the insurgency. “Forgetting fear” was also a coping strategy that allowed villagers to put the past behind them.20 Previously frightened people could see beyond the guns and their own fear and were willing to forget. The story of our neighbour Lek Bahadur illustrates how one individual forgot his fear and how experiences of intense fear were not mutually exclusive with explicit support of and engagement with the Maoists. Early one morning in September 2004 Pettigrew overheard a hushed conversation between her neighbour, Lek Bahadur and Dhan Kumari. Lek Bahadur whispered: They arrived when it was raining and sheltered in our house for about an hour. They have gone now but they say that they will be back in the evening with their friends. They have left their packs on the veranda. What should I do? I want to move them in case the army arrives, because if they find them we will be killed, but I am terrified that they contain bombs which might explode if they are moved.

So began what Lek Bahadur later described to Pettigrew as “the longest and worst day of my life”. The army did not arrive, the bags did not explode, and the young Maoist women returned in the evening to collect them. Later Lek Bahadur commented, “I have never been pleased to see

20 This is not the case for people who were deeply traumatized. People interviewed in other villages who were injured in crossfire and were traumatized re-experienced fear in their heartmind each day.

Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal 257 the Maoists, I do not support their ideas, and do not like them frightening and threatening us, but that day I was happy when they re-appeared.” In mid-2006, a large contingent of the People’s Liberation Army underwent training for a month in Kwei Nasa. People were not fearful as the Maoists were no longer underground, and many villagers had lengthy conversations with them. In late 2006, a thirty-one-year-old woman explained how her ideas about the Maoists had changed following this visit. She said: In the past if I heard their name, I was frightened. I thought “What type of people are they?” … who carried guns and killed people and terrorised the village. They brought a particular type of fear. Now there is no fear. We can move around … I can talk openly with the Maoists. I have discovered that the Maoists are people just like us.

Lek Bahadur spent many hours in their company and was impressed by their commitment to rural Nepal. The Maoists were the only party who engaged Lek Bahadur politically, and without their guns, he hoped that they offered the possibility of a better life for him and his family. In early 2008 he joined the Maoist Party and during the elections of April 2008 he was one of the Maoist representatives stationed at the polling booth. He plans to stand as a Maoist candidate in future local elections. “Forgetting fear” both acknowledged an emotional state and reflected a choice. People no longer re-experienced their memories of frightening events. Some like Lek Bahadur also made a choice. After years of conflict people desperately wanted peace and by choosing to forget they actively engaged with the peace process.

CONCLUSION Spanning the years 1999–2008 this chapter illustrated how the different phases of the insurgency and individual circumstances resulted in people’s experiences of fear changing over time. Fear was closely tied to social uncertainty created by the transformations in social relations that resulted from the arrival of the Maoists and the security forces. It was also tied to specific life circumstances and consequently people experienced, expressed and concealed fear differently. Villagers had strongly developed coping strategies which they drew upon to support themselves and mitigate their fear. However, social tensions were realized in unpredictable ways and at times people both supported and betrayed each other. This

258 Windows into a Revolution uncertainty heightened fear as people tried to work out who was an “insider” and who an“outsider”. Some individuals hid their fears because of their social position, while others were so marginalized that they perceived fear to be a privilege they could not enjoy. Others coped through parody and ridicule. Following the formal end of the conflict, people quickly reclaimed the spatial arrangements of the village. A certain amount of suspicion and mistrust lingered, as the heartminds were slower to mend than the villagescape. Most people, however, recovered from the impact of chronic fear, and fully returned to their field and forest work and their previous social activities. Despite the fears of the conflict, the people of Kwei Nasa have recreated their life patterns. BIBLIOGRAPHY Desjarlais, R.R. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994 (1992). Green, L. “Living in a State of Fear” in C. Nordstrom & A. Robben (eds.), Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 105–27. INSEC (Informal Sector Service Centre). Forty-five Days of State of Emergency, January, 2002. Lysaght, K. “Catholics, Protestants and Office Workers from the Town: The Experience and Negotiation of Fear in Northern Ireland” in K. Milton & M. Svašek (eds.), Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feeling, Oxford: Berg, 2005: 127–43. Thapa, S.B. & Hauff, E. “Psychological Distress among Displaced Persons During an Armed Conflict in Nepal”, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 40, 2005: 672–9. Skidmore, M. Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Suárez-Orozco, M.M. “A Grammar of Terror: Psychocultural Responses to State Terrorism in Dirty War and Post-Dirty War Argentina” in J. Martin & C. Nordstrom (eds.), The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992: 219–59.

ANTI-“ANTI-WITCHCRAFT” AND THE MAOIST INSURGENCY IN RURAL MAHARASHTRA AMIT DESAI INTRODUCTION

C

asting an oblique look sometimes illuminates facets of social life that are otherwise obscured. So, rather than subject the Maoist Movement to a full-frontal examination, I want to trace some of the consequences of its emergence for people living in one of the many areas in which it operates. My principal concern here is to examine how dealing with witchcraft and sorcery has become progressively more difficult for people in an Adivasi (or “tribal”) area of eastern Maharashtra in central India as a consequence of the state’s reaction to the Naxalite insurgency. The presence of the Maoists (also known as Naxalites) in Maharashtra since at least the late 1980s, primarily in the easternmost districts of I would like to thank the organizers and participants at the workshop “Everyday Life with Maoism in India and Nepal: Anthropological Comparisons”, held in September 2007 at which this paper was first presented. Fieldwork and writing were made possible by funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. My thanks, in particular to Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew for their comments, and to the people of Markakasa for their hospitality.

260 Windows into a Revolution Gondia and Gadchiroli, has made the state more urgently involved in the people’s lives than before; its personnel and policies have come closer to villagers both in fact and in imagination. As the police attempt to tackle what they see as Adivasi “backwardness”, which they believe leads the latter to support the Maoists, they attack so-called “superstitious” practices such as witch-finding and ghost-detecting. In combination with other social and historical processes not immediately connected with the effect of the Maoist insurgency, this leaves people and villages that are troubled by malignant mystical attack without effective recourse to the remedies readily used in the past. I conducted fieldwork in and around the small village of Markakasa1 in Gondia District from 2002–04, and then again for a short time in 2005. My research project did not initially account for the Naxalite presence. But I became aware very quickly that it was a major factor in any social transformation underway in the area. Though I recognized its importance, the Naxalite Movement did not become the focus of my study, hence the sideways nature of my gaze. It certainly interested me, but I felt concerned about posing too many direct questions, always fearing a nocturnal knock at my door. Villagers asked me if I would like to meet some Naxalites, and perhaps interview them; keen as I was, I realized that my position vis-à-vis the local police might become difficult if ever they discovered that the foreign researcher had been fraternizing with the enemy. My principal research objective was to understand why a particular Hindu devotional sect (or panth) had become so popular in recent years. I discovered that people joined it in order to combat incurable illness caused by witchcraft or magic. Since the level of witchcraft had not increased dramatically, the question posed itself: why was this sort of mystical attack becoming more difficult to fight? The effect of the Naxalite insurgency suggested possible avenues of enquiry. While the bulk of this chapter is therefore concerned with plotting the connections between the response to the insurgency and the impediments to dealing with witchcraft, the increased popularity of Hindu devotional sects has its own consequences for local society, which I examine briefly towards the end of the essay. I begin with an account of the visit of a powerful witch-detecting deity called Angadev to a village neighbouring Markakasa. 1 All

personal names and most village names are pseudonyms.

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 261

THE ANGADEV

The Angadev at “play” (khel) (Courtesy Amit Desai).

The principal weapon a village as a collective has at its disposal in combating tohni2 and bhut3 is to request the services of an Angadev, or in Gondi, Angapen,4 a powerful Gond (Adivasi) deity that is adept at detecting troublemakers and unquiet spirits. The Angadev is called to uncover the causes of suffering felt by the village as a whole, such as in cases of illness or death of a large number of young people. Inviting the Angadev to one’s village is extremely expensive and all villagers need to be agreed in order to contribute money. They have to bear the cost of transport for the deity and its attendants, animals (goats, pigs, chickens) for sacrifice and feasts, and alcohol. Depending on how long the Angadev stays, the whole exercise can cost between twenty thousand and fifty thousand rupees, an enormous sum of money.5 Though I had heard descriptions of the Angadev from Markakasa people, its visit to the village of Kondenar, three kilometres away, meant 2 Witches. 3

Ghosts.

4 Foreign

words and phrases in italics are Chhattisgarhi for the most part. This converts to approximately two hundred and fifty and six hundred and fifty pounds sterling respectively. The daily wage for a (male) farm labourer is twenty-five rupees (thirty pence). 5

262 Windows into a Revolution I was able to see it for myself. The Angadev resembles a wooden bier, comprising three long, thick wooden poles crossed by two smaller pieces that connect the others across its width. The middle length of wood is said to be imbued with shakti 6 and is carved at the front with the head of an animal—in the case known to me, of a horse. The latter is specifically referred to as the pen or dev.7 The Angadev was decorated with a large number of peacock feathers at the places where the length and the width poles crossed; the god itself (the head) was painted bright orange, and the poles were black. This particular Angadev had come from its shrine forty kilometres away to the south, accompanied by several baiga.8 The Angadev is carried by four bearers, who say they are driven by the dev to places where witches live or ghosts are to be found. The landscape is no obstacle for the deity: the Angadev have been known to take their bearers through lakes, into wells, far out to threshing floors and up onto the roofs of houses in search of bhut and tonhi. There are three principal stages of the Angadev’s visit to a village. The first is the binding of the village’s boundaries,9 whereby the Angadev travels the length of the borders, stopping several times along the way while the attendant baiga sacrifice animals to it. The binding is done in order to prevent residents leaving the village while the Angadev is in residence. Informants described it as a powerful spell that would kill or harm anyone trying to leave. The second, and central, stage is the detection of witches and ghosts.10 The Angadev goes from house to house searching for wrongdoers. When it detects a witch,11 it stands in front of him and knocks him with one of the poles that make up its bier. This action is variously interpreted as either a simple identification, or as the pronouncement of divine punishment, which in some cases leads to death. The third and final stage is “play”12 and is the entertainment aspect of the visit: the Angadev puts on a show. A crowd of spectators gather in 6

Power.

7 God. 8 Ritual

specialists. sima bandhna. 10 tonhi-bhut khojna. 11 Technically a witch can be male (tonha) or female (tonhi), but the former term is less common in daily usage than the latter, which is often used to refer to male witches too. 12 khel; karsana (Gondi). 9

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 263 the village square, and as the drums beat the Angadev rushes around swaying and dancing, sometimes bumping into members of the audience. Here, however, there is no risk of being accused of witchcraft: the Angadev is merely “playing”. At the same time, induced by the drumming, the attendant baiga and certain other people, both villagers and visitors, begin to get possessed by the gods,13 who come to “play” alongside the Angadev. Men possessed roll around on the ground, jump into the crowd or flay themselves with barbed chains, and all the while the Angadev runs and sways.14 Of these three stages of an Angadev visit, I was only able to witness the final one. But this was not through lack of trying. Though I had confirmed the dates of the visit on a number of occasions, and the Kondenar people I spoke to led me to believe that I would be able to witness the detection stage as well as the “play” stage, they had in fact misled me and other “outsiders”15 (people from other villages) and given (people from other villages) us all the wrong dates. When my companions and I arrived in Kondenar at the appointed time we were told to our dismay that the first two stages had been carried out during the night when only the Kondenar villagers were present; all that was left now was the element of spectacle. To the extent that we can learn a great deal about a given social situation by examining that which is lied about or left unsaid, that the Kondenar villagers had done this was interesting. Why would they lie? Naturally, I was a little put out when I discovered that I would not be seeing any witch-finding and I asked Soma, a Kondenar leader, to explain why I (and others) had been misled. The reason, he said, was that the activities of the Angadev in Kondenar were a secret matter, and secrecy needed to be maintained in relation to two groups: people from other villages and the police. The concern with keeping things from people of other villages was bound up with potential stains on honour and reputation. Soma’s desire to keep the Angadev’s visit secret from the police is more complex, and is indicative of the type of impediments that exist in combating witchcraft and magic at the village level. The problem was that Kondenar had been refused the required police authorization to 13 dev

jhupna. Alfred Gell (1980) has an interesting discussion of the Angadev’s characteristic movement in his analysis of vertigo and dizziness in Hindu-Gond ritual practices. 15 People from other villages. 14

264 Windows into a Revolution invite the deity. In the particular case of the Angadev, villagers seek assurances from the police that those who accuse others of witchcraft will not be subject to criminal investigation. The villagers in return undertake not to use violence in dealing with a suspected witch. Essentially, the police are asked to adopt a “hands-off ” attitude, and the villagers are given control over witchcraft accusations and their consequences.16 Just as the police refused permission for Kondenar, so it was denied about six months later for another village, Bodalkasa, about ten kilometres from Markakasa. Young people there had been falling ill and dying at an unusually high rate, perhaps eight in as many months, and no medical explanation had proved satisfactory to its inhabitants. While negotiations were taking place with the guardians of an Angadev in Bastar, the police refused the villagers’ request. On learning this, the Angadev guardians declared that they would not attend a village that had not received official permission. Police approval seemed to be increasingly difficult to come by. In the past, the Angadev would come and go, and asking for permission was just a formality; in most cases the village would not bother to inform the authorities at all. The police were stationed far from the village and visited infrequently. Why were the police no longer granting permission for Angadev visits?

THE MAOISTS AND THE STATE: A CLOSER PRESENCE Over the past fifteen years, the eye of the state has become increasingly keen in this relatively neglected and under-governed part of India. This is largely a result of the presence and growth of the Maoist Movement. The police (as representatives of the state) have come physically closer to villages such as Markakasa and Kondenar than ever before, and bring with them an alternative world-view that is unwilling to tolerate practices such as the hunting of witches and ghosts that reek of superstition or “blind-faith”17 and are antithetical to their idea of what constitutes “modern India”. In her recent study of witchcraft accusations and violence in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, Helen Macdonald examines the differences that exist between the higher and lower ranks of the Indian police force 16 See Macdonald (2004: appendix) for an example of just such an agreement between

police and villagers in the central plains of Chhattisgarh. 17 andha-shraddha.

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 265 regarding belief in these types of being: the former subscribe to a “modernist” vision which takes a dim view of belief in witches and magic, regarding it as a throwback and part and parcel of “traditional India”; the latter, on the other hand, are more willing to countenance suspicions of magical activity and largely share in the belief as to their existence.18 Though her argument is entirely convincing and applies equally well to police in the area of my fieldwork, it is premised on the fact that, in much of plains Chhattisgarh (and I suspect in rural India more generally), the lower ranks of the police are drawn from similar backgrounds to the citizenry they serve. In the Adivasi districts of eastern Maharashtra however, and particularly in the Adivasi dominated areas of southern Gondia and Gadchiroli Districts, there is a sharp difference between the lower echelons of state administration—police, teachers, forest officials— and the local population. Recruitment of the latter into the former, though increasing,19 is at much lower levels than in other non-Adivasi districts, and thus policemen and others are overwhelmingly “outsiders”, people who regard themselves and are regarded by locals as coming from “a different area” with “a different atmosphere”.20 Despite Macdonald’s evidence that objectively witchcraft is not simply an Adivasi issue and that it is just as prevalent in much of non-Adivasi plains Chhattisgarh, the fact of the matter is that members of the local bureaucracy and police in Adivasi areas do, as a matter of subjective understanding, believe that it is more of a concern in these “backward” areas where they work. This attitude predominates regardless of lower-level policemen’s own beliefs in witchcraft and magic. Confronted with people paradigmatically regarded as backward and superstitious, the policeman’s response is to deny any similarity. 18

Macdonald (2004: 131). From what I could gather anecdotally, the mid-1990s saw an expansion in the number of police jobs reserved for those in the Scheduled Tribe (or Adivasi) category, though this has since slowed quite considerably. 20 Våtåvaran. I was unable to obtain official statistics on the percentages of policemen who were “locals” as opposed to “outsiders”. Based on my own interviews with junior policemen, however, I would suggest that no more than five percent of the personnel in either the local police station or at the armed outpost nearer Markakasa were from Gondia or Gadchiroli Districts. Most were from other parts of Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra) or from western Maharashtra. Conversely, of the three Adivasi men from Markakasa who were policemen, two were stationed in non-Adivasi areas in the northern part of the district. 19

266 Windows into a Revolution The Naxalite Movement began in the late 1960s in eastern India and exploded into large-scale violence between 1970–71 across several states.21 Following the suppression of this initial rebellion, a new Maoist organization called the People’s War Group22 emerged in south-central India in the early 1980s. During the course of that decade, it spread its area of operation northwards into eastern Maharashtra and southern Chhattisgarh (erstwhile Madhya Pradesh), both predominantly Adivasi areas. By the early 1990s, Naxalite violence peaked in Maharashtra and by then the PWG had gained access to landmines as well as guns.23 The turn of the century has seen a renewed growth in Naxalite activity in Maharashtra, followed by increased police crackdowns, with scores of policemen, civilians and insurgents killed every year.24 Though the figures look less horrifying than those for Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh, it must be remembered that the Naxalites are seriously active in only two districts of Maharashtra—Gondia and Gadchiroli—out of a total of thirty-five and therefore over a much smaller area with a smaller population as compared to the other affected states. Both districts have been designated by the Central Government as “severely-affected”25 by Naxalite activity since at least the early 1990s.26 In 2004, the PWG merged with another important Naxalite faction, the Maoist Communist Centre,27 which operates principally in Bihar and Jharkhand, to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).28 Their objective has been the creation of a Compact Revolutionary Zone stretching from the Nepalese border in the north through the spine of central India to Tamil Nadu in the south. 21

Singh (1995: 133). PWG. 23 Singh (1994: 133–4). 22 Henceforth 24

Incidents (Naxalite) Civilians killed Policemen killed

2004

2005

2006 (to June)

84 9 6

94 29 24

56 24 1

Source: Parliament Q & A, Home Ministry, 2nd August 2006. See http:// 164.100.24.219/annex/208/AU952.htm. Note: I have no figures for Naxal deaths. 25 The

highest rating. Singh (1995: 132). 27 Henceforth MCC. 28 Henceforth CPI (M). 26

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 267 While the Naxalites declare that their struggle is against the perceived oppression of the Indian state and its agents and their ultimate aim is the liberation of the adivasi peasantry from a neo-colonial yoke, the growth in Naxalite activity has succeeded, at least in this part of India, in bringing the state closer to its citizens. Shantha Sinha observes the same process in rural Andhra Pradesh where, as a result of greater and closer police and administrative contact in the wake of the Naxalite insurgency, “People for the first time realised that their standard of living depended not, as they had so far believed, on the local landlord or money lender but on a much larger and infinitely more powerful entity—the State.”29 An example of this in Markakasa was the construction of a new network of roads in the area by the Border Roads Organisation.30 The Border Roads Organization One of the largest public work projects undertaken by the state in this area in recent years was the building, repairing and tarring of the road network. The work was carried out by a central government agency, the BRO, a corps of military engineers. Renowned throughout India for its work on building roads in the most inaccessible and dangerous parts of Kashmir and the insurgency-hit states of the Northeast, and along India’s tense borders with Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, the BRO was contracted by the Government of Maharashtra to build a network of allweather roads in the Naxalite-affected districts of Gondia and Gadchiroli. A network of tarred roads would allow better access for police and security forces in areas where rebels were known to operate, and also minimize the risk of landmines which can be hidden more effectively on dirt or stone roads. Moreover, as a military organization, the BRO had personnel at its disposal to guard the construction work from attack by rebels opposed to the project.31 The work was carried out in phases and is still going on in both districts and across the state border in Chhattisgarh. While the BRO supplied the machinery, materials and engineers, labour was recruited from the areas in which the roads were built. Many Markakasa villagers, both women and men, were employed as labourers 29

Sinha (1989: 317). BRO. 31 Nevertheless, on several occasions, machinery was attacked and set alight, and an elaborate plot was hatched to kill the chief engineer on his visit to one of the sites. 30 Henceforth

268 Windows into a Revolution on the road-building work during the early phases of construction at various periods between 1995–98. The BRO left a lasting impression on those in Markakasa who worked for it. It paid its labourers generously and it was seen as a time in which most people were awash with cash. The monthly wage was D 2200, more than double the amount that could be earned on “ordinary” government work projects, and three times the wage of a farm labourer. When payday came, everyone would receive crisp five-hundred-rupee notes; for some it was the first time they had seen a denomination that high. Many workers bought consumer goods such as cycles and radios, or a new pair of bulls. It was during the time of the BRO that people began to get a taste for eating snacks and drinking tea in roadside cafes, and indeed it was at this time that Markakasa’s first paan and tea stall opened. Everyone smoked sophisticated and expensive cigarettes (known generically as “Bristol”, after the brand), not the cheap, rustic and more popular Indian bidi. It was not only the generous wages that people remembered about the BRO but also the style and efficiency of its operation. The project represented a different “state” to the one which they had had experience of. The machinery the BRO brought with them was impressive, quite unlike the equipment used by the local Public Works Department.32 The engineers and officers, who, I was told, all spoke English with one another, did not tolerate complaints from farmers whose fields bordered the road, and when they realized that supplies were taking too long in coming from elsewhere, they established a cement factory close to their operations. The roads built by the BRO are constantly praised and compared favourably with those built by the district PWD: the latter’s roads begin to disintegrate after a couple of monsoons, because of the poor materials used by the contractors who cut costs in order to line their own pockets. That sort of corruption did not go on with the BRO, I was told, and as a consequence their roads are of better quality. Importantly, the presence of the BRO represents the militarization of the area: road-building here was explicitly about security rather than development.33 In short, the BRO represented not only a different kind of state, but also a very generous and powerful one, and the project has 32 Henceforth 33 I

PWD. am grateful to Nandini Sundar for pointing this out.

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 269 continued to have great symbolic value. As I examine later in this section, the engagement of the police has been far more striking and closely involved with the issue of witchcraft. The Maoists in Markakasa The Naxalites34 are a definite presence in Markakasa and in the immediate area and have been active here since at least the early 1990s. Small squads visit the village regularly, going principally to those (Gond) households where they know they will be fed and watered, and also visit the village shop after hours to buy soap and biscuits. The villagers tell me that the Maoists themselves prefer Gond households and regard all-Gond villages as less threatening. In comparison to neighbouring villages, therefore, Markakasa was regarded as less attractive because the presence of several castes and the concomitant village factionalism were said to compromise Naxalite security. Nevertheless, villagers observe the bandhs35 in July and December every year that commemorate the Naxalite fallen and which last for several days. During this time, called Shaheed Saptha,36 they cannot work in their fields or drive bullock carts. General village-wide meetings were seldom called, and not, to the best of my knowledge, during the time of my fieldwork (2002–04). In 2001, a Maoist squad dragged a Markakasa man to the village square in the middle of the night, and beat him very badly in front of the other villagers. He was suspected of being an informant to the forest guard about the villagers’ illegal timber-hunting forays into the jungle; someone felt aggrieved enough to call in the insurgents. Every village in the area has a story like this to tell, and in many of them the Naxalites have killed local people, including suspected informants and elected village council members. The insurgents have also targeted local state officials and property. In January 2003, a couple of months into my fieldwork, two policemen were blown up by a landmine on their way to investigate a Naxalite arson attack on a timber

34 The villagers used a variety of terms to refer to the Naxalites: naxalwadi ( “naxalist”); jangalwalle (“those of the forest”); lal salaam walle (“red salute people”); or simply by saying o-man (“that lot”). They were also referred to non-verbally by making the hand gesture for a gun. 35 “Stoppages”. 36 Martyrs’ Week.

270 Windows into a Revolution depot fifteen kilometres from Markakasa. The following month, a new, as yet unoccupied government building located twenty kilometres to the south was attacked and burnt to the ground. In May 2005, a landmine killed seven policemen in a jeep outside a village ten kilometres away. Information about Markakasa people’s direct participation in the Naxalite Movement was murky at best, but it seemed that only one person in the village, a woman, had been a Naxalite and left the movement a number of years ago; another had been a regular cook for a squad which visited her natal village. This is an area, therefore, of longstanding Maoist operation but where physical violence has generally been deployed by the insurgents in a targeted fashion against government officials such as policemen and forest guards, and those regarded as working for them. While most people I spoke to clearly feared the Naxalites’ capacity for violence, it was constantly impressed upon me that they were not whimsical or unpredictable: they would issue several warnings to you and if, after these warnings, you failed to comply with their request, then you ought to be concerned. Other accounts of Naxalite activity in India37 have highlighted their role in promoting or diffusing existing disputes in a given village. Though day-to-day dispute resolution processes seemed unaffected by their presence in the area, Markakasa people were certainly aware of the Naxalite effect. Village dispute resolution bodies deliberate and pronounce in the shadow of the law and of the Naxalites; if their judgements are seen to lack legitimacy, equity, or authority, there is the risk that disaffected parties will contact the insurgents for assistance. Just as the relationship between the police and the local populace has changed in many ways due to the Naxalite presence (discussed in more detail further in the chapter), there is also an awareness among villagers that forest guards can no longer harass them to the extent they did twenty years ago; the latter are far more careful to demand reasonable bribes to overlook villagers’ access to timber and firewood, and avoid antagonizing several villagers at one time. The guard with responsibility for Markakasa told me that the Naxalites arranged to meet him soon after he was posted to the area, and warned him to behave “respectfully” if he wished to avoid incurring their displeasure. In fact, many low-level beat forest

37

e.g. Shah (2006).

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 271 officials are in fairly regular contact with the Naxalites (or vice-versa), in a way that would be unthinkable for policemen.38

POLICE ENGAGEMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF WITCH-IDENTIFICATION In 2003, in response to increased Naxalite activity in the area, the police established an Armed Outpost39 in Ramtola, a village four kilometres from Markakasa. The AOPs are heavily fortified camps, containing between twenty-five and fifty policemen led by a Police Sub-Inspector.40 The AOPs have none of the principal functions of police stations; their sole purpose is to provide a base closer to the forests and villages where Naxalites operate, and from where patrols can be carried out more easily. On average, the police patrol for about three days in a week, in a squad of approximately fifteen men, during which time they spend the nights out of base either in the forest or in a village. While I lived in Markakasa, a band of heavily-armed policemen in fatigues, looking more like soldiers, would often arrive in the late hours of the evening, use the house of a villager as a base to eat their meal and then retire either to an abandoned threshing floor or the roof of the school, and head into the forest in the middle of the night. The patrol would then reappear in the village a day or two later on their way back to the AOP. Not only are the police more visible to the villagers than ever before, they are also more accessible and less threatening.41 The policy appears to be one of engagement with the local populace in order to diminish the attraction of the Naxalite Movement. People themselves say that, even twenty years ago, everyone would either run into their homes or

38 Though

I have no direct evidence of this, and was loathe to investigate, I suspect, following Shah (2006), that the Naxalites in and around Markakasa operate a “market of protection” over the valuable timber in the forest, in collaboration with forest officials and contractors. 39 Henceforth AOP. 40 Henceforth PSI. 41 Only up to a point, however. Markakasa villagers were well aware of how the police could behave. While I was conducting fieldwork, an “encounter” took place in a village fifteen kilometres to the north and a man, who was a relative of a Markakasa resident, was mistakenly killed by the police. The latter then claimed he was a Naxalite. In fact the police had been pursuing suspected Naxals, had lost them, and then come upon this man.

272 Windows into a Revolution flee to the forest on hearing of the arrival of the police in the village. The police were regarded as brutal and being hauled to the station would inevitably involve violence.42 Nowadays, I was told, even if the police chief visited the village, people would not bother to get up and give him a seat. This was bluff of course, and when high-ranking police officers did visit Markakasa they were treated with a certain amount of deference. Importantly, the nature of the fear had changed. In the past, there had been a very real fear of police violence and a more general apprehension of the unknown and distant state. Now the state and the police were far more known and knowable, because of prestige projects such as the BRO road construction, the establishment of AOPs, and through an active police policy of closer engagement. As I show below, local police attempted to position themselves as defenders and advocates of the local population vis-à-vis other local state actors such as the sub-district43 office and the State Tribal Development Corporation.44 However, as my description of the Angadev visit demonstrates, this knowability raises other fears: how are activities that meet with official disapproval to be concealed, and what are the consequences of concealment? I shall return to this question towards the end of the chapter. An example of police “engagement” was the policy of helping villagers in their dealings with the local administration over the renewal of ration cards.45 Ration cards are required in order to purchase cheaply priced essentials such as rice, wheat and kerosene from government shops. The cards had to be renewed at the tahsil headquarters, some forty kilometres away, and travelling to this town on government work tended to be troublesome and expensive, involving repeated journeys and payment of bribes. These difficulties came to the attention of the policemen stationed at the AOP at Ramtola as a result of their conversations with villagers in the course of patrolling. The ranking officer, the PSI, decided that they, the police, would collect all the ration card applications and submit them 42 In 1990, the local police beat a Markakasa man so severely that he died of his injuries. 43 Tahsil. 44 Adivasi Vikas Mahamandal. 45 Another example: the AOP Ramtola organized a meeting for people from the surrounding villages, where representatives of local government agencies gave presentations explaining the policies available to assist them in agriculture, education, new livelihoods, and so on.

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 273 en masse to the tahsil office on behalf of the applicants. The PSI at the time was a young man in his late twenties called Subhash. Hailing from more prosperous western Maharashtra, Subhash had seen service in Naxalite-affected areas in the east of the state for three years. A talkative and inquisitive man, his visits to my house during the course of a patrol always made me slightly uncomfortable: the conversation would naturally turn to the topic of the Naxalites, and he would gently probe me as to whether I had heard any news lately or had an encounter with them. Though I always replied in the negative to both sorts of enquiry, truthfully in the case of the latter, dishonestly in the former, I would then be anxiously questioned by Markakasa villagers at the teastall about what I was asked and whether I had said anything about the jangalwalle. Subhash explained why the police had decided to help the locals over the ration cards: That’s what’s good about being at the AOP: you’re in much closer contact with the local people—we see them every day at the teashop—and then we meet people in other villages when we go on patrol. We heard complaints about how difficult it was to get ration cards renewed. I asked my superiors in Taluk [the tahsil town] if we could do something to help: it would help the people but it would also help us [to encourage people to turn against the Naxalites]. We could show them that the police are friends of the people and not their enemies. It’s true that the police in this area have behaved badly in the past so we have to change what people think of us.

In their own minds then, they, the police, had become the protectors of the local populace against the petty exploitation perpetrated by local officials. As I mentioned above, villagers were conscious too of a change in attitude and viewed the police differently than in the past. On the part of the police, this level of involvement, which extended beyond the maintenance of order, was indicative of a wider process of engagement that saw the Adivasi locals as “backward” and in need of a guiding hand along the path of development and modernity. One such area is in the combating of what are regarded as superstitious practices, including disapproval of the use of the Angadev. As we saw earlier in the paper, the police have been reluctant to grant permission to the visit of Angadev to villages in the area. A Markakasa man told me the following story of an Angadev visit to a neighbouring village that took place some fifteen years ago. A group of policemen on patrol happened to pass through the village

274 Windows into a Revolution at a time when the Angadev was in attendance.46 They asked what the curious looking structure was and on being told it was a god that had the ability to detect witches, the policemen began to laugh. They challenged the villagers, saying that witches were not real and that the Angadev could not detect them; they were examples of backward superstition and the Angadev was guided by its bearers, not the other way round. How could the villagers not see this? No, countered the villagers, the Angadev has considerable shakti: for instance, they suggested, it would not permit just any person to pick it up. The police took up the challenge but were unable to lift the deity. What really happened on that occasion is difficult to determine but the truth of the matter is irrelevant. The man who told me this story was trying to emphasize the difference in attitude between the local populace and the police who patrolled in their areas. What is interesting is that the police were seen as presenting the local populace as bound by superstition and they took on the role of challenging such erroneous belief. The police are just one part of a larger class of local state officials and administrators who see the area in which they have been posted, and the people whom they govern, as fundamentally un-modern and undeveloped in comparison to western Maharashtra or other parts of Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra), where the vast majority of personnel are recruited from. It was constantly impressed upon me that the people here were uneducated, simple and easily taken advantage of, unlike the people from other parts of the state or country. This brings me back to my earlier point: though witchcraft is, as Macdonald suggests, 47 widespread throughout rural and perhaps urban India, it is nevertheless associated with “backwardness” in the minds of officials trained in an ideology of “modernization”. The combination of “backward practices” like witchcraft performed by paradigmatically “backward people” (Adivasis) provides a potent composite image of backwardness. The Naxalite insurgency has made certain state actors more urgently and intimately involved in what they see as the problem of “backwardness”: Adivasi people are seen as “simple” and “trusting”—characteristics of their “backwardness”—which, the police suspect, leads to Adivasi collaboration with the rebels. Official 46 This is echoed by Sundar (2001: 441), who describes that the fact that a witch had been murdered only came to the attention of the police in Bastar when they were combing the area in an anti-Naxalite operation. 47 Macdonald (2004).

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 275 intolerance of a belief in witchcraft and of the corresponding measures needed to tackle it, and their much closer involvement in people’s lives, mean that villagers and villages that are afflicted by witchcraft and a sense of unease find it increasingly difficult to use remedies which would have been effective in the past. Macdonald’s research on witch accusations and police authority in the Central Provinces (where Markakasa was located)48 in colonial times suggests that in contrast to other parts of India, police presence there was minimal and largely ineffective,49 and most of the policing was left to village law agents who colluded in keeping witchcraft accusations at the level of the village.50 Even as recently as sixty years ago, at the time of Independence, the police station with responsibility for Markakasa was in the small town of Sakoli, eighty kilometres away to the north-west along bullock cart trails through dense forest. As recounted by elderly villagers, police officers—and others such as forest guards—visited only sporadically, staying at the abandoned ghotul building once used by the village youth, which came to be known as the sepoy bangla.51 The Bhandara District Gazetteer mentions in passing that the southern part of the district (where Markakasa was located) was “very jungly and remarkably free from crime”.52 In 1906, the proportion of police engaged in the detection and prevention of crime in Bhandara District was one policeman for every 13 sq. miles and 2139 persons.53 This compared to the all-Central Provinces figures of 9 sq. miles and 1061 persons respectively.54 So, in 1906, Bhandara District was less intensively policed than the average district in the Central Provinces, which were already less covered than other parts of India. By 1968, the figures for the district were one policeman to 10.13 sq. km and 1370 persons.55 Thus even in the late 1960s this district was less well-covered than the average district 48 Markakasa was located in Bhandara District in the Central Provinces. In 1999, Bhandara was split into two and the eastern portion, containing most of the Adivasi population, became the new district of Gondia. 49 Macdonald (2004: 114). 50 Ibid: (108–14). 51 The soldiers’ house. 52 Russell (1908: 171). 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 From the District Gazetteer, Bhandara District, Maharashtra State (Bombay), (1979: 580).

276 Windows into a Revolution in the Central Provinces at the turn of the twentieth century. One can conclude that the forested areas of Bhandara District were even less intensively policed than the already rather sparsely administered general Central Provinces, as MacDonald demonstrates.56 If we examine MacDonald’s evidence of a limited police presence throughout much of the rural Central Provinces in the light of the historian Ajay Skaria’s analysis of witchcraft in the Dangs and Mewar in colonial western India, we can make some speculative observations about the present-day. Skaria demonstrates how the districts of Mewar and the Dangs were different:57 whereas the police and administrative presence in the former was in many respects similar to that of the rural Central Provinces, the latter was intensely policed and governed from an early stage. In the Dangs, individual witch killings became more pronounced as village-wide witch detection was suppressed.58 In Mewar, by contrast, detection conducted by bhagats (diviners) and others continued, and witches could be dealt with effectively at the village level.59 This resonates with MacDonald’s contention that in the Central Provinces, more generally, news of antiwitch activity very seldom reached the ears of the administration. It may also account, rather speculatively, for that curious comment in the Bhandara District Gazetteer 1908 that the “jungly” southern part was crime-free, perhaps indicating that indeed in this part of the Central Provinces, “crimes” were not being reported but were dealt with at the village level. In the erstwhile Central Provinces, the process that took place in the Dangs in the early part of the twentieth century has only happened more recently with the expansion of police presence gradually since Independence, and especially in the past fifteen years with the explosion of the Naxalite Movement. Not only are the police more present and accessible, but public policy and discussion in India—and in Maharashtra in particular—oppose witchcraft and sorcery practices to the idea of modernity: detecting and dealing with witches, and employing sorcerers is seen as hampering India’s emergence as a developed modern nation.60 56

Macdonald (2004: 108–14). Skaria (1997). 58 Ibid:137. 59 Ibid. 60 See in particular the activities of the high-profile Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (Maharashtra Committee for the Eradication of Superstition) and 57

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 277 This has certainly had an effect on how police approach the issue of witchcraft and witch-detection, and how ordinary people come to be aware that in many instances their views on witchcraft are at odds with those of other parts of Indian society. My repeated questions about the fate of witches once they were identified were met with verbal equivalents of shoulders shrugged. “What can we do? Nothing. If we beat them or even have a meeting about them, they can go to the police station and file a complaint against us. It didn’t used to be like that. The siyan61 of the village would tie the person to a tree and beat her to stop her doing her badmashi.”62 This increased awareness of the hostility of the state has also led to the progressive marginalisation of baiga as identifiers of witches and sorcerers, and thus an important impediment to the proper resolution of mystical attack. Apart from the common complaints about their greed, the most striking disadvantage from the afflicted person’s point of view is that baiga are no longer willing to disclose the identity of the attacker for fear of causing disputes. It is only in this sphere of suspected magical attack that they show such reticence. In other circumstances, such as that of trying to divine the whereabouts and identity of a thief, the baiga has no such qualms about describing the wrongdoer in detail. Baiga have become wary of identifying witches and opening themselves to possible arrest by the police—who are more present than ever before— should the victim of magical attack seek a violent remedy.63 Unfortunately, their reluctance to name witches or instigators of sorcery makes them less satisfying for people who visit them in search of answers about causation. And this applies to the use of the Angadev too. Though the police were refusing permission to invite the Angadev, the example of Kondenar demonstrates that a village, if determined, will ask the deity to visit regardless. The problem appears to be that the villagers cannot take satisfactory measures—expulsion, disciplining, fining—against any witches identified by the Angadev: they run the risk of the accused filing

their sponsorship of a Bill in the Maharashtra Assembly to criminalize “superstitious” practices such as detecting witches and the use of sorcerers. 61 Elders. 62 Wickedness. 63 See also Macdonald (2004: 140).

278 Windows into a Revolution a complaint with the police, who are now much more accessible and involved in matters of everyday life.

THE MAOISTS AND WITCHCRAFT The police in Adivasi areas and public policy in Maharashtra have become hostile to the desire to find and punish witches, and the penetration of the former, particularly through the establishment of AOPs, has increased largely in response to the Naxalite insurgency. What then of the position of the Naxalites themselves towards witchcraft? In many other parts of the country and in neighbouring Nepal, the Maoists take an avowedly anti-witchcraft, anti-superstition line that accords rather well with what I have described for the local state administration in and around Markakasa. The Maoists subscribe to a particular vision of modernity that is in opposition both to the unequal economic and social relations of the past, and the mystifying (and expensive) shackles of “religion” and “superstition”. According to the programme of the CPI (M)64 antiwitchcraft measures and the use of shamans, diviners and sorcerers are to be discouraged and banned in the areas in which they control. Both Shah65 for Jharkhand and de Sales66 for Nepal describe the measures introduced by the Maoists to limit the numbers of ritual specialists required for witch-cleansing rituals, short of banning the rituals altogether. Nevertheless, de Sales demonstrates the tensions that exist in forbidding such activity: the PLA’s desire to win the support of the local populace is in conflict with the newly-appointed Maoist village government cadres anxious to establish their ideological credentials. No clear picture emerges in and around Markakasa. Kondenar village, which hosted the visit of the Angadev, is locally regarded as completely “open” to the Naxalites, unlike Markakasa.67 There, because of its relatively isolated position, dense forest, and all-Gond composition, the Naxalites come and go unhindered during the day as well as the night, and are known by all. One would expect the Naxalites to have objected 64 CPI

(M) (2004). Shah (2006). 66 See this volume. 67 People used the English word “open”. Several other villages in Markakasa’s immediate vicinity were also regarded as “open”. For the most part these were all-Gond villages, again unlike Markakasa. 65

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 279 to the presence of the Angadev in a village they regard as their own. Yet, I heard no hint of any such objection, and the Angadev visit went ahead in any case, with a full accompaniment of baiga and plenty of animal sacrifice. Pragmatism on the part of the local Naxalite squad might explain this: that their support base may be tenuous and so any ideological prescriptions have to be disregarded. In Markakasa and the surrounding area, the Naxalites are seen as promoters and defenders of Gond culture,68 and for this they are praised—principally by Gonds themselves, but not exclusively so. In their meetings and discussions, they encourage Gonds to use Gondi with their children and their political songs are also all in Gondi. The meeting held in Markakasa in 2001, for instance, during which a man was badly beaten, was conducted almost entirely in the Gondi language, and this was remarked on repeatedly in its various retellings to me. Some people were also aware that in other parts of India, the Naxalites had set up schools with Gondi as the language of instruction. Thus, one possible explanation of why anti-“anti-witchcraft” is not on the local Naxalite agenda is because it would contradict a popular assumption that the Naxalites are somehow pro-Gond, not only as advocates of their economic and political betterment but at a “cultural” level too. In its capacity as a powerful deity, the Angadev is an important local component of Gond sanskruti. Perhaps the Naxalites understand, in a way that the police certainly do not, the role that the Angadev and the baiga play in the regulation, maintenance and reproduction of local forms of sociality.

CONCLUSION It is the disruption of sociality that lies at the heart of the consequences of change that I have discussed in this paper. The trouble caused by witches and by those employing sorcerers in order to attack others is generally the result of problematic sociality, often involving disputes with kin or neighbours. Successfully engaging in other forms of sociality allows one to counter the attack, whether it is by employing a diviner who trusts you enough to reveal the name of your tormentor, or building a sufficient consensus in the village in order to pay for an expensive Angadev visit. However, both these remedies are less satisfying than before and 68

sanskruti.

280 Windows into a Revolution more difficult to employ, in large part because of the increased presence and accessibility of the state in general, and of the police in particular. Unlike in the colonial-era Dangs, where the suppression of effective non-fatal village-wide methods of dealing with witchcraft led to an increase in individual witch-killings, there is no evidence of such an increase in this part of Gondia District. Indeed there are no reported cases of witchcraft related violence in the last fifteen years at all. Instead, there has been a tremendous growth in the popularity of a Hindu devotional sect, the Mahanubhav panth, which people join specifically in order to deal with attacks of witchcraft and magic. Whereas twenty years ago, there was not a single devotee in the area, now at least ten per cent of the households in every village have adherents. The panth and its temples are regarded as very efficacious in dealing with malignant mystical attack. Those in search of healing are required to spend several weeks in residence at the panth’s temple located a hundred kilometres away, by praying and learning correct devotional practice. During the course of their stay, and through a form of possession called byan, God reveals the name of their tormentor, and begins to fight him/ her on behalf of the afflicted person. By seeking relief at the panth’s temple, and then by joining the sect, Markakasa people attempt to stop the current magical attack, claim retribution against the witch through the actions of God, and ensure that any future magical attack against them will be ineffective. Importantly, the particular relations of sociality that are crucial in the deployment of other remedies such as baiga or the Angadev become irrelevant: as long as the Mahanubhav adherent keeps to the tenets of the panth regarding daily worship, diet and unswerving devotion to God alone, he will be protected from harm. In combination with other important factors such as changes in land legislation that make it more difficult for people to escape problematic social relations, other remedies such as using Angadev or baiga are less attractive because the state response to witchcraft accusations in the context of the Maoist insurgency has made them less satisfying. But the story does not end there. Rising membership of Hindu devotional panths in villages like Markakasa further jeopardizes the use of the Angadev to combat harm. The requisite consensus to invite it and pay for it becomes more difficult to achieve, as new devotees no longer have need of the deity. The effects of state action are thus compounded. Membership also leads new adherents to see certain practices such as

Anti-“anti-witchcraft” and the Maoist Insurgency 281 vegetarianism, teetotalism and daily worship of God as bodily necessary and morally powerful. Local Hindu nationalist activists in the form of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) also promote these practices through their hostels and by organizing visits to the area of sympathetic Hindu holy men-ascetics. This organization is part of a larger movement that aims to turn nominally secular India into an explicitly Hindu state; the VKA’s role is to reinforce the Hindu nature of groups such as Adivasis who they regard as vulnerable to the wiles of “anti-national” Christian missionaries. Those who have embraced these practices for reasons of protection from harm because of the lack of other measures, come to see the resonances between their own moral projects and the moral project of the Hindu Nationalist Movement. The encounter between the state and the Maoists has far-reaching and unexpected consequences indeed. BIBLIOGRAPHY Communist Party of India (Maoist). Party Programme, Central Committee (P) Communist Party of India (Maoist), 2004. Gell, A. (1980). “The Gods at Play: Vertigo and Possession in a Muria Village”, Man (n.s.), 15, 1980: 219–48. Macdonald, H. Resolution and Rupture: The Paradox of Violence in Witch Accusation in Chhattisgarh, India, SOAS, University of London, London, 2004. Shah, A. Markets of Protection: “The ‘Terrorist’ Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India”, Critique of Anthropology, 26(3), 2006: 297–314. Singh, P. The Naxalite Movement in India, New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1995. Sinha, S. Maoists in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi: Gyan, 1989. Skaria, A. “Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India”, Past and Present, 155, 1997: 109–41. Sundar, N. “Divining Evil: The State and Witchcraft in Bastar”, Gender, Technology and Development, 5(3), 2001: 425–48. Sundar, N. “Bastar, Maoism and Salwa Judum”, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 July, 2006: 3187–92.

THE PURIFICATION HUNT THE SALWA JUDUM COUNTERINSURGENCY IN CHHATTISGARH JASON MIKLIAN

M

ilitary counterinsurgencies can intensify wars by exacerbating the very violence and attacks upon civilian populations that they are meant to temper.1 In 2005, the state of Chhattisgarh responded to a long-simmering conflict against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in this manner, but instead of quelling the rebellion, the conflict became exponentially deadlier, in the process heavily militarizing large numbers of marginalized communities in many districts. Carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, Chhattisgarh constitutes a key base area for recruitment and operations for the Maoists, a pan-Indian violent insurgency group dedicated to revolutionary social and political change. Naxal-affiliated groups have operated in rural areas of Chhattisgarh for decades to various degrees, but the operations themselves were low intensity, usually consisting of occasional attacks on rural police outposts in an effort to either intimidate or liberate village communities depending on the perspective.

1 “Counterinsurgency” is defined here as a government-sponsored military force outside of traditional control designed to fight an internal insurgency. Even ardent military strategists admit that counterinsurgencies are difficult to control, often causing more problems than they create. See Cline (2005).

The Purification Hunt 283 Chhattisgarh’s limited efforts to banish the Maoists proved ineffective, particularly after operations in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh during 2004–05 drove many Maoist fighters to Chhattisgarh as a safe haven. In response, the Chhattisgarh Government consented to secretly fund and arm a counterinsurgency group called Salwa Judum in 2005 in its southern districts. Salwa Judum is a largely informal organization comprising both local villagers and out-of-state opportunists, with active members numbering perhaps five thousand in total. Many Salwa Judum members were armed by the state in the hope that they would use the weapons to engage the Maoists in combat. The state’s rationale for doing so was that it would bolster official military capacity, make the mineralrich area safer for industrial extraction, and allow for official deniability of any violence taken against civilians and suspected Maoists in the name of re-asserting control. However, the degree to which it is a subservient arm of the state is disputed. The conflict’s epicentre is the heavily forested and poverty-stricken district of Dantewara. After the Salwa Judum plan was operationalized, Dantewara became the frontline of the Indian battle against the Maoists, constituting over 50 per cent of the total casualties of the conflict in India (ACHR 2007). Since 2005, thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed, and forty thousand villagers languished in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps during the three years when the conflict was at its most intense.2 Villages have been burned and emptied, with villagers themselves forced to join the Maoists, ally with Salwa Judum or evacuate. Tens of thousands fled to other parts of Chhattisgarh and neighbouring states. As a counterinsurgency, Salwa Judum was seen by analysts both within the Indian government and outside of it as a failure. However, defeating Maoists was not the primary motivation behind its creation. Salwa Judum leaders function as local warlords demarcating Dantewara’s assets and territory amongst themselves. They built their strength by redirecting the funding provided by the State Government for the IDP camp management into their personal coffers, and by funding personal armies with the money received from mining companies who contract them for 2 Official conflict figures underestimate casualties, as they include only official troops and confirmed kills by official troops. They do not include civilians, Salwa Judum, Naxals killed by Salwa Judum, killings unreported by officials, or killings of unofficial SPOs.

284 Windows into a Revolution protection and “ground-clearing” services. In some areas, official forces relinquished almost all control to Salwa Judum leaders. In the process, Dantewara developed the embryonic characteristics of entrenched violence seen in some of India’s most intractable conflicts. By examining how the motivations of the major actors in the region facilitated these developments, as well as how the conflict has affected Dantewara residents, a multi-faceted picture develops that explains the political economy of Salwa Judum’s creation and continued existence. To understand why and how Salwa Judum had the space to operate with impunity, it is first necessary to illustrate the overall security force environment in Dantewara.

OFFICIAL CHHATTISGARH FORCES The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is the primary official military operation in Chhattisgarh, and was extensively deployed in the region to combat the Maoists. The CRPF serves “to assist the State/Union Territories in Police operations to maintain law and order and contain insurgency … and return to barracks once this objective is achieved. The force is also being used for various police duties in other States.”3 When it began Chhattisgarh anti-Maoist operations, the CRPF was derided for inaction and incompetence. The CRPF has since secured major Dantewara roads from what was previously an area with almost no police presence, but forested areas, secondary roads, and areas over ten kilometres away from major roads, are Maoist-mined and remain inaccessible.4 In the belief that a “law and order” approach will solve the problem, senior CRPF leaders have campaigned for a doubling of CRPF forces in Chhattisgarh in order to more effectively follow up on intelligence to raid Maoist strongholds, a policy that has gradually been implemented since mid-2007.5 3 The CRPF mission statement, available at: http://crpf.nic.in/crp_b.htm (accessed 15 May 2008). The CRPF is a “paramilitary” force, which in India means a supplementary, but still official, national police force. 4 Author interview, Rahul Sharma, CRPF Battalion Commander, September 2007. 5 Author interview, Sharma. Also, the Chhattisgarh State Government is in negotiations to purchase ten to fifteen armed military helicopters to transport state ministers into Dantewara and conduct bombing raids of Naxal strongholds, using Israeli Ofeq 5 satellite imagery. Author interviews, senior CRPF personnel and helicopter salesman, Dantewara and Jugdalpur, September 2007.

The Purification Hunt 285 However, Chhattisgarh forces still lag far behind other Indian states in both quantitative and qualitative terms.6 As of early 2008, there were 2,000 CRPF personnel engaged in Chhattisgarh counter-terrorist operations, with 80 per cent of this force deployed for passive defence measures such as protecting Salwa Judum camps, government installations, and political ‘VIPs’ who travel in the region.7 The Chhattisgarh Police offload the bulk of their responsibilities to the CRPF, providing only 300 personnel to assist in anti-Maoist operations.8 There are ongoing problems in filling posts and maintaining adequate troop levels, as most view Chhattisgarh positions as detrimental to career advancement, and attempt to be stationed elsewhere as quickly as possible. Those troops who remain often have little interest in maintaining their posts or developing a deeper contextual or historical understanding of the situation.9 Many Chhattisgarh constables pay bribes to ensure that they are not posted in Maoist-affected areas. Even celebrated “Super cop” K.P.S. Gill, brought in specifically to quell Maoist violence, gave up after one year and left without any measurable success because of “rampant corruption in the recruitment and transfer of policemen, redtapism, and poor governance”.10 Faced with continued manpower shortages in an increasingly hostile environment, the recruitment of Special Police Officers (SPOs) began to form a key component of Dantewara anti-Maoist strategy. The SPO 6 Sahni (2007). The all-India average is 42 police per 100 square kilometres. The figure for Chhattisgarh is just 17/100 square kilometres. The situation is worsened by lopsided distribution of this force. Bastar region officially employs 2,197 policemen but only 1,387 of the positions are filled, leaving only 3.55 policemen per 100 square kilometres, less than 10 per cent of the all-India average. Also, some Indian states have high police/civilian ratios: (Mizoram: 854/100,000; Sikkim: 609/100,000). By contrast, Chhattisgarh is 103/100,000. 7 Sahni (2007). 8 Sahni (2007). 9 For example, on Vijay Agarwal’s (Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kirwandal) desk sits a macabre photo album with pictures of Maoists that his team has shot. He was excited to show it, noting that he starts a new photo album each year. CRPF leadership also claimed that Naxal men are forced to get vasectomies for fear that they would impregnate female fighters, thus incapacitating key soldiers. The only proof offered for this was the fact that condoms have been found in raids on Naxal camps. This was patently dismissed by a senior Maoist leader. Author interviews, September 2007. 10 Gill (2007).

286 Windows into a Revolution category of officers was designated by the CRPF in 2006 as a way to increase manpower with minimal financial or logistical outlays. The SPO jobs are highly desired by the locals, as they constitute the only stable jobs in Dantewara, and are mostly filled by residents of the IDP camps that dot the district.11 SPOs with tactical local knowledge are recruited to lead CRPF raiding parties on suspected Maoist camps. The SPOs bear the greatest brunt of Maoist violence given their lead scout positions. The CRPF views the SPOs as expendable and replenishable. Therefore, they do not invest significant training or resources to ensure their security compared to permanent CRPF troops. This callousness is justified by claims that since a large number of double agents operate in the conflict, the CRPF is unwilling to risk arming and training their enemy.12 The SPO programme was designed to legitimize the Salwa Judum movement, and circumvent the problem of arming Salwa Judum individuals directly. At the outset, weapons were disbursed only occasionally and their lethality was minimal—usually just bows and arrows. Even this raised eyebrows, as several politicians were concerned about conflict escalation and weapons falling into Maoist hands during raids. The original Salwa Judum drafting proposal itself states: “While villagers are asking for guns or license to use them, this is not advisable” because people could defect to the Maoists or their weapons could be looted by a Maoist.13 These fears were later dismissed as most of the SPOs with Salwa Judum connections are now provided a firearm upon completion of their two-week training period: either a .303 rifle or an AK-47.14 The term SPO itself is nebulous in Dantewara, and can refer to not only official forces but also to clandestine agents and Salwa Judum cadres 11 The exact number is a matter of dispute, as official figures list anywhere from seventeen to thirty-one camps. SPO pay was pegged at one thousand five hundred rupees per month at the time of interview, but this figure has reportedly since been raised to two thousand rupees per month. 12 Author interview, Sharma. 13 “Common Man’s Awareness Raising Campaign Against Naxalites, Work Plan to Make the Campaign Successful; District South Bastar, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh”. Dantewara Collector, (2005): 10–11. This document was an internal memo from the Dantewara Collector to his superiors, later released by the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties. 14 Payment was erratic when the programme began, but all SPOs interviewed asserted that timely monthly wages have resumed. Author interviews, September 2007.

The Purification Hunt 287 who are bestowed the title honorifically. Examples of three different typical types of SPOs in Dantewara can illustrate this situation. First, Pradeep is an example of an official SPO.15 Pradeep is what the CRPF envisioned when it created the SPO programme. A self-professed Maoist since he was sixteen, Pradeep voluntarily switched sides and now works as a tactician and field officer leading police raids into Maoist hideouts. SPOs like Pradeep provide logistical services for CRPF troops with their superior local-level knowledge of the terrain, Maoist strategy, and camp locations. In retaliation for his treason, Pradeep’s brother and sister were killed by the Maoists. Far from being dissuaded by these tragedies, he says that this has only steeled his resolve to kill more Maoists. He has been told that with continued good service, he will join the official CRPF forces one day, a goal that keeps his spirits high. 16 Pradeep is one of approximately five thousand official SPOs.17 Sandeep is a secret SPO.18 A recently surrendered Maoist, Sandeep serves as a CRPF informant. Like most SPOs, he looks far younger than his stated age of twenty-two. He is not on the official police rolls, and was told that he is a “confidential police man … higher than SPO”.19 Sandeep is a double agent, gathering intelligence for future CRPF raids. Sandeep wore no uniform, and had no identification to prove his status. Even though his brother was killed by the Maoists, his primary reason for switching from the Maoists to the SPOs was the promise of a steady paycheck,20 an indication of how valuable this carrot of employment can be in an area of extreme poverty. There is no concrete estimate of how many “secret” SPOs there are, as they constitute only a small (but growing) portion of SPO forces, numbering four to five persons in each of the local CRPF stations visited by the author, which would extrapolate 15

Author interview, September 2007. Name changed for protection. Ibid. 17 Included here are approximately 200–300 female SPOs who serve in largely symbolic guard duties near refugee camps. Female SPOs do not lead raids or participate in combat operations, and are shielded from journalists whenever possible. There are reports that some are being used as “comfort women” by CRPF forces. Their actual duties are unclear, as they appear to be little more than window dressing. 18 Author interviews, September 2007. Names changed to protect the identity of persons. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. The police-provided translator for this interview refused to translate this assertion, translating only that he joined to “kill Naxals”. 16

288 Windows into a Revolution to a total of five hundred. Although Sandeep is paid with the other SPOs and has a weapon, it is unclear where the funding and arms originate. Self-professed SPOs constitute another major group. While other SPOs are stationed within CRPF compounds,21 self-professed SPOs wear plain clothes, carry no identification, roam the countryside without restriction, and pledge their allegiance not to the CRPF but to local Salwa Judum leaders who confer this title without the authority to do so.22 These SPOs provide protection and carry out freelance assignments for these leaders, ranging from individual protection to village raids to mine security. These forces are paid and housed by the Salwa Judum, and adamantly profess that they are also SPOs and not just Salwa Judum even though they are not recognized by the state.23 Concrete numbers are difficult to ascertain, but based upon observation and interviews, a minimum estimate of at least one thousand is reasonable. The entire chain of command at the time (Chhattisgarh Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan, CRPF Commander Rahul Sharma, and Bastar Inspector General R.K. Vij) asserted that Salwa Judum and SPO forces are distinct entities, but the SPOs themselves dispute that they relinquish Salwa Judum associations when joining.24 The CRPF’s plans for the future of the SPOs are murky. Since their introduction, there have been gradual efforts to institutionalize SPOs into the CRPF, but without adequate training or official status, most continue to occupy a vague role. Some officials wish to extract the SPOs from southern Chhattisgarh and relocate them throughout the state to sever ties between the SPOs and the Salwa Judum.25 However, none have been moved yet, and future shifts seem unlikely with CRPF forces heavily reliant on their unique local knowledge. When pressed for exact dates and figures, Ranjan said that perhaps only 10 per cent of the five thousand SPOs would be relocated, and even this would not happen for

21 Most of the SPO interviews were held in the presence of CRPF commanders were characterized by heavily-coached stock answers to specific questions, with the commanders nodding and smiling as SPOs gave the “right” answers. 22 Author interviews, September 2007. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Author interview, Sharma.

The Purification Hunt 289 some time.26 Others want to lump the SPOs together into a special battalion of five thousand forces, but it is unclear what purpose the unit would serve.27 Salwa Judum happily picks up the slack in the meantime.

SALWA JUDUM Salwa Judum is the brainchild of Mahendra Karma. Originally a Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)28 politician representing Faraspal, Karma was kicked out for poor performance in 1981. He then switched to the Congress (I) Party, representing Dantewara for the last twenty-four years. Karma first gained notoriety from the malik makbuja scam, amassing significant income by purchasing timber rights from adivasi populations at reduced prices and reselling them at a profit to developers and logging companies.29 A Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry states: “Mahendra Karma … and others were party of criminal conspiracy during 1992–96 to cause wrongful gain to the land owners in the matter of felling trees.”30 Despite the indictment, no disciplinary action was taken against Karma, and he remains a fixture of Chhattisgarh state politics. This emboldened Karma to exploit natural resource expropriation for personal gain creating Salwa Judum as a cover to achieve these objectives. Karma patterned the Salwa Judum concept after earlier Dantewara anti-Naxal movements. In 1990, Karma led the Jan Jagran Abhiyan (JJA), an anti-Naxal group that opposed the creation of sanghams (Maoist village-level organizations) in villages. The JJA went to villages demanding that senior sangham leaders were handed over. If the villages refused, they were harassed, threatened, and sometimes burned (PUCL 2006: 12). The JJA was morally supported by BJP leadership, but there was no official funding or arms given from the state. Aside from a brief resurgence 26

Author interview, Ranjan, September 2007. Author interview, Sharma. 28 Henceforth CPI (M-L). 29 Land/timber resources are subject to many regulations that are often exploited for personal gain. The Protection of Scheduled Tribes (Interest in Trees) Act of 1956–7 restricts the purchase of tribal land by non-tribals. Chhattisgarh is a favoured scam area because of the high value of teakwood, low population density, and high tribal population. Because Karma himself is a Koya tribal, he has the right to engage in these transactions. 30 Central Bureau of Investigation Report, India: 8 December 1998. 27

290 Windows into a Revolution in 1998, the JJA garnered little support outside of localized pockets of Dantewara, and faded away by 2002. In January 2005, Karma and the District Collector of Dantewara began discussions on how to revive and expand the JJA into a districtwide counterinsurgency movement. Hoping to harness a growing discontent among many village heads of the redistributive sangham policy of the Maoists, and by the villagers themselves from a Maoist ban on the sale of Tendu leaves,31 a plan to restart the JJA was proposed with support from the Chhattisgarh Government. The JJA officially became Salwa Judum in June 2005 following a summit meeting of Dantewara politicians chaired by Mahendra Karma (PUCL 2006). Although there are several different possible translations for Salwa Judum, “purification hunt” is considered truest to the Gondi language spoken by most of its members. With this new branding, Salwa Judum began to target civilians, “widening the definition of ‘Naxalite’… to include all sangham members. The current definition restricts it to those in uniform, carrying arms, or a member of a dalam”.32 Salwa Judum was initially framed by its members and the press as a spontaneous village uprising against the Maoists to provide deniability for criticism of its violent tactics. This narrative is now debunked and dismissed by all except Karma and some local Salwa Judum leaders (ICI 2006). Although some citizens did join Salwa Judum post facto in reaction to Naxal violence, they were not the instigators of the movement. Konda Madhukarrao, a teacher from Bijapur, was handpicked by Karma to be the public face of this new campaign against Maoist atrocities. On 25 August 2005, Chhattisgarh State established a committee led by Chief Secretary, A.K. Vijayvargiya, to provide direct support to Salwa Judum in the form of logistics, arms and funding.33 Salwa Judum recruits victims of Maoist violence, opportunists who wish to profit from security services, aspiring politicians, criminals, conscripts and residents of IDP camps who have no other job opportunities. Salwa Judum members often become SPOs, using their Salwa Judum connections to obtain the coveted positions. Members wear no uniforms and carry little or no identification (ICI 2006: 23). Most 31

Also called beedi leaves. They are a major source of income in Dantewara. “Common Man’s Awareness Raising Campaign Against Naxalites, Work Plan to Make the Campaign Successful; District South Bastar, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh”: 15. 33 http://www.ipcs.org/IPCS-Special-Report-25.pdf. 32

The Purification Hunt 291 members are under twenty years old, and many appear to be no more than fifteen. In 2005, witnesses in Dantewara saw “local people on their bicycles, in groups of five (and often more), carrying three assault rifles, one 2 inch mortar launcher and a sten-gun to be … common.”(PUCL 2006: 14) Two years later, the groups were larger (fifteen to twenty people), more prolific, and carried more deadly weaponry.34 Brazen and deadly Salwa Judum attacks have upended local populations. In pockets where the counter-insurgency is strongest, scores of villages have been burned, attacked and abandoned with impunity for the attackers.35 Salwa Judum forces have killed villagers who they claim are “Maoists”, those who attend Maoist meetings, and those who give any support to Maoist, real or perceived. Salwa Judum has annexed large sections of Dantewara with local government assistance. As Varadarajan notes: A 2007 memo by the Collector of Dantewara lists the number of Salwa Judum meetings held from June 2005 till January 2007, the villages which joined SJ and those which have not. Coupled with an earlier document from 2005— which laid out a ‘work proposal’ for the SJ including identifying ‘friendly’ and ‘enemy’ villages, appointing Special Police Officers, dividing the entire area into clusters and permanently resettling villages next to police stations—the 2007 memo sounds like the report of work successfully done.36

Despite the evidence, Karma describes Salwa Judum as “a Gandhian movement, so there can’t possibly be any violence” claiming that Salwa Judum forces number 120,000.37 The huge Gandhi painting above his head notwithstanding, Karma is disinterested in peaceful resolution of the conflict, stating that “the single greatest lesson I have learnt is never to compromise with the Maoists”.38 Further, the “Salwa Judum can’t stop if you ask it to stop”,39 and “the only way the state can develop is to sanitize it off Maoists so that peace is ensured”.40 The language of 34

Author observation, 2007. Both the ICI (2006) and PUCL (2006) reports give many specific examples. 36 Personal blog of Siddharth Varadarajan, The Hindu. http:// svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2007/09/salwa-judum-international-humanitarian.html. 37 Author interview, Mahendra Karma, September 2007. 38 Vij (2007b). 39 Vij (2007a). 40 April 2007—Hard News (Le Monde Diplomatique S Asia division): Maoist Mayhem http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2007/04/915. 35

292 Windows into a Revolution cleansing parallels that of leaders of other large-scale atrocities, as Karma brands any who disagree with him a “Naxal”, and has a personal propensity to violence and intimidation tactics, leveraging his wealth and position of parliamentary power to maintain the conflict. Karma wants to expand Salwa Judum throughout Chhattisgarh, and then to all of the areas where the “Naxal menace” lies.41 In pursuit of this aim, Karma is considering moving his electoral district from Dantewara to Bastar because “I want to contest from the place where the Maoists are strongest”.42 When asked when Salwa Judum forces would return the weapons given to them by the government, he said, “Why should they ever return the weapons?” because “there will be no withdrawal of SPOs in Dantewara”.43 When asked how long he saw Salwa Judum in operation, he said “forever, out of necessity in the area (but) not less than fifty years. It will never be complete”.44 Although Maoist propaganda pamphlets are printed in at least five languages in Chhattisgarh alone as a means to seek grassroots allegiance, through supporting a host of localized grievances,45 Salwa Judum’s presence has affected the recruitment of villagers by the Maoists. According to senior Maoist spokesman Ganesh Uyike, Salwa Judum’s creation was a recruitment boon because some villagers joined to avenge Salwa Judum violence, and others were forced to choose sides as neutrality no longer was possible.46 That said, the Maoists do also conduct intermittent extortions, kidnappings and forced recruitments within villages often related to the sangham restructurings that disenfranchise traditional village elites in favor of Maoist operatives.47 These village 41

Author interview, Karma. Ibid. Karma’s likely target is Kanker, also reserved for tribal politicians. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Hindi, English, Telugu, Dormi, and one undefined tribal language. Pamphlets were shown to author at both Kiranpur and Dantewara city stations, but two days later were “no longer available” to photograph. Author interviews, September 2007. 46 Senior Dantewara Expert. Comrade Sonu, CPI (Maoist) states an increase of 23x in main (fighting) forces and 10x in base (logistical/support) forces since mid-2005 (People’s March. July 2007). 47 A sangham is a community-level power restructuring that expropriates resources from traditional tribal leadership to redistribute it in a “more equitable” manner. Although this philosophy is Maoist-based, it often only serves to consolidate power in a different set of elite hands. 42

The Purification Hunt 293 elites and their supporters are significant supporters to anti-Naxal counterinsurgency efforts. Salwa Judum altered the conflict landscape of Dantewara, evidenced by a “warlordization” of the region through local Salwa Judum leaders who controlled the IDP camps sheltering displaced villagers, displacement that these same warlords bear partial responsibility for. In exchange for their “protection” services to the IDPs, they received funding, food and arms from Chhattisgarh State. The leaders demarcated Dantewara territory amongst themselves, consolidating efforts to increase monetary and arms support from the state, and strategically plan to ensure that Salwa Judum continues to thrive.48 Karma himself is no longer invited to attend these meetings. When asked about this, Karma deferred that “they are more powerful than me. They are repeatedly in routine meetings (without me)”.49 The warlords crisscross Dantewara in truck convoys with automatic weapon-wielding plainclothes security personnel. Most of them recruit self-professed SPOs as supplementary forces. The most powerful is Ram Bhuvan Kushwah, who oversees four IDP camps, including the largest at Dornapal. Kushwah describes himself as just another ordinary citizen tired of seeing “the government rubbing shoulders with the Naxalites … suppressing the movement of the people. The government made us passive”.50 The reality is different; he moved from Uttar Pradesh in 2003 tempted by the potential to quickly climb the Chhattisgarh political ladder. Kushwah was a founding member of Salwa Judum, increasing his visibility, power, and control since. Kushwah forcefully agitates for the establishment of camps every ten kilometers on all major Dantewara roads, and for a militarization of government services. For Kushwah, “Every department should work on war, including the forestry, health, and education departments.”51 Kushwah believes that he should be able to operate beyond the law simply because he is fighting the “Naxal menace”, maintaining an iron grip over his jurisdiction of IDP camps and surrounding regions. Other local Salwa Judum leaders also fit the soldier of fortune moniker. For example, Madhukar Rao and Ajay Singh control adjacent territory, 48

Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert, September 2007. Author interview, Karma. 50 Author interview, Kushwah, September 2007. 51 Ibid. 49

294 Windows into a Revolution and are engaged in a bitter turf war over control of the rich forest resources and IDP camps that cross their lands.52 The warlords extract funds from the people in the IDP camps through state aid, and by using camp residents as forced labour to complete road construction projects awarded by the state, including National Highway-221.53 In a poignant example of the broken chain of command, several Salwa Judum members in Dornapal SPO headquarters related a story of what happens when senior officials come down from the capital of Chhattisgarh, Raipur. After a 2006 Maoist attack that killed twenty-two police, Inspector General Vij travelled to Dornapal by helicopter with a Sahara reporter to assess the situation. After a verbal confrontation, Salwa Judum/SPO cadres began physically assaulting the reporter. In an effort to protect the reporter, Vij stepped in to mediate, whereby he was slapped by Salwa Judum leader Prakash for his efforts. Instead of retaliating, Vij immediately returned to his helicopter with the reporter and did not return to Dornapal.54 Access to Dornapal police headquarters is controlled by Kushwah, as the Police Chief of Dornapal needs to ask his permission to allow visitors or make tactical decisions.55 Regardless, senior CRPF leaders remain publicly satisfied with Salwa Judum and how it augments their forces by creating a tactical advantage in Dantewara.56 However, there is acknowledgement that “mistakes” were made, admitting that villages were burned and people killed by Salwa Judum forces.57 In a telling sign, the CRPF is strategizing for scenarios if and when Salwa Judum breaks completely free from state subservience, 52

Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert. Although news reports state that Singh was murdered by Naxals, several sources assert he is very much alive and operating. 53 “Work on Naxal-hit NH stretch back on track.” Indian Express 28 September 2007.These practices mirror those in other areas of protracted conflict, such as those by Hutu groups inflating numbers and preying upon refugees in Rwanda after the genocide. 54 Author interviews, September 2007. Neither the Sahara reporter nor Vij would confirm or deny the report. However, this is only one of many similar stories. 55 The author attempted to enter the Dornapal SPO headquarters (across the street from Dornapal refugee camp) in September 2007 with previous permission from Sharma and Vij. The Thanedar ignored these permissions and asked Kushwah instead, who would not give access. The Thanedar heeded Kushwah’s wishes, despite the fact that Kushwah operates in no official capacity, and that both the Thanedar’s superior and his superior’s superior gave explicit instructions to grant access. 56 Author interviews, Vij and Sharma. 57 Author interview, Sharma.

The Purification Hunt 295 and a vigorous debate is taking place internally about how to react. In the meantime, the conflict itself has been locked in stasis since 2007, leaving most citizens of the region unable to return to their previous lives.

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE Bali58 is eighteen years old. His village of Kesargaon was attacked by Maoist or Salwa Judum forces at least twenty times, and was burned

Tribal women carrying tendu leaves near an IDP camp in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh (Courtesy Jason Miklian).

58 Author interviews, September 2007. Name, age and village changed for protection.

296 Windows into a Revolution completely to the ground twice. Seven people from his village were killed in the conflict over the last two years—six by Salwa Judum and one by the Maoists. During one attack, Salwa Judum and SPO forces armed with axes and guns corralled the entire village. They then separated four women. The older women were pushed to the ground, and the younger two were repeatedly gang-raped in broad daylight by fifteen different Salwa Judum members. Afterwards, the women were dressed in Maoist clothing that Salwa Judum had brought with them, their hair was cut, and they were then taken from the village and arrested as “captured Maoists”.59 Thousands of villagers with stories similar to Bali’s were herded in 2006 into over twenty IDP camps adjacent to Salwa Judum barracks across Dantewara. Camp residents are virtual prisoners, given direct warnings by camp leadership that if they try to return to their villages, they will be killed. None in the camps are allowed to leave for more than ten hours, and residents are forced to re-register each night.60 The camps are recruitment havens for Salwa Judum leaders, some of whom entice teenage children to join their ranks within earshot of UNICEF tents. After human rights groups complained that camp settings were crushing the spirits and the livelihoods of villagers, the CRPF and Salwa Judum forces at Dornapal camp cordoned off a section of land for women to cultivate rice. This land is roughly two acres, barricaded on all sides by three-meter fencing topped with barbed wire and manned gun towers at the corners. It is the only “field” that the thirteen thousand people in the Dornapal camp were allowed to cultivate.61 Further, after the State Government stopped supplying free rice to those in the camps, they were forced to work as day labourers for food.62 The number of camp residents is significant but disputed. The Indian Government claims a figure of sixty thousand in twenty-one camps. 59 Neither woman could be located. ICI interviews have unearthed similar stories, however. 60 ICI (2006). This practice continues at Dornapal camp. In 2008, some started making their way to their former villages, but for many, the camps have become new homes. 61 The author observed three people working in the compound. The rice was harvested long ago. 62 The provision of food from the state comes and goes, and can usually be predicted by looking at the election schedule.

The Purification Hunt 297 Independent estimates, however, put the figure at closer to forty thousand.63 Government numbers are inflated by Chhattisgarh State to increase the military aid given, as the Central Government allocates funding to the camps on a per capita basis. Also, the creation of nonexistent IDPs enables the Salwa Judum to skim off the top, “assisting” villagers who do not exist. There are moves to make these camps permanent; to that end, the government is allocating land to camps for roadside houses adjacent to police stations (PUCL 2006: 25). The IDP camps constitute only one part of the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Up to 100,000 are displaced in addition to 300,000 more affected by Maoist/Salwa Judum violence, with six hundred and forty-four “officially liberated” Salwa Judum villages.64 Large swaths of Dantewara are now abandoned. Villages in Salwa Judum-controlled areas that refuse to cooperate are deemed “Maoist” villages, and are then attacked.65 Salwa Judum deems any land not under their direct control as “Maoist-lands” blockading those therein.66 Affected villagers have no access to health care, government services or markets to buy and sell goods. So many people were emptied from the countryside that those remaining also left for the camps, for the simple fact that “we come here because everybody else does”.67 Villagers are forced to attend Salwa Judum rallies, warned by Karma that “we know you have Maoists in this area, if you don’t tell us who they are, we’re going to attack you”.68 Further, many village heads usurped by Maoist sangham reorganizations are Salwa Judum enablers, deciding for their village that they will support Salwa Judum in

63 Independent figures from Senior Dantewara Expert, CPJC (2006), and ICI (2006). 64 Campaign for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh. http://cpjc.wordpress.com/ peoples-convention-on-salwa-judumpress-release/. “Liberated” means emptied. Figures may be overstated, particularly in the number of displaced, as Dantewara population is 715,000. 65 PUCL (2006) and ICI (2006) detail villages that were attacked, burned, and/or evacuated. 66 Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert. The region between Dantewara City and Bijapur is one such area, consisting of over 200 villages. 67 Author interview, Camp resident Bardela, September 2007. A popular rumour around Dornapal was that the Naxals and the Salwa Judum will join forces in five years to fight the government. 68 “Unreported World. India’s Hidden War”. Channel 4 News (UK Television), (2006).

298 Windows into a Revolution order to regain their lost authority. Those in the village who disagree are killed or cast out. Those who fled to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh fared little better, as the state actively discourages assistance to Chhattisgarh refugees. Local indigenous populations accepted the new arrivals, instructing them to tell forest officials that they have lived in Andhra Pradesh for at least seven years in order to guard against forcible removal and targeted attacks.69 This is not enough to ensure security, however, as the border village of Gangapalli illustrates. Gangapalli is one of many border villages taking in dozens of IDPs arriving each month from Dantewara.70 A petition was filed on behalf of one hundred and thirty-six Chhattisgarh IDPs on 1 September 2007 with the Andhra Pradesh Forestry Department, stating that Gangapalli was burned to the ground seven times since August 2005, under orders of forest ranger V.R. Puram.71 Andhra Pradesh forest officials can legally destroy villages under the 2002 Forest Rights Act because the trees used to build the houses were felled illegally.72 These actions speak to the Andhra Pradesh Government’s distaste for harbouring massive numbers of IDPs from Chhattisgarh by taking measures to dissuade IDPs from settling permanently. Most of the IDPs who have resettled in Andhra Pradesh harbour no illusions about the likelihood of going back to Chhattisgarh, and are now simply trying to reconstruct a normal life. Some have attempted to return, but were forcibly prevented from re-establishing their homes by Salwa Judum, and returned to Andhra Pradesh.73 Malnutrition of IDPs is endemic, with some starving to death in early 2008. Salwa Judum cadres assert authority on both sides of the border, and access to villages and permission to speak with villagers even in Andhra Pradesh must be cleared through Salwa Judum.74 This illustrates the difficulties of containment along the two-hundred-kilometre porous Andhra Pradesh/ 69

Author interviews, November 2007. Although some estimates place the number of refugees in Andhra Pradesh in the tens of thousands, five thousand is probably more accurate. Author observation and interview, Ahmed Ali, regional director-SARAD, November 2007. 71 Andhra Pradesh complaint number PP-170907-24607, filed 17 September 2007 and author interviews, November 2007. 72 Author interview, November 2007, AFP Regional head Upendra and Chandar Nayak, APO Range Official and Head of Department. 73 Author interviews, November 2007. 74 Author observations and interview, Ali. 70

The Purification Hunt 299 Dantewara border, and of the stature of Salwa Judum on both its sides. Rule of law suffered significant setbacks at the individual and legislative levels. Impunity is rife, as no SPO or Salwa Judum member was charged or arrested with a single crime from 2005-08, or disciplined in any way.75 Vij justifies this by saying that “there may be a few isolated cases (of violence), but we know Salwa Judum is not doing that” as policy.76 Information is nearly impossible to obtain, however, as Chhattisgarh State will only discuss Salwa Judum behind closed doors, using the first secret State Assembly meetings in India’s history. To note: Mahendra Karma and BJP legislator Devji Patel said all members had been briefed not to speak about the session … any disclosure of the proceedings will be treated as gross breach of privilege of the Assembly. Former chief minister Ajit Jogi was unimpressed. “Being the first to do this or that does not mean anything. Dr Raman Singh must remember it is the government’s responsibility to ensure peace and safety.”77

These policies institutionalize official secrecy, opening the door for expanded “black operations” by state-funded counterinsurgencies in the state. Further, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA) of 2005 gave officials greater flexibility to arrest suspected Maoists without hard evidence, but its vague language opens it to civil liberties abuses. The CSPSA permits arrest of suspected insurgents and imprisonment without charge and without due process or trial. It is standard CRPF policy to cite CSPSA statutes when detaining villagers, imprisoning any dissidents that they suspect to be “Maoists”.78 The May 2007 arrest of human rights activist and General Secretary of the PUCL, Dr Binayak Sen, has become a benchmark case under the Act. Sen and the PUCL are strident voices within Chhattisgarh in highlighting human rights abuses and calling for the restoration of civil liberties. After searching Sen’s home without a warrant, the police found what they determined to be Naxal propaganda, evidence that Sen’s family and co-workers say 75

Author interviews, Ranjan, Sharma, Vij Author interview, Vij. 77 “Maoist Cloud sends House Under Cover”. By Sheena. K. and Rasheed Kidwai, Telegraph, July 26. 78 From internal unpublished CRPF document obtained by author (available upon request). 76

300 Windows into a Revolution was planted.79 He was incarcerated in Raipur without access to an attorney, as was film-maker and activist, Ajay T.G., arrested on a similar trumped-up charge. Finally on 25 May 2009 the Indian Supreme Court granted bail to Sen and though he is out of prison, where he spent the past two years, he is not yet a completely free man. T.K. Ajay was also granted bail after 90 days in Durg jail. Media freedom has suffered at the individual and institutional levels. Local journalists are threatened, arrested, assaulted and otherwise harassed by both Maoist and Salwa Judum cadres for reporting truth over skewed versions of attacks. Upon Salwa Judum’s inception, officials in Dantewara argued that “media coverage of Naxalite attacks makes it look as if they are gaining the upper hand. By reporting what Naxalites are doing as against reporting how ordinary people (Salwa Judum) are responding, the media indirectly gives the Naxalites a voice.”80 Reflecting this, local journalists now operate in an environment where any story that goes beyond “facts and figures” of raids or killings opens them for potential retribution by either Maoist or Salwa Judum forces, or arrest under the CSPSA Act. Human rights and development NGOs in the area are also threatened. The only international NGOs operating in Dantewara in late 2007 were UNICEF and Medicines Sans Frontiers. UNICEF has a minimal presence in the IDP camps, with employees providing basic services within each camp of five thousand to ten thousand people. The most prominent local NGO is Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, operated and led since 1991 by Himmanshu Kumar within a dangerous environment that frowns upon neutrality. Located on the edge of Naxal/police control, Kumar’s ashram was “visited” several times by CRPF forces in an effort to bully away his neutrality.81 In January 2008, the NGO was shut down by the state claiming that it had “encroached upon government land without permission”, revoking Kumar’s licence before razing the premises.82 79 Chhattisgarh Government Arrests Rights Leader. May 26, 2007. http:// www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2007/chattisgarh_govt_arrests_right.html. 80 “Common Man’s Awareness Raising Campaign Against Naxalites, Work Plan to Make the Campaign Successful, District South Bastar, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh”. 81 Author interview, Kumar, September 2007. Kumar’s wife was harassed twice by the CRPF when Kumar was away. 82 Official case from Chhattisgarh Government, dispute case number Sl. No. 1828/ 07 dated 21/01/08.

The Purification Hunt 301 Villagers attempt to fight back by raising awareness of the conflict at the local and national levels. In November 2006, fifty thousand villagers marched the length of Dantewara in order to demand an end to Salwa Judum.83 The Centre for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh sponsored a press conference in New Delhi in July 2007 to highlight cases of abuse by Maoist and Salwa Judum forces, demanding accountability and restoration of peace. Most villagers want neither Salwa Judum nor Maoist involvement. They are upset over Maoist opposition to government programs and efforts to block participatory elections; they are livid at heavy-handed Salwa Judum responses, and they are the most affected by the increasing violence which uproots their livelihoods and lives. Thus far, their efforts have fallen on deaf ears.

BLOOD IRON In Dantewara, iron helps generate the funding needed to enlarge personnel, arms and territory on all sides of the conflict. Iron ore processing plants dot the district, mining roughly eighty billion dollars (U.S.) of mineral.84 The largest is Bailadila, in central Dantewara. The complex is owned by the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC, a state-owned enterprise), and processes fifty thousand tonnes of ore daily from five mines, destined for Japan, China and the domestic market. The mines are heavy polluters, contaminating rivers with iron dust, thereby rendering the only source of fresh water for irrigation and for the local villagers unusable.85 These policies foment villager agitation, but instead of addressing these competing interests, the Bastar region’s tourism slogan celebrates them with “Bastar: The Land of Tribals and Natural Resources”.86 Private firms are also active. Tata and Essar steel were granted prospecting rights at Bailadila, which was challenged in court by the

83 Event video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVyYg5xFtBI. Accessed 1 November

2007. 84

Author interview, Kindo, September 2007. Unreported World. India’s Hidden War. Channel 4 News (UK Television) (2006); and Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert. 86 http://bastar.gov.in/. Diamonds, water, and forests are among other resources being privatized. 85

302 Windows into a Revolution NMDC on the grounds that they are too exploitative and pro-business.87 Several grass-roots protests in Dantewara have targeted Essar, including a Dhurli rally in 2006 when hundreds of locals protested forced land acquisition for a steel plant. Villagers were forced at gunpoint by Salwa Judum to sign over land deeds, and were arrested by the CRPF if they refused. 88 Essar was also under investigation for co-funding the construction of housing adjacent to the IDP camps in order to concretize village displacement. Tata is under scrutiny for a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed with the Chhattisgarh Government that included an unconstitutional “confidentially clause” allowing the parties to refuse to provide any information to any third party.89 The deal was so secret that the MLA from the constituency where the proposed plant is to be built had no idea of the plans.90 Mine officials pay Salwa Judum members to protect their employees, and to forcibly expropriate and secure neighbouring mineral-rich land from tribal villagers.91 Security is omnipresent, but the mine complex is too large to fence off.92 Salwa Judum cadres patrol the resource-rich fields in tandem with official forces, with licence to kill and/or remove anyone who defies orders to evacuate.93 Mahendra Karma is proud of Salwa Judum’s role as protectors of the mines, saying, “Of course, this is the best, the greatest achievement” of Salwa Judum.94 However, mine officials also pay Maoist leaders for the same purpose.95 Mine officials are certain that their complex will be attacked again, but they protect the workers from the Maoists through an unwritten pact that consents to infrastructure attacks but not violence against employees.96 These payments have not halted Maoist aggression or Salwa Judum extortion. Maoists have attacked Bailadila nine times during 2005-08, 87 On 22 February 2008 the Delhi High Court cancelled Tata’s licence in favour of the NMDC. 88 Sen (2006). 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert. 92 Author interview, Kindo. Five hundred and twenty-seven armed CRSF/CISF security forces protect one thousand seven hundred workers and mine equipment. 93 Author interview, Senior Dantewara Expert. 94 Author interview, Karma. 95 Author interview, Sharma. 96 Author interview, Kindo.

The Purification Hunt 303 and increased attacks are likely.97 The most visible example was a February 2007 night raid on the explosives magazine of the NMDC, seizing twenty tonnes of highly concentrated high-grade ammonium nitrate explosives with an estimated force of two thousand villagers.98 CRPF forces have since discovered the stolen material in multiple roadside bombs and explosives. Since acquiring the explosives, the Naxals now make pipe bombs with multiple detonators in addition to standard tiffin bombs.99 The CRPF has recovered some raw material following a tip from a captured Naxal, but the vast majority is still unaccounted for.100 Increased corruption from mine involvement exacerbates the conflict, providing a multitude of opportunities for parties on all sides to share the benefits of extracting assets from land once belonging to adivasis, an egregious breach of rule of law.

A WAY FORWARD? Many military strategists, politicians and Indian citizens are asking the question, “Why isn’t Salwa Judum working?” But Salwa Judum is in many ways a complete success, operating exactly as its founders intended, as a land and power grab masquerading as local uprising. Its creation enriched its leadership both financially and politically, obfuscated the true nature of the conflict, and enabled corporations to exploit the veil of violence to achieve otherwise difficult objectives. Rural villagers are the primary losers, as their land has been expropriated, their civil rights trampled, and their livelihoods ruined from a preventable conflict.

97

Ibid. Losses are estimated at two billion rupees. Sujeet Kumar. “Maoists Plan to Attack India’s Iron Ore Stocks.” 5 September 2007, IANS. http://in.news.yahoo.com/ 070905/43/6kbzj.html. 98 According to mine officials, over two thousand Naxals and sympathetic villagers jointly carried the explosive material from the magazine on their backs, a weight of twenty pounds each. A similar raid by the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist in 2001 is now viewed to have been the catalyst for the expansion of their war against the Nepal Army. 99 Author Interview, David Kulka Sgt PF, Dantewara, and bomb expert, Mr Singh, September 2007. “Tiffin bombs” are simple devices with explosives, a detonator, and shrapnel in a small metal (tiffin) container. 100 “Huge Arms Haul in Chhattisgarh”, NewsPost India. 3 October 2007. http:// newspostindia.com/report-17389.

304 Windows into a Revolution Recognizing the political and humanitarian disaster of Salwa Judum operations, state and federal politicians competed to reshape Dantewara policy within existing conflict management frameworks. However, potential solutions are problemetized by the fact that every major actor gains more from continued conflict than peace. Hardliners advocate increased militarization by expanding Salwa Judum, while the Left prefers a political solution that incorporates ceasefire negotiations, and the Centre proclaims that a development-as-security stance will be a panacea. None addresses how Chhattisgarh politicians benefit from the clash. Without measures to reframe their political will, reforms within Dantewara will be a non-starter. Simplistic assessments by officials also colour responses. Some of the CRPF and police leadership view the Maoist/Salwa Judum clashes as an extension of Koya/Dorla tribal warfare. They are seen as simple, war-like peoples who “have been killing each other for hundreds of years, and will continue to kill each other” regardless of state policy.101 Although the delineation of Koya (Naxal) and Dorla (Salwa Judum) tribal affiliations does exist, it is only a loose correlation. For example, Mahendra Karma is Koya. These attitudes are used to justify inaction and to provide selfassurance that the Salwa Judum won’t spread, because villagers in the areas surrounding Dantewara are “historically peaceful”.102 The conflict is increasingly becoming polarized and politicized along a Red vs. Saffron (Naxal vs. Hindu fundamentalist) line. Celebrating the SPO/Salwa Judum/CRPF nexus, the CRPF now awards exceptional SPOs with “Bastar Tiger” medals of honour. The medal’s name carries significant symbolism, as it is also the long-time nickname of Mahendra Karma. The medals and certificate are emblazoned with the same tiger logo used by the ultra-right-wing Hindu fundamentalist Shiv Sena party, gaining in popularity throughout Chhattisgarh. The policies of Hindu nationalist groups to foment violence for political gain are well documented, and recent gains by the BJP in Chhattisgarh “proved” to party leaders that their strategy paid dividends.103 The Maoists, too, have played up this angle, attacking Right-wing Hindu leaders in an 101

Author interviews, Ranjan and Vij. Author interview, Ranjan. 103 BJP win in Chhattisgarh proves Salwa Judum is effective. See the Sangh Parivar’s mouthpiece Organiser, 17 February 2008. 102

The Purification Hunt 305 attempt to win over Christian and Muslim communities in mineral-rich areas of neighboring Orissa, another battleground of the conflict. Emboldened by Salwa Judum, actors in other Maoist-affected states have begun to develop their own counterinsurgency forces. For example, Sendra was created by Sunil Mahto, a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) member of parliament from Jamshedpur.104 Due to a power struggle between pro- and anti-Sendra forces in the Jharkhand State Government, however, large-scale funding for the group has not yet been released. Also, Maharashtra launched a program in January 2007 to create antiMaoist Village Defence Committees (VDCs). Each village was offered 200,000 rupees for the formation of the VDCs, and at least twentyeight villages have taken part.105 These examples, coupled with reflection on the inability of the JJA to gain traction, illustrate the allure of counterinsurgency policies, and the difficulty for counterinsurgencies to succeed without state-level funding and support. Hard-line stances to tackle the upsurge in violence are piloted by the BJP in Chhattisgarh and the Union Ministry in New Delhi. Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have banned the political CPI-M Party in favor of a no-compromise, no-quarter stance. Also, targeted assassination of Maoist political leaders is a policy advocated by the high-level AntiNaxal Task Force, composed of various experts and members of the InterMinisterial Group.106 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has proposed the creation of an Empowered Group of Ministers, including the Home Minister and select Chief Ministers, to monitor the spread of the Maoist movement.107 Defence Minister A.K. Antony has said that he is “totally opposed to the Army being moved against Naxal elements”, as “(t)aking on the Naxalites is the role of the police forces and whenever need arises

104 Sendra is the name of a traditional regional Adivasi hunting festival. The connotations of the name are remarkably similar to those of the Salwa Judum. 105 Asian Center For Human Rights. 11 April. http://www.achrweb.org/ncm/NCMVOL-02-01.pdf. 106 Security forces aim to target Maoist leaders. Times of India, 13 April 2007. The group has now been folded into the Naxal Management division under the Home Ministry. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Security_forces_ aim_to_target_Maoist_leaders/articleshow/1900954.cms. 107 Prime Minister’s speech at the Conference of Chief Ministers on Internal Security and Law & Order. 11 April 2005, Available at: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/ india/document/papers/PMCCM05.htm (Accessed 15 May 2008).

306 Windows into a Revolution paramilitary forces can be deployed”.108 However, the pan-India antiMaoist force (COBRA, known in the media as Operation Green Hunt) has several Army officers on staff providing consultation services and other tactical assistance. There are calls to discontinue Salwa Judum as the first step of a peace process. Most vocal is former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, stating that “Salwa Judum is the by-product of BJP and Right-wing fascist forces to gain control over the adivasi areas … it aims to eliminate democracy in Chhattisgarh.”109 Advocacy groups including the Independent Citizens Initiative, Sinha Institute, Campaign for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh and the People’s Union on Civil Liberties have offered negotiation expertise and/or peace roadmap proposals, but have received no reply. Senior police officers in neighboring Andhra Pradesh also disapprove of Salwa Judum, finding it counterproductive and hampering their own anti-Maoist efforts.110 The Supreme Court of India has petitioned the Chhattisgarh Government for exact specifics of their support to Salwa Judum to determine if finances are properly used and if there are unpunished transgressions of justice.111 There has been no response. Negotiation efforts will remain in stasis until the benefits of violence are addressed. Neither the Maoists nor Salwa Judum has been receptive to individual, state, national or international negotiation, or mediation offers. Further, Naxal military losses after the breakdown of the Andhra Pradesh ceasefire in 2004 left it gun-shy about any adhocracy-driven state-level negotiations. Naxal leader Ganapathi rejected an ICI appeal for talks, advocating instead for military escalation through the establishment of permanent Naxal bases to achieve their goals.112 No side involved feel a sense of urgency to initiate a negotiation process, nor is there political will for a ceasefire. At the Centre, the Union Government favours a development-assecurity stance to eliminate internal insurgency, arguing that with 108 “No Involvement of Army in Anti-Naxal Operations: Govt”. Times of India, 4 February 2007. 109 7 September 2007 interview, available at: http://cpjc.wordpress.com/peoplesconvention-on-salwa-judumpress-release/ 110 Author interview, Shatish Kumar, Khammam Border Police force, November 2007. 111 Vic (2007a). 112 CPI (Maoist) (2007).

The Purification Hunt 307 economic growth in the most poverty-stricken districts, insurgencies will dissipate of their own accord. Current measures even employ officers of the CRPF’s colloquially-named “Operation Green Hunt” doubling as development personnel.113 As the head of the Kanker Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare college states: “We have to make sure the wheel of progress is not disturbed by anti-national elements. (The Maoists) are doing anti-national work.”114 This vision is tempered by Dantewara realities, where the only development underway is the construction of roads that enable police forces to transit better between outposts. Filling the dire need for schools, hospitals, a working local justice system and other basic government services would be more effective to sway the proverbial “hearts and minds” of local citizens than counterinsurgency forces. But development measures have only raised expectations by focusing on short-term fixes, thus increasing disillusionment when even these are either not fulfilled or used to line the pockets of the elite. As long as Dantewara development policy encompasses nothing more than road construction and mining projects, its “development-as-security” stance will continue to be seen as nothing but empty rhetoric by local citizens. The creation and continued presence of Salwa Judum militarized Dantewara society, entrenched the Maoist conflict, and cleansed rich mineral areas from their tribal populations all in the name of “bringing peace”. Salwa Judum’s “purification hunt” was indeed successful in at least one sense: creating an opportunity for mining companies to operate without the potential endless delays and profit-sharing that acquiring tribal land for operations would bring if pursued through legal channels. Considering these beneficiaries of the conflict should give pause to those who wish to explore traditional avenues alone for a durable resolution.

113 “Onus on govt for Naxalite menace”. The Telegraph, Calcutta. 14 April 2007. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070414/asp/jamshedpur/story_7644302.asp 114 “Unreported World. India’s Hidden War”. Channel 4 News (UK Television), (2006); and Karan Singh’s documentary “India’s Civil War”, available at: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYkk91pUzrE (accessed 15 May 2008).

308 Windows into a Revolution BIBLIOGRAPHY Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR). Naxal Conflict Monitor, January-March 2007. Cline, L. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Other Countries: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2005. Communist Party of India (Maoist). People’s March Newsletter, April 2007. Gill, K.P.S. “My Year-Long Stay in Chhattisgarh was a Waste”, Mumbai Mirror, 30 April, 2006. Independent Citizens’ Initiative (ICI). War Into the Heart of India: An Inquiry Into the Ground Situation in Dantewara District, Chhattisgarh, 2006. People’s Union of Civil Liberties. When the State Makes War on Its Own People: A Report on the Violation of People’s Rights during the Salwa Judum Campaign in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, New Delhi: People’s Union of Democratic Rights, 2006. Sahni, A. “So Who’s Losing Sleep Over Chhattisgarh?”, Outlook, India, 16 July, 2007. Sen, I. “Ground-clearing with the Salwa Judum”, Himal Southasian, November, 2006. Vij, Shivam. CWC Reports “Can’t Stop the Salwa Judum”, Tehelka, 24 September, 2007. ——. “We Have to Pay a Price to Fight Naxalism”. Tehelka, 31 March, 2007.

THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE JELBANG KILLINGS DEEPAK THAPA, KIYOKO OGURA and JUDITH PETTIGREW

I

n this chapter we analyse the story of Jelbang, a village in Rolpa District of western Nepal, which suffered an unusually high number of deaths during the decade-long “People’s War” launched by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).1 Sixty-eight people from this village are documented to have died in the course of the decade-long conflict, making it perhaps the village that suffered the highest number of casualties in all of Nepal. Of these, thirty were killed in Jelbang itself, and that, too, within the first three years of the start of the conflict which had till then been confined mainly to two districts, Rolpa and adjoining Rukum. Most of these killings were at the hands of the police. We ask why, in relation to the other communities in the area, there were such a high number of deaths in Jelbang. What particular circumstances made We would like to thank Anne de Sales, Alpa Shah and Sara Shneiderman for comments on draft versions of this paper. We are grateful to Kamal Adhikari for assistance with the Kathmandu-based fieldwork. 1 Henceforth CPN (Maoist). The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is now called Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or UCPN (Maoist), following its merger with another party in January 2009.

310 Windows into a Revolution Jelbang different from the other villages in the area? To answer these questions we examine what was particularly significant about the history of Jelbang. We argue that the high number of deaths in Jelbang was due to a complex interaction of events, circumstances and interrelationships. In the initial stages of the “People’s War” revenge killings increased antagonism between the Maoists and their opponents, and this played an important role in perpetuating violence. The most significant contributing factor to the high number of killings in the village, however, was police brutalization of the local population. Police brutality was supported and facilitated by the administration and took place in an atmosphere of impunity. Our work is based on documentary sources and interviews conducted over a period of six years. Ogura visited Jelbang in 2007 and is currently writing a history of Rolpa in the Maoist insurgency. Thapa also visited the village in 2002. Much of the information in the following sections is based on documents Ogura has collected and on interviews conducted with key individuals, including the senior-most Maoist in the village, Chandra Bahadur Budha; People’s Liberation Army2 division commander, “Sarad”3; and the Rolpa District Committee secretary, “Raktim”; all of whom are originally from Jelbang.4 “Raktim” provided an important document on the political history of Jelbang and personal data on sixty individuals who have been declared “martyrs” by the Maoists. This material was supplemented by interviews with key informants carried out by the authors in Kathmandu. Where necessary, the information has been supplemented through other sources, mainly, the annual Human Rights Yearbook published by the Nepali human rights organization, the Informal Sector Service Centre.5

2

Henceforth PLA. Maoists are generally known by their noms de guerre. Whenever these are used in this chapter, they are placed in quotation marks. 4 The police stationed at Jelbang over the years could have provided the other side of the story, but the national police force continuously moves personnel around and tracking them down and convincing them to talk about their experiences would have involved considerably more time. In any event, although the police always reported killings these were often billed as suicides, accidental deaths and the like. 5 Henceforth INSEC. 3

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 311

THE VILLAGE OF JELBANG Jelbang, or rather Jelbang VDC,6 lies in a remote part of central Rolpa, the district that has become synonymous with the rise and spread of the Maoist Movement in Nepal. It lies in a gently sloping valley formed by the River Fagam. It is a day’s walk from the district headquarters of Libang but can also be reached in a few hours from the road-head at Sulichaur. Its seclusion is partly due to the high mountains that rise to more than three thousand metres at its head, and although there is a foot trail that leads north across the high mountains to Thabang, the “cradle” of communism in Rolpa, the main route from Sulichaur to Thabang, and further to Rukum District follows the adjoining Lungri River valley to the east, bypassing Jelbang altogether. Like all VDCs in Nepal, Jelbang is made up of nine numbered wards: Majibang (1), Ainselukharka (2), Dalitgaun (3), Korbang (4), Thulogaun (also called Jelbang) (5), Sulkabang (6), Guthalbang (7), Rulbang (8), and Khibang (9). Wards are generally named after a hamlet, and include other settlements and isolated homesteads within the geographical area covered. Hence, they are known by the name of that hamlet, a combination of the hamlet name and ward number, or simply by the ward number. Thus, Ward No. 1 of Jelbang VDC can be called Majibang village, Jelbang VDC 1 or just Ward Number 1. In this chapter we use names and not ward numbers. According to the last census, held in 2001, Jelbang VDC had a total of 519 households with a population of 2815 people. Since it lies deep in the Kham Magar heartland of west Nepal, the demographic distribution is very clear cut: 95 per cent are Kham Magar, a branch of the Magar, the third largest population group in Nepal, and the remaining 5 per cent are Dalit (deemed the lowest in the Hindu caste structure, and also called the service castes as they provide services such as tailoring and blacksmithing). Agriculture is the main occupation although only around 35 per cent of the land in the VDC is cultivable. The main crops are maize, wheat, barley and potatoes. Income has traditionally been supplemented by animal husbandry and employment in foreign countries. The latter was concentrated mainly in India in the past, but nowadays more people have been seeking employment in the Gulf region and Malaysia. 6

Village Development Committee, the smallest administrative unit in Nepal.

312 Windows into a Revolution

The Maoists’ martyrs’ memorial arch constructed on the open air stage of the high school in Jelbang, 2002. (Courtesy Deepak Thapa).

Before the administrative reorganization in the 1960s, the area covered by Jelbang VDC was under the nominal authority of five mukhiyas,7 of whom the one from Thulogaun was considered the most prominent. 7

Headmen.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 313 Although a sixty-nine-year-old man from Rulbang, now living as an internally displaced person8 in Libang and who identified himself as not being interested in politics,9 does not remember any major conflict among the five mukhiyas, and recalls the village as being generally peaceful, the account provided by the local Maoists in Jelbang is quite different. According to the latter, the mukhiyas in charge of Thulogaun, Rulbang and Khibang were well known for “exploiting” the people, whereas those of the other villages were more progressive and supported the people in their fight for justice.10 This history of Jelbang being under the jurisdiction of different local authorities is believed to be a major factor for the divergent political outlooks of the people here.11 Evidence of this division was clear even as early as the first Parliamentary Elections in 1959. The votes from Jelbang were divided between the Nepali Congress (which won a landslide victory nationwide) and the Gorkha Parishad (the party that emerged as the main opposition in Parliament). Thulogaun, Rulbang and Khibang voted for the Nepali Congress with the others supporting the Gorkha Parishad. Both sides were presumably influenced by their respective mukhiyas. It is worthy of note that the then Communist Party of Nepal12 did not figure as a political player at all in Jelbang in that election even though it managed a clean sweep in nearby Thabang.13 It would be another two decades before communism as a political ideology arrived in Jelbang.14

THE POLITICAL SETTING: PRE-1990 During the formation of local bodies following the dismantling of the multiparty democratic system by King Mahendra in 1960, the mukhiya of Ainselukharka, Iman Singh Budha, became the pradhan pancha15 of 8

Henceforth IDP. reason this man had to leave the village had nothing to do with his politics or lack of it. Rather, it was because he was a close relative of a local leader who had been targeted by the Maoists and also because the police post at Rulbang was housed in a building he owned. 10 “Raktim” (2006). 11 Interview with Santosh Budha Magar, 17 February 2008. 12 Henceforth CPN. 13 Ogura (2007). 14 Ibid. 15 Chair. 9 The

314 Windows into a Revolution Jelbang Village Panchayat (corresponding to today’s Jelbang VDC). Assisting him as his deputy was his cousin, the former Indian Army serviceman, Khojbir Budha of Majibang. According to the Maoists, both these individuals were quite progressive in that they sought to develop the village.16 It was while they were in office that the first primary school was established in Jelbang. That was in 1964, and Khojbir took over as pradhan pancha soon after and remained in that position until his death in 1977. Khojbir was said to be a strong leader who unified the village, and his term was characterized by a lack of conflict in the village. He was also instrumental in developing the primary school into a lower secondary school, and for starting an irrigation project in Jelbang. Khojbir’s son, the local Maoist leader, Chandra Bahadur, described his father, saying: My father was a tall and physically strong man with an exceptionally strong right arm and people used to be afraid of him. Both he and his cousin, Iman Singh, never took alcohol or smoked cigarettes and they didn’t gamble. So villagers used to call him a Bahun.17

The path taken by Khojbir’s son, Chandra Bahadur, is important to map out an understanding of how communism came to be established in Jelbang. Since there was no school in Jelbang at that time, Chandra Bahadur had gone to study in Thabang, the communist stronghold to the north, where a primary school had been established in 1959. Chandra Bahadur was strongly influenced by communist ideals while attending school in Thabang, which had been founded by Barman Budha, a local leader and the person largely responsible for turning Thabang communist. Some of the teachers there expressly imparted lessons on communism.18 When the famous communist leader from Pyuthan, Mohan Bikram Singh, visited Thabang in 1956, he formed a peasant committee under

16 The Maoists use the Nepali phrase samaj pariwartan, which can be translated as “transformation of society” or “social change”, to describe what they wanted to bring about in the village. Presumably, any action aimed at undoing the status quo, socially, culturally, economically or politically can be construed as “pariwartan”. “Raktim” (2006). 17 The reference to Bahun, as the hill Brahmins are known in Nepal, with their past taboo on alcohol is made in contradistinction to the Magar, one of the matwali, or alcohol-drinking, groups to which Khojbir belonged. Personal communication by Chandra Bahadur Budha Magar to Ogura. 18 For further discussions on the role played by Budha, see de Sales (2008); Ogura (2007).

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 315 the leadership of Barman, who went on to become the mukhiya of Thabang a couple of years later. Under his active leadership, Thabang began to display anti-establishment leanings. It is said by the old-timers there that all the votes from the village in the General Election in 1959 were cast in favour of Khagu Lal Gurung, the candidate of the CPN. During the Panchayat period of authoritarian rule by the king that lasted from 1960–90, many communist activists stayed in Thabang. Decades later, the Maoists successfully made this village the centre of their insurgency. According to Majibang’s “Sarad”,19 Jelbang’s Khojbir Budha himself was exposed to communist ideas through Dharma Bahadur Roka, another prominent communist leader from Thabang. Due to his father’s relationship with Dharma Bahadur, Chandra Bahadur stayed at the latter’s house while studying in Thabang. As there was no high school in Thabang at that time Chandra Bahadur went to the neighbouring district of Pyuthan to complete his studies, becoming the first Kham Magar student in eastern Rolpa to pass high school. In 1976, he returned to Jelbang and became the headmaster of the primary school that had by then been established by his father. At that time, there were a number of students from Jelbang studying at the middle high school in Thabang, and like Chandra Bahadur, they too were influenced by communist ideas through local leaders and school teachers there. Around the time of the Students’ Movement in 1979, in which the student organizations affiliated to the then “outlawed” political parties launched nation-wide agitations against the Panchayat system, the first students’ organization was set up in Jelbang. As part of the ongoing unrest, a group of Jelbang students, including “Sarad”, set off for Libang to participate in a strike call. But they had to turn back when they came under police attack. This was the first confrontation between the state security forces and the Jelbang activists. In November 1981, a military operation took place in Thabang in response to a complete boycott of the general election by the villagers earlier that year. The boycott had been called by the CPN (Fourth Congress), the party from which the CPN (M) eventually emerged in

19 The

PLA.

nom de guerre of the current commander of the Fifth Division of the Maoists’

316 Windows into a Revolution 1995 through a series of splits and mergers. Some activists, including Santosh Budha Magar,20 now a ranking Maoist party official but then a class ten student at the high school in Thabang, sought refuge in Jelbang. Some of them stayed with Chandra Bahadur in Majibang and it was around this time that Chandra Bahadur joined the CPN (Fourth Congress), becoming the first person from Jelbang to take up membership of a communist party. Jelbang gradually evolved into a regular stop in the itinerary of roving communist leaders who had to work clandestinely due to the then prohibition on political activities. “Kiran” (Mohan Vaidya), now a member of the central secretariat of the UCPN (Maoist),21 often visited Jelbang on his way to Thabang. Other young communist leaders like Krishna Sen, a poet and journalist killed by the police in 2002, also started coming to Jelbang and communism began to gradually spread in the village. As the most educated person, a teacher and a social worker in Jelbang, Chandra Bahadur had a lot of influence among the youth, and given the level deprivation in Jelbang, it would not have been difficult to attract the young to Leftist ideas. In terms of electoral politics, after the death of Khojbir Budha, a former British Gurkha,22 Sarbajit Budha of Thulogaun became the pradhan pancha. Jelbang’s Maoists claim that the villagers soon became divided into two groups, one led by Sarbajit and the other by Chandra Bahadur. According to Maoist sources, Sarbajit soon began exploiting the villagers and appropriating development resources for his own benefit. He received political patronage from Balaram Gharti Magar and Reg Bahadur Subedi, both originally from nearby villages and long-time representatives from Rolpa in the then national legislature, the Rastriya

20 Budha Magar was for a while the secretary of the Magarat State Committee, the would-be “government” of the Magarat Autonomous Region as envisaged by the Maoists. 21 See footnote 1. 22 Many Jelbang men joined the British Army during the Second World War, especially from the ward of Majibang, where almost all the men left to fight. A local Maoist said that because many men who went abroad to fight for the British Army had told about their hardships in the battlefields after they came back, very few from Jelbang joined the army or the police in Nepal. However, there were several, including Chandra Bahadur’s brothers, who joined the British Army. Joining the British Army used to be, and still is, the quickest way for men in Jelbang to become rich as it is for many parts of Nepal with a history of service in foreign armies.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 317 Panchayat. Maoist sources claim that Sarbajit, with the support of these two national-level politicians, tried to suppress those who opposed him. In the 1982 local election, Chandra Bahadur and his group successfully supported Sete Roka of Majibang for the position of pradhan pancha with Chuk Bahadur Roka23 of Rulbang as his deputy in order to prevent Sarbajit from gaining office for a second time. In the last local election before the fall of the Panchayat system in 1990, former deputy pradhan pancha, Chuk Bahadur Roka from Rulbang became the pradhan pancha with the support of Chandra Bahadur and his followers. However, Chuk Bahadur slowly lost the support of Chandra Bahadur, according to Maoist accounts, because he became corrupt.24 At the national level, the political divide within Jelbang so evident during the General Elections in 1959 was further highlighted in the two elections to the Rastriya Panchayat after 1980 when legislative elections within the Panchayat system were held under universal franchise.25 While Sarbajit and his supporters voted for Balaram Gharti Magar and Reg Bahadur Subedi, Chandra Bahadur and his followers chose to support those standing against Magar and Subedi, regardless of their political affiliation.26 Often, the antagonism between the different wards within Jelbang VDC, especially Rulbang on one side and Majibang and Ainselukharka on the other, was played out during village festivals. The role of village festivals in exacerbating tensions assumed the greatest importance in 1995, which we address below.

23

For reasons of sensitivity this person’s name has been changed. A pseudonym has also been used for an additional individual. Both these individuals stand accused by the Maoists of collaborating with the district administration, thus implicating them in the deaths of some of the Maoist sympathizers. While it would be clear to Jelbang residents who these particular individuals are from the context of the narrative, their identities have been protected since they have both begun a new life in places where their past would not be so well known. 24 “Raktim” (ibid). 25 For the Rastriya Panchayat elections the whole district was considered an electoral district. Of the 75 districts in the country, nearly half sent two representatives to the Rastriya Panchayat while the rest sent only one. Thus, the electorate of a district with two representatives voted for two candidates, while those with only one representative voted for just one. 26 “Raktim”(ibid).

318 Windows into a Revolution

THE YEARS OF DEMOCRACY: 1990–96 With the restoration of democracy in Nepal in April 1990, party politics entered Jelbang, and the local leaders also chose sides. Sarbajit Budha and his supporter, Kul Bahadur Gharti,27 entered the Nepali Congress, while Chuk Bahadur Roka opted for the Rastriya Prajatantra Party,28 a conservative, pro-monarchist force of politicians active in the Panchayat system. Chuk Bahadur had close personal links with Balaram Gharti Magar, now a leading member of the RPP, and it is possible that this connection led to his joining the RPP. Meanwhile, Chandra Bahadur and his supporters organized a cell committee of the CPN (Mashal) in Jelbang, and later joined the United People’s Front Nepal (UPFN). (The CPN [Mashal] and part of the CPN [Unity Centre] were among the organizations that the CPN [Fourth Congress] evolved into en route to becoming today’s CPN [Maoist]. The UPFN was the political wing of the CPN [Unity Centre], which was formed by the merger of the CPN [Mashal] and other radical left groups in 1990.)29 In the Parliamentary Elections in 1991, the Nepali Congress won an outright majority nation-wide and formed the National Government. In Rolpa, however, the UPFN won both the seats, with the constituency in which Jelbang lies going to Barman Budha of Thabang. According to “Sarad”, more than 90 per cent of the valid votes in Jelbang went to the UPFN.30 The results emboldened the UPFN supporters into taking on those who had controlled the village administration in earlier times, leading inevitably to violent confrontations. The first serious clash in Jelbang took place in the run-up to the local elections of 1992 when supporters of Chuk Bahadur Roka of the RPP beat up some UPFN activists, followed the next day by a serious encounter between the two groups in Rulbang. In the elections, however, the UPFN candidates were “unopposed” since the only other party with candidates, the Nepali Congress, withdrew at the last moment under intimidation from the UPFN activists. As a result, all the seats of the VDC, including the chair and deputy chair, went to the UPFN. 27

Name changed. Henceforth RPP. 29 See Thapa with Sijapati (2004) for a detailed discussion of these splits and mergers. 30 Personal communication by “Sarad” to Ogura. 28

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 319 A major turning point in the approach to Jelbang’s impending political violence came in 1994, soon after the mid-term General Elections held on 15 November. By then, the UPFN (and with it, the CPN [Unity Centre]) had split, with the faction that eventually became the CPN (Maoist) calling for an election boycott. The influence of this faction in Rolpa was considerable, indicated in part by both the Members of Parliament elected in 1991 joining it. In Jelbang VDC, therefore, four wards completely boycotted the election, while in the other five a total of just nine votes were cast.31 During the election itself a contingent of the Royal Nepali Army set up temporary base in Jelbang. Soon after the army left, a major clash took place between supporters of the UPFN and the Nepali Congress, during which Sukhe Budha, a Nepali Congress supporter close to Kul Bahadur Gharti and who also happened to be the younger brother of Sarbajit Budha, was beaten to death by several young men. Following this, an arrest warrant for murder was issued in the names of more than thirty people from various walks of life, including teachers, students and farmers. Among those under warrant was Chandra Bahadur, who was in Dang, the district to the south of Rolpa, at the time of the incident. A number of people mentioned in the warrant went underground, fearing for their safety. Maoist informants from Jelbang claim that most of these people were innocent. Many Maoists in Rolpa are of the view that the Nepali Congress people used the state machinery to accuse hundreds of supporters of the UPFN with trumped-up charges. This incident also led Sarbajit Budha to use his contacts to establish a police post in Jelbang. The police had initially planned to be stationed in Thulogaun, but given the strong opposition from UPFN supporters there, they shifted to Rulbang. The arrival of the police was to prove devastating for Jelbang in the years to come. With one faction of the CPN (Unity Centre) having changed its name to CPN (Maoist) in early 1995, preparations were on to launch an armed uprising, a “People’s War” in Nepal. As part of the warm-up, the CPN (Maoist) began a political awareness campaign throughout Rolpa and Rukum, during which, in October 1995, a clash took place between supporters of the RPP and the Nepali Congress on the one side and the CPN (Maoist) on the other at a village fair at Gam, about a day’s walk to 31

INSEC (1996).

320 Windows into a Revolution the east of Jelbang. The Gam incident was provoked by activists of the Nepali Congress and the RPP, who disrupted a cultural programme being staged by the Maoists. Hundreds of people were reportedly injured.32 Fights in local festivals are quite common throughout Nepal but after 1990 such fights in Rolpa took the form of political confrontation. It should be noted here that Balaram Gharti Magar of the RPP had been elected to Parliament in the Election in 1994, and the RPP and the Nepali Congress were coalition partners in the government led by the latter that had taken office in September 1995. Gharti Magar himself became a minister after the cabinet was expanded in December the same year. Given the strong presence of the CPN (Maoist) and the challenge it posed to the Nepali Congress and the RPP, the government set in motion a police operation against the Maoists in November 1995.33 Codenamed “Operation Romeo”, this operation was launched mainly in north-eastern Rolpa, where most of the inhabitants are Kham Magars. On the first day of Operation Romeo, seventeen supporters of the UPFN were arrested by the police in Jelbang. Of these, eight were charged with the murder of Sukhe Budha and spent more than four years in jail. One of the eight claimed that most of them were innocent and that the real culprits had fled to India.34

THE “PEOPLE’S WAR” 1996: The beginning of the war: Maoists arrested, tortured and killed The “People’s War” began with an attack, among other incidents, on a police station in Holeri in southern Rolpa on 13 February 1996 and this hitherto marginal district was soon to enter the national consciousness as the Maoist bastion. The government’s use of indiscriminate force to tackle the Maoists was evident in places like Jelbang. Five Maoist activists were arrested in Damphu village of Jelbang VDC in August 1996, and taken to the police post in Rulbang and tortured before being killed. The detailed account of the incident (paraphrased below) given by “Raktim”, currently the secretary of the Rolpa District Committee of the CPN (Maoist), explains what happened. 32

Bharadwaj et al. For a discussion of the Gam incident, see Ogura (2007). 34 Personal communication by Dil Bahadur Budha Magar to Ogura. 33

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 321 The policemen in the traditional dress of Kham Magars, including the Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, the in-charge of the Rulbang Police Post, came to his (“Raktim’s”) house in Damphu searching for him. “Raktim” was not there but his mother was. Upon learning that the person they wanted was not to be found they left, but soon came upon five villagers, two peasants and three students, one of whom had just become a squad commander of the Ladaku Dal.35 The policemen called out “Lal Salaam”36 to them, pretending to be Maoists. As the unsuspecting five responded with a “Lal Salaam”, they were arrested by the policemen and taken to the police station in Rulbang. Two of the five, including a squad commander, were beaten to death in the police station. The police took the other three to the jungle in Jaimakasala VDC early in the morning two days later and shot them. All the five bodies were buried there.37

Whether these killings had anything to do with the beating up of a group of people, including Sarbajit Budha and the VDC secretary, Lal Bahadur Budha, a nephew of Sarbajit’s, by the Maoists a few days after the uprising had begun is not clear. But the local Maoist informants in Jelbang said that this incident played a huge role in turning the people against the state. They claim that the relatives of some of those killed, including the brother of one, went underground and joined the Maoists in order to avenge their deaths. This incident triggered a subsequent sequence of revenge killings by the Maoists. 1997: Revenge killings by the Maoists The first of these acts of vengeance took place in May 1997. A former CPN (Maoist) member who had defected to the Nepali Congress and been elected VDC chairman, Amil Pun of Rulbang, and a ward chairman, Ker Singh Pun of Khibang, were killed within days of one another. A Maoist in Jelbang said that they had killed the latter because of his involvement in the murder of the five villagers mentioned above. Perhaps sensing danger from the rising level of violence from the Maoists, a second police post was set up in Jelbang VDC in August 1997. Armed police moved into the house of the Nepali Congress supporter, Kul Bahadur Gharti of Thulogaun and their deployment in Jelbang appears to have been a direct provocation to the Maoists.38 At 35 Fighting Squad, the precursor to what later became the “People’s Liberation Army”. 36

“Red Salute”. Personal communication by “Raktim” to Ogura. 38 This armed police force is the armed wing of the civilian police and to be 37

322 Windows into a Revolution the same time, another police post was also set up in Narabang of the adjoining Jaimakhasala VDC but since it was located just outside the border of Jelbang VDC, this post was also presumably meant to keep the Jelbang Maoists in check. It was very rare for a single VDC to host two police posts—three, counting the one at Narabang—let alone a contingent of the armed police, which was generally confined to the district headquarters. The role of Kul Bahadur in exacerbating the conflict is worth recounting here. He had come back following the 1990 restoration of democracy after spending some time in India, and had become the main person to challenge the UPFN in Jelbang. Kul Bahadur had received some martial arts training in India. The Maoists claim that he had first tried to join the UPFN and moved to Thabang, where he had taught martial arts for some months. But following some personal problems, he went to Libang, the district headquarters of Rolpa, and joined the Nepali Congress. He had begun living in Libang in 1992 and had developed close ties with the police. Later, he got a government job to teach martial arts in Libang by using his close connections with the police and the local administration there. He also became a member of the Nepali Congress District Committee. The local Maoists state that Kul Bahadur did not live in Jelbang at all but whenever he visited he used to behave violently towards other villagers, most of whom were supporters of the UPFN. The Maoists also say that he sometimes brought the police from Libang to attack villagers. In 1996, during a visit to Jelbang, the Maoists had shot at him, injuring one of his family members, after which he took his family away with him and began living fulltime in Libang.39 1998: Killings by both sides A spate of killings took place on both sides in March 1998. On 20 March, Purna Bahadur Pun of Korbang was returning home after planting potatoes when he was hacked to death by the Maoists. He is also reported by the latter as having been involved in the killing of the five Maoists in August 1996. Lalu Sunar of Rulbang was taken by the police to Rulbang Police Station on 23 March, where the police poured kerosene on him distinguished from the Armed Police Force, raised in 2001 specifically to take on the Maoists. 39 Ghanshyam Acharya, INSEC, personal communication to Ogura.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 323 and set him on fire. He survived but the police later shot him to death. Lal Bahadur Budha, the secretary of Jelbang VDC and thus a government employee, was killed by the Maoists on 24 March. The same day, Sete Roka, Bagbir Roka, Bahadur Roka, and a ward chairman elected on a Nepali Congress ticket, Kal Sing Gharti, who were all related to each other, were called to the Rulbang Police Station. They were all accused of being Maoist supporters and killed near the Ri River two days later. The Maoists say that Sete and Bagbir were members of their “volunteer squad”. Fifty-one-year-old Nanda Lal Pun of Rulbang was killed by the police in October 1998 in Damphu. According to Maoist sources, Nanda Lal was staying in a relative’s house at that time. He was a member of the Maoist farmers’ group and a “whole-timer”40 and so was required to provide food and lodging to the insurgents. But since his house was close to the Rulbang Police Post, he felt insecure and had gone to live with a relative. Not long after Nanda Lal’s death, Kum Bir Pun of Rulbang was beaten to death by the Maoists at his home for being a fataha41 and a suraki.42 Then, in a case similar to Nanda Lal’s, in November 1998 the police shot dead Katake Pun, also in Damphu. He, too, had left his house near the Rulbang Police Post and gone to live in Damphu. 1999: Maoists strengthen their attack on the police Ratha Roka of Ainselukharka was surrounded by the police at his home in January 1999. When he tried to escape, he was shot and wounded. He was taken to the Rulbang Police Post and later killed. Ratha had earlier been arrested in November 1995 on suspicion of being a Maoist but had been released on bail. The Maoists now claim that he was one of them but he did not have a nom de guerre, a must for anyone who has joined the Maoists. In May 1999, the Maoists beat to death sixty-year-old Iman Sunar of Rulbang, a Dalit who had been elected ward member on a Nepali Congress ticket, for voting in the Parliamentary Elections held a week earlier despite the boycott call by the Maoists.43 The Maoists also carried 40

A person who works full time for the party. Cheat. 42 Informer. 43 INSEC (1997). 41

324 Windows into a Revolution out simultaneous attacks on the two police stations in Thulogaun and Rulbang—both in Jelbang VDC—and an another one the same month on the nearby Narabang Post. A police constable was killed in the attack on Thulogaun, which was also burnt down. After this coordinated attack, the police withdrew from Thulogaun and regrouped in Rulbang. But there was no letup in police action against the Maoist supporters. Chandra Bahadur Budha—not to be confused with his more famous namesake—and Bahadure Budha of Khibang were arrested by the police from their homes in September 1999, and shot dead by the Sirbang River. Of these two, Bahadure was a Maoist while Chandra Bahadur was not. Sometime later, Chun Bir Pun, the fifty-nine-year-old former ward chairman of Rulbang who had been elected on a UPFN ticket in 1992, was beaten to death at his home by supporters of the Nepali Congress and the RPP. Following this incident, and probably fearing retaliatory attacks, the police abandoned the Rulbang Police Post and consolidated their position in Narabang. 2000: The police withdrawal from Jelbang area In the face of continuing attacks, the police were retreating all over Rolpa and other Maoist strongholds. They moved out of Narabang as well and went down to the road-head of Sulichaur after a successful Maoist assault on the Area Police Office in Ghartigaun in western Rolpa in February 2000 left fifteen policemen dead, causing concern over the safety of isolated police positions. The police withdrawal made non-Maoists like Sarbajit Budha and Chuk Bahadur Roka vulnerable and they left Jelbang to begin life as IDPs. Most of them settled in Libang while some went to towns in the Tarai plains as did many others from all over the district. More than one thousand persons were registered as IDPs with the administration in Rolpa District alone. Jelbang became completely “red” after the police posts were vacated and the Maoists set up a “People’s Government” in the village.44 In effect, Jelbang had become a “liberated area”. But that had come at a considerable cost. Thirty people from Jelbang VDC had been killed. State killings far outweighed those by the Maoists. To put it all in context, all of this happened at a time when the Maoist threat was not considered to be so 44

For a detailed discussion of “People’s Governments” see Ogura (2008).

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 325 serious by the state. It was only after the latter half of 2000 that the conflict began spreading to other parts of the country, and the Maoists proved themselves capable of attacking larger government installations. Even by the time the ceasefire had been declared in July 2001, just over one thousand five hundred people had died across the country, and the cost to this small community had been around 2 per cent of all that. 2001: The State of Emergency and confrontation of two armies (the RNA and PLA) Jelbang was to suffer more in the years to come. A four-month-long ceasefire with the government broke down in November 2001. The army was called in and a nation-wide State of Emergency was imposed. The initial phase of army deployment was characterized by the state trying to take back control of the territory in Rolpa that had been abandoned by the police retreat. As part of the military action in eastern Rolpa, fortysix people were killed in an operation in Gumchal VDC not so far away from Jelbang in March 2002. Ten of those killed were from Jelbang, and nine of them were women who were members either of the Maoist women’s organization or of a cultural group. They were in Gumchal for training to become part of the “area level squad force”. The Maoists had officially formed the PLA the previous year during the ceasefire period, and were intensively enlarging their armed forces in their “base areas”. The Maoists carried out a successful attack on the army’s outward post in Gam in May 2002, in which over seventy security personnel and thirty-five Maoists were killed. Nine unarmed “volunteers” from nearby Jelbang returning home after the attack were ambushed and killed by a security patrol that had been away from the base at the time of the Maoist attack.45 The Maoists attacked the district headquarters of Arghakhanchi, a district to the east of Rolpa in September 2002. During the “search operation” that followed, government troops arrived in Jelbang and killed

45 For a discussion on the role of “volunteers” in Maoist attacks, see Ogura (2004). By “volunteers”, the Maoists mean anyone who is not a fighter with the “PLA”, but who provides auxiliary support such as carrying ammunition and evacuating the wounded without taking part in the actual fighting. “Volunteers” could either be part of the larger Maoist organizational structure, comprising the party, united fronts, etc., but they could also be ordinary folk forced to join the group on a particular campaign.

326 Windows into a Revolution a party activist. A three-year-old child was also killed in the crossfire. Further, the security forces burnt down fourteen houses in Jelbang, including those belonging to Maoists.46 The account given above does not include the many others who died in the course of Maoist attacks elsewhere. According to the Maoists from Jelbang, sixty of their comrades, “martyrs” in their parlance, died in the decade-long fighting, while dozens were wounded or disabled. By the time the fighting ended in April 2006, around ninety persons from Jelbang were serving in the PLA in various capacities. Of the total 519 households in Jelbang, members of nearly half had been directly involved in the conflict on the Maoist side.

MAKING SENSE OF THE JELBANG KILLINGS Killings are always interwoven into the social fabric but why were there such a high number of deaths in Jelbang? What circumstances made this village different from others in the area? In answering this question we examine the main contributing factors. These include the long history of factionalism in the village; the role of particular individuals in spreading violence, the deployment and brutality of the police, and a particular pattern of police-Maoist revenge killings. Factionalization There is a long history of factionalism in Kham Magar villages.47 Villages in north-eastern Rolpa, such as Thabang, Jelbang, Gam and Khureli have been factionalized since the time of the Panchayat regime. After multiparty democracy was reinstated in 1990, factional fighting in those villages metamorphosed into those between political parties, especially between the Nepali Congress, the ruling party at the Centre, and the United People’s Front Nepal, which swept Rolpa in both the First General Election and the First Local Election. Jelbang, too, had been divided

46 The burning down of houses was a common method of punishing villages for “supporting” the Maoists. Government troops burnt down many houses in Thabang in March 2002. The most infamous incident took place in Khara VDC, Rukum District in February 2000, and an inquiry into the event had been a long-standing demand of the Maoists in the initial rounds of peace talks. 47 See de Sales in this volume.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 327 into two factions with Thulogaun, Rulbang and Khibang ranged against the rest of the village, and factionalization became more intense after party politics entered the village after 1990. What seems to be different in Jelbang is that key individuals with ties to the administration used these connections to bring an exceptionally large police presence into the village. It has been the practice of politics in Nepal for politicians at the Centre to rely on district leaders and the latter on the local leaders; which is only as it should it be in any polity, but the difference here is that political parties made no attempt to reach out to the people themselves and left it to the local leaders to rally support for whatever party they were affiliated with. In almost all cases all over Nepal, with the exception of the CPN (Maoist), the other parties tapped the local notables to serve as their representatives. This was evident in Jelbang as well after 1990. Both the former pradhan panchas of Jelbang found new political patrons, with Sarbajit Budha joining the Nepali Congress, and Chuk Bahadur Roka opting for the RPP. The RPP has by now almost faded out of relevance but during the crucial period between 1996–99 they were very much in the power equation. Relations with the district administration were also patterned along similar lines, and the links between the village notables and the district headquarters made it easier for the former to manipulate the situation to their own advantage, which in this case would be suppressing their opponents while enhancing their own personal security. Thus, it was that the first police post in Jelbang was set up in 1994 at the request of Sarbajit Budha, following the killing of his brother, Sukhe. That it was housed in Rulbang in a house belonging to a close relative of Chuk Bahadur Roka’s is also instructive of how these links between the village notables and the administration worked. The second, located in the Thulogaun house of Kul Bahadur Gharti, was also near Sarbajit’s house. Revenge killings At least six people were killed by the Maoists in Jelbang after they started their insurgency. The document by “Raktim” mentions that most of them were targeted because they believed those people were linked to the police killings of villagers. Revenge killings were one of the tactics adopted by the Maoists to clear their village of police presence. Around the time of the local election in May 1997, the Maoists in Rolpa launched

328 Windows into a Revolution a campaign known as “Hattilai Andha Banaune”.48 The purpose of this campaign was to rid the village of “spies” who were close to the police. In the course of this campaign two people, Amil Pun and Ker Singh Pun, were murdered in Jelbang by the Maoists. For the Maoists, there was no more egregious crime than being an “informer”. The “informer” ranked on a scale lower than the “class enemy”. Whereas action against the latter generally consisted in running them out of the village using various methods, there was no reprieve possible for an “informer”, with bhautik safaya (literally, physical elimination) being the preferred mode of dealing with them. It also has to be mentioned that unlike the security forces which were rather indiscriminate in the use of violence, the Maoists always knew who they were targeting even if this was based on faulty information. It was thus that people like the Jelbang VDC secretary, Lal Bahadur Budha, whose very nature of work required constant interaction with the district administration, was considered to be an “informer” and killed in 1998. His killing took place just some months after the second police post came to Jelbang, and it is perhaps more than a coincidence that Lal Bahadur happened to be a nephew of Sarbajit’s and was also very close to Kul Bahadur Gharti. Revenge was a common behavioural motif for both sides. Killings by the Maoists caused retaliatory killings by the police. For example, as soon as Lal Bahadur Budha was killed in Korbang, five villagers from there were detained by the police on suspicion of being Maoists, and later killed. The police When recounting the story of the Maoist insurgency, the role of the police in actually fanning the flames of rebellion while trying to stamp it out comes up time and again.49 To understand why the police acted in the way they did, it is worth recounting the background of the Nepali Police in the modern era. The Nepal Police is modelled after the Indian one, a force that had been created by the British for the express purpose of perpetuating their colonial rule. “No system of police has ever worked better for the 48

Literally, “Make the Elephant Blind”, where the reference to the elephant is the

state. 49 Gautam, Baskota and Manchanda (2001); Karki and Seddon (2003); Pettigrew (2003); Onesto (2003); Thapa with Sijapati (2004).

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 329 suppression of political agitation, or agrarian disorder than the [royal] Irish constabulary,” Sir Hugh Rose, the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, is reported to have said while the reorganization of the Indian Colonial Police was being considered in the mid-nineteenth century.50 Thus it came to be that the British adopted a model for India that had worked so well for British rule in Ireland. The military character of the Irish police was grafted on to the system then existing in South Asia, which has been described as “ruler-appointed … to protect and defend the ruler and the establishment”.51 It was this form of policing and the administrative structure guiding it that were introduced by Indian experts as part of the administrative reforms in Nepal following the downfall of the Rana regime in 1951. Integral to this arrangement is the office of the Chief District Officer,52 “the representative of the centre—the eyes and ears of the central administration”.53 The CDO is the district’s administrative head responsible for maintaining law and order, and also has quasi-judicial functions that grant him the authority to keep people in detention. Assisting him is the police which is “the sharpest sword of the CDO which is used in the prevention of crime, enforcement of law and maintenance of peace”.54 The centralized character of the police with no local accountability explains to a large extent the police brutality that has been a hallmark of law enforcement in Nepal. The CDOs report directly to the Home Ministry in Kathmandu, which in 1995 was headed by Khum Bahadur Khadka of the Nepali Congress, who had been elected from Dang, Rolpa’s neighbouring district to the south. It has been argued that Khadka took the Maoist activity in Rolpa as a personal affront,55 and made use of the district administration and the police at his disposal to try and crush it.56 The police first set up base in Jelbang soon after the 1994 elections. That was at the time of the minority government of the Communist 50 Cited in Kirpal Dhillon, Police and Politics in India—Colonial Concepts, Democratic Compulsions: Indian Police 1947–2002, Delhi, Manohar (2005). 51 Dhillon (2005). 52 Henceforth CDO. 53 Shrestha (1985). 54 Ibid. 55 Rolpa and Dang both lie in Rapti Zone, one of the 14 second-tier political units above districts which Nepal is divided into. 56 Thapa with Sijapati (2004).

330 Windows into a Revolution Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), itself no friend of the Maoists. But the atrocities came later when the Nepali Congress was back in power within a year along with the RPP as coalition partner. As has been described earlier, the Nepali Congress and the RPP were the main political rivals to the UPFN/Maoists in Rolpa. In Jelbang itself the main opponents of the Maoists were Kul Bahadur Gharti (Nepali Congress) and Chuk Bahadur Roka (RPP). With the district administration doing the bidding of the ruling coalition, and a very willing Home Minister backing them, it was only to be expected that the police would resort to extreme measures in tackling the Maoists. Police high-handedness that began with Operation Romeo in Rolpa was to further exacerbate in later years.57 In mid-1998, the Nepali Congress-led Government launched another police operation, Kilo Sierra Two, in a number of districts, including Rolpa. By then, the extent of impunity granted to the police had reached such a height that the regional police chief even went on record to say: “If they [the Maoists] don’t respect the Constitution, we don’t have to stick to the Constitution and take them to court.”58 Mass involvement in the insurgency Many Kham Magar villagers were collectively involved in the Maoist insurgency, which sometimes led to tragic massacres, such as the mass killings in the Gumchal Maoist camp and the nine people from Jelbang shot on their return from the Gam attack. Other VDCs in this area have similar experiences of massacres, such as that in Gam VDC where thirteen villagers were detained and killed the next day by the security forces during the counter-operation that followed the Maoist attack on the Arghakhanchi district headquarters in 2002; and in Bhabang VDC where eleven members of a non-armed cultural group were surrounded and killed by the police in 1999. Jelbang, however, remains unique as it had two instances of massacres, in which all the victims were unarmed. Although the Maoists have not disclosed the exact number of its party members in Jelbang, they have confirmed that the number of party 57

The Dhami Commission set up by the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) to provide a better understanding of the Maoist Movement specifically pointed out that a large number of innocents had been victims of police brutality. 58 Deputy Inspector General of Police Sahabir Thapa quoted in The Kathmandu Post, 8 July 1998.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 331 members, the number in the armed front, and the number of households generally involved in their movement was higher in Jelbang than anywhere else in Nepal. Further research remains to be done on this issue, but there does seem to be a clear indication of a much higher level of involvement of Jelbang villagers than from any other VDC in Rolpa, higher even than the famous Thabang. According to the information provided on the sixty “martyrs”, a remarkable 87 per cent of these people joined the Maoists around the time of the “People’s War” or after it had begun, indicating that the Maoists had not struck deep roots in Jelbang before 1996. This is corroborated by the fact that in comparison to the other villages in Rolpa, such as Thabang, Libang and Gajur, Jelbang had fewer communist activists in the years preceding the insurgency. What was different in Jelbang compared to other villages though was the level of police violence.

CONCLUSION Sixty-eight people from Jelbang died during the decade-long conflict, thirty of whom were killed within the village. Based on chronological analysis, our paper examined the circumstances that led to the high numbers of deaths in the village. A history of social activism, which predated the spread of the Maoist Movement, and the interrelationships between the Jelbang villagers and the well-known Maoists in Thabang led to the development of a support base for the movement in the village. The first communist in the village, Chandra Bahadur Budha, became the headmaster of the school and played an important role in radicalizing the local youth. There is a long history of factionalism in Jelbang which intensified when party politics entered the village. What seems to be different in Jelbang is that key individuals with links to the administration used these connections to bring an exceptionally large police presence into the village. Thus the village ended up in the most unusual situation of hosting two police stations and a third one close by. These individuals were also able to use their party positions to influence the police to suppress their opponents. The police far exceeded their remit in Jelbang. The brutality practised in the Rulbang Police Post, which characterized the state’s counterinsurgency efforts, can be attributed to the attitude of the district administration, the role of sponsoring individuals, and an atmosphere

332 Windows into a Revolution of impunity. Those who have perpetuated violence in Jelbang have not been called to account for their atrocities. The urban middle-class intelligentsia’s construction of a “backward peasantry” in rural Nepal who were perceived to support and fuel the insurgency allowed the state to participate in the worst kinds of violence, and with impunity. A detailed analysis of the Maoist dead showed that the majority had joined rather late, a sign that the Maoists had not penetrated deeply in Jelbang before 1996. The motivation to join the Maoists seems to have arisen to a large extent from police brutality. The Maoists have also played a contributory role in the high degree of violence experienced in this village. There was a pattern of revenge killings between the Maoists and the police. The killing of five villagers by the police six months after the Maoists started their insurgency caused at least two revenge killings by the Maoists. In 1998, two more villagers were killed by the Maoists under the charge of giving information to the police, which led to another five villagers being killed by the police. The Maoist policy in the early stage of the insurgency, named “To make the elephants blind”, led to the deaths of at least four villagers in Jelbang. This cycle ended after the police stations in Jelbang were abandoned. But in the initial stage of the insurgency revenge killings clearly increased the antagonism between the Maoists and the anti-Maoist groups, before the former’s attacks on the three police stations made Jelbang a “free zone” for the rebels. The high number of deaths in Jelbang was due to a complex interplay of events, personalities and timing, as well as particular interrelationships between the central administration and its local representatives, and the state security forces. The police brutalized the local population in an atmosphere of impunity and with the support and facilitation of the administration. This was the most significant contributing factor to the high number of killings in the village. Although Jelbang arguably suffered a greater number of deaths than any other community in Nepal, there are villages right across the country, which have experienced—albeit to a lesser degree—conflict-related violence. Based on empirical research and the analysis of secondary data, our work draws attention to the need for historically- and contextually-situated analyses of what happened in places like Jelbang during the “People’s War”. Such insights show how violence was produced and experienced in diverse communities and have the potential to facilitate peace-building in the post-conflict era.

The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings 333 BIBLIOGRAPHY Bharadwaj, N. Dhungana, S.K. and B.R. Uprety. “Electoral Bottlenecks and Problems of Governance in Nepal”, Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 19 (2), 2008. de Sales, A. “The Biography of a Magar Communist”, In Gellner, D.N. and K. Hachhethu (eds.), Local Democracy in South Asia: Microprocesses of Democratization in Nepal and its Neighbours, New Delhi: Sage, 2008. ——. “From Ancestral Conflicts to Local Empowerment: Two Narratives from a Nepalese Community”, In this volume. Dhillon, K. Police and Politics in India—Colonial Concepts, Democratic Compulsions: Indian Police 1947–2002, Delhi: Manohar, 2005. Gautam, S., Banskota A. and R. Manchanda. “Where There Are No Men: Women in The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal”, In D. Thapa (ed.) Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal, Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2003 [2001]. INSEC. Human Rights Yearbook, Kathmandu, 1996. ——. Human Rights Yearbook, Kathmandu, 1997. Karki, A. and D. Seddon (eds). The People’s War in Nepal: Left Perspectives, New Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 2003. “Raktim”. “Samyukta Gaun Jansamiti Jelbangko Barga Sangarshako Itihas”, Unpublished document written by a Maoist in Jelbang, 2006. Ogura, K. “Maoists, People, and the State as Seen from Rolpa and Rukum”, In Ishii, H., Gellner, D.N. and K. Nawa (eds.), Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal, Delhi: Manohar, 2007. ——. “Realities and Images of Nepal’s Maoists after the Attack on Beni”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 27, 2004: 67–125. ——. “Maoist People’s Governments, 2001–05: The Power in Wartime”, In Gellner, D.N. and K. Hachhethu, Local Democracy in South Asia: Microprocesses of Democratization in Nepal and its Neighbours, New Delhi: Sage, 2008. Onesto, Li. “Report From the People’s War in Nepal”, In Thapa, D. (ed). Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal, Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2003 [1999]. Pettigrew, J. “Guns, Kinship and Fear: Maoists Among the Tamu-mai (Gurungs)”, In D. Gellner (ed.), Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences, Delhi: Social Science Press, 2008 [2003]. Shrestha, S.B. “Chief District Officer and Law and Order Administration at District Level”, In Shrestha, T.N., District Administration in Nepal: Issues and Ideas, Lalitpur: Nepal Administrative Staff College, 1985. Thapa, D., with Sijapati, B. A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2004, London: Zed Books, 2004.

INDEX

adivasi 5, 16, 21, 28–9, 32, 125, 259–261, 265–7, 272 fn 44, 273–4, 275 fn 48, 278, 281, 289, 303, 305 fn 104, 306 alcohol 29–30, 199, 228, 261, 314 ancestral conflicts 5, 16, 18, 24, 189–90, 195, 201 Andhra Pradesh 1, 3, 9–11, 19, 32–3, 44, 115–16, 120, 127, 131, 132, 267, 281, 283, 298, 305–06 Angadev 28, 260–3, 264, 272–4, 277–80 armed action 15, 19–20, 44, 90–1, 102, 104–05, 110 army 1–2, 13–14, 16, 25–7, 30, 33, 63 fn 5, 69, 71 fn 37, 76, 81, 117, 139, 162–4, 166, 174 fn 38, 175, 182 fn 61, 189, 192, 196–8, 200, 202, 218– 20, 226, 229, 234, 236 fn 8, 239–43, 244, 247, 251, 254–7, 303 fn 98, 305, 310, 314, 316 fn 22, 319, 321 fn 35, 325, 329 (See also Royal Nepal Army) Baburam Bhattarai 12, 165, 182 fn 61 backward 18, 23, 28–33, 91 fn 8, 108, 121–2, 129, 133, 170, 197, 199, 204, 260, 265, 273–4, 332

base area 3, 12, 69–71, 75–6, 81, 117, 128, 185, 187, 189, 197, 205, 218, 282, 325 betrayal 50, 56–8, 147, 163, 196 Bhumihar 91, 108 fn 78, 122 Bhumi Sena 98–9, 105, 107 Bihar 3, 5, 9–11, 15, 19–20, 44, 89–90, 91 fn 8, 93, 101 fn 45, 103–04, 109– 10, 116, 120–3, 266 caste 4–5, 19–21, 28, 30, 39, 45, 72, 74 fn 46, 75, 85, 89, 91–3, 94–5, 97–8, 100–01, 104–08, 109–10, 113, 121– 2, 126 fn 32, 129 fn 34, 167, 186, 203, 218, 223, 226–8, 236 fn 7, 269, 311 Central Reserve Police Force or CRPF 32, 284–5, 286–7, 288, 294, 296, 299 fn 78, 299–300, 302–04, 306 certainty 15, 26, 41–2, 52–3, 58 (See also uncertainty) Chhattisgarh 3, 5, 10–11, 16, 28, 31–3, 115–16, 125, 130, 264–7, 282–4, 285–6, 288–9, 290, 292–5, 297–9, 300 fn 82, 301–02, 304–07 class 1, 3, 5–6, 9, 11, 18–21, 28–31, 39–

Index 335 40, 44, 47, 60, 72, 74 fn 47, 74–5, 78, 82, 85, 91, 94–6, 102, 106–10, 113–14, 117–18, 120–1, 123–7, 128, 133–4, 136, 139, 141, 143–7, 151, 157, 166, 170–1, 174 fn 38, 174–5, 210–12, 217–18, 221 fn 27, 222, 274, 316, 328, 332 colonial 3, 6, 9, 64, 104, 125, 137, 146, 156, 267, 275–6, 280, 328–9 Communist Party of India (Maoist) 4, 9, 11, 44, 48 fn 14, 89, 114, 117, 129, 266 Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation 4, 44 Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Party Unity 44, 89, 96 Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 4, 10, 12, 80–1, 84, 207, 209–10, 212, 213 fn 17, 217–18, 224, 231–2, 309, 315–316, 319–21, 327 Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist Leninist) 10, 70–3, 75–8, 80–1, 83 Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) 10, 70, 71 fn 39, 73, 79–80, 330 fn 57 Constituent Assembly 2, 12–14, 61, 72 fn 39 counterinsurgency 11, 16, 32–3, 141–2, 144, 153, 179, 188, 197 fn 37, 205, 234, 241, 282 fn 1, 283, 290, 293, 304–05, 307, 331 dalit 15, 19–20, 89–93, 94–101, 104–11, 120, 121 fn 19, 129 fn 34, 218, 227, 236, 252, 311, 323 Dantewada 11, 31, 33, 286 fn 13 democracy 1, 3, 10–12, 21, 78–9, 83–4, 161, 163, 168, 173–4, 178–9, 190, 195, 210, 220, 306, 318, 322, 326 (See also election) development 4, 7, 10, 16, 18, 21–4, 40, 45–6, 48, 50, 52, 56, 66–7, 85 fn 67, 85–6, 106, 14, 127, 130, 134, 147– 8, 160 fn, 161–3, 165–6, 167–9, 171, 174–5, 178–80, 181 fn 60, 185–6,

189, 215 fn 20, 243, 246, 268, 272– 3, 284, 300–01, 304, 306–07, 311 fn 6, 316, 331 dignity 19, 95 fn 27, 98, 109 fn 82, 121, 242 economic liberalization 4, 23 education 18–19, 21–4, 32, 91, 106, 143, 146, 150, 166, 167, 171, 178, 180, 195, 197, 253, 272 fn 45, 293 election 2, 12–13, 31, 44, 61, 72 fn 39, 116, 122, 134, 138–140, 188, 191, 198, 198 fn 38, 205, 217–18, 220, 235, 257, 296 fn 62, 301, 313, 315, 317 fn 25, 317–20, 323, 326–327, 329 (See also democracy) elite 3, 21, 28–9, 40, 45, 62, 68, 72, 82, 84, 141, 292 fn 47, 292–3, 307 ethnicity 5, 248 false consciousness 18, 21, 26, 39–40, 62, 67–8, 83, 180 fear 16–18, 21, 25–8, 39, 50, 52, 54–8, 61, 69, 83, 99, 122, 163, 174 fn 38, 175–6, 192, 197, 205, 208, 218–19, 222, 227, 231 fn 33, 233–8, 239–40, 241–56, 257–8, 272, 277, 285 fn 9, 286 feudal 3, 6, 9, 72, 94, 96, 97 fn 36, 113, 115, 119, 121, 128, 131, 147–8, 161, 211, 255 (See also semi-feudal) gender 5, 23, 30, 84 fn 64, 85, 123, 133, 137, 144, 157, 162, 167, 170, 180, 234, 239 Gond 261, 263 fn 14, 269, 278 fn 67, 278–9 guerrilla 1, 5, 10, 12, 32, 44–5, 52, 90, 99, 114–15, 117–18, 122, 123 fn 27, 126–30, 134, 139, 202, 211 fn 11, 215 fn 20 guerrilla zones 10, 44, 114, 123 fn 27, 127, 129–30, 134 ideology 9, 15, 18, 21, 26, 40–2, 44, 47, 48 fn 14, 58, 63, 74 fn 47, 74–5, 79–84, 94, 114, 118, 123, 133–4,

336

Index

139 fn 10, 157, 206, 247 fn 15, 274, 313 informal economy 22, 40–1, 45–6, 53 janajati 29, 85 Jharkhand 3, 5, 10–11, 16, 21–3, 25–6, 40, 43–5, 47–8, 58, 89, 115–16, 125, 129 fn 34, 266, 278, 304–05 King Birendra 3, 164 King Gyanendra 2, 13 Kurmis 19, 91–4, 95, 98–101, 105–08, 109 landlord 5, 9, 11, 19, 21, 45, 47, 71–3, 75, 89, 92, 94–9, 101, 104–05, 107, 109, 115, 117, 119, 121–3, 125–6, 129–31, 223 fn 28, 267 land reform 21, 83, 117, 119, 129 fn 34, 132 Liberation (Maoist organ) 119 fn 15, 120, 125, 142 Maharashtra 5, 11, 16, 28, 116, 125, 132 fn 46, 259, 265–7, 273–4, 275 fn 55, 276, 278, 305 Majumdar (Charu) 9, 138–9, 140, 148, 151 Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) 3, 10, 21, 44–48, 55, 89 fn 3, 266 market 22, 39, 40–1, 43, 45, 47, 52–3, 106, 125, 132, 168–9, 179, 271 fn 38, 297, 301 masculinity 20, 23, 32, 47, 136–7, 144, 155–7, 251 mass action 90, 103–04 mass mobilization 9, 15–17, 19–20, 90, 104–05, 109–11, 138 mass movement 90, 104, 110–11 Mazdur Kisan Sangram Samiti (MKSS) 19 fn 50, 96 fn 35, 96–9, 101–04, 110 modernity 5, 22–23, 182 fn 60, 273, 276, 278 Musahar 91, 100, 109 Naxalbari 2, 9–10, 115, 119, 121–2, 127, 129, 136, 138–42, 146, 151–2 Nepali Congress 11–12, 14, 70, 191, 313, 318–24, 326–7, 329–30

Orissa 3, 9, 11, 115–16, 125, 132, 304 panth 260, 280 peace process 10, 31, 252, 257, 306 peace talks 13, 326 fn 46 peasant 5, 9, 19–20, 29–30, 40, 64, 71, 84, 86, 95 fn 24, 96, 101, 104, 106–07, 108 fn 77, 109, 115–27, 128–30, 132, 138–9, 143, 151, 157, 169–70, 180, 197, 204–05, 210 fn 8, 211, 314, 321 people’s court (jan adalat) 9, 44, 102–03, 122–3, 125 People’s War (Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) People’s War) 3, 10, 19, 89, 106 fn 66, 266 People’s War in Nepal 1–2, 12, 22, 26, 33, 81, 161, 178, 200, 205, 207–11, 213, 214 fn 18, 215 fn 20, 230, 236, 239, 309–10, 319–20, 331–2 Peru 7, 22, 28, 41 police 9–16, 19–21, 25, 28, 32–3, 48–9, 61, 66, 71 fn 37, 75–7, 81, 83, 90, 98–9, 101, 105, 108, 115, 122, 129– 32, 139, 142 fn 16, 143, 161–2, 166, 172–3, 175, 178 fn 49, 189, 192, 194–7, 200, 211, 213, 217, 219, 220 fn 26, 225 fn 31, 237, 239, 260, 263– 4, 265–7, 269–74, 275–80, 282, 284– 5, 287–8, 291, 294, 297, 299–300, 304–06, 307, 309–310, 313 fn 9, 315–16, 319–29, 330–2 Prachanda 4, 14, 210, 211 fn 11, 212, 214, 227 proletariat 9, 71, 115 fn 3 protection 20, 22, 31, 40–1, 45–7, 53, 55, 98, 106, 121, 130, 192, 195, 271 fn 38, 281, 284, 287 fn 15, 288, 289 fn 29, 293, 295 fn 58 protracted people’s war 2, 9, 117 Ravidasi 91, 93, 100 resistance 6–7, 40, 73, 84, 97, 132 fn 47, 133, 138, 169, 177, 180, 185, 187, 201, 206, 227 Royal Nepal Army or Royal Nepalese Army or RNA 1, 166, 218, 234, 239, 325 (See also army)

Index 337 Salwa Judum 11, 31–3, 130 fn 38, 283– 6, 288–91, 292–7, 298–304, 305 fn 104, 306 fn 109, 306–07 sangham 289–90, 292, 297 Sanyal (Kanu) 9, 138 semi-colonial 3, 6, 9 (See also colonial) semi-feudal 3, 6, 9, 147–8 (See also feudal) Shining Path 40–1 Special Economic Zones or SEZ 117, 132, 138 Special Police Officers (SPO) 32, 283 fn 2, 285–6, 287– 8, 289–94, 296, 299, 304 spirit (bhut) 28, 30, 225, 237, 261–2 superstition 202, 264, 274, 276 fn 60, 278 support 7, 12, 15, 18, 21, 26, 28, 31, 39– 42, 44–5, 47, 49–50, 53, 69–70, 73, 81, 83, 90, 96, 98–9, 106, 111, 114, 126, 144–5, 147–8, 153–4, 158, 160, 161–3, 169, 173–4, 180, 191, 200, 203, 219, 230, 233, 235, 237, 245, 247, 249–50, 256–7, 260, 278–9, 290–1, 292 fn 46, 293, 297, 305–06, 317, 325 fn 45, 327, 331–32 terror 16–17, 26–7, 54, 58, 133, 207–08, 209–11, 212–15, 219, 222, 229, 231, 252 terrorism 32, 208–10, 306

terrorist 11, 32, 45, 47, 70, 75, 77, 131, 139, 209, 239–40, 285 trust 55–7, 74, 153, 155, 163, 174, 230, 279 uncertainty 25–7, 41–2, 53–8, 146, 205, 222, 239, 249–50, 257–8 (See also certainty) violence 7, 13, 16–17, 19, 26–7, 31, 33– 4, 44, 47, 54–7, 66, 68, 81, 95, 99, 101, 104–15, 124–6, 140–1, 163, 167, 170, 174, 178, 189, 191, 196– 7, 202, 205, 210, 212–15, 217, 219– 21, 223–4, 233, 235, 240 fn 13, 246, 254, 256, 264, 266, 270, 272, 280, 282–6, 290–2, 297, 299, 301–06, 310, 319, 321, 326, 328, 331–2 West Bengal 2, 9–11, 15, 115, 119, 121, 125–7, 129 fn 34, 132, 136, 138–40 witchcraft 53–4, 237, 259–60, 263–5, 269, 274–80 (See also superstition) youth 5, 19–20, 22–3, 32, 72, 84, 94, 98, 122, 128, 139, 182 fn 60, 211 fn 10, 221 fn 27, 229, 239, 275, 316, 331 zamindar 48, 94, 104, 109