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'Sleepwalking' with India's Maoist guerrillas

9 hours ago

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Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict between Maoist guerrillas and the
Indian state. Alpa Shah lived among the tribal villagers in their guerrilla strongholds for
a year and a half to understand why they shunned democracy to take up arms.

Eyelids heavy, I struggled to keep my eyes open as we marched in single file, weaving our
way across the open rice fields towards the safety of the forest, without even the light of a
torch to guide us.

I was walking with a platoon of India's Maoist guerrillas - armed rebels who say they are
fighting for the rights of tribal people and the rural poor. It was my seventh night of walking
with these fighters and we had covered more than 30km (18 miles) each night. They moved
after dusk because Indian security forces undertook counter-insurgency patrols in daylight
hours.

Every muscle in my body was exhausted. My shoulders felt like a dead weight imposing itself
on the rest of my body. My legs were numb. My neck jerked as my head collapsed onto my
chest. I had dozed off while walking and awoke with a jolt. My brain seemed to empty of all
consciousness and awareness moved to my feet, which intuitively put themselves one in front
of the other. My neck jerked again, and then again.

Why women join India's Maoist groups

"Sleepwalking" is what the guerrillas call it. Over the course of the "Nightmarch", I realised
they could all do it. For the previous year-and-a-half, I had been living as an anthropologist
among India's Adivasis - or tribal people - in a Maoist stronghold in the eastern state of
Jharkhand.

I wanted to try and understand why some of India's poor had shunned the world's largest
democracy and taken up arms to fight for a fairer society. It was only when I was nearly done
with my research - in February 2010 - that I unexpectedly stumbled onto the march. Soon, I
would return to London but these men would continue with their relentlessly gruelling life. Year
after year, they would be constantly on the move as they try to evade security forces. And
they would never sleep under the same trees for more than a few days.

GETTY IMAGES

For the last 50 years, Maoist guerrillas have been fighting against the Indian state to establish
a communist society - the conflict has so far claimed at least 40,000 lives. They are better
known as Naxalites, named after the village of Naxalbari in eastern India, where a violent left-
wing uprising occurred in 1967.

Although it was eventually quashed, Maoists have since regrouped and asserted control over
vast swathes of central and eastern India. The movement is made up of Marxist ideologues
from well-to-do families and poor, lower-caste and tribal combatants, all of whom seek to
overthrow what they say is a "semi-feudal" system. But the Indian government considers them
a "terrorist" group.

Back in 2010, we were moving from one underground guerrilla conference in the jungles of
Bihar state to another in Jharkhand state.

Although a far cry from the dazzling skyscrapers and shopping malls that tower over Indian
cities, the camps erected for these conferences were impressive for their grandeur and
impermanence.

Trails connected by rainbow bunting led to tents - there were rooms for the combatants, a
conference room, a medical tent, a tailor's tent, a "computer room" and a kitchen.

There were also cubicles with latrine pits even though there were no toilets in the surrounding
villages. These secret cities could be dismantled in a couple of hours, leaving no trace that
could be detected by the untrained eye.

GETTY IMAGES

Life in the guerrilla armies was meant to be devoid of the social hierarchies entrenched in
Indian society, creating a casteless, classless microcosm of the utopian community they were
fighting for.

Material differences were to be erased, gender hierarchies eliminated and the division
between mental and manual labour broken down. Individuals became "Comrades" and were
reborn with new names that were stripped of caste and class. Cooking rotas involved both
men and women; and while lower-level cadres learnt to read, leaders dug latrine pits.

But over the years, these Maoists have been reduced to a ragtag army, desperately trying to
survive while focusing on their military strategy at the expense of fighting for social justice.

Today, the guerrilla strongholds are surrounded by team of Indian security forces with names
such as Jharkhand Jaguars, COBRA and Greyhounds - they have all been trained in jungle
warfare to fight the guerrillas using their own tactics.

Life in an Indian Maoist jungle camp

Human rights activists allege that the counterinsurgency operations also aim to clear the
region of its tribal inhabitants so that the government and private corporations can extract
lucrative minerals - coal, iron ore, bauxite. Mining contracts and other licenses have been
granted to several domestic and multinational companies. But historic laws that protect the
forests and tribal lands stand in their way.

The guerrillas try to defend their territory with guns stolen from the police and rudimentary
land mines, which are laid under dirt tracks to deter security forces. They use flash devices
from cameras to make detonators and cow urine to makes explosives.

But they are down to less than 10,000 soldiers and they are facing the might of the Indian
government's security apparatus. So their movements are increasingly strangled.
 GETTY IMAGES

Roads are being built and power cables are being installed in India's tribal hinterlands which,
for decades after independence, had only dirt tracks and no electricity. The new infrastructure
will ease the entry and movement of security forces.

The circumstances are ripe for the formation of renegades, betraying and corrupting the
insurgents from within. In the last six years, 6,000 so-called Naxalites have surrendered,
according to the South Asia Terrorist Portal. But human rights activists have said that many of
them are Adivasi tribals who were allegedly coerced by the police.

In Jharkhand alone, 4,000 Adivasis who were charged for being Naxalites, have been in
prison for years on end without trial. Many of the guerrillas I met have since been arrested or
killed.

But the Naxalite movement has survived against all odds, resurfacing each time the state
assumed it had been snuffed out.

Alpa Shah, who teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics, is the author, most
recently, of Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerrillas

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