Maoists in India

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“Red train to Gurgaon,” by Saroj Giri

Rahul Pandita’s eyewitness chronicle of the Maoist movement and its affected lives is both sensitive and careful, finds Saroj Giri

HOW DOES one cut through the State and media’s dominant depictions of ‘marginal’ events and present a convincing story to a sceptical audience? One way seems to be to provide something incontrovertible — like an eyewitness account, something the writer has directly experienced, heard or felt. Take the recent writings on the Maoist movement wanting to tell the ‘real’ story, the ‘untold’ story. They bring us direct accounts of walks and journeys, travels and conversations in the Red zone — a jangalnama.

Rahul Pandita’s choice of title for his new book adds a familiarity to this directness: Hello, Bastar. The book presents his travels in the Maoist heartland and brings out both the movement’s history and the actors involved. Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy recommends the book for its authenticity and reliability. The presentation is not lyrical but not dryly factual either — it carefully lays out the oral history that circulates and nourishes the movement.

Pandita achieves a sensitive and humane account of the real lives of the people in the Maoist movement by cutting through not just State and media propaganda but also through Maoist ideology. There is a palpable unease about the political ideology these people supposedly believe in. Apparently, Maoist practice in its immediacy and local context is adorable. But ‘communism’ is, we are told, an irreparable problem — made clear in Arundhati Roy’s writings.

Pandita also sketches a touching account of Anuradha Ghandy, Maoist leader and Kobad’s wife. Coming from a well-off family, “Anuradha wouldn’t shy away from hardships; she did everything that other guerrillas would do.” In Nagpur, she lived and worked in Dalit bastis. Bicycling for political work around the city, she was known for her sensitivity and concern.

ARE ANURADHA’s Maoism and her justice-loving self irreconcilable? Isn’t trying to discover the ‘real’ person — unmediated by ‘ideology’ — part of a depoliticisation? Is ideology that pernicious?

Pandita narrates: “They might learn big words like comprador, bourgeoisie or imperialism, but the motto for an ordinary cadre is: datt kar khao, datt kar chalo (eat as much as you can, walk as much as you can).” Cleansed of these “big words”, the struggle gets construed as local and contingent — not what is usually understood as Revolution. Maoists are shown as fighting local violence and oppression by landlords and forest officers backed by the State. Their honesty and commitment melted Adivasi hearts. Little Tarakka and her family faced years of oppression by forest officers. Today, that is a thing of the past. She is now known not just as a Maoist rebel but also for her beauty.

Unease with political ideology and ease with the local and the directly experienced gives way in the last chapter, however, to hints of a broader generalisation — enacting a Giridih or a Bastar in Gurgaon. The imagination, dream and perhaps ‘ideology’ inspiring Ghandy’s humane acts and ‘big words’ start to silently underpin Pandita’s text. Let’s dream the urban agenda — Hello, striking workers!

Giri teaches political science at Delhi University
saroj_giri@yahoo.com