Sleepwalking with Naxals

Our knowledge of Naxalites is mostly hostage to second-hand accounts on the movement. Alpa Shah’s book is an exception because it is a rare account drawn from participant observation — a method espoused by ethnographers who believe in the importance of living in a community to understand it. Ms Shah, a social anthropologist who teaches at the London School of Economics, describes how living in Lalgaon brought her in close proximity with Adivasi life, and subsequently with wandering Naxalite platoons.

Her initial interaction with the Naxalites was disappointing, she says. An early interview with a senior leader revealed little beyond his recounting the official history of the movement in India. Then she noticed a group preparing for a ten-day trek across Bihar and Jharkhand and asked if she could join them. They agreed, after some hesitation. Ms Shah was the only woman, unarmed and disguised as a man, trekking for seven nights with a Maoist platoon. As she describes how she walked, sometimes sleepwalked, with the Naxalites, we, the readers, march along with her, alert and in awe as we turn each page.  

Each night is a separate chapter. Ms Shah’s narrative is interspersed with chapters explaining the wider background of the movement, and the personal histories of the people she meets. Divided into seven sections, each deals with a character type we usually encounter in a standard narrative on the Naxalite movement: the middle class leader who has shed the class and caste tags; the young, innocent Adivasi; the violent Naxalite — Ms Shah calls them “Frankenstein’s Monster”; and the female Naxalite leader. These stereotypes allow her to work through the larger questions of declassing, de-casting and gender in the Naxalite movement, revolutionary violence, and the contradictions within the movement. 

Ms Shah’s strength lies in humanising each of these types and, at the same time, not compromising with the theoretical questions explored in social science research. She also draws from her experience of living with Somwari, and Adivasi woman, in Lalgaon. She explains how Adivasi societies are different and enjoy more egalitarian domestic spaces than the families of most middle class Naxalite leaders. The Naxalites believe in modernity and progress but often undermine egalitarian gender relations in Adivasi societies. At the same time, she points out that Adivasis are wary of outsiders, but the Naxalites could establish trust with this community through small acts of kindness. Like a skilled painter, Ms Shah comprehensively brings out the various shades of this complex relationship between the Adivasis and the Naxalites.

Women, we learn, seldom remain in the movement for more than a couple of years. Ms Shah, however, does meet a senior woman member of the party who confides in her. Since men and women are segregated, she explains how she feels left out of decisions sometimes made by senior male comrades in informal settings. Ms Shah treats these small vulnerabilities with a rare sympathy in her narration. 

These vulnerabilities are present among the men as well. Gyanji takes a risk and answers a call while the platoon is on the move. We learn that it’s a call from his wife who’d like him to come and meet the family. At the end of the book, we learn that Gyanji had, in fact, been apprehended by the police when he came to meet his family, and has, since then, surrendered. 

Gyanji, we see, laments the fact that excessive emphasis on armed actions gives the Maoists cadres little time to read and engage in other constructive action. Ms Shah charts out several possibilities for Gyanji’s dedication that led him to renounce his earlier life. One such is in tracing a lineage of personal spiritual renunciation in India. Although Ms Shah distinguishes the idea of personal renunciation with collective transformation, this lineage seemed a little far-fetched even though we learn that Gyanji had, in his youth, considered becoming a yogi. For a materialist like Gyanji, it is unlikely that spiritual renunciation would have had any lasting influence in his life. We learn also that he had thought of quitting the party in the nineties when it was debating whether India was a semi-feudal or a semi-capitalist state. It is more likely that Gyanji traces his lineage to other communist movements where these questions are addressed. I would have liked to see Ms Shah discuss that debate a little more. This would have given us more perspective on how the Naxalites see history and their role as active transformative agents in that history.

If there’s one thing that is permanent to history, it's contradictions, and the Naxalites are no exception to this rule. The Naxalites, for instance, replace middlemen and contractors with their own cadres, and increase remuneration for the Adivasis workers. The risk is that the cadres who become middlemen then run the risk of emulating the very people they want to overthrow.
 

Nightmarch: A Journey into India's Naxal Heartlands 

Alpa Shah

HarperCollins, Rs 699, 352 pages