In the heart of the Maoist underground: A Chhattisgarh chronicle

By Rahul Pandita Editor’s Note: Reports on Maoists often focus on lack of development or stories of atrocities on both sides. But what does daily life in the jungles of Chhattisgarh feel like? What drives thousands of young Adivasis into the arms of the Maoists? Rahul Pandita, senior correspondent with Open magazine is just out with his new book Hello, Bastar: The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement (Tranquebar Press). Here is an excerpt set in the jungles of Chhattisgarh where Maoists have become the face of governance. What is it that has attracted the young men and women of Dandakaranya into the Maoist fold? After all, apart from the hardcore 10,000 strength of the Maoist’s People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, there are hundreds of thousands of Adivasi youth who are associated with the Maoists in the form of civil militia and other base force. The Adivasis have no reference  point to a better life. They have few aspirations apart from, perhaps, better food. Nothing has changed in these parts of the country for centuries except a sense of empowerment engendered by the Maoists. [caption id=“attachment_40773” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“What is it that has attracted the young men and women of Dandakaranya into the Maoist fold? AFP.”] [/caption] It is the monsoon of 2010, and I am in a Maoist camp, set along an angry river, somewhere on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border. The camp is big, and at any given point of time, squads of Maoist rebels are coming and going from the camp. There is a constant flurry of activity. Young men and women go about doing their duty with surgical precision. In one corner, men are helping in cooking food, two girls are chopping firewood, and in another, a cultural troupe is rehearsing for an evening show in a nearby village. In an open tent—essentially a thick sheet of plastic spread over a jute rope—a senior Maoist leader is conducting a strategy class for young recruits. Some girls are combing their hair and massaging it with coconut oil—their only indulgence. A small tape recorder plays Gondi songs. The day begins very early in the camp. Those who are out on sentry duty at night will return, and another group will replace them. The security around the camp is multilayered. If the police are spotted, the Maoists will get at least an hour to run away to safety. Though the last time police were seen in this area was when they passed through a neighbouring village around two years back. There are military drills and then the camp in-charge blows a whistle that means food is ready. Every guerrilla carries a kit bag inside which is a uniform, a steel plate and a mug, a jhilli (thick plastic sheet) to sleep on, thread and needle, some medicines and books. There will also be a few things like a toothbrush and some kerosene oil to clean one’s weapon, a knife and a torch. And there will be ammunition. Each one carries a weapon according to the training he or she has undergone. That means that the guerrillas with advanced training may carry sophisticated weapons like an AK-47 or an INSAS rifle, while new recruits carry a .303 rifle. The food is very basic: rice, dal and some pickles. Occasionally, there will be eggs or the odd chicken, cooked with its guts intact. Food is precious and is not wasted at all though every guerrilla can eat to his or her heart’s content. During military classes, 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). The Maoists walk a lot. No camp stays at one place for more than a few days. On an average, a Maoist squad walks anything between 25-50 km a day or even more depending on circumstances. A camp is dismantled within minutes. And then one moves on. The rest of the day is spent in political and military classes. There are constant patrols around the area. In their free time, the guerrillas read and write, and listen to the radio. In the evening, the senior cadres assemble at one place and listen to the Hindi service of the BBC on radio.That is their only way of keeping abreast of developments around the world. The night that I am there, there is a small news item on All India Radio, Raipur, that the Chhattisgarh government has decided to give half a day’s wages to labourers to enable them to collect the wages due to them under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)— many NREGA beneficiaries live in far-flung villages and don’t even have the money to go to the nearest post office to collect their dues, hence this populist decision. The guerrillas laugh about it. ‘You cannot expect looters to turn into saints. They will always remain looters,’ says one of them. I have arrived at the camp after walking for days through the forest. In the first hour of our arrival, two guerrillas spot a poisonous snake with another snake in its mouth. It is killed immediately. ‘If it bites you, you will die in twenty minutes flat,’ one of them tells me, while another laughs. It is green everywhere, and it has been raining for days. While walking through the mud and slush, it almost feels as if one is in Vietnam. Story continues on the next page The night before we arrived at the camp, we had halted at an Adivasi’s hut, along with the Maoist squad. Under the influence of mahua or maybe in spite of the mahua, the Adivasi began to cry after some time as he forced a few morsels of rice down his throat. ‘Why are you crying?’ Maoist squad leader Samayya asked him in Gondi. ‘I feel like crying,’ he replied. [caption id=“attachment_40801” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The paddy they grow is not enough to fill their bellies. So their staple diet is rice gruel. AFP”] [/caption] When the Maoists establish camps like these, villagers from around keep on trickling into its fringes. Here as well, a few villagers have arrived from the nearby village. Some of them have connections with the Maoists. An old man’s daughter was a part of the Chetna Natya Manch—the Maoists’ cultural troupe, and was killed in police action elsewhere a few months ago. Three other men from this village are also Maoist guerrillas. Vanessa, a French journalist who is with us, tries speaking to them in broken Hindi that a senior Maoist leader translates into Gondi. Vanessa is keen to know whether there is a school nearby and if a teacher ever takes classes there. The leader translates it for them. There is silence for a few seconds. Then the one whose name is Dolu, laughs. His laughter doesn’t stop for almost a minute. And when it does, it is almost as if he has applied brakes to it. ‘Guruji!’ he speaks with the same wonder with which he utters the word ‘Dilli’. ‘Guruji, he comes every year on 15 August, jhanda phehraate hain (unfurls the flag), and that is it. We never see him again,’ he says, astonished that anybody should ask him about the schoolteacher, as if this is what schoolteachers are supposed to do. A young woman—a child suckling at her breast—walks over to the small group and kicks a mongrel. It runs away, whimpering, taking refuge beside two Maoists who sit on their haunches on one side. In this part of the country, I think, there is hardly any difference between a mongrel and an Adivasi. Upon being kicked by the woman, the mongrel ran to the Maoists just as the Adivasis ran to them after being kicked by the State. Two villagers have died of diarrhoea just a week before we arrive at the village next to the Maoist camp. The villagers grow paddy but in the absence of proper knowledge, the crop often falls victim to disease. To avoid this, the Adivasis can, at best, perform a dev puja through the vadde—the local witch doctor. The paddy they grow is not enough to fill their bellies. So their staple diet is rice gruel. The nearest ration shop is about 20 km away. ‘But by the time we come to know the ration has arrived, it is already over,’ says a villager. Many have run away, to work as labourers in Mumbai and Pune. While senior guerrillas like Tarakka can talk about their reasons for joining the Maoist fold, most of the younger lot shy away from the subject, often citing constraints of language as a reason. Even when leaders who can speak in Gondi and then translate it to us in Hindi or English offer to do so, it is difficult to get the younger guerrillas to open up, especially the girls. It is futile to ask them why they joined just as it is futile to ask Adivasis in the villages what they would want in terms of a better life. The younger lot has no specific answer to the question about why they joined the rebellion. Only when one spends time with them does one understand that it is mostly because the uniform offers them a sense of who they are, makes them one large group, gives them some purpose in life. It is also because in these parts the Maoists are the face of governance rather than government officials. So for many Adivasis, joining a Maoist medical unit is like joining a government health centre. The Maoist medical teams distribute medicines among the villagers and even anti-malaria or anti-venom vaccine. Eventually, some end up joining them. Take the case of 14-year-old Suresh who is now a part of Chetna Natya Manch. ‘We dissuaded him from joining us at such a young age but he followed us for weeks,’ says his team leader Raju. Suresh used to go a local paathshala run by the tribal affairs ministry. ‘But the food there was so bad and erratic, I ran away,’ he says. Suresh has returned to his village after months, since he travels with the troupe from one village to another. His mother has come to meet him. ‘I ask him to come back,’ she says, ‘but he refuses.’ It is a sense of identity that prevents Suresh from leaving the Maoists. The work they do and the guns his senior comrades carry give him a purpose in life. It is the same sense of identity that prevents another young boy from removing his cap. It is olive green with a star. On its tip, he has scribbled the name given to him by the party: Viju. ‘Some comrades who knew his original name would call him by that and he would get upset,’ says another guerrilla. ‘That is why he wrote “Viju” on his cap.'