That reminded me of what a young PLGA commander told me in Jharkhand in 2009. We know we have faced severe losses in terms of leadership. But we are ready to don the mantle now. We are ready to take forward the legacy of GP sir,' (Ganapathi is referred as GP sir by many Maoist guerillas).
A Maoist guerilla sets out to clean a small area before making preparations for lunch. In the Maoist set up, men and women share equal burden for kitchen work.
A squad of Maoist rebels during a training session somewhere in Chhattisgarh. Women account for forty percent of the Maoist strength.
(Photos: Rahul Pandita)
A Maoist guerilla carries a ration of eggs from one camp to another, somewhere in Dandakaranya.
A Maoist camp somewhere on the Maharastra-Chhattisgarh border. A camp like this is built in minutes and dismantled in minutes. Depending on the presence of senior leaders, a camp is fortified accordingly.
Rebels sleep at the camp after spending a whole night on sentry duty.
Apart from military training, there is a lot of emphasis on education. Here, a Maoist recruit reads party literature before a class on world affairs.
A young guerilla combs her hair inside a camp. In their spare time, girls like to listen to music or do sundry things like combing hair or washing clothes.
A Maoist guerilla from a medical unit injects anti-malaria vaccine into an Adivasi woman in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.
Maoist commander Tarakka outside a military camp, somewhere on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border.
14-year-old Suresh is a part of the Maoists' cultural unit, Chetna Natya Manch. After this picture was taken , the group broke into a song about how New Delhi was unleashing a wave of terror and brutality upon poor Adivasis.
The author with two Maoist guerillas in mid 2010. The guerilla on his right is the bodyguard of a senior Maoist leader.
An artistic impression of the first 'martyr' of the Peoples's War Group, Peddi Shankar.
A memorial biult by the Maoista for their fallen comrades in a remote village in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.
One of the victims of an alleged fake encounter by Salwa Judam in Chhattisgarh in January 2009. (Photo provided by the CPI (Maoist))
PLGA fighters at the 2007 Maoist Congress held in the jungles of Bihar (Photo provided by the CPI (Maoist))
Anuradha Ghandy in the PLGA uniform at the 2007 Congress after being inducted into the Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist)
Anuradha Ghandy in a photo taken by her brother on her wedding (Photo courtesy: Ritesh Uttamchandini)
14Interview to the author.
15Frontline, 11-24 October 2003.
16'We shall certainly defeat the government', Open Magazine, 17 October 2009.
17Interview to Tehelka's Shoma Chowdhury, 12 June 2010.
18The Times of India, 28 September 2010.
19In a party press release.
20Interview to the author.
21Aman Sethi, 'Death stalks disease-hit Dantewada', The Hindu, 10 October 2010.
22Quoted from Satnam's Jangalnama published by Penguin Books India, 2010.
23As reported in People's March, April 2007.
24India Human Rights Report, July-September 2010.
25Vishwa Mohan, The Times of India, 18 January 2010.
26R. Dutta Choudhury, The Assam Tribune, 13 February 2010.
VII
THE GUERILLAS,
THE REPUBLIC
Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.
—John Steinbeck
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 (see the structure of the Maoists pp. 103-115). 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.
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 multi-layered. 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 guerilla 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 guerillas 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 guerilla 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 guerillas 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 guerillas 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 guerillas 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.
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.
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 guerillas.
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 guerillas 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 guerillas 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 guerilla. 'That is why he wrote “Viju” on his cap.'
Some of the guerillas stay in touch with their families. They write letters, and sometimes get to visit them as well. A commander who is in charge of the camp security said he regularly sends letters to his mother. Commander Samayya joined the Maoists in 2003. He comes from a village on the Andhra Pradesh-Chhattisgarh border. 'There was a landlord in my village who had 200 acres of land. He would employ the rest of us as labourers and pay us Rs 30 for a hard day's labour,' he said. Samayya says he would often think of how a single man in his village owned so much land while others had a tough time even getting enough to eat. In early 2000, he remembers, a Maoist squad came to his village. 'They spoke to us, and said: “land to the tiller”,' he said. Samayya joined them soon afterwards. A year later, the Maoists took away the landlord's land and distributed it among those who worked on it.
Samayya has taken part in many actions against the police. His first brush with death took place in the Dodai encounter in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur area when his platoon attacked a police party. Eighteen policemen were injured but four Maoists lost their lives, including a close friend of Samayya, a young guerilla called Mangtu. 'He took a bullet in his chest. We took him away and tried to get him to a hospital but could not. Finally, after lingering on for two days he died,' said Samayya.
Samayya also took part in the October 2009 attack on police personnel in Gadchiroli's Laheri area in which 17 policemen lost their lives. It was led by the military head of the Maoists' Gadchiroli Division, Commander Eiatu.
Eiatu who is in his mid thirties is a lean man with a thick moustache. His brother was also a senior Maoist leader and was allegedly killed in a fake encounter along with his partner in 2008. 'They were members of the Maharashtra State Committee and were picked up by the Andhra Special Intelligence Branch men from Kolhapur, taken to the jungles of Andhra and then shot dead,' Eiatu says. His other brother is also a senior Maoist commander elsewhere, while Eiatu's partner works with the Maoists' doctor brigade. 'I meet her sometimes,' he says.
The Maoist leadership is quite open about relationships. The cadres can marry if both partners are willing, and in most cases, the leadership takes a lenient view by trying to place the couple close to each other's area of operation. There have been instances where two partners have held back in the wake of an encounter with the police and sacrificed their lives while letting other squad members escape. Bearing children is, however, not encouraged. Later that night, Eiatu offers us glimpses of the military planning that went into the Laheri attack he had led. 'Just before the Assembly election, the police had created fear in village after village to coerce people into submission,' he says. One day, a platoon of Maoists got information that a team of police commandos, led by their leader Rama, was moving in the area. For two days, the guerillas followed them, without as much as stopping for food. Finally, hostilities broke out at Laheri in Bhamragarh taluka, just 750 yards away from the Laheri police station. Some 42 policemen and 18 Maoist guerillas (who'd reached before their other exhausted comrades), found themselves locked in a fierce gun battle. 'The police have a lot of ammunition,' elaborates Eiatu, 'and they just lay on the ground, firing thousands of rounds all over. But since we have limited ammunition, we fire at specific targets.'
The policemen, Eiatu says, kept shouting that the guerillas would be mowed down since police reinforcements were coming, but they held their ground—and upped the ante. The police, he says, also fired mortar shells. But for the first thirty minutes, nobody was injured on either side. Then, in the next ten minutes, six policemen were killed. After that, Eiatu claims, most policemen fled, including their leader. Eight policemen wh
o had taken positions at one particular spot were asked to surrender. 'But they let out another volley of bullets in which our senior comrade was killed,' says Eiatu. After that, the guerillas let their guns blaze—killing the eight of them and three others. In all, 19 weapons were seized in that encounter.
That the Maoist guerillas are more motivated and better trained than the security forces becomes clear in such incidents. In fact, a young Maoist guerilla who surrendered a few years back and now leads certain anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh said it clearly. After he quit the movement he was sent by the police with dozens of other men to train with the army in Kashmir. Before that, he received training with the Naga battalion of the CRPF. 'But I tell you, the training was nothing in comparison with the training given by Naxals. They have a lot of jazba (motivation) … But look at the central forces. You just need to burst a cracker, and they will all roll over to one side. Naxals burst Laxmi crackers and the CRPF exhaust their ammunition in the return fire,' he said.27
'If they had surrendered, we would have let them go after snatching their weapons,' says Samayya of the eight policemen they killed in the last phase of the Laheri encounter. But have they ever done this? 'Many times,' he says. He cites the example of an encounter with the Special Task Force personnel in Kuddur-Narayanpur in 2007, where he claims they treated three injured jawans and sent them back 'One of them had begged us not to kill him; he said he had children. We just talked to them about our party, bandaged their wounds, and dropped them at the nearest road head,' says Samayya.
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