Imagining Another World

I had a complete breakdown as I finished reading the story ‘Mugguru Thallulu’ in Telugu. The process of translating it into English was no less than painful. Translated into ‘Three Mothers’, the story is set in a Bhadrachalam mortuary, in Bhadradri Kothagudem district, Telangana, where Adivasi mothers queued to see if their sons and daughters are in the pile of bodies that the Greyhounds killed in the name of “development”. The insensitivity of the Greyhounds, coupled with the helpless state of the mothers who cannot identify their children because of the gravity of their injuries and the “encountered” faces, makes even those otherwise unconcerned by police brutality question the order of things.

This story is one among the 20 stories written mainly by Adivasi and Dalit women guerilla revolutionaries and members of the CPI-Maoist in a recently published anthology.

Aravinda and B. Anuradha’s edited volume, Viyyukka, The Morning Star: Stories by Women Revolutionaries, is an English translation of short stories written by underground revolutionary women in Telugu, although the word Viyyukka is Gondi in origin. Translated and published by the Revolutionary Writers Association, this anthology is about the life of the Maoist party and its interactions with the state and society, starting from the 1980s and going up to as recently as 2015, with much focus on the later years. The stories were published whenever these women could successfully send them to the outside world for publication.

All the stories are based in the forest regions of Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. This anthology emphasises that a feminist praxis is required to fight for the liberation of all. At a time when intellectuals are simultaneously writing plauditory obituaries for India’s ex-prime minister, Manmohan Singh, whilst condemning today’s Operation Kagar, this book reminds us of the continuities in policies from Singh’s time, such as Operation Green Hunt which began roughly around 2009.

Written by women, this anthology brings out their nuanced perspectives on the state, society and the Maoist party. The anthology shows that a revolutionary movement in Adivasi settlements is possible because of the extreme brutalities they face. The detailing in the descriptions of police and Greyhound violence upon even minor girls brings to the fore the realities of Indian democracy. However, in commenting on the state’s indiscriminating nature, the book doesn’t mean to glorify the communal hierarchies within Adivasi living. The state is a mere extension – and more oppressive arm – of the family itself.

The stories do a remarkable job of showing how Adivasi society is not static and timeless. Instead, it is ever-changing. One of the ways it changed in recent times, thanks to the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, is the creation of sacred thread-wearing communities and the introduction of untouchability based on hierarchies of consuming meat. Even prior to that, Adivasis did not have egalitarian households, as one of the stories on child marriage reflects.

While in most of the stories, the party is shown as a leading light that fights against societal and statist harassment, the party is also shown as imperfect. For one of the women revolutionaries, the party was a means of escaping patriarchal principles imposed by the state and society. However, she realised the party was also not all liberating because of the patriarchal constraints of marriage being pushed upon her. In the story, she resists and emerges victorious. However, such instances speak to the continuities of patriarchy even in progressive spaces. Further, state-sponsored violence, such as the Salwa Judum, brought out extreme versions of the party, which formed a Janatana Sarkar in some regions of Dandakaranya. The extreme forms the Janatana Sarkar took, leading to the beheading of Salwa Judum members, was a dark moment for the Naxalite movement.

A theme running across all these stories is the fact that indigenous communities are oppressed and exploited, and dissenting communities within these oppressed groups are ruthlessly erased from existence. Exposing these brutalities, the book calls for us to imagine a better world. The stories are fragments of messages from underground revolutionaries to dispel the state’s propaganda that brands Maoists as killers. The stories desperately ask the reader to see that revolutionary violence differs from statist violence. Or, to put it in human rights activist and mathematician K. Balagopal’s words, as he condemned Manmohan Singh for applauding the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh in 2007:

“The greyhounds is a force trained to hunt and kill – it is honest in its name. It is no doubt to their credit as a hunter group that they have hunted and killed a number of underground Maoists, especially in recent months. But any one concerned with legality must worry whether in the law that governs our country it is permissible to develop a police force to hunt and kill anyone; and anyone concerned about the social character of Maoism must worry whether it is bearable that these sons and daughters of the oppressed who have taken up weapons to fight for a new society – believe that they are misguided if you will – should be killed like dangerous animals.” (emphasis added)

As Balagopal did, the book appeals to the humanity of the readers by exposing them to the extreme brutalities that revolutionaries and indigenous people suffer because of the state’s ambitions to exploit the mineral-rich forest areas of central India to fuel the state-capitalist system that is reliant on the dispossession of marginalised communities. Operation Kagar and Operation Samadhan Prahar, which are designed to dispossess Adivasis today, are a result of changes that took place in 2007 when the Union government, under the aegis of Manmohan Singh, declared Naxalism to be the biggest threat to India’s internal security. The anthology shows that statements by Amit Shah on wiping out Naxalism from the country by 2026 and the resultant killing spree are a mere extension of Congress politics. Samadhan Prahar was rolled out, marking the end of Singh’s Operation Green Hunt, in 2017, upon which Rs 6,000 crore were spent to murder and displace Adivasis.

Acknowledging all the mistakes that went into the movement, these women revolutionaries also show glimpses into what I call the experiment worlds. The continuing insistence in all the stories is that a party should exist for the people, and its existence ceases as soon as people do not want it. Such writings speak to their commitment to democratic decision-making central to non-oppressive ormations. One of the chapters shows how education was organised around the needs of communities led by the Janatana Sarkar. Emphasis is laid on education that makes one more responsive to society and Adivasi languages as the medium of instruction. A story in this collection regarding the return of two villagers after working with Salwa Judum illuminates the practice of the justice system in these collectives. Unlike the modern state’s arbitrariness, the amount of negotiations that go into making decisions gives us a taste of a different world. As several feminist-abolitionist activists call for the abolition of state institutions that repress the marginalised rather than help them secure their rights, they advocate for experimenting with societies. Calling for the abolition of prisons and police, these feminists suggest experimenting with societies that are devoid of state and societal repressive institutions. The Zapatista Movement in southern Mexico is one such experiment.

Holding one of the largest indigenous populations of Mexico, the state of Chiapas was captured by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, armed to its teeth, in its fight against racial and colonial capitalism. Capturing power on the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 came into effect, the Zapatas showed the world the strength of a grassroots movements in protecting indigenous livelihoods and the environment against capitalist exploitation. In the short stories of Viyyukka, Dandakaranya emerges as one such experiment of creating a world without oppressive hierarchies. Like an experiment, it is imperfect, strewn with failures and malfunctions. However, it is a sincere attempt to escape the everyday legal violence that caters to capitalism.

Just like an experiment, the politics and life of guerillas need profound changes and incorporate broader visions of liberation, as opposed to limited party-centred and disciplined revolutionism. The stories in the book, written by women revolutionaries, some of whom were martyred and some of whom were on the verge of dispossession, urge the readers to see the true nature of the ruling class and their class interests while assuring them that another world is possible.

Vipanchika Sahasri Bhagyanagar is a PhD student, Department of History and founder president, Progressive South Asia Collective, Purdue University.