Interrogating the Maoists and the Indian State: A Study of Salwa Judum in Bastar

Abstract

Salwa Judum was a unique tribal-peasant movement that arose against the specific agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) ¹ (henceforth Maoists) in its full intensity in 2005 in the sub-region of Bastar (baanstari, a Halbi word meaning the bed of or the land of bamboos) in Chhattisgarh. The movement began since January across different villages of non-Abujh Maad (the unknown hills of Madia/Koya tribes) sub-region that initially galvanised approximately 20,000 tribals. It was spontaneous and non-political (Prasad, 2012, p. 329). It was unique as the movement was against a ‘revolutionary’ group of Maoists and not against the state or against the zamindari system as most peasant movements in rural India were in the past. Its build-up was the culmination of suppressed anger of the tribals that had developed over decades against the Maoists also called ‘Naxalites’. It was a new and different phenomenon.