Domesticating the “New Terrorism”: The Case of the Maoist Insurgency in India

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the Indian state’s response to the Maoist insurgency has been ideologically shaped by the “new terrorism” discourse cultivated by Western powers, particularly by the United States. Following the post-9/11 othering of Islamic terrorism as a trope of a “civilizational clash” between East and West, the Indian state has strategically demarcated the regions affected by the Maoist armed insurgency as the “Red Corridor,” conceiving the insurgency as “the single biggest threat to the internal security of the nation.” The domestic othering of the Red Corridor as an “unpatriotic,” “undemocratic,” “contaminated,” or even a “diseased zone” is further exacerbated by the systemic demonization, criminalization, and depoliticization of the Maoist insurgency through state-sponsored propaganda. In the attempt to uncover the implied collusion and complicity between the U.S.-led “war on terror” and India’s “war with the Maoists,” I draw on Hamid Dabashi’s view of “post-Orientalism,” Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life,” and Achille Mbembe’s coinage of “necropolitics.”

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Ashok Kumbamu and the two anonymous readers for their constructive feedback on this essay.

Notes

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2. Land redistribution issues were at the heart of the Girijan Movement of Srikakulam (1967–70) which received an official endorsement by the leaders of Naxalbari. Dandakaranya region is a forest habitat that spans across four federal states of India: Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

3. For a detailed history of the movement, see Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar, the Untold Story of the Maoist Movement (New Delhi: Tranque Bar, 2011).

4. Jan Myrdal, Red Star Over India (Kolkata: Imprinta, 2012), 45–46, 83–85.

5. Sandeep Joshi “Maoist Ideologues Keeping Naxal Movement Alive: MHA,” The Hindu, at:

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6. See Ramachandra Guha, “Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy,” Economic and Political Weekly 32 (2007): 3305–12. I am weary of the Orientalist origins of the term adivasi (which literally means “first people”). However, the term has been reclaimed by a number of “indigenous” communities in India today.

7. Sudeep Chakravarthi, Red Sun: Travels in the Naxalite Country (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009), 197.

8. John Gearson, “The Nature of Modern Terrorism,” Political Quarterly 73 (2002): 8–12.

9. David Rapoport, quoted in Isabelle Duyvesteyn, “How New Is the New Terrorism?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27.5 (2004): 439, 443–46.

10. Bruce Hoffmann, quoted in Cody Brown, “The New Terrorism Debate,” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations 6.3–4 (2007): 31.

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43. Although the movement this movement was born of out of an earlier incident of killing of two tribal peasants by landlords in October 1967 in the Parvathipuram Agency. See also Pandita, Hello Bastar, the Untold Story of the Maoist Movement, 9–31.

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45. See Chakravarthi, Red Sun: Travels in the Naxalite Country, 100–106. Given their vernacular purchase, I use “Maoists” and “Naxalites,” “Maoism,” and “Naxalism” interchangeably throughout the essay.

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55. “Adivasis, Mining and Monopoly Capital,” 53.

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57. “Adivasis, Mining and Monopoly Capital,” 54, 5.

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59. Dabashi, Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror, 187, 225.

60. See Navlakha, “Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion,” 12–13.

61. Roy, “Walking with the Comrades.”

62. Navlakha, “Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion,” 36.

63. See Uday Kumar, Maoist Terrorist and ISI (Delhi: Lucky International, 2011).

64. Navlakha, “Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion,” 16.

65. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 12.

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76. Myrdal, Red Star Over India, 210–13; see Appendix V.

77. Roy, “Walking with the Comrades.”

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80. Smita Gupta, “Mind the Drill,” Outlook, 16 November 2009, at: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262704; accessed 1 May 2012.

81. Roy, “Walking with the Comrades.” The designation of SPO status to the militia was granted after the Supreme Court of India questioned the legality of Salwa Judum.

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