Everyday Life of Political Struggles
Series editor Alpa Shah
Ethnographies of Maoism in India
and Nepal
Edited by Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew
Read the book review in The Hindu at
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/
‘Lines of fear and conflict cross what is already a changing and disrupted social life. By revealing how people live, every day, with violence and fear of both sides in a civil war, the authors show how they suffer and also how they create their own new relations, sharing suspicions, fears and pleasures. This is a new kind of political writing. Out of intensive local fieldwork in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, this writing has an authority that none of the others, including those of the state and of its enemies, do because it is so much better informed and never loses its loyalty to the local people.’
352 pp
215x140 mm Hardback 11 illustrations
Published price Rs 695
ISBN
978-81-87358-49-7
SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS,
HISTORY
Pub date October 2011
Read the book review in The Hindu at
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/
‘Lines of fear and conflict cross what is already a changing and disrupted social life. By revealing how people live, every day, with violence and fear of both sides in a civil war, the authors show how they suffer and also how they create their own new relations, sharing suspicions, fears and pleasures. This is a new kind of political writing. Out of intensive local fieldwork in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, this writing has an authority that none of the others, including those of the state and of its enemies, do because it is so much better informed and never loses its loyalty to the local people.’
Professor Stephan Feuchtwang
London School of Economics and Political Science
‘What is it like
to live through a revolution? This important collection brings together superb,
hard-won anthropological insights from field sites all the way from Pashupati
to Tirupati (from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh). It is essential reading for anyone
who wants to know about Maoism in South Asia.’
Professor David N. Gellner
University of Oxford
‘In a context in
which there is no end of misinformation and disinformation about the Maoist
movements of South Asia, the articles in this collection - all based on rich
ethnography - provide an invaluable resource, illuminating the complexities of
the many different local experiences of Maoism in both India and Nepal. Windows into a Revolution is a vitally
important contribution both to South Asian studies and to the comparative anthropological
study of revolutionary politics.’
Professor John Harriss
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
Everyday Life of Political Struggles reflects the subaltern experiences of political
struggles, which are sometimes explosive but at other times silent, invisible
and unnoticed by many commentators. The books in this series explore the
tensions and constraints of class, race, gender, caste and religion within
these struggles. They draw on fine-grained research, detailed description and
rigorous analysis to bring clarity to the confusion of information emerging
from various sources. The series draws on the works of historians, political
scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, activists and
journalists.
Windows into a
Revolution, edited by Alpa Shah
and Judith Pettigrew, the first book in the series offers glimpses
into the spread of Maoism in India and Nepal by tracing some of its effects on
the lives of ordinary people living amidst the revolutions. Weaving through the
nostalgic reflections of former Bengali Naxalites; the resurgence of ancestral
conflicts in the spread of the Maoists in the remote hills of western Nepal;
the disillusionments of dalits of central Bihar in the policies of the
cadres; to the complexities of the interrelationship between non-aligned
civilians and insurgents in central Nepal, the book offers a series of windows into
different stages of mobilization and transformation into what are, were or may
become, revolutionary strongholds.
Contents
1. Windows in to a Revolution: Ethnographies
of Maoism in India and Nepal - Alpa Shah and Judith
Pettigrew
2. In
Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India - Alpa Shah
3. The Formation of Political Consciousness
in Rural Nepal - Sara
Shneiderman
4. Smouldering Dalit Fires in Bihar - George Kunnath
5. Reflections
of a One-time Maoist Activist - Sumanta Banerjee
6. Radical Masculinity: Morality, Sociality
and Relationships through Recollections of Naxalite Activists - Henrike Donner
7. Women’s
Empowerment and Rural Revolution: Rethinking “Failed Development” - Lauren G.
Leve
8. From Ancestral Conflicts to Local
Empowerment: Two Narratives from a Nep alese
Community - Anne de Sales
9. Terror in a Maoist Model Village in
Mid-western Nepal - Marie Lecomte -Tilouine
10. Fear and Everyday Life in Rural Nepal - Judith
Pettigrew and Kamal
Adhikari
11. Anti-‘anti-witchcraft’ and the Maoist Insurgency in Rural
Maharashtra - Amit
Desai
12. The
Purification Hunt: The Salwa Judum Counterinsurgency in Chhattisgarh - Jason Miklian
13. The Social Fabric of the Jelbang Killings - Deepak
Thapa, Kiyoko Ogura and Judith
Pettigrew
