> <http://platypus1917.org/2010/08/06/the-maoist-insurgency-in-india-end-of
> -the-road-for-indian-stalinism/>
>
> [Jairus Banaji] There are different strands here. One is Roy’s tendency
> to see Maoism as the passive reflection of a tribal separatism that is
> rooted in decades if not centuries of oppression of the adivasis.
I'm not an expert on things South Asian, but Banaji is missing the mark. Arundhati Roy's article is magnificent, showing empathy for the adivasis struggling for sheer survival against a postcolonial state which has all too often failed to deliver the rudiments of education, health care and education to the 700 millions of people in the countryside (e.g. about 330 million people still cannot read and write in India today, 40% of children have signs of chronic malnutrition), while also pointing to the internal tensions of the insurgents (especially gender) -- tensions which, Roy would be the first to argue, threaten to turn insurgent movements into mirror images of the repressive state they are resisting.
India's rural insurgencies number in the hundreds, and are simply not comparable to the Sendero Luminoso, though they may come closer to the networks of Bolivia's indigenous social movements.
Finally, the issue of Left nationalism is very, very complex in India. We're talking about a society with 22 official languages, hundreds of language-groups, ethnicities, religions, occupational identities, etc. You really have to drill down to specific federal states, regions, power-constellations and histories to even begin to make sense of the place.
-- DRR