Mimetic Sovereignties JPS

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Mimetic sovereignties precariouscitizenship state effects in a looking-glass worldNandini SundarPublished online 03 Jul 2014

To cite this article Nandini Sundar (2014) Mimetic sovereignties precarious citizenshipstate effects in a looking-glass world The Journal of Peasant Studies 414 469-490 DOI101080030661502014919264

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Mimetic sovereignties precarious citizenship state effects in alooking-glass world1

Nandini Sundar

This contribution explores the way in which the Indian state and the incipient Maoist statein central India mimic while repudiating each other As against theories of sovereigntywhich see it either as authored from below (contract theory) or scripted from above(domination) or irrelevant to the extent that subject and state are co-constituted byregimes of power (cf Foucault) I argue that in civil war the display and practicalexercise of statehood and sovereignty is critical However this is primarily aimed notat putative citizens but at the enemy I look at the way in which the Indian stateimpersonates guerilla tactics in order to fight the Maoists and the way in which theMaoists mimic state practices of governmentality Each side identifies its own lsquocitizensrsquothrough uniforms and lists of people killed and inscribes its lsquoterritoryrsquo with memorialsto its martyrs For the presumed citizens of these mimetic states however it isprecisely these markers of identity and legibility which make them more vulnerableMembership of parallel regimes holds out both promise and precarity

Keywords mimesis sovereignty state-effects citizenship Maoist guerillascounterinsurgency India

The worst violators of nature and human rights never go to jail They hold the keys In the worldas it is the looking-glass world the countries that guard the peace also make and sell the mostweapons The most prestigious banks launder the most drug money and harbor the most stolencash The most successful industries are the most poisonous for the planet

ndashE Galeano (2000 7)

In the lsquolooking-glass worldrsquo of South Bastar or Dantewada today2 a region in Chhattisgarhcentral India populated largely by adivasis3 and the site of an ongoing civil war between

copy 2014 Taylor amp Francis

1This paper was originally written in November 2008 for a workshop on Rethinking Citizenship at theMax Planck Institute in Halle I am grateful to the participants in that workshop my co-fellows at theProgram in Agrarian Studies Yale University as well as audiences at the University of Cornell Uni-versity of Texas-Austin Fondation Maison Des Science De LrsquoHomme - Paris University of Pennsyl-vania University of theWitwatersrand and the University of Toronto where I have presented versionsof this paper I am grateful to the three anonymous referees who so painstakingly reviewed this paper aswell as the Editor of JPS Jun Borras I am also grateful to Aparna Sundar Chris Gregory Amita Bavis-kar andK Sivaramakrishnan for their encouragement and toDelhiUniversity for funding this research2Bastar district originally covered 39000 km2 It has since been repeatedly divided into smaller dis-tricts Here Bastar refers to the original undivided district and Dantewada to South Bastar before itwas further carved up3I prefer the self-designation lsquoadivasirsquo rather than the globalized lsquoindigenous peoplesrsquo to refer to the86 percent of Indiarsquos population officially known as lsquoscheduled tribesrsquo They are the poorest and mostexploited by all indicators (see Kannan and Raveendran 2011)

The Journal of Peasant Studies 2014Vol 41 No 4 469ndash490 httpdxdoiorg101080030661502014919264

armed guerillas of theCommunist Party of India (Maoist) and the Indian government all rolesare reversedMaoist guerillas (colloquially called Naxalites) behave like a state laying sover-eign claim to territory while the police who are deeply envious of Maoist organizationalstructure and support among villagers outsource their monopoly over force to vigilantesThe people are desperately poor while the land is enormously rich4 The police protect theland against the people seeing them as security threats to the unfettered exploitation of min-erals by corporates5 Even asMaoist guerillas lsquowagewarrsquo against the government ndash as Section121 of the Indian Penal Code that is routinely applied to insurgents defines it (Government ofIndia 1860) ndash the government in turn wages war against its own citizens

In this looking-glass world wordsmeanwhatever each sidewants them tomean nothingis as it appears and the rules of the game change as one goes along As Winifred Tate (2007)says of Colombia but which holds as true of Chhattisgarh it is the security forces and rulingpoliticians who are the most vociferous about lsquohuman rightsrsquowhich they define as the viola-tion of their own rights by left-wing guerillas As for the human rights of innocent civilianswho get killed asMaoists this is mere lsquocollateral damagersquo Thewords lsquoConstitutionrsquo or lsquoRuleof Lawrsquo in the mouths of human rights activists are read as propaganda for the Maoists6

Peasant women who complain of rape by the police or paramilitaries are treated as liarsout to demoralize the brave security forces7 In a war where every villager is considered apotential guerilla a child grazing cattle in the forest or villagers celebrating agricultural fes-tivals in their villages are all equally lethal weapons If they protest their innocence thatclearly proves their guilt Why else would they be found in the forest in the path ofcombing operations or gathering in large numbers in their villages8

By its willful violation of laws governing land acquisition and human rights in adivasiareas the government has ceded the principles on which the Indian Constitution isfounded to theMaoists9 Equally it has ceded territory through its linguistic practices ampli-fied by a compliantmedia Evenwhen something as ordinary as hand pumps or solar panels isdiscussed the setting for it is always lsquoMaoist-hit districtsrsquo (see for example The Statesman2012) The label lsquoMaoistrsquo functions metonymically for everything that is wrong in theseareas

This contribution explores the performance of sovereignty in times of civil war in par-ticular the mimetic nature of both fighting and statehood and that mixture of attraction and

4The wider Dandakaranya region of which Bastar is a part has 18 percent of Indiarsquos iron ore depositsalong with graphite limestone diamonds uranium and other minerals5Since 2006 the Indian Prime Minister has consistently referred to the Maoists as lsquoIndiarsquos gravestsecurity threatrsquo (Reuters 2006)6lsquoUnion home minister P Chidambaram saidhellip civil society activists who have argued against stateviolence must answer for the slaughter of civiliansrsquo (Times of India 2010)7For example when asked why a police officer accused of rape was not dismissed the Chief of Chhat-tisgarh police replied lsquoThis is a well-conceived strategy of Naxalshellip They are making frivolous alle-gationsrsquo (Bhardwaj 2012)8Following the killing of 17 villagers in June 2012 while they were celebrating a festival the PoliceChief of Bijapur justified it saying lsquoIt is difficult to differentiate between Naxals and villagershellip Onregular days they take part in farming activities and at other times they help the Naxals In effect theyare also Naxalsrsquo (quoted in Pandey and Jain 2012)9The government justifies its attacks on the Maoists on the grounds that they do not believe in theIndian Constitution and indeed the Maoists have dismissed the Constitution as being as worthlessas a roll of toilet paper On the other hand the Maoists have done more to enforce the 5th Scheduleof the Constitution governing adivasi areas which restricts transfer of adivasi land to non-adivasisthan the Indian government has and the Maoists repeatedly ask the Indian government to adhereto the Constitution that it has sworn to uphold (Azad 2010 56ndash7)

470 Nandini Sundar

repulsion fear fantasy fetish and contempt that drives each side (Taussig 1993 Aretxaga2003) The Indian state impersonates guerilla tactics in order to fight the Maoists while theMaoists mimic state practices of governmentality Each side identifies its own lsquopeoplersquothrough uniforms and lists of people killed each side plots its territory through memorialsto its martyrs and each side complains similarly when lsquothe peoplersquo are not sufficientlydisciplined10

As Aretxaga notes while states persecute people they in turn are haunted by the ima-gined power of those they construct as their enemies

This mirroring paranoid dynamic often takes the form of powerful identifications and obsessivefascination as when the state engages in terrorist or criminal practices in order to appropriate thepower it attributes to its enemies criminals subversives or terroristshellip These are not justmoments of repression against enemies that are already there they are fields in which thestate and its enemies are created and recreated as powerful fictional realitieshellip through whatDerrida has called lsquoa phantomatic mode of productionrsquo (Aretxaga 2003 402)

While incumbent states may be more or less successful in destroying their enemies in theprocess they especially those which claim to be democratic also self-destruct and frag-ment This happens by violating the principles on which they are officially founded suchas popular consent and the rule of law as well as through the common practice of outsour-cing violence to vigilantes The same applies to social movements bound to secrecy Evenas guerilla movements like the Maoists challenge the Indian state in the name of equalityand democracy they create their own state-effects with all the constraints these imposeon citizens For instance the policy program of the Janathana Sarkar (JS) the Maoistproto-state or peoplersquos government lists the following fundamental rights which shall beguaranteed by the Peoplersquos Democratic Government lsquoright to express right to meetright to form organizationrsquo (CPI Maoist 2004) However each of these freedoms includingthe freedom to vote for other parties in elections is constrained by the partyrsquos need to dom-inate their areas and protect their personnel

However the Maoists and the Indian state are not mirror images of each other For thesecurity forces fighting is primarily a salaried job though they may also be driven bynationalism honor or other emotions Vigilantes are lured by money power the thrillsof criminality and more occasionally the guilt of betrayal when they have been formerinsurgents themselves Maoist recruitment on the other hand draws solely on non-monet-ary motivations such as idealism escape from the drudgery of everyday life or forced mar-riages (for women) and a desire for justice or revenge against those who have oppressedthem Contrary to what the government propagates Maoist guerillas are not fighting forpersonal benefit and live in difficult conditions at great personal privation (for thesecrucial distinctions between state forces and guerillas more generally see also Richani2007 Sanin 2008 on Colombia) Second the Maoist Peoplersquos Liberation Guerilla Army(PLGA) has about 60 percent women (Majumdar 2013) compared to the all-male parami-litary forces This significantly affects the way villagers experience their presence withoutfor instance the threat of random sexual violence Third insurgent weaponry and resourceshowever imaginatively deployed are no match for the vast firepower of the statewhose repertoire against the Maoists includes helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles

10On government dissatisfaction with unruly citizens see Scott (1998) Maoist language is equallyrevealing they note that of 16200 saplings distributed only 30 percent survived lsquobecause thepeople did not take sufficient carersquo (CPI Maoist 2000 19ndash49)

The Journal of Peasant Studies 471

(Menon 2012) Finally to the extent that sovereignty is propped up by external recognitionin a system of states the government side is intrinsically stronger

This essay is based on eight and a half years (since 2005) of investigation into the effectsand practices of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Dantewada as well as some 24 yearsof research in the adivasi tracts of India Due to my sustained visits I have been able to talk tovillagers without being lsquoembeddedrsquo either with the government or with the Maoists in con-trast to almost all the current descriptive literature on Maoists (see for example Ramana2008 Choudhary 2012 Navlakha 2012) Where not specifically attributed the observationsmade here are based on a composite understanding developed over the years born of mul-tiple conversations The names of all informants and villages have been changed

The mobile Maoist state

The JS (Janathana Sarkar) shall be the newly formed Peoplersquos Democratic State and the powerof a government This power shall attain a complete character and a form with the formation ofcountrywide Peoplersquos Democratic Republic federation Depending on the common minimumprogram prepared by the Party the Janathana Sarkars forming in the process of development ofrevolutionary struggle in DK shall make efforts to implement the peoplersquos government poweras the new state power

ndash Policy program of Janathana Sarkar CPI Maoist document 2004

When there are two governments whom should we followndash A woman in Basaguda camp 2008

TheMaoist state inBastar has taken shapeover three decades and its boundaries have expandedand contracted with the power of insurgency and counterinsurgency At one level the Maoiststate is a virtual phenomenon an idea an emotional identificationRabindraRay a formerNax-alite once told me a joke that had circulated in the 1970s in the initial heyday of Naxalism Apoliceman taunted a youth he had arrested lsquoYou guys talk so much about Vietnamrsquo he saidlsquoshow me where it is on the maprsquo The youth who was illiterate put his hand on his chestand replied lsquoIt is in my heartrsquo At another level the boundaries of the Maoist state can bemapped by the absence of the Indian state of visible markers like roads schools or health ser-vices and the presenceofMaoist institutions like sanghams (village level governance structuresdiscussed later) though these are not evident to the casual visitor

Thewider regionwhich theMaoists call lsquoDandakaranyarsquo straddles the boundaries of offi-cial states and includes Bastar in Chhattisgarh parts of the state of Andhra Pradesh to thesouth Maharashtra to the west and Orissa to the east The Maoists claim this comprisessome 6 million people (CPIMaoist 2000 4) Currently debilitated in Andhra due to counter-insurgency successes Bastar is widely considered the most important Maoist strongholdparticularly its southern half and a vast stretch in the center called Abujhmarh (unknownhills) which has never been mapped by either the colonial or post-colonial government

The Indian state treats adivasis as backward and needing paternal protection and sim-ultaneously as oppressed and dangerous ndash the lsquoOtherrsquo of the lsquomainstream nationrsquo For theMaoists adivasis are now their primary constituency though historically they have alsobeen strong among dalits or scheduled caste agricultural labor in states like AndhraPradesh and Bihar While Indian states are identified with the dominant linguistic commu-nity the borders of Maoist state committees follow the spread of exploited communities andlanguages as well as topographies suited for guerilla fighting As Chris Gregory put it (per-sonal email June 2013) the boundaries of the Indian versus the Maoist state can also beidentified along an axis of ricemillet wetdry HalbiGondi and flathilly oppositions

472 Nandini Sundar

though as the Maoists spread into the plains and rice replaces millets as the food item ofchoice this boundary too is increasingly blurred

While Chhattisgarhrsquos official language is the north Indian Hindi the majority ofBastarrsquos people speak Gondi or other adivasi languages like Dhurwa Halbi Bhatri etcThe Chhattisgarh government constantly describes Maoists as Telugu-speaking outsiderseven though by now over 90 percent of Maoist cadre and even high-level commandersin Bastar are local adivasis and all meetings are conducted in Gondi But Bastar hasalways been a zone of north-south crossings and the two movements that have changedthe course of Bastarrsquos history have both been from south to north In the fourteenthcentury the Kakatiya king Annam Deo fled from Warrangal (now in Andhra Pradesh)and established the kingdom of Bastar which lasted till its accession to the Indian statein 1947 (Sundar 2007) The second fateful journey north was of Naxalite squads in 1980

The Naxalite movement officially began in the late 1960s as a peasant struggle in Nax-albari West Bengal though its roots go back to the 1940s Telengana armed struggle led bythe undivided Communist Party of India It represented the armed pro-Chinese stream ofIndian Marxism which did not believe that parliamentary democracy would lead to therequisite systemic change The Indian state managed to crush the movement in the1970s but various splinter groups regrouped In Andhra the Communist Party of IndiaMarxist-Leninist Peoplersquos War (CPI [ML] PW) was one of the more successful factionsIt later merged with another party CPI (ML) Party Unity and then in 2004 with theMaoist Communist Center (MCC) of India to form the Communist Party of India(Maoist) The CPI (Maoist) is currently a significant political force across several statesThe partyrsquos politics and policies are not uniform across states ndash much depends on the

Figure 1 Map of DantewadaSouth Bastar

shape of local class hierarchies the past history of the area geographic factors the nature ofthe ruling regime and even the nature of local Maoist commanders11

In 1979 Peoplersquos War (PW) drew up a plan titled lsquoPerspective for a Guerilla Zonersquo Theprimary reason for going to Bastar was to develop it as a rear area for retreat when repres-sion intensified on the Andhra side of the Godavari organizing local adivasis was the sec-ondary task (CPI Maoist nd) In the Sanskritic epic imagination in which these TeluguMaoists were nurtured it has always been a place of retreat ndash Dandakaranya literallymeans forest of punishment

When the PW squads first came to Bastar they focused on making existing institutionswork and not yet on establishing a parallel state They held meetings in the villages at nightand identified local problems They threatened foresters and contractors who paid less thanthe minimum wage teachers and health workers who neither taught nor cured but drewtheir salaries anyway land revenue officials and police who demanded bribes for routineadministrative work and shopkeepers who cheated the villagers After two or threeyears forest and revenue staff stopped staying overnight in the villages to feast on chickensand liquor forcibly requisitioned from adivasis and moved to the smaller block centerswhich had a police presence (see Shankar 1999 Sundar 2007)

As the Maoists tell it12 since the exploitative state had receded if not completely disap-peared they were at a loss Their struggles became seasonal concentrating on raising therates of tendu patta (used for making local cigarettes and the biggest source of cashincome for adivasis) Between 1983 and 1987 there was an intense debate within theparty on the local agrarian structure ndash as to whether internal class differences matteredwithin adivasi society which is traditionally more homogeneous than caste society orwhether the major contradiction was with the state The real breakthrough in South Bastarcame in 1987 One Kalmu Deva who originally came from further north had colonizedsome 100 acres of forest land nearKonta in the deep south ofBastar The localDorla adivasisasked the Maoists to distribute some of this land to them for which the Maoists held two orthreemeetings in the village trying to persuadeDeva to part with his land During this periodthe squad was attending a wedding in the village whenDeva called the policeWhile the restof the squad escaped their leader fell into a ditch and was caught The next week his deputykilledDeva for betraying them but the villagers saw this as a signal that the partywas ready totake land redistribution seriously and began coming to them in large numbers

Much of the land that adivasis cultivate has no legal title dating from the colonialappropriation of forests in which they practiced shifting cultivation (see Sundar 2007) Offi-cial landholdings are about one hectare per household making access to land a big politicalissue The Maoists helped people settle new villages in the forest ranges of the deep southand redistributed land in the more settled villages13 Over time they set up their own par-allel structures in the villages called sanghams (collectives) displacing both the traditionalheadmen and the sarpanchs or elected village representatives some of whom left the vil-lages The Maoists claim the latter act as lsquoagents of the Indian state in the villagesrsquo ratherthan representing the people to the state

11For the first phase of the Naxalite movement see Mohanty (1977) Banerjee (1984) Sinha (1989)for the recent phase see Jeffrey et al (2012) Shah and Pettigrew (2011) Venugopal (2013) See alsothe CPI (Maoist)rsquos own party history (nd) for both phases12Interview with Lanka Papi Reddy former Central Committee Member of the CPI (Maoist) and otherformer Maoists March and May 2010 see also Shankar (1999)13The parliamentary Communist Party of India (CPI) also gathered support by settling adivasi pea-sants onto forest land but has been gradually displaced in its strongholds by the Maoists

474 Nandini Sundar

Kalyvas (2006 218ndash9) argues that lsquoinsurgency can best be understood as a process ofcompetitive state building rather than simply an instance of collective action or social con-tentionrsquo with terms like lsquoshadow government parallel hierarchy rebel infrastructure oralternative governmentrsquo used to describe these alternative sovereignties He goes on tospecify some of these lsquostatelike activities they collect taxes organize policing administerjustice and conscript fightersrsquo (Kalyvas 2006 219) Similarly in describing lsquoguerilla gov-ernancersquo Nelson Kasfir notes that lsquoan insurgent organization must meet several definingconditions First it must gain territorial control within the state against which it is rebellingalthough its territory and its control may vary Second civilians must reside in that areaThird there must be at least initial violence and if not continuing violence then its crediblethreat Fourth the guerrilla organization must be sufficiently free from external control thatits leaders can make their own decisions about whether and how to governhellip Three clus-ters of variables define governance encouragement of civilian participation formation ofcivilian administration and organization regulation or taxation of commercial productionof high value goods or servicesrsquo (Kasfir 2008)

The Maoist lsquostatersquo in Dantewada meets all these conditions ndash it has control over a par-ticular territory albeit one that is fragile and subject to police and paramilitary incursions ithas organized civilians under the Janathana Sarkar and it taxes contractors and industriesworking within its ambit While there is evidently a great deal of voluntary support over andabove the coercion exercised by the Maoists coercion as Kasfir notes is a given because ofthe threats the movement faces from the state This is also borne out by Maoist leaderAzadrsquos response to civil society criticism on the killing of informers

lsquoto be more humanersquo cannot be associated with the question of civil behavior vis-agrave-vis theenemy and their agents in our tactics Having said this quite rightly there should not beany attack on soft targets but targets have to be assessed within the framework of the poli-tico-military aims of the movement ndash both immediate and long term (Azad 2010 9)

Kalyvas (2006) argues that the degree of violence exercised by states and insurgents variesinversely in proportion to their control over a given territory ndash the greater the control theless the need for violence

My concern in this contribution however is not with the degree of violence or controlover territory and services Nor does it aim to merely establish the fact of a dual sovereigntyalthough in contrast to the post-Foucault literature which sees traditional concepts of sover-eignty based on consent or domination as passeacute in an age of biopower and bioregulation14 Iwish to emphasize the importance of assertions of sovereignty as part of civil war My focusis on showing how the performance of sovereignty involves mimicking the other and howthe state effects this creates lsquoaddressesrsquo individuals creating precarious citizenship

So how does the incipient Maoist state practice sovereignty and what sort of state effectsdoes this create For one its enactment is often a silent affair ndash with thousands attendingmeetings but as secretly melting away into the forests15 Civil wars have a culture of

14Foucault (2003 35ndash6) himself provides a far more sophisticated historical analysis of sovereigntywhich relates it to different modes of surplus extraction15Describing a rally he attended in 2005 at which some 10000 people gathered Shubhranshu Choudh-ary writes of how secrecy is maintained even from the participants themselves lsquoWe met many groupswalking like us to the rally No one knew where the rally actually was Groups landed at one villagefound a local contact who told them to go to another village where the next destination was revealedSometimes there are other groups waiting and they joined uprsquo (Choudhary 2005)

self-censorship (see also Green 1994) Villagers will not talk to outsiders about Maoistmovements in their areas

However in their strongholds Maoist memorials to their leaders ndash which take days andweeks to build with the combined labor of several villages ndash tower over the landscape (seeFigure 2) Along with memorials flags and commemoration days are essential rituals ofrule The policy program of the JS lays these out lsquoName Janathana Sarkar FlagHammer and Sickle with red flag with the length and breadth of the ratio 23 SongMust sing communist international in front of the flagrsquo (CPI Maoist 2004) The Indianstatersquos celebration of Independence Day and Republic Day accompanied by the unfurlingof the Indian tricolor is countered by black flags in Maoist areas Instead the Maoists markInternational Womenrsquos Day and Martyrs Week The Maoist stamp on the annual calendargoes deeper JunendashDecember remains the period for cultivation but JanuaryndashMay whichwas earlier devoted to the collection of minor forest produce and wage labor now includesfighting Visiting squads are well integrated into village life openly attending villagemeetings playing volleyball with villagers and sleeping on cots in the open spacesbetween houses

The Maoist state like any other has both coercive and welfare functions thoughoften exercised by the same institutions The Politburo and Central Committeeoversee various state committees who work through dalams (armed squads) which in

Figure 2 Memorial to Maoist leader Azad (Cherukuri Rajkumar)

476 Nandini Sundar

turn oversee their mass organizations like the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan(Revolutionary Adivasi Womensrsquo Union) and the village committees Like any armythe PLGA has companies platoons and brigades though as a lsquopeoplersquos guerilla armyrsquocommanders and cadre share the same work food and living conditions In additionthere are village militias or lsquobase forcesrsquo which form an essential part of the JS

In practice the village JS appear quite varied On average a village JS comprises some4ndash5 villages with a population of 500ndash3000 and is run by a committee of 15ndash20 membersdrawn from all the constituent units It has eight departments financial defense agriculturejudicial education-culture health forest protection and public relations Each departmenthas its own workers The forest department for example has two people in every villagewho check out the forests once a month to see whatrsquos been cut and whether it was author-ized The agriculture department encourages the formation of co-operatives to cultivate andshare plough bullocks and the construction of ponds for irrigation and fish rearing The vis-iting squads urge people to grow vegetables to ensure a balanced diet Every month or so ageneral body meeting is held by rotation in the different constituent villages where allissues are discussed Everyone attends including women and children unlike traditionalmeetings attended only by men

The Maoists also regulate drinking and gambling during cockfighting intervene toprevent domestic violence and settle petty disputes The Maoists catalogue their statersquosachievements just as the Indian government does in terms of the numbers of fish seedlingsdistributed cattle pounds created and so on (see CPI Maoist 2000) Their record-keepingpropensities date back to the 1970s Amrita Rangaswamy describing the Naxalite conflictin Srikakulam noted lsquoThe routine and the organisation of the guerillas seem to be modeledon the Indian police The habit of maintaining diaries and the style of entries is perhaps anoutstanding examplersquo (Rangaswamy 1974)

Citizenship of theMaoist state comes at the cost both good and bad of citizenship of theIndian state In one village Pulam I was told by residents that they had burnt their govern-ment-issued land titles (the main source of identity and surety across the country andunthinkable in normal times) because they were told they had no more use The Maoistshad issued their own land deeds instead In many places villagers have been advised toreject local government money for road-building construction etc which is a source oflocal wage labor on the grounds that this enables corruption by the village leaders andleads to class differentiation in society Elsewhere while roads remain taboo because theyallow the security forces to travel freely the villagers are allowed to use governmentfunds after the Maoists approve of the scheme In some places sarpanchs or villageleaders who were elected in panchayat (local government) elections were made to resignThe Maoists have consistently called for poll boycotts Before Salwa Judum (see nextsection) started teachers health workers and fair price shops (where government suppliesbasic foodstuff at less than market rates) were welcomed by villagers and Maoists From2011ndash2012 onwards because all development funds are routed through an lsquointegratedaction planrsquo which serves as a form of low-intensity counterinsurgency Maoist attitudeshave hardened though essentials remain exempt from a boycott Ideally villagers wouldlike the best of both states ndash to have schools and hospitals but not police camps wagesfor forest work but no restrictions by the forest bureaucracy Forced to choose the poorerpeople across villages say they prefer the Maoist state but with a real sense of regret atthe government funds they are forced to forgo Just as in the Indian state in the Maoistregime too people are forced to migrate for work in this case as seasonal agriculturallabor for farmers in Andhra Above all the Maoists offer no protection when thepolice arrest villagers Instead villagers turn for help to parliamentary parties like the

Communist Party of India the same parties whom they boycott during elections on Maoistorders

The Maoists finance their state through levies Other than some 20 multinational com-panies whom they refer to as the lsquocomprador big bourgeoisiersquo (CBB) who they will notallow to operate on ideological grounds everyone working in Maoist areas has to paythem taxes For example traders running transport services in the interiors pay them Rs(rupees) 5000 per year to run a tractor and Rs 3000 for a jeep Tendu leaf contractors canonly purchase leaves at rates cleared with the Maoists and after paying them a share16

While the Maoists have used this to leverage higher prices for the villagers neither thisnor the achievement of social equality within the villages entirely transforms the widerinequalities between adivasis and outsiders The latter continue to look down upon theformer While an armed adivasi has more purchase on national attention than an unarmedone and the Maoists are posing a major challenge to primitive accumulation in the forestbelts they do not pose an alternative to advanced capitalism as a whole

Just as the Maoist state slowly elbowed out the Indian state replacing it with structuresthat look similar as well as different the Indian state is trying to force its way back inmimicking what they see as the practices of the Maoist state

Salwa Judum as outlaw envy a government-run lsquopeoplersquos movementrsquo

This mimicry by the colonizer of the savagery imputed to the savage is what I call the colonialmirror of production and it ishellip identical to the mimetic structure of attribution and counterattribution that Horkheimer and Adorno single outhellip where they write lsquoThey cannot standthe Jews but imitate themrsquo

ndash Michael Taussig (1993 66)

The police and the government cannot stand the Maoists but they want to be like them or atleast like their idea of what Maoists are like The Indian police routinely complain that theyare lsquohamperedrsquo by laws in carrying out extra-judicial executions as compared to thefreedom that insurgents and criminals are thought to enjoy This position has widersupport occasionally taking the form of public vigilantism (see also Caldeira 2006Pratten and Sen 2008)

In 2003 the Indian Home Ministry announced a policy of promoting lsquolocal resistancegroupsrsquo drawing on counterinsurgency practices in Kashmir and Indiarsquos Northeast (Minis-try of Home Affairs 2003ndash4 44) Accordingly in 2005 the Dantewada District Adminis-trator laid out a proposal that outlined clearly how a lsquopeoplersquos movementrsquo should work incountering Naxalites blurring the boundaries between civilians and combatants

At each cluster level one village defence squad should be formed If we look at Naxaliteorganisation they have one dalam or squad over every 75ndash80 villages The Naxalites haveerected this structure after 25 years experience We need to learn from this If we want todestroy the Naxalites totally we will have to adopt their strategies or else we will not besuccessful (District Collector Dantewada 2005 25)

This lsquopeoplersquos movementrsquowas then named Salwa Judum In Gondi salwa is something thatcools the body ndash either purification or pacification ndash while judum refers to the long huntscarried out in summer months in which a number of people from different villages

16Conversations with traders 2005ndash2013

478 Nandini Sundar

participate Depending on who is doing the translation the name can be read as lsquopurificationhuntrsquo or as the more benign lsquopeace campaignrsquo Few genuine peoplersquos movements have beenas lucky as the Salwa Judum praised by the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Raman Singhas lsquothe fragrance of the forestrsquo a lsquoholy battlersquo and even a lsquoGandhian movementrsquo Insteadmost commonly peaceful movements against displacement by dams or industries are metwith police fire and arrests In fact Salwa Judum was a classic counterinsurgency move-ment with parallels across the world in civil patrols home guards village defense forcesspecial police officers and the like (see Starn 1995 Sanford 2003 Wood 2003 Elkins2005 Richani 2007 Tate 2007 French 2011 Staniland 2012) Although calling it alsquopeoplersquos movementrsquo was intended to displace culpability as is the case everywhere thiswas also a tacit acknowledgment of the moral legitimacy such movements have in IndiaThe Salwa Judum in turn became a business model for the government in its counterinsur-gency efforts elsewhere As a Wikipedia entry on Salwa Judum helpfully tells us lsquoEncour-aged by the highly positive results of the movement (Salwa Judum) in the region thegovernment is planning to launch a peoplersquos movement in insurgency hit state ofManipur on similar linesrsquo (Wikipedia nd)17

In Dantewada the Judum (as it was colloquially called) took the form of a series ofpublic meetings summoned by the Congress opposition leader Mahendra Karma withthe support of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government18 Judum meetingswere always accompanied by the police and often attended by ministers and district offi-cials They threatened to fine and burn villages which did not participate Sanghammembers or those known to be active Maoist workers were forced to lsquosurrenderrsquo Villageswhich resisted were attacked and their inhabitants forcibly evacuated into lsquorelief campsrsquocontrolled by the Judum Whoever could fled either to the forests with the guerillas orto neighboring states Over 1000 people were killed mostly by the Salwa Judum and secur-ity forces and some by the Maoists who attacked the Salwa Judum leaders andlsquoinformersrsquo19

The camps known locally and in administrative documents as lsquobase campsrsquo clearlybetraying their militarist origins became the defining line in a new geography of civilwar Beyond the camps located mostly along the national highways there was Maoist ter-ritory The police recruited some 4000 youths including children of 14ndash16 years as SpecialPolice Officers (SPOs) drawing them from the ranks of either surrendered insurgents orvictims of the Naxalites claiming this made them lsquohighly motivatedrsquo in the fight againstNaxalism The Maoists also poured in more battalions in an effort to hold on to their lib-erated zone Since 2009 under pressure from activists and orders from the Supreme Courtthe Salwa Judum has been replaced by Operation Green Hunt a more straightforwardlystate operation conducted through paramilitary forces like the Central Reserve PoliceForce (CRPF)20

Many of the Salwa Judum leaders had been objects of Maoist justice (for instance oneof them was a contractor who had been punished for not paying minimum wages to his

17The Wikipedia entry is itself a battleground juxtaposing contradictory pro- and anti-Salwa Judumstatements18While the two parties are often engaged in slanging matches they are united on fundamental issuessuch as neoliberal policies and opposition to the Maoists19Kartam Joga and ors (2007) litigation before the Supreme Court of India provides a partial list ofover 500 people killed by the Judum and security forces between 2005 and 2007 A thousand casual-ties since 2005 is therefore an informed guess20In India the paramilitary forces are part of the regular state forces and not vigilantes

workers while another a former sarpanch had been punished for stealing the money meantfor widowsrsquo pensions) had had their land expropriated (members of Mahendra Karmarsquosfamily for example) or had close connections with leading politicians In other wordsthey had a natural interest in siding with the state against the Maoists in order to maintainthe exploitative status quo The SPOs however joined for more varied reasons Somewanted a government job21 some had no choice as surrendered Maoists some feltstifled by Maoist dictates to forgo government funds or contest elections Some youngmen joined for the sake of lsquocarnivalrsquo the fun of looting villages in an otherwise boringlife Initially given bows and arrows they were later armed with guns

In the early stages of the war SPOs stood at checkpoints marching onto buses anddemanding IDs Now their primary task is to accompany the paramilitaries on combingoperations22 Their knowledge of the terrain makes them invaluable guides Becomingan SPO was a path to modernity with policemen who had long treated them as lsquosavageothersrsquo now recognizing their potential as defenders of the lsquonationrsquo But the SPOs wereambivalent about both their friends and foes Some SPOs hung out with security forceslearning how to play new games like snooker acquiring new goods like walkmans andheadsets wearing fatigues and acquiring fluency in Hindi which marked them out aslsquonationalrsquo educated and cosmopolitan Some of them were personally loyal to localSalwa Judum leaders forming gangs which ruled a particular area But the vast majoritysocialized only with other SPOs saying the CRPF made them feel inferior Unhappy atbeing posted in the jungle far from city lights where danger lurks around every tree anda man can be felled by malaria as much as by a land mine the CRPF blamed the adivasiSPOs for their predicament as part of a more general anger against the sheer impertinenceof the resisting savage For the female SPOs (many fewer in number) patriarchy was auto-matically transferred ndash they washed the clothes of the CRPF officers and cleaned the policestation As Orin Starn writes of the Rondas Campesinas of Peru the peasant patrols whowere used as auxiliaries by the state to fight the Shining Path guerrillas much like theIndian SPOs Fujimori used them to show how he had lsquorechanneled the dangerousenergy of Perursquos poorest inhabitants to the defense of democracy and nationhoodhellip However the very existence of the rondas speaks of the second-class citizenship of pea-santsrsquo (Starn 1995 555ndash6)

What constituted the fault lines of enmity between SPOs and Naxalites For one SPOswere bound to follow orders which could even override family ties ndash as when an SPO waspart of a combing operation in which his own brother was caught and killed as a NaxaliteBut they were also propelled by machismo drug-induced violence and a guilty fear TheSPOs especially former Maoists claimed to the police that they would finish theMaoists ndash lsquojust give me a gun I know the paths they travel and their local contactsrsquo ndashbut their aggression was mixed with dread23 The Maoists they knew were formidableenemies

Just as SPOs targeted their former comrades the Naxalites singled out the SPOs fromamongst other ordinary villagers living in camp In an attack on Rani Bodli camp in 2007out of the approximately 55 people killed 39 were SPOs However it was widely suspected

21Initially the SPOs were paid Rs 1500 which though cheap for the state was substantial by localstandards22In 2011 they were renamed Assistant Constables in defiance of a Supreme Court order that they bedisbanded but for the purposes of this essay I will continue to refer to them as SPOs (Justice Suder-shan Reddy and Justice SS Nijjar 2011)23Interviews with SPOs 2005 2010

480 Nandini Sundar

that the Naxalite attack was possible only with SPO help Indeed a couple of SPOs wentmissing immediately after Everyone is suspect ndashNaxalites who have infiltrated the ranks ofSPOs as well as SPOs who are former Naxalites pointing to the precarity of lsquobelongingrsquo incivil wars like these

But even as the SPOs were conscripted in a war not of their own making they retainedauthorship of some of its elements Even when the killings were done by police or parami-litary personnel they may have originated in some never-settled village feud On the bus toDantewada in 2007 a fellow passenger who had been in the police briefly told me that heleft because his life had been miserable lsquoThe force looks attractive from the outside but itrsquosnot what you think it is There are constant encounters In three months last summer we shot60ndash70 people on patrol in Bijapurrsquo lsquoWere all these Naxalitesrsquo I asked lsquoOf course notrsquo hesaid lsquoNone of them were Naxalites Sometimes an SPO would point to someone and tell usto shoot sometimes we shot simply because the villager was running away and refused tostop when we called outrsquo lsquoDid you record these deaths somewherersquo I asked Now it washis turn to be shocked lsquoOur jobs would be in trouble if we did We left the bodies in thejungles We recorded it as an encounter only if someone was actually wearing a uniformor carrying a weaponrsquo

The Indian state competes with Maoist memorials by surrounding its camps with statuesof dead SPOs dressed in fatigues and holding a gun (see Figure 3) But the living SPOs are

Figure 3 Memorial to a lsquoMartyredrsquo SPO

reviled in their own villages By 2013 most camp residents have been able to return to theirvillages but the SPOs cannot because of the killings rape and arson they have engaged inand because the villages are now even more tightly controlled by the Maoists Having sidedwith the state they are homeless having crossed an unmarked border from the Maoist stateto the government side there is no safe return

But the extent to which the officials of the Indian government are in charge of their lsquoownsidersquo is debatable In 2006 members of the Independent Citizens Initiative who werestopped by SPOs outside Bhairamgarh police station were allowed to leave only after thelocal Salwa Judum leader gave permission despite having a letter from the Chief Secretarythe top official in the state (see ICI 2006) By 2012 the SPOs were so emboldened by thechange in nomenclature and higher pay they received following the Supreme Courtrsquos 2011orders to disband them that they attacked officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) The CBI had been sent by the Court to investigate a particularly egregious attackon three villages by the security forces The CBI affidavit of 6 March 2012 describeshow they barricaded themselves inside a room while the SPOs armed with automaticweapons and hand grenades tried to break down the defenses The local officers whotried to prevent them were also manhandled by the SPOs24 Yet none of this preventsthe state of Chhattisgarh from continuing to defend them in the Supreme Court soclosely has it identified its own existence with vigilantism

Uniforms and lists as markers of belonging

In these co-existing and tenuously balanced regimes with their systems of competing sover-eignty uniforms lists and ID cards are markers of membership and yet dangerous forms ofidentification The role of state practices in individuating differentiating enumerating andregistering people or in other words the governmentality associated with citizenship (seeMamdani 2001 Fassin 2011 Sammadar 2011) is always dangerous for those they excludeand those who fall within bureaucratic cracks (see Caplan and Torpey 2001) but here Ipoint to a moment when inclusion is equally dangerous particularly when the lines thatare being crossed and the people who are doing the crossing are never what they seemon the surface (see also Aretxaga 2003 Das and Poole 2004 10 14ndash8 Poole 2004 Gordillo2006 Thiranagama 2010)

Initially the SPOs did not have uniforms and did not wear their paper badges becausethey were scared to be identified as such In 2006 when my companions and I tried tophotograph the ID card of a youth who had stopped us at a checkpoint we werenearly lynched and my camera was seized Later the SPOs were issued with camouflagefatigues and guns These uniforms gave them a sense of authority but one which wasforever under threat as the Maoists then singled them out precisely because of theseuniforms

Uniforms are an important feature distinguishing lsquolegitimate targetsrsquo from others Whenthe police capture civilians ndash as in the story I was told by a co-villager about a youngwoman Shanti whose illness prevented her escape when the Salwa Judum attacked theirvillage ndash they dress them in lsquoNaxalitersquo uniforms Sometimes they are made to parade forthe press with guns which are kept in stock with the police and conveniently brought outat successive lsquoencountersrsquo Like the rewards that accompanied tiger kills capturing orkilling a Naxalite occasions promotions (see also Mahajan 2007) But for some policemen

24CBI affidavit received 6 March 2012 in Sundar and Ors 2007

482 Nandini Sundar

adivasis donrsquot deserve even these uniforms including their cheap canvas shoes In 2006 atDornapal CRPF camp soon after the security forces had returned from a combing oper-ation I observed a policeman kicking the canvas-clad feet of the corpse of a woman mili-tant which had been brought in He said contemptuously lsquoLook they have started wearingshoesrsquo It was not clear whom he hated more ndashNaxalites or uppity adivasis who wore shoes

Uniforms can also be disguises and weapons in a war of wits Groups of SPOs have pre-tended to be visiting Maoist squads in order to identify their key supporters in the villages25

Villagers in Jaipal told me how SPOs came to their homes at night wearing Maoist uniformsasking for Masa a sangham worker Since they were native Gondi speakers no one suspectedthemThey askedMasa lsquoDidnrsquot you get themessage thatwewere going to attackKorku policestationrsquoHe denied knowing anything about it so they asked to be taken to the sarpanch Thesarpanch recalled tome that he had been to a cock fight that afternoon andwas sleeping off hisliquor But when the SPOs knocked on his door at 3 am ostensibly in search of two squadmembers he retained enough of his wits to deny knowing them Then Masa innocently pro-duced aMaoist pamphlet saying lsquoI have one how come you donrsquotrsquo revealing the sarpanchrsquosclose ties to the Maoists At that the SPOs fell upon and beat up the sarpanch

The civil war has generated several rolls of the dead ndash lists issued by the Naxalites andlists issued by the government26 Appearance on one list or the other indicates to whom youlsquobelongrsquo Government records contain only the names of those ostensibly killed by the Nax-alites whose relatives are then compensated Naxalite lists on the other hand released tothe press and to human rights groups contain only the names of those killed by the SalwaJudum SPOs or security forces By and large these lists reflect their respective followersthough in some cases when people have protested at extra-judicial killings by the policethe government has persuaded them to pass it off as a Naxalite murder and take compen-sation27 Sometimes the police tie themselves into knots ndash as in the case of a 2008 listthey gave to the National Human Rights Commission which had been tasked with investi-gating the deaths and which in turn uncritically accepted it ndash where they described severalpeople as lsquonaxalites killed by naxalitesrsquo28

Sometimes the state has to produce Naxalites from among its own ranks when none ofthe genuine articles are forthcoming In early 2007 in a rare flicker of opposition the Congresscharged that out of 79 lsquoNaxalitesrsquo who lsquosurrenderedrsquo before the BJP Chief Minister in a cer-emony held at the state capital on 3 January many were really BJP workers (Newswebindia2007) Surrendered Naxalites get rehabilitation grants so faking identity works to the advan-tage of both the leader who gets the glory for pacification and the workers who get the money

Human rights activists have also generated lists in particular a list of over 500 peoplekilled based on testimonies given by villagers to the parliamentary Communist Party ofIndia (CPI) which was submitted to the Supreme Court in 2007 in Kartam Joga and ors

25lsquoPseudo-operationsrsquo or lsquothe use of organized teams which are disguised as guerilla groups for long

or short term penetration of insurgent controlled areasrsquo (Cline 2005 1) is a common counterinsur-gency strategy See also Guha (1983 208ndash9) on the colonial use of lsquodecoysrsquo and lsquoperfidy as an instru-ment of pacificationrsquo26See annexures in Sundar and Ors 2007 based on names and figures provided by the Government ofChhattisgarh and the Ministry of Home Affairs See also Annexures I amp II in PUCL PUDR et al(2006) which reproduce both government and Maoist handouts27Despite repeated directions from the Supreme Court the state compensates victims of Naxalite kill-ings but not those killed by the Salwa Judum or security forces28NHRC Annexures not included in the published NHRC report (NHRC 2008) accessed in theSupreme Court

vs State of Chhattisgarh and Union of India WP (Cr) 119 of 2007 Some of these namesstraddle both the government and Maoist lists However the NHRC declared that the majoritywere simply the names of people lsquomissingrsquo because there were no First Information Reports(FIRs) on their deaths (NHRC 2008) Villagers fleeing from police attacks on their villages arescarcely likely to register FIRs with the police and such FIRs as the police have written bearlittle resemblance to the truth (see also Grover 2002 Das 2004 229) As far as the state isconcerned these are people who are not missed even if they are lsquomissingrsquo

But as Das (2004) writes the signature of the state is reproduced even by those who areoutcast by it Notice the stress on official identification in this testimony submitted by awidow to the Supreme Court explaining why the killing of her husband was illegitimate

In December 2006ndashJanuary 2007 when Polampalli camp was newly established the SalwaJudum SPOs and police attacked our village for the third time and burnt houses Thinkingthey had left my husband and two others went to see the damage to their houses They thendrank water at the boring pump Hearing the sound of the boring hand pump the SPOscame back and fired indiscriminately Gunga and Potem managed to escape but myhusband was shot and died of two bullet woundsSince he was carrying with him an election ID card a land deed and Rs 2500 the SPOs realizedhe was not a Naxalite and left the body lying in the village They took away the money and IDand land deed The next morning the villagers went in search of him and found the body andcremated him We were too scared to file an FIR and it would have been pointless since he hadbeen killed by SPOs29

The signature of the Maoist state is similarly simultaneously authoritative and indetermi-nate A sarpanch friend received a letter purportedly from the Maoists demanding Rs30000 lsquoSarpanch ji [term of respect] do you want to help the Maoists or diersquo Whilethe style of the letter made him doubt its Maoist authorship ndash he suspected a local politicalrival ndash he could not afford to take any chances He paid not just Rs 30000 but twoadditional installments following more threatening letters written in red ink completewith a lsquosealrsquo of the CPI Maoist He left home temporarily to be safe but in the meantimeput out feelers to the Maoists The Maoists ordered an investigation in which they askedhim to name the alleged impersonator lsquoButrsquo said the sarpanch lsquowhen it came to it Icould not take his name for if the Maoists did anything to him his family would take itout on me and we both have to live in the same villagersquo

In a situation where ordinary people are lsquoventriloquisedrsquo by armed insurgents and secur-ity forces and in turn see their agency in lsquodupingrsquo either side and even each other (Nelson2004) seals signatures signs and speech are all imbued with uncertainty Broken speechserves here as the marker of a broken citizenship

Who represents the state teachers or paramilitaries

The government has repeatedly claimed that the Salwa Judum has enabled it to expand itsreach into areas formerly controlled by the Maoists This is debatable as even though CRPFcamps have extended to more areas they are themselves under siege Police stations areheavily fortified with barbed wire and in remote areas supplies are airdropped

Far from gaining more territory the government has lost whatever presence it had Offi-cially the government claims that it is the Naxalites who have driven teachers and other

29Testimony of SB village A 8 July 2008 recorded by the author

484 Nandini Sundar

government staff away But in 2005 it was the government which ordered school teachersand fair price shops to work only in camps This was compounded by the CRPF occupationof schools while on combing operations The Maoists retaliated by blasting the buildings Awhole generation has now grown up unschooled or been forced to leave their homes andlive in faraway hostels if they hope to access any education at all30

For the SPOs and others who left their fields and livestock behind when they came tocamp teachers and health workers were the only lsquopropertyrsquo they could lay claim to a markof their own superiority over those who had not joined the Judum In Basaguda camp I wastold in 2008 lsquoThese teachers belong to our government We have kept them (teachers) alltogether in one place Those who donrsquot join the Judum will get no school or be allowed togo to schoolrsquo For the teachers themselves always reluctant to travel to interior villages theperiod since 2005 has meant pay without work many have prospered so much with theSalwa Judum that they have become contractors

In December 2008 the district administrator showed CPI leader Manish Kunjam andme a letter written in a purposely illiterate hand ostensibly from the Naxalites to avillage school principal lsquoShut down the school within two weeks or prepare to be put atpeace foreverrsquo He used this as an example of Naxalites hindering education On enquiringin the village concerned we learnt that it had originated from a disgruntled teacher upsetwith the principalrsquos insistence that he report to work on time Government functionariesthink of Naxalites as uneducated and therefore produce poorly written fakes whereaswhen villagers counterfeit Maoist letters they are very neat For villagers the Maoists rep-resent literacy and knowledge and their most lasting impression of cadres is of lsquopeople whokeep readingrsquo In a situation where sovereignty is contested there are more contenders forpower than just the two main warring parties

Curiously what applies to government staff does not apply to traders and tendu pattacollectors Many of them are supporters and bankrollers of the ruling BJP but dependenton the Maoists to operate in their areas and thus serve as the chief boundary crossersand intermediaries In the midst of all the mayhem that Salwa Judum created tendu leafcollection barely stopped and it was the traders who supplied rice and other essentials tothose inside the forest when government supplies were stopped

For the Maoists state withdrawal of services has rendered the area even more comple-tely within their control Now with the sarpanches and richer farmers gone and no govern-ment staff there is no room for dissension in the villages People wishing to leave or toreturn to their villages write letters to the Maoist leaders asking for permission Whilethis is sometimes felt as a constraint it also helps to check the large-scale trafficking ofwomen that has been going on by unscrupulous agents What the Indian government hasdone is to effectively prop up its lsquootherrsquo giving it a cohesion and solidity which it didnot possess before in terms of either territory or people

Whereas the Indian state is now a straggly space along the highway electrified withsearch lights around the camps the Maoist state stretches large into the mysterious interiorsndash unknowable unmappable dark and with unmarked routes where the leaders come andgo But to the extent that people are silenced and carry their allegiances in their hearts31

the borders of both states will never be known

30While the Maoists have an education department which publishes textbooks and runs a few schoolsthis is no substitute for government schools See Dasgupta (2010)31As Dule of a forest village told me in 2013 lsquoI can only say what is in my heart I cannot speak for thehearts of othersrsquo

Conclusions

This contribution studies sovereignty and citizenship as a set of practices identificationsand acts that emerge in the mimetic relationship between states at war Here the displayof sovereignty is authored not by a consenting people from below or a law-generatingstate acting on its own from above but by the statersquos perceived enemy ndash as in theoutlaw-envy that drives the state to set up vigilante groups or the hubris that drives theMaoists to distribute their own land records and uniforms These opposing states arehowever linked through their personnel ndash the sangham members turned SPOs the pro-BJP traders turned Maoist suppliers ndash and also intertwined through the conflicting alle-giances of their subjects who are engaged in a constant back-and-forth ventriloquismwith both governments albeit from positions of subjugation

In terms of appearances each side must claim that their authority comes from belowfrom the consent of the governed (see Howland and White 2009 Skinner 2010 onclassic theories of sovereignty) Both the state through its lsquowinning hearts and mindsrsquo cam-paign and the Maoists ostensibly compete for the hand of the villagers In practice theIndian governmentrsquos sovereignty over adivasi areas has historically been based on subjuga-tion and conquest as against consent (see Foucault 2003 on conquest as the basis of sover-eignty) The land and forest laws which independent India inherited from the British andwhich have traditionally been used to expropriate adivasis code violence into the verynotion of the rule of law

Faced with growing resistance to these laws not just from the Maoists but from a rangeof social movements protecting indigenous rights to land against mining companies or bigpower projects the Indian government has resorted to propping up support groups for itsprojects Backed by the police and company-hired vigilantes they attack protest move-ments The Salwa Judum as a so-called lsquopeoplersquos movementrsquo is perhaps the most egregiousbut not the only example of re-engineering lsquothe peoplersquo in order to maintain the fiction of asocial contract Unlike the lsquonestedrsquo or lsquooutsourcedrsquo sovereignty that Hansen and Stepputat(2006) describe as a durable feature of post-colonial states counterinsurgent vigilantism isdirectly attributable to state agency

The Maoists claim that they are replacing subjugation in the Indian state by citizenshipin their own regime As Foucault notes sovereignty as an ideal provides arms to both mon-archs and contenders to legitimize their rule or to overthrow arbitrary authority (see Fou-cault 2003 35 Kalmo and Skinner 2010 8) It is true that people initially welcomed theMaoists and the JS is based on active participation and consent However for both thestate and the Maoists continued membership is on suffrage contingent upon compliancewith their rule People can be jailed or killed when expedient (as government informersor Maoist sympathizers) without the guarantees that a law-ruled state would provide Inthe process the stated raison drsquoecirctre of both states fragments or gets reformulated underthe pressure of exceptions demanded by war The Constitution in whose name the Indiangovernment claims to be acting is increasingly laid waste by the war against its ownpeople while the Maoist dream of a lsquoRed flag over the Red Fortrsquo32 or a new democracyfor the whole of India is shrinking to the space of the forest where the Indian governmenthas hemmed them in

For the adivasis who live in the intersecting penumbras of these labile sovereigntiestheir belonging or citizenship is uncertainly defined Their participation in the Maoist

32The Red Fort in Delhi has been the symbolic seat of Indiarsquos power from the Mughal period onwards

486 Nandini Sundar

state makes them vulnerable in the Indian one and in turn the benefits of everyday govern-mentality in the Indian state are treated with suspicion in the Maoist parallel regime Evenworse the contested sovereignty of civil wars produces subjects at war with themselvesdoubting their neighbors and even doubting themselves

The more interesting question today is not how legitimacy was instituted in the Indianstate since it clearly has its origins in both a long colonial past and a shorter history basedon the freedom movement and the Constitution Far more interesting is the attempt tounderstand what happens when such a state willfully chooses to dissolve itself ndash cedingboth its foundational principles and its monopoly over violence to vigilantes ndash afterpeople have grown accustomed to it or at least grown used to the state-idea in definingtheir own citizenship33 Agamben (2005 59) claims that for those at the receiving end oflsquostates of exceptionrsquo the only option is lsquocivil war and revolutionary violencersquo Howevercitizens continue to maintain a practical relation to the idea of law if only as a sign ofhope that flourishes despite the anomie and despair If the state is responsible for its owndissolution it is ordinary people especially non-combatants who intervene to prop up astate-idea which they define in terms of justice and a minimal degree of welfareDrawing on materials from the parallel states they inhabit they appeal to the Indiancourts for justice while simultaneously pledging to continue with their JS even if insecret Through all the uncertainty the doubting and the fighting they continue to hopeto look to the state(s) to make their fractured selves whole again These are signs thatstand for wonders in the parched landscape of civil war

ReferencesAbrams P 1988 Notes on the difficulty of studying the state Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1)

58ndash89Agamben G 2005 State of exception Kevin Attell trans Chicago University of Chicago PressAretxaga B 2003 Maddening states Annual Review of Anthropology 32 393ndash410Azad 2010 Maoists in India Writings and interviews Hyderabad Friends of AzadBanerjee S 1984 Indiarsquos simmering revolution The Naxalite uprising Calcutta Selectbook Service

SyndicateBhardwaj A 2012 lsquoHero SPO Mentorrsquo was facing many charges Indian Express February 11 2012

Available from httpwwwindianexpresscomnews-hero-spo-mentorndashwas-facing-many-charges910805 [Accessed 30 June 2013]

Caldeira TPR 2006 lsquoI come to sabotage your reasoningrsquo Violence and resignifications of justicein Brazil In J Comaroff and JL Comaroff eds Law and disorder in the postcolony ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press pp 102ndash49

Caplan J and J Torpey eds 2001 Documenting individual identity The development of state prac-tices in the modern world Princeton Princeton University Press

Choudhary S 2005 In Naxal heartland The Hindu Available from httpwwwhinducommag20050410stories2005041000160200htm [Accessed 4 January 2014]

Choudhary S 2012 Letrsquos call him Vasu With the Maoists in Chhattisgarh New Delhi PenguinBooks

Cline L E 2005 Pseudo operations and counterinsurgency Lessons from other countries CarlislePA Strategic Studies Institute

Communist Party of India (Maoist) 2000 New peoplersquos power in Dandakaranya Calcutta BiplabiYug Publications

33lsquoThere is a state-system in Milibandrsquos sense a palpable nexus of practice and institutional structure

centred in government and more or less extensive unified and dominant in any given societyhellip There is too a state-idea projected purveyed and variously believed in in different societies at differ-ent timesrsquo (Abrams 1988 82)

Communist Party of India (Maoist) 2004 Policy program of janathana sarkarCommunist Party of India (Maoist) nd 3O years of NaxalbariDas V 2004 The signature of the state The paradox of illegibility In V Das and D Poole eds

Anthropology in the margins of the state Santa Fe School of American Research Press pp225ndash53

Das V and D Poole 2004 State and its margins Comparative ethnographies In V Das and DPoole eds Anthropology in the Margins of the State Santa Fe School of American ResearchPress pp 3ndash34

Dasgupta D 2010 My book is red Outlook magazine May 17 2010 Available from httpwwwoutlookindiacomprintarticleaspx265325 [Accessed 14 February 2014]

District Collector Dantewada 2005 Work proposal on the Jan Jagran Abhiyan MimeoElkins C 2005 Imperial reckoning The untold story of Britainrsquos gulag in Kenya New York Henry

HoltFassin D 2011 Policing borders producing boundaries The governmentality of immigration in dark

times Annual Review of Anthropology 40 213ndash26Foucault M 2003 Society must be defended Lectures at the College de France 1975ndash76 New York

PicadorFrench D 2011 The British way in counter-insurgency 1945ndash1967 New York Oxford University

PressGaleano E 2000 Upside down A primer for the looking glass world Mark Fried trans New York

Metropolitan BooksGordillo G 2006 The crucible of citizenship ID-paper fetishism in the Argentinian Chaco

American Ethnologist 33(2) 162ndash76Government of India 1860 The Indian Penal Code Act No 45 of 1860 Government of IndiaGreen L 1994 Fear as a way of life Cultural Anthropology 9(2) 227ndash56Grover V 2002 The elusive quest for justice Delhi 1984 to Gujarat 2002 In Siddharth Varadarajan

ed Gujarat the making of a tragedy New Delhi Penguin Books pp 355ndash88Guha R 1983 Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India Delhi Oxford University

Press pp 208ndash09Hansen TB and F Stepputat 2006 Sovereignty revisited Annual Review of Anthropology 35

295ndash315Howland D and L White eds 2009 The state of sovereignty Territory laws populations

Bloomington Indiana University PressIndependent Citizens Initiative (ICI) 2006 War in the heart of India New Delhi ICIJeffrey R R Sen and P Singh eds 2012More than Maoism Politics policies and insurgencies in

South Asia New Delhi ManoharJustice Sudershan Reddy and Justice SS Nijjar 2011 Judgement dated 5 July 2011 In Nandini

Sundar and Ors v State of Chhattisgarh WP (Civil) 2502007 reported in 2011 (7) SCC 547Kalmo H and Q Skinner 2010 Introduction A concept in fragments In Hent Kalmo and Quentin

Skinner eds Sovereignty in fragments Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 1ndash25Kalyvas S 2006 The logic of violence in civil war Cambridge Cambridge University PressKannan KP and G Raveendran 2011 Indiarsquos common people The regional profile Economic and

Political Weekly September 17 2011 vol xlvi no 38 60ndash73Kartam Joga and ors 2007 Kartam Joga Dudhi Joga and Manish Kunjam vs State of Chhattisgarh

and Union of India WP (Cr) 1192007 in the Supreme Court of IndiaKasfir N 2008 Guerilla governance Patterns and explanations Paper presented at the seminar in

Order Conflict amp Violence Yale University October 29 2008Mahajan N 2007 Chhattisgarh police fudged data to project win against Naxals Indian Express

April 24 2007 Available from httpwwwindianexpresscomnewschhattisgarh-police-fudged-data-to-project-win-against-naxals291540 [Accessed 26 October 2012]

Majumdar U 2013 Top Maoist leader Ganapathy admits to leadership crises in the party TehelkaMagazine September 19 2013 Availabel from httpwwwtehelkacomtop-maoist-leader-ganapathi-admits-to-leadership-crisis-in-party [Accessed 4 January 2014]

Mamdani M 2001 Beyond settler and native as political identities Overcoming the political legacyof colonialism Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(4) 651ndash64

Menon N 2012 Air power against the Maoists India Defence Review 27(4) Oct-Dec 2012Available from httpwwwindiandefencereviewcomnewsair-power-against-the-maoists[Accessed 14 February 2014]

488 Nandini Sundar

Ministry of Home Affairs 2004 Ministry of home affairs Government of India Annual Report for2003ndash04 New Delhi Ministry of Home Affairs

Mohanty M 1977 Revolutionary violence A study of the Maoist movement in India CalcuttaSterling

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) 2008 Chhattisgarh enquiry report New DelhiNHRC

Navlakha G 2012 Days and nights in the heartland of rebellion New Delhi Penguin BooksNelson D 2004 Anthropologist discovers legendary two-faced Indian Margins the state and

duplicity in postwar Guatemala In V Das and D Poole eds Anthropology in the margins ofthe State Santa Fe School of American Research Press pp 117ndash40

Newswebindiacom 2007 Congress walkout over lsquofakersquo naxalite surrender Raipur February 222007 Availabel from httpnewswebindia123comnewsar_showdetailsaspid=702220308ampcat=ampn_date=20070222 [Accessed 20 October 2008]

Pandey B and P Jain 2012 Death And dark lies in Bastar Tehelkamagazine 9(29) Available fromhttpwwwtehelkacomstory_main53aspfilename=Ne210712Deathasp [Accessed 25 October2012]

Peoplersquos Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Peoplersquos Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and ors2006 When the state makes war against its own people Delhi PUDR

Poole D 2004 Between threat and guarantee Justice and community in the margins of the Peruvianstate In V Das and D Poole eds Anthropology in the margins of the state Santa Fe School ofAmerican Research Press pp 35ndash66

Pratten D and A Sen 2008 Global vigilantes New York Columbia University PressRamana PV ed 2008 The Naxal challenge Causes linkages and policy options New Delhi

Pearson Education IndiaRangaswamy A 1974 Making a village An Andhra experiment Economic and Political Weekly

September 7 1974 1524ndash7Reuters 2006 lsquoMaoists gravest threat to security says PMrsquo Gulfnewscom April 14 Available from

httpmgulfnewscommaoists-gravest-threat-to-security-says-pm-1232871utm_referrer [Accessed30 June 2013]

Richani N 2007 Caudillos and the crises of the Colombian state Fragmented sovereignties the warsystem and the privatization of counterinsurgency in Colombia Third World Quarterly 28(2)403ndash17

Sammadar R 2011 Sovereignty and the dialogic subject In Anjan Ghosh Tapati Guha-Thakurtaand Janaki Nair eds Theorising the present ndash Essays for Partha Chatterjee New DelhiOxford University Press pp 101ndash18

Sanford V 2003Buried secrets Truth and human rights in Guatemala NewYork PalgraveMcmillanSanin FG 2008 Telling the difference Guerillas and paramilitaries in the Colombian war Politics

and Society 36(1) 3ndash34Scott J 1998 Seeing like a state New Haven Yale University PressShah A and J Pettigrew eds 2011 Windows into a revolution New Delhi Social Science PressShankar P 1999 Yeh jungle hamara hai Calcutta New Vistas PublicationsSinha S 1989 Maoists in Andhra Pradesh New Delhi Gyan Publishing HouseSkinner Q 2010 The sovereign state a genealogy In H Kalmo and Q Skinner eds Sovereignty in

fragments Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 26ndash46Staniland P 2012 Between a rock and a hard place Insurgent fratricide ethnic defection and the rise

of pro-state paramilitaries Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(1) 16ndash40Starn O 1995 To revolt against the revolution War and resistance in Perursquos Andes Cultural

Anthropology 10(4) 547ndash80Statesman The 2012 Solar-based water system to come up in 10000 Maoist-hit villages The

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Sundar N 2007 Subalterns and sovereigns An anthropological history of Bastar 1854ndash2006 (2nded) Delhi Oxford University Press

Sundar and Ors 2007 Nandini Sundar Ramachandra Guha and EAS Sarma vs State of ChhattisgarhWP (Civil) 2502007 in the Supreme Court of India

Tate W 2007 Counting the dead The culture and politics of human rights activism in ColombiaBerkeley University of California Press

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Community In S Thiranagama and T Kelly eds Traitors Suspicion intimacy and theethics of state building Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press pp 127ndash49

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Wood E 2003 Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador Cambridge CambridgeUniversity Press

Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics Delhi University Herpublications include Subalterns and sovereigns an anthropological history of Bastar (2nd ed 2007)She serves on the boards of several journals including American Anthropologist the InternationalJournal of Conflict and Violence and the International Review of the Red Cross In 2010 she wasawarded the Infosys Science Foundation prize for social anthropology Her public writings are avail-able at httpnandinisundarblogspotcom Email nandinisundaryahoocom

490 Nandini Sundar

Abstract

Salwa Judum as outlaw envy a government-run lsquopeoples movementrsquo

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Conditions of access and use can be found at httpwwwtandfonlinecompageterms-and-conditions

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Documents

Mimetic Sovereignties JPS