Suparna Banerjee’s latest work Maoists and Government Welfare: Excluding Legitimacy or Legitimizing Exclusion (published by Routledge in 2023) is a delightful read for anyone interested in the Sociology and politics of conflict, insurgency, and violence in India. It problematises notions of state, caste, exclusion, and welfare by trying to understand the intricacies of the Maoist movement in Eastern India. In this methodically organised text, Banerjee examines why Maoism in India operates in the manner it does, drawing on the history of the movement and citing amply from her own, extensive fieldwork in West Bengal. In an extremely rare approach to understanding Maoism in India. Banerjee’s work is founded on the perspective of the excluded, both from the empirical and ethnographical lens.

Most accounts and analyses of Maoism in India are either mere reportage or accounts of exploitation by the state and Maoists alike. Banerjee’s work, however, is methodologically very sound, her chapter on the reflexivity of the researcher, titled, “question of positionality”, is an incisive take on the ever-perplexing dialectic between objectivity and subjectivity that Social Science researchers are wedged between. Banerjee employs what she calls rhetorical participation language to engage with her respondents on the field. She alludes to the peculiarity of her caste-class location within the given field and tries her best to situate herself in a manner that allows for unimpeded receptiveness from the field and introspective reflexivity vis-à-vis what she has observed.

Caste mentality, a concept that the author propounds, must be understood as a departure from the traditional social anthropological typification of caste as an archetype. Rather than root caste structurally and functionally, Banerjee posits caste both as performance and ideology. She identifies the performance of caste in the proliferation of exclusion by society and state in India through the various examples that she cites within the text. Scholars studying the phenomena of Maoism in India from both the security and sociological perspectives have seldom made caste and caste mentality – which modern political discourse equates to Brahminism – an important element in the analyses of Maoism in India.

Banerjee asks the pressing question of the Indian state’s disconnect with its citizens, especially those who are at the margins, she lays out the stage for a more serious look at the question of legitimacy, exclusion, and conflict. Drawing from Gramsci, Lukacs and Marcuse, Banerjee’s indictment of political legitimacy from a historical and performative lens is commendable. Banerjee is concerned with domination and hegemony as the hallmarks of power in the more remote parts of India. Contestation for power is examined by dissecting the history of the Indian National Movement. This exercise entails excerpts from modern Indian history wherein events from the life of four different leaders of the national movement are analysed in the context of Congress’ attempt at formulating a political consciousness. The infirmities of the Congress movement, its inherent paradoxes and the contradictory nature of its politics are all problematised and analysed splendidly, with an intent to locate the political legitimacy of the state (or the lack thereof) built on the frame of the Congress’ political milieu.

Exclusion as a concept is diachronically studied, wherein Banerjee fastidiously maps out the birth of the Naxalbari movement. She also contextualises how the Maoists gained a foothold in Bengal, despite its founders coming from the very bhadrolok class that Marxists-Leninists-Maoists sought to label as their class enemy (Pg. 77). In an integral account of what had unfolded, Banerjee mentions how the fear of dispossession of the intellectual class – herein the bhadrolok – by the ascendancy of a new political class drove them to adopt the ideals of Maoism-Marxism-Leninism, in rejection of the electoral democracy that the Constitution of India establishes.

Banerjee takes an empirical dive into the lives of adivasis in East India, specifically, West Bengal. In her revelation of the adivasi perspective of the state, she quotes from a respondent of hers, “What is heaven? Miles and miles of jungle and then what is hell? Miles and miles of jungle with only one forest guard. Forest guard make their life miserable” (Pg. 106). The forest guard here becomes the symbol of the state. This, in conflict zones, often turns into a CAPF camp which signifies an institutional manifestation of dominance that stems from caste mentality. Banerjee does not reduce the State’s approach to mere militarism. She delves deeper into the facets of Welfare and Development that the state propels amongst the marginalised. Banerjee purports two theoretical strands as the directions of the State’s response: co-optation and empowerment. In her deliberation of both she dissects these policy directions through an analysis of policy measures that are employed by the state and counter-narratives that the state bolsters. Banerjee’s intricate exposition of exclusion through the lens of caste, social structure and state responses is highly commendable. This perspective in the analysis of Maoism in India is pathbreaking and provides a new direction for research on the subject.

I believe, however, that an analysis of the Maoist movement in South-Central India and subsequent comparison with Banerjee’s field site could have added immense value to the text and could have uncovered the nuances of Maoism and government welfare from a holistic perspective. My contention in this regard stems from the fact that former United Andhra Pradesh was the hotbed of the Maoist-Marxist-Leninist movement in India. Even today the top leadership of the CPI (Maoist) is from the Telugu States and one of Banerjee’s respondents is reported to be a close acquaintance of Mallojula Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, who hails from Karimnagar District of former United Andhra Pradesh. While Banerjee’s analysis of why Maoists are considered more legitimate than the state is spot on, the conditions and manner in which Maoism operated in South-Central India are markedly different from what she has documented in Eastern India. Maoism in South-Central India, unlike in Bengal, was not a movement of the marginalised led by the intellectual class, It was a mass movement that shook every class in society for brief spells in the 1980s and 1990s. The People’s War movement as it was called pervaded even the Tollywood film industry and found its sympathisers from amongst national parties that participated in electoral politics promising to implement the People’s War/Maoist agenda. Parallels can be drawn to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) movement of Sri Lanka to which Dr. Siegfried O. Wolf had alluded in a discussion on the book with the author.

Banerjee’s discussion on caste and caste mentality traces the concept of caste from a pragmatic lens and deserves immense praise. While one cannot accuse this text of having the savarna gaze there is a slight element of Bengali ethnocentricity. No social anthropologist can escape from the curse of ethnocentricity, especially when working in a field tied to their cultural milieu. The operation of caste mentality is relegated to its manifestation in the structure of the society and its institutionalisation by the state. A discussion on caste within the Maoist party and its dynamics amongst the Maoists is altogether missing. Apart from a reference to the caste-class location of the initial Maoist-Marxist-Leninist leaders the fact that the Maoist party’s top leadership is almost exclusively upper caste is not analysed. Caste also operates within the Maoist party in myriad ways. Domination within the party and the gaze with which the party considers Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes as expendable elements has been problematised before. Discussion on the same by Dr. Banerjee would have added much more substance to the operation of caste mentality within the sociological confines of the Maoist conflict.

Maoism in India is deeply rooted in the question of dispossession by a state that overlooks its marginalised population until they make themselves heard, either through coordinated political action, like in the case of Bahujan politics, or through mindless violence like in the case of the Maoist-Marxist-Leninist revolt in India. While the legitimacy of the state is on untenable foundations amongst the marginalised, the Maoists fill the power vacuum by maintaining order and dispensing justice. They live amongst the excluded and speak their language, giving them the legitimacy that the Indian state requires to work with the marginalised in building a more inclusive nation. Banerjee’s work not only documents the above facts but also corroborates the above argument with strong ethnographical evidence. The most noteworthy aspect of Banerjee’s work is her stringent approach to staying objective and her candid reflexivity. In the final judgement of this seminal text, I would personally recommend it as the starting point of research for any policy enthusiast interested in or any academic studying conflict and Maoism in India.

1. Link to the Discussion of Suparna Banerjee with Siegfried O. Wolf: https://www.sadf.eu/an-sadf-conversation-on-maoists-and-government-welfare-in-india-book-by-suparna-banerjee-2/

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Puneet Repalle is a doctoral research scholar at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics (DSE).