The war between
Maoists and the state in the heart of India
The Burning Forest
is an empathetic, moving account of what drives indigenous peasants
to support armed struggle despite severe state repression, including
lives lost, homes and communities destroyed.
Over the past
decade, the heavily forested,mineral-rich region of Bastar in central
India has emerged as one of the most militarized sites in the
country. The government calls the Maoist insurgency the "biggest
security threat" to India. In 2005, a state-sponsored vigilante
movement, the Salwa Judum, burnt hundreds of villages, driving their
inhabitants into state-controlled camps, drawing on counterinsurgency
techniques developed in Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere. Apart from
rapes and killings, hundreds of 'surrendered' Maoist sympathisers
were conscripted as auxiliaries. The conflict continues to this day,
taking a toll on the lives of civilians, security forces and Maoist
cadres.
In 2007, Sundar and
others took the Indian government to the Supreme Court over the human
rights violations arising out of the conflict. In a landmark judgment,
the Court in 2011 banned state support for vigilantism.
The Burning Forest
describes this brutal war in the heart of India, and what it tells us
about the courts, media and politics of the country. The result is a
granular and critical ethnography of Indian democracy over a decade.