India After Naxalbari: Unfinished History

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Although the 1967 revolutionary armed peasant uprising in Naxalbari, at the foot of the Indian Himalayas, was brutally crushed, the insurgency gained new life elsewhere in India. In fact, this revolt has turned out to be the world’s longest-running “people’s war,” and Naxalbari has come to stand for the road to revolution in India. What has gone into the making of this protracted Maoist resistance? Bernard D’Mello’s fascinating narrative answers this question by tracing the circumstances that gave rise to India’s “1968”decade of revolutionary humanism and those that led to the triumph of the “1989” era of appallingly unequal growth condoned by Hindutva-nationalism, the Indian variant of Nazism. Will what remain of India’s continuing “1968” bring twenty-first-century “New Democracy” to the collective agenda? Or will the ongoing regression of “1989” lead the way to full-blown semi-fascism and sub-imperialism? India after Naxalbari is far more than a simple history of the ongoing Naxalite/Maoist resistance; it is a deeply passionate and informed work that not only captures the essence of modern Indian history but also tries to comprehend the present in the context of that history – so that the oppressed can exercise their power to influence its shape and outcome. Title Page......Page 3 Copyright......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 7 Introduction......Page 11 1. Naxalite! “Spring Thunder,” Phase I......Page 24 2. “1968” India as History......Page 53 3. Unequal Development and Evolution of the Ruling Bloc......Page 112 4. Naxalite! “Spring Thunder,” Phase II......Page 156 5. India’s “1989”—“Financial Aristocracy” and Government à Bon Marché......Page 192 6. “The Near and the Far”—India’s Rotten Liberal-Political Democracy......Page 225 7. Maoist! “Spring Thunder,” Phase III......Page 250 8. “Rotten at the Heart”—The “Secular State”......Page 284 9. “Little Man, What Now?”—In the Wake of Semi-Fascist and Sub-Imperialist Tendencies......Page 305 10. History, Memory, and Dreams—Reimagining “New Democracy”......Page 330 Appendix: Caste......Page 355 Notes......Page 364 Index......Page 407