NAXALBARI AND AFTER
Class Struggle and Patriarchy
Women in the Maoist Movement
Shoma Sen
In the 50 years since Naxalbari,
women have made a significant
contribution to the growth of
the Maoist movement, breaking
free from many of the shackles
that bind women down in Indian
society. This article discusses the
role of women and the question
of patriarchy in this stream of the
Naxalite movement on the basis
of the literature available.
Shoma Sen (shomasen@hotmail.com) teaches
English literature at Nagpur University.
56
I
n an unpublished letter, “An Open
Letter to Krishna Bandyopadhyay,”
written to Krishna Bandyopadhyay
in 2008,1 Nishita (probably a pseudonym)
expressed her affinity with Krishna and
then argued why, in spite of the prevailing
patriarchy within the Naxalite movement,
she (Nishita) chose to stay and fight,
claiming that women have succeeded in
occupying almost half of the Maoist sky.
Krishna herself had ended her article
published in this journal by saying,
But today I feel that if all of us had continued
and sustained it, we women would have
stood side by side with the men and had an
equal say in decision-making. Perhaps the
history of the Naxalbari movement would
have been written differently then. (Bandyo-
padhyay 2008: 59)
Nishita has expressed her regret that
women activists of her generation never
met the inspiring Krishna and others who
sparked that initial prairie fire. If they
could have met, she says, “then we would
have been spared some of the battles
which we had to wage inside the party.”
MAY 27, 2017
Fifty years after that Spring Thunder,
nine years after Bandyopadhyay’s article,
and Nishita’s letter, where do women
stand in the Naxalite/Maoist movement?
The Communist Party of India (Marxist–
Leninist) (CPI(ML)), formed in 1969, splin-
tered into various factions, some of which
are still active and have their own women’s
organisations comprising the broader ML
or Naxalite movement. Since 2004, when
the CPI(ML) (People’s War) [CPI(ML)(PW)]
and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC)
joined to form the CPI(Maoist), the activi-
ties of this party and the mass organisa-
tions close to it have been generally re-
ferred to as the Maoist movement. This
article discusses the role of women and the
question of patriarchy in this stream of
the Naxalite (Maoist) movement on the
basis of literature available. Due to strate-
gic reasons, as well as state repression,
this movement was pushed into being
based largely in tribal areas, in the deep
forests, with some work in plain areas
and urban areas where women have also
been active in student organisations,
trade unions or women’s organisations.
Women’s Organisations
Bhattacharyya (2016) points out how the
story of Naxalbari begins with women.
Policeman Sonam Wangdi was hit by an
arrow shot by a tribal woman at Naxalbari
on 24 May 1967. On the next day, of the
vol lIi no 21 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

11 peasants who were gunned down by
the police, eight were women, two hold-
ing their babies. Reviewing the literature
of the 1970s, Bhattacharyya finds that
though the programme of the CPI(ML)
asserts that the people’s democratic
state would “guarantee equality of sta-
tus to women,” the party did not feel the
need to form separate women’s organi-
sations. Women actively participated in
the peasant struggles that spread across
Telangana and central Bihar and in the
squads of Srikakulam, bearing immense
difficulties, falling to police bullets for
one cause: new democratic revolution.
In the 1980s, a consciousness of sec-
tional movements made the ML parties
think deeply about strategies regarding
caste, gender and the nationality question.
Women sympathetic to one of the ML
factions, the Chandra Pulla Reddy group,
that later evolved into the Janashakti
party, began the first women’s organisa-
tion with ML leanings in the 1970s—the
Progressive Organisation of Women (POW).
In the 1980s, in Bihar, the Party Unity
group of the CPI(ML) that worked mainly
among peasants had Mazdoor Kisan
Sangram Samiti and a Nari Mukti Sangram
Samiti. The MCC began an organisation
for women called Nari Mukti Sangh that is
still active, mostly amongst tribal women of
Jharkhand. Several women organisations
with sympathies towards CPI(ML)(PW)
were also formed in many urban centres
in Andhra Pradesh (AP) between 1985
and 1995.
A women’s magazine in Telugu called
Mahila Margam was started in 1989 in AP
by women with a revolutionary ideology. It
has been running for the past almost three
decades. In 1995, the CPI(ML)(PW) formed
Viplav Mahila Sangham (VMS) in the
villages of the areas where armed peas-
ant struggle was going on. In the tribal
areas of AP, this was called Adivasi
Viplav Mahila Sangham. In AP, the POW
organised the women bidi workers in
Karimnagar, Nizamabad and other dis-
tricts. The VMS took up land struggles as
well as those against feudal forms of
sexual and labour coercion that was tra-
ditionally prevalent in the area. Working
along with the Rythu Coolie Sangam
(RCS or Peasant Workers Association),
they occupied huge tracts of land
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MAY 27, 2017
illegally owned by landlords and marked
with red flags, as their own:
It is a decision of RCS and VMS that when lands
are taken over and distributed, women should
also be given titles to the lands independently
and this is also being implemented wherever
the revolutionary movement is being able to
give titles to the land. (Ghandy 2011: 217)
In 1980, the CPI(ML)(PW) sent its first
squads into the forests of central India,
called Dandakaranya, and started form-
ing peasant organisations there. As
many tribal women work in agriculture
and tendu leaf collection, they too be-
came active in these struggles for higher
wages and land to the tiller. In 1986, the
Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan (AMS) was
formed and later in 1991, it was renamed
as the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanga-
than (KAMS) after it was consolidated at
the division level in Gadchiroli.
KAMS Document
An account of its history has been pub-
lished in Telugu and also translated into
English but not yet published. From this
account, it becomes evident that it is a
huge women’s organisation. Just as it
identifies the class issues, it is also intense-
ly aware of how patriarchy affects this
society though it bemoans that it cannot
always fight this kind of patriarchy. This
document claims that 50,000 acres of
forestlands were seized by Adivasis and
tilled. Women played a key role, “more
crucial in this struggle than men” (Kurpu
2010: 23). It traces the history of how
upper-caste landlords had migrated from
the West Godavari district of AP and from
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to the areas of
Bastar, married Adivasi women to acquire
land, and where sexual exploitation of
women was rampant. The presence of the
KAMS and the Naxalite squads countered
this practice. Apart from the sexual exploi-
tation by “outsiders,” the KAMS writer
describes the “internal patriarchy” of
Gond tribal society like forced marriages,
polygamy, kanyasulkam or bride price,
etc. At the economic level, daughters
cannot inherit land. They are not allowed
to sow seeds, or to enter the granary. They
cannot thresh the grain. Superstitions
about menstruation make it necessary
for women to sit outside the home or in
huts where food is brought to them.
vol lIi no 21
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
In Gadchiroli, married women used to
be forced to stop wearing blouses. The
KAMS began a takkelladu lon hodiya (let
the girls enter the granaries) campaign
(Kurpu 2010: 32). They also tried to burn
the korma lon (huts for menstruating
women) but it was not well accepted by
the tribal society. KAMS activists feel
that they need to make the people un-
derstand things better before taking
such decisions.
As there are many kinds of marriage
practices amongst Gonds, the KAMS
decided to encourage one of them called
lon hodiya (entering the home). In this
custom, if a girl likes a boy she is supposed
to enter his home and start living with his
family. Then the parents would talk to each
other and their marriage would be fixed.
In an open public meeting on 8 March in
a village, KAMS activists encouraged an
open declaration of love by asking couples
who wanted to marry to come forward
and hold hands. KAMS also intervenes in
cases of forced marriages, domestic vio-
lence, witch-hunt and divorce, holding
“people’s courts” to openly discuss these
issues and take collective decisions, mak-
ing the “personal into the political.”
One of the important institutions of
Gond society is the gotul. This used to be
a centre for youngsters to learn their tra-
ditional knowledge, to relax after a hard
day’s work, interact, sing, dance and en-
joy themselves. It was also a place for
the boys and girls to seek out partners.
Pre-marital sex is not looked down upon
and even if a boy or girl does not want to
marry the one with whom he or she has
had sex, s/he is encouraged to look for
another partner. However, the KAMS
document feels that in the present times,
the gotul has become a place where young
men dominate, deciding who will sleep
with whom, do not take up responsibility
for a girl who may get pregnant and make
the girls do the work like fetching fire-
wood, etc. The KAMS wants to turn the
gotul into more of a place where learn-
ing is encouraged along with discussion
and decision-making, where the focus is
on gender equality. Many Gond women
have demanded that gotuls should be
closed down because they are forced to
dance and have sexual relations in these
places (Kurpu 2010: 36).
57
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
The leadership of KAMS feels strongly
that they should fight the internal patri-
archy of tribal society, like inheritance
of land and regarding agricultural practic-
es. In the areas where, they claim, the
janatana sarkars (people’s governments)
are ruling, and women have been given
responsible higher posts, the KAMS en-
couraged Gond women to go against
their community’s superstitions and sow
the seeds. The document says that fortu-
nately, the weather bore with them and
there was a bumper crop!
The KAMS also takes up political issues
like the attack on Iraq by the United
States, army atrocities in Kashmir, com-
memorating 6 December as Anti-Hindu-
Communalism Day, torchlight procession
and burning of ministers’ effigies when
Thangjam Manorama was raped and
killed in Manipur, etc. They have been
publishing two magazines since 1996:
Poru Mahila in Telugu and Sangharshrat
Mahila in Hindi, and stated that they ought
to publish more in Koya, the language of
the Gonds. It is in this context that one
can see how the Salwa Judum targeted
women leaders, since the old feudal
forces amongst the tribal people do not
want these changes and have aligned
with the state to unleash the most heinous
forms of repression in Chhattisgarh.
Undoubtedly, a movement that is seen
as “terrorist” by the Indian state will
have faced severe repressions. Much of
the published literature of the Maoists is
based upon the lives of such women who
had been martyred to the cause. The
foreword of a booklet called Women
Martyrs of the Indian Revolution, hails
the sacrifices of Panchadi Nirmala, Sne-
hlata, Padma, Rajitha, Aruna and others.
Conference Note
Many questions are raised in the context of
armed insurgency and women’s involve-
ment regarding their agency in these
movements. Are they predominantly male
groups and parties which are “using”
women’s power in this violent struggle
to fulfil their own ends? If this question
was to be applied to the Naxalite move-
ment, one would find ample evidence in
the literature accessible in the media to
say that, by and large, women go through
a consciousness raising process so that
58
they generally understand what they are
doing and why they are struggling.
A small report by two urban activists,
Latha and Sujata, who had attended the
conference of KAMS in 1991, observed
that 40 delegates representing 1,000 vil-
lage units of KAMS had come for the con-
ference. There were tribal women in-
volved in all aspects of volunteer work
like cutting down trees and making
benches, levelling the ground, etc. There
was a great deal of dancing and singing,
sometimes all through the night. The ob-
servers felt that the Naxalite squads had
a major role in initiating the women’s
groups. As the women spoke in the con-
ference, they seemed to generally begin
their narrations with “The squad came
into our village, then...”.
Initially, the male squad members
took it for granted that the Adivasi wom-
en would cook for them and would par-
ticipate along with menfolk in the tendu
patta struggles. But there were commu-
nist revolutionaries who were women in
the squads and they began meeting the
Gond women separately to form a wom-
en’s organisation. Though initially the
tribal men did feel threatened by sepa-
rate women’s organisations, the confe-
rence report observes that “they have
also succeeded in gradually eradicating
the patriarchal attitudes prevailing in
their own men” (Latha and Sujata 1991: 7).
It was the Adivasi women who chal-
lenged the protective patriarchy of the
early squads and fought to join them as
if to say that if they could fling an arrow,
they could also wield a gun.
Party Documents
The seminal document outlining the Mao-
ist party’s understanding on these issues
is called “Our Approach to the Women’s
Question.” Bhattacharyya uses the doc-
uments of the CPI(ML)(PW)/Maoist to dis-
cuss the attitudes of this party towards
the women’s question and patriarchy
such as “the approach of our party in
building a revolutionary women’s move-
ment” (Bhattacharyya 2016: 308). The
2001 Circular, “Fight against Patriarchal
Thinking within the Party and Promote
Proletarian Culture” clearly shows that
the Maoist party acknowledges the ex-
istence of patriarchy within its ranks.
MAY 27, 2017
As per the report of the Ninth Congress
held in 2007, the Maoist party accepted
the prevalence of patriarchy as one of its
shortcomings and decided to resolve this
problem. A question was also sometimes
raised about whether women could rise
to the leadership in the Maoist party. One
has read of two women, the late Anuradha
Ghandy and a recently freed political
prisoner, Sheela Didi, an Adivasi woman,
as being the two women members of the
central committee, while a number of
state committees and divisional commit-
tees have women. Thirty percent of the
People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army com-
prises women and there are some mili-
tary formations like squads and platoons
which are exclusively made up of and led
by women. Some of the recently released
political prisoners who held important
positions in the party prior to their arrest
have shared with me, in interviews,
their experiences that do speak of their
difficulties in leading men and all male
committees in some areas. Others, like
Nishita, avow that they have worked with
“excellent men comrades who can be
called the best human beings to have ex-
isted on this earth with regard to women.”
In her book, Srila Roy (2012) has talked
about the glorification of the heroism of
the Naxalite movement in the memories
of women, where sacrifice is seen as the
greatest virtue. In this vein, I can recall a
conversation with a woman activist, who
was a wonderful mass leader, who hated
housework and everything feminine and
joined the movement in her young days
because it allowed her a reversal of
gender roles. But circumstances pushed
her into the underground movement
where she had to live in the guise of an
“ordinary woman” to avoid suspicion and
practise a backward gender reversal.
Bhattacharyya also mentions about a
1999 Circular which says, “Let us cast
away the alien class tendencies regard-
ing sex, marriage and family from our
party!” He finds it as “unique” and “most
valuable” because these are the areas
which political parties and groups prefer
to remain silent upon, or they follow the
prevailing traditions (Bhattacharyya 2016:
308). That a circular would be written to
encourage women to rebel against the
domination of their male partners or
vol lIi no 21 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

leaders if there is a wrong trend; that the
circular lashes out against men for belit-
tling women and criticises women for un-
dermining themselves; that it also works
out norms for marriage, divorce and re-
marriage is indeed unusual. Being meant
largely for those involved in guerrilla
warfare, for whom discipline and con-
centration is a way of life; the circular
prohibits pre-marital and extra-marital
sex; encourages self-choice marriages with
the knowledge of the experienced and
leading group members; and warns
against the jealousy of male activists
towards their female partners. It also
feels that live-in relationships and casual
relationships are anarchic, causing confu-
sion and emotional disturbances that
the disciplined life of revolutionaries
cannot accommodate. In the past year, a
section of students of Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, who worked in a
student organisation sympathetic to
Maoist politics, broke away from this
group criticising the leadership of the RDF
that subscribes to Maoist ideology of
having feudal patriarchal views.
Thus, the above-mentioned circular and
the norms it prescribes have come under
criticism from a section of young radicals.
Similarly, the Maoist party and women’s
organisations close to it have been cam-
paigning against the consumption of
liquor among the rural people making it
a norm for its activists to avoid drinking.
This again is a matter of debate in urban
areas or among urban students, where
young men and women smoking and
drinking or living together are becoming
more prevalent. However, the question
does arise whether the norms that prevail
in metro cities can be used to generalise
on issues of morality and ethics in rural
areas. Similarly, norms that hold good in
tribal areas do not hold water in main-
stream rural society. This is the view of a
recently released political prisoner and
woman activist B Anuradha, who says,
“Marxist ideology gives utmost importance
to concrete analysis before generalising
and both have a dialectical relation.”2
Urban Women’s Movements
The Naxalite movement, and Marxism–
Leninism–Maoism, the ideology guiding
it, has had a far-reaching impact on the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MAY 27, 2017
people of India and abroad. In India, many
urban women who were thus motivated
had become activists. They might have
worked amongst the working class, stu-
dents, white collar unions or civil liber-
ties groups as well as in women’s orga-
nisations. Many of these women’s orga-
nisations were not organically linked to
any Naxalite faction or Maoist party, but
some of its members sympathised with
this ideology. Such women’s groups took
up many struggles pertaining to rape
and sexual assault, domestic violence,
acid attacks, sex-selective abortions,
Hindutva and women, commodification
of women in beauty pageants, globalisa-
tion and the issues of women workers,
the special economic zones as well as
state repression on tribal women as in
Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh or Sendra
in Jharkhand, women political prisoners,
women killed in false encounters, etc.
The issues of displacement in the pre-
sent model of development in Chhattis-
garh, Odisha, and West Bengal as in Nan-
digram, Singur and Lalgarh and repres-
sion of such movements were also taken
up. Believing in the unity of all women’s
organisations, these groups worked with
the Autonomous Women’s Movement,
hosting one of its conferences in Tirupati
in 1991. Women activists participated in
the cultural movement with skits, songs
and dances based upon folk forms and
had recorded these popular songs written
and performed by women in CDs and cas-
settes. Women’s magazines in various
languages have been published, sold in
offices, colleges and community settle-
ments, bringing the discourse of women’s
liberation to the ordinary small-town
women and giving them a space for their
own views. Writers, poets and cultural ac-
tivists of both sexes, part of revolutionary
politics have had seminars and debates
on women’s issues. One such seminar was
held in Patna in 1992, organised by the
All India League of Revolutionary Cul-
ture, where a hot debate for and against
feminism in the context of revolutionary
politics enriched the understanding of
activists. A struggle between a patriar-
chal mentality, based upon middle class
morality, and a revolutionary outlook
sharpened by a feminist axis took place in
this seminar where I was myself present.
vol lIi no 21
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
However, in the last decade, there has
been a sharp decline of this kind of
urban women’s movement which mush-
roomed in the 1990s probably due to a
massive crackdown on Naxalites, Marx-
ists, Dalits and democratic spaces as
well. In urban areas, some women activ-
ists have felt stifled by a patriarchal atti-
tude amongst the male activists, espe-
cially those of an older generation. Women
have been told that feminism is an ideo-
logy that divides the working class and
should be avoided. Rather than seeing
feminism as an anti-patriarchal axis
sharpening the gender question within
broader philosophical trends like liber-
alism, Marxism, Gandhian or Ambedkar
thought, some activists tend to see femi-
nism and Marxism as incompatible. The
Indian Maoist movement seems in
denial of issues pertaining to queer is-
sues, like same sex relations, transgen-
der or intersex people. By accessing the
internet, one can see that the Commu-
nist Party of Philippines (Maoist) has
conducted gay marriages of their squad
members and research scholars have
worked upon the topic of how this party
has grappled with the question of ho-
mosexuality, but there seems to be no
discourse on this subject in the Maoist
movement in India.
Conclusions
In the years since Naxalbari women
have made a significant contribution to
the growth of this movement, breaking
free of many of the shackles that bind
women down in Indian society. In the
words of an insider, Nishita:
As a woman comrade, I can confidently say
that women in the party and army have
made rapid and genuine advances, winning
their rightful place in the revolution as lead-
ers of the whole party and the people ...
Women comrades are not dependent on men
comrades nor do they look to them for deci-
sions. They are part of the decision-making
process. It is their revolution, it is their party
which they had built up and which they will
defend, preserve, lead and continue.
Due to my reading, observations and
various conversations I have had with
women activists over the years, I would
tend to conclude that there has been a
sea change in the approach towards and
participation of women in the Naxalite
59
NAXALBARI AND AFTER

movement in both understanding and
practice. First, unlike women in non-
government organisations or even some
Dalit women’s organisations, the Maoist
movement has always emphasised on
the link between patriarchy and class.
Without class struggle and overthrow-
ing the ruling class, patriarchy cannot
be challenged because every type of
class society perpetuates patriarchy in
different forms. In most parliamentary
parties, including the Communist Party
of India and the Communist Party of
India (Marxist), the women’s wing is just
another organisation that will mobilise
women for the political issues, just as
the trade unions, student organisations,
peasant organisations do. But, from my
interviews with Hisila Yami of the Com-
munist Party of Nepal (Maoist–Centre),
with women’s activists of Philippines and
Anuradha Ghandy from India, I have re-
alised that these parties see women as
half the struggle. In other words, they are
(or should be) half of the party, half of the
military formations, half of the students’,
peasants’ and workers’ organisations
and half of the alternate people’s power
structures like janatana sarkar, etc, play-
ing a leading role in all these spheres.
Another change in understanding is
similar to that regarding caste: that caste
and gender are part of both the base and
the superstructure. Women will not get
equality automatically after the revolution
but have to concretely fight against the
cultural, social and economic practices
which discriminate against them through-
out the struggle. This is why it is hearten-
ing to see the Adivasi women of central
India and Jharkhand boldly defying
their own patriarchal norms. The very
act of joining an organisation that chal-
lenges the entire system and wants to
shake it by its roots is an anti-patriar-
chal act, for every woman activist of
such a movement knows the sacrifices
she has to make and the danger in-
volved. As Nishita writes, “The fight
against patriarchy is, in essence, class
struggle.” To catch the bull by both
horns is what women in the Maoist
movement are attempting to do.
Notes
1 Bandyopadhyay (2008) appeared in EPW.
Probably, it would be the first time a woman
activist had openly spoken out and published
her experiences of patriarchy in the Naxalite
movement of West Bengal in the 1970s. I recently
came across an open letter to Bandyopadhyay
written by another activist, calling herself
Nishita. The letter was written in 2008, which
she might have sent to EPW but was not
published. She reviews the situation, locating
herself in the Naxalite movement of the first
decade of the 21st century, probably in Andhra
Pradesh or Dandakaranya.
2 Personal interview, 2017.
References
Bandyopadhyay, Krishna (2008): “Naxalbari Politics:
A Feminist Narrative,” Economic & Political
Weekly, 5 April.
Bhattacharyya, Amit (2016): Storming the Gates
of Heaven: The Maoist Movement in India:
A Critical Study 1972–2014, Kolkata: Setu
Prakashani.
CAVOW (2006): “Salwa Judum and Violence on
Women in Dantewada, Chhatisgadh, Nagpur,”
Committee against Violence on Women,
December.
Ghandy, Anuradha (2011): Scripting the Change:
Selected Writings of Anuradha Ghandy, Anand
Teltumbde and Shoma Sen (eds), New Delhi:
Daanish Books.
Kurpu, Sabari (2005): Women Martyrs of Dandaka-
ranya, Published by Swapan Dasgupta Radical
Publications, Kolkata.
— (2010): Dandakaranya Mahila Udyam Charitra
(1980–2009) published in Telugu, Hyderabad:
Virasam Pracharanalu, March (English transla-
tion unpublished).
Latha and Sujatha (1991): “Emerging Women’s
Movement in Dandakarnya: Conference Report,”
published in Telugu journal Arunotara, March
1992, translated into English and published as
an activist pamphlet.
Nishita (unpublished): “An Open Letter to Krishna
Bandopadhyay.”
Roy, Srila (2012): Remembering Revolution: Gender,
Violence and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari
Movement, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Review of Women’s Studies

April 29, 2017

Feminist Science Studies: Intersectional Narratives of Persons in Gender-marginal Locations in Science —Gita Chadha, Asha Achuthan
Chronicles of a Queer Relationship with Science —Chayanika Shah
Learning to Belong as an Indian Physicist —Sumathi Rao
Mathematics to Mathematics Education: A Telling Trajectory —Jayasree Subramanian
Woman Mathematician in India: An Autobiographical Account —Geetha Venkataraman
Gender and Science: A Case for Inclusion and Diversity —Sujata Ramdorai
The Production of Science: Bearing Gender, Caste and More —Bittu Karthik Kondaiah, Shalini Mahadev,
Maranatha Grace Tham Wahlang
Towards a Narrative of Gender in the Biological Sciences —Vidita A Vaidya
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