Nandini Sundar

Satish Deshpande

Patricia Uberoi

Originally publihsed: Delhi: Permanent Black, c2007.

Founders of Indian Sociology and Anthropology

Anthropology in the East

The Indian Government has repeatedly described Maoist guerrillas as 'the biggest security threat to the countryÕ and Bastar as their headquarters. This book chronicles how the armed conflict between the government and the Maoists has devastated the lives of some of India's poorest citizens.

India's War In Bastar

The Burning Forest

In a long and versatile career spanning thirty-five years, Ramachandra Guha has produced a vast body of work. Each time, he has broken new ground-his pioneering environmental histories of India and his still-relevant work on ecology and equity; his social histories of Indian cricket; his monumental history of the Indian republic; his biographies of Verrier Elwin and Gandhi; his anthologies of ecological, social and political thought in India; and his collections of biographical and political essays. Sparked by Guha's wide-ranging and important work, A Functioning Anarchy is a collection of essays by historians, social scientists, ecologists and journalists.

Functioning Anarchy?

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 supportf or 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.

Nandini Sundar

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