Abstract
The truth is complicated not in and of itself. It is rendered complicated by tendencies entrenched within extractive capitalism that prolong the systematized exploitation of marginalized populations by influential groups within a liberal democracy. Nandini Sundar’s latest instalment is unputdownable not only for its riveting account of how privilege ruthlessly reproduces itself but equally for its painstakingly impeccable treatment of how strategies—to obscure, organize and legitimate inherently abhorrent practices—are brought into play by powerful actors and experienced by those they wreak havoc upon. Simply put, The Burning Forest is a narrative of the state-making and state-breaking contemporary history and ongoing conflict of Bastar—a civil war zone in central India where the tasks of democracy have been traded for domination, violent dispossession and resource frontier politics. But it is also an earnest record of a collective struggle, of ‘rage against the dying of the light’ (Thomas, 1952); a clarion call not so much to rescue a would-be democratic system from the vestiges of its worst excesses as to lay bare the stark limits of its workings and the harsh realities of the manifold betrayal of its people.
Drawing on 27 years of intense engagement with all things Bastar, Sundar sets out to map exploitation and resistance within people and places, to vivify the experiential worlds inhabited by those living in a climate of counter-insurgency and to throw into question the substantive achievements of democracy-in-the-doing. She accomplishes a convincing demonstration of how ‘even the most basic of checks within the state fail in the face of corporate and political greed and official indifference’ (p. xiv). The prioritization of rich empirical detail over thick theoretical layering, doubtless a considered decision, serves to underscore the crucial absence of accountability in an oft-overwhelming manner, despite scholarly refrain from any indulgence in sensationalism. This effect is caused by the content being replete with factual, studiously grounded and harrowing descriptions of rape, murder, arson and purposive miscarriages of justice against Bastar’s adivasi inhabitants. This mineral-rich region in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh hosts the arrogant will to power spawned amongst a multitude of muscle-flexing opportunists itching to transform a crisis of accountability into political prestige and profitable resource flows: Maoist insurgent groups, policemen, central government-funded counter-insurgency troops, regional lumpen youth recruited as ‘special police officers’ to constitute a state-sponsored vigilante ‘movement’, small-time traders and big industrialists, higher-level bureaucrats and politicians, and changing leaders within locally habitant Scheduled Tribe communities.
Dedicated activists, courageous victims, occasional bureaucrats and committed scholars take on long odds to resist the tilted scales of justice and state-pandering mainstream media accounts of a government’s war against people it seldom seems to regard as its own. But the main patterns of resource takeover, posited as essential for security and development but necessarily coming at the expense of a less acquisitive way of life, are orchestrated by those who wield the might of the state, and by typically middle-class power brokers who are equipped to symbiotically leverage it. Largely cornered Maoist outfits garner occasional victories that are invariably condemned and cause spiralling violence in battles within a lost war. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, it, nonetheless, remains possible to speak truth to power—as Sundar’s own involvement in public interest litigation showcases par excellence—and to even secure recognition of the facts within the gargantuan legal apparatus of the courts. But these very examples bear witness to the intractability of the Indian state when called upon to redress cruelty authored by its officers through its own institutions, safeguarded, as the latter are, by a complex assemblage that foregrounds political economic considerations even as it disregards gross human rights violations against populations, deemed inessential to self-serving visions of national progress.
Those with a semblance of familiarity with the long-running problem of insurgency as portrayed by the Indian state and in popular media will recognize many incidents that have recurrently dominated headlines, especially over the past decade. Discerning readers will nod in satisfaction at the textured presentation of facts that have too often been glossed over or omitted entirely in reportage elsewhere, and the bitterest of opponents will have to concede that the analysis is consistent, unstintingly comprehensive and unflinchingly honest. Even experienced scholars will find it instructive to attend to the approach this book takes to delicately unpacking the astounding range of issues that spans the human experience and governance puzzle thrown up by Bastar’s managed descent into organized plunder. One might, however, wonder nonetheless if there is anything left to say about attempts to decimate indigenous peoples and seize the wealth they are entitled to by states, using violence within a territory to benefit treacherous rulers and their henchmen who portray themselves as the very vehicles of state-building. After all, history and contemporary times provide ample testimony; so what is left to add to this litany and legacy of loot, beyond further cases of genocide and hegemonic capitalism, transported by foot-soldiers of globalization treading their distant cousins underfoot at the service of a selectively benevolent master?
Sundar’s motivations include countering militaristic understandings, recognizing honourable moral choices, placing a holistic version of the unpalatable truth on record and writing ‘as catharsis, as helpless witnessing, as rage about the annihilation of a people and their way of life’ (p. xv). The book meets these expectations and succeeds in fulfilling an additional one. It situates many insights characteristic of counter-insurgency and internal warfare within the rather peculiar ‘strong state’ context of India’s Chhattisgarh. This latter is simultaneously a recently created state ruled with an iron fist by cultural outsiders from the outset, a resource frontier in the heartland of a country that promotes itself as a liberal democracy but perpetually relies on extractive strategies to power its economic growth targets, and a burning news story unfolding in a relatively open media setting yet largely ignored by mainstream journalists on specific issues like human rights due to the greener pastures of counter-insurgency pro-state coverage. Then there is Bastar itself, a culturally distinctive region that Sundar possesses unparalleled expertise on, being forced to cater to the demands of perennially resource-hungry masters even as its people recoil from gut-wrenching ‘encounter’ upon encounter.
Bodies are snatched, used, represented as Naxalite (i.e., insurgent) women by unemployed and often initially coerced young men turned ‘special police officers’. Villagers are forced to pick sides between hounded forest-based Maoists, angrily fighting the injustices of an endless state, and brutal invaders relocating them to futureless camps posing as their saviours. Actors protesting against injustice are accused, incarcerated and made examples of, and their scope of action drastically delimited. Simultaneously, angry and desperate men recruited to vigilante groups or at times even the army are left frustrated and disgusted or become bloodthirsty and infatuated by unchecked power. Undeterred and apathetic, the state churns on, a well-oiled system replicated through controlled elections, accountable to no one who dares question it, let alone contradict it. Echo Joseph Conrad though even a dismayed Supreme Court might, it can do little to challenge the might of the executive vested in an intransigent government. In tracking and explaining these developments over time in a well-reasoned and cogently argued manner, Sundar has produced a mirror that sceptics not entirely closed to reflection will find hard to dismiss. It is a text that those with an open mind would do well to inform themselves through, and a source of inspiration for seasoned and aspiring scholars of democracy, India and resource governance alike.
To claim that an intervention of this stature might lead to adequate introspection to change the status quo would be naïve and fly in the face of the very understanding of the nature of the state in Bastar that The Burning Forest reveals; yet to neglect its important contribution towards some positive impact would smack of cynicism. Visions of desirable futures and pathways are essential for people to galvanize around. For all its failings, democracy proffers constructive possibilities premised on social mobilization, evidence-based critique and state-citizen engagement to a greater extent than other large-scale forms of social organization. Yet this alone will not suffice. Justice, albeit urgently requisite, is long delayed and effectively denied on countless fronts in Bastar. This is far from unique even within India. In the long run, more equitable outcomes require structural transformations that bring about accountability to check governmental exercise of power by an informed public. Such change must be crafted around the sort of meticulous and committed scholarship, Sundar so robustly embodies and brings to bear on some of the most pressing issues of our times. Thus, the book’s most crucial contribution is hopefully one in the future. At a juncture when research on India, on affording marginalized peoples lives of basic dignity, and indeed on equity-oriented resource governance faces severe barriers globally, may this exemplar light a thousand lamps to replace the raging fires in Bastar’s burning forest.