Red Sun: Travels through Naxalite Country is the sombre story of India at war with itself. It describes in vivid detail the explosive situation in vast swathes of rural India, where the Maoists and the state are locked in violent confrontation.

The book is the outcome of author Sudeep Chakravarti’s travel through some of the states that fall in the ‘Red Corridor’— the swathe of land from Nepal to Karnataka where Maoists wield varying degrees of influence.

The book is not only an account of what he saw during his travels but also includes the memories, experiences and perception of people he encountered in these areas— from government officials and counter-terrorism experts to Maoists, ex-revolutionaries, sympathisers, activists and radical students.

He begins with an account of his travel through Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, the epicentre of the Salwa Judum campaign and describes the Salwa Judum’s brutal impact on ordinary people, caught in the crossfire between the state and the Maoists.

“It is difficult to pass Salwa Judum off as a spontaneous mass movement” against the Maoists, Chakravarti writes, even as he draws attention to the “increasing resentment in many villages with Maoist pressure tactics.”

There is an interesting observation that the author makes with regard to road construction in Dantewada. It is not civil contractors that are laying roads into the Maoist areas but the military’s Border Roads Organisation, which lays roads along India’s borders with Pakistan and China.

Government officials might want to play down the intensity of the conflict in Dantewada and dismiss it as a law and order problem but BRO’s involvement in construction of roads to transport troops into the area “is in itself an admission that there’s a war raging in the heart of India,” the author writes. 

Brutality of both sides

Chakravarti tries to be even-handed, drawing attention to the brutality of both— the state and the Maoists. But his empathy with the Maoist cause is obvious. He is sensitive to the extreme poverty and oppression that is fuelling rural rage and understands their resort to armed struggle. Yet he is uneasy with the violence and repeatedly stresses that democracy does provide the Maoists with space to be heard. 

What of the future? Chakravarti foresees a polity of gated city-states or what he calls the ‘In-Land’ with surrounding rural areas or the ‘Out-Land’ acting as captive hinterlands. The ‘Out-land’ “beyond the urban pale, would likely be abdicated by the central government, if there is one, to bands of various ‘people’s governments’, Maoist or otherwise,” he writes.

The scenario he paints might seem rather extreme at first, still one cannot ignore the fact that such a situation does in fact exist in parts of Southern Chhattisgarh for instance, where the writ of the government does not run.

Maoism is here to stay for a while. “There is no indication of Maoism wrapping up, because the key triggers for Maoism— massively skewed development, massive corruption, and great social and ethnic discrimination— show no signs of wrapping up either.” It will be a very, very long war, it seems.

For all those who are dazzled by India’s stunning economic growth rates and still believe that India is shining, Red Sun will come as a big shock. The future it predicts is far from positive.

Red Sun: Travels through Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008, Rs 495, 351 pages)