When 79 policemen are murdered in Dantewada, the nation calls the movement India's biggest 'internal security' problem and we ask where is Dantewada? Subsequent reports portray the Maoists as the enemy, the other. When the Supreme Court strikes down Salwa Judum we do another rethink. In between, we all change our Facebook profile pictures to the campaign image to free Binayak Sen. It is not that we are unaware of the Maoists or Naxals but somewhere in the course of the struggle of our lives we have either buried the memory of other struggles or sat in judgment on their methods and decided to dig our individual tunnel to prosperity. Then when we grow complacent and frustrated by the path we chose - for capitalism is ever elusive and puts us in a rat race where we battle with the our friends for that carrot which hangs in front- the Maoists send us a message loud and clear (in Abraham Lincoln's words): a house divided against itself cannot stand.
 
Rahul Pandita's Hello, Bastar seeks to bridge the gap, understand the other, the enemy. He tries to show us how developmental processes are connected: cities with villages, higher castes with other castes, economic classes with the have-nots, man with woman. Unless those who build nations do not include everybody we will have huge sections of aggrieved people who will continue to wage war against the state. In his analysis, the struggle has come to what it is because the arms of the state have believed that they can quell voices and silence those who stand up for their rights. Who are they? They are the poorest of the poor, Fanon's 'wretched of the Earth'. They are those for whom kerosene is perhaps the biggest invention of human civilisation because it keeps the flames burning and helps them prepare their rice gruel meal though they inhabit forests which perhaps are the world's richest in flora and fauna. The status-quoists may postpone the war but as long as forests and women are raped, mines and stomachs are robbed, the fight will not end. Rahul, himself a Kashmiri Pandit in exile by another insurgency, goes deep into the forests of Dandakarenya, into Abujhmaad, Bhojpur, Naxalbari and Bastar to bring us his findings of those who for centuries, neglected by various systems of the state (Kings, British, Indian), have chosen to hold their ground.
 
Hello, Bastar is divided into various sections which trace the history and current state of Maoism/Naxalism in the country. Rahul starts with the capture of one of the educated leaders of the movement, Kobad Ghandy and goes on to give us give us summaries of how the movement shaped and grew in ten states. He shows us how this movement is connected to other people's movement and what is its theoretical framework. The sections after the photographs make most sense because, unlike the earlier summaries which read more like reports, these are much more immediate and personal. Anuradha Ghandy's story of how an upper class, well educated woman was drawn to the movement is contained in this part of the book. In fact, over the decades, the movement, since it is about real hunger and real loss, against class discrimination, and about imminent threat and unjustified state atrocities, has attracted many educated supporters and leaders. After all there is so much one can do for a cause through books and lectures. There are times when those who believe in a compassionate cause and equality have to pick up the gun.
 
The book is replete with quotes and statistics. The Maoist movement is 100,000 strong and has other hundreds of thousands direct or indirect supporters. Here is a summary from the book of a speech, September 2010, by Sri Raghuram Rajan, noted economist and honourary advisor to the Prime Minister: most of India's billionaires did not derive wealth from IT or software but from land, natural resources, and government contracts and licenses.
 
So, it is not that the government does not know about the inequality of wealth distribution. It is really about how to achieve an equal society. Rahul talks of how Gurgaon and Giridih (a Maoist stronghold in Jharkand that supplies labour to build Gurgaon) are not unconnected islands. The argument is to stop looking at ways to build only individual tunnels to prosperity but to take a more holistic view of how, if the foundations of the house crumble, we too will perish. Read this book if you love India. Read it to understand what it means when the name India is evoked, the reality of the term is certainly much vaster than your own journey through it. 
 
Amandeep Sandhu is the author of   Sepia Leaves