PLGA militants are the hardhitters of the Maoist fighting force.

We're moving in single file now. Myself, and one hundred, 'senselessly violent', bloodthirsty insurgents. I looked around at the camp before we left. There are no signs that almost a hundred people had camped here, except for some ash where the fires had been. I cannot believe this army. As far as consumption goes, it's more Gandhian than any Gandhian, and has a lighter carbon footprint than any climate change evangelist. But for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotage; before a police vehicle is burnt for example, it is stripped down and every part is cannibalized. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar barrel, the rexine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery for solar charging. (The new instructions from the high command are that captured vehicles should be buried and not cremated. So they can be resurrected when needed.) Should I write a play I wonder—Gandhi Get Your Gun? Or will I be lynched?

We're walking in pitch darkness and dead silence. I'm the only one using a torch, pointed down so that all I can see in its circle of light are Comrade Kamla's bare heels in her scuffed, black chappals, showing me exactly where to put my feet. She is carrying ten times more weight than I am. Her backpack, a rifle, a huge bag of provisions on her head, one of the large cooking pots and two shoulder bags full of vegetables. The bag on her head is perfectly balanced, and she can scramble down slopes and slippery rock pathways without so much as touching it. She is a miracle. It turns out to be a long walk. I'm grateful to the history lesson because apart from everything else it gave my feet a rest for a whole day.

It's the most beautiful thing, walking in the forest at night. And I'll be doing it night after night.

We're going to a celebration of the centenary of the 1910 Bhumkal rebellion in which the Koyas rose up against the British. Bhumkal, means earthquake. Comrade Raju says people will walk for days together to come for the celebration. The forest must be full of people on the move. There are celebrations in all the DK divisions. We are privileged because Comrade Leng, the Master of Ceremonies, is walking with us. In Gondi Leng means 'the voice'.

Comrade Leng is a tall, middle-aged man from Andhra Pradesh, a colleague of the legendary and beloved singer-poet Gadar who founded the radical cultural organization Jan Natya Manch (JNM) in '72. Eventually JNM became a formal part of the PWG and in Andhra Pradesh could draw audiences numbering in the tens of thousands.

Comrade Leng joined in 1977 and became a famous singer in his own right. He lived in Andhra through the worst repression, the era of 'encounter' killings in which friends died almost every day. He himself was picked up one night from his hospital bed, by a woman Superintendent of Police, masquerading as a doctor. He was taken to the forest outside Warangal to be 'encountered'. But luckily for him, Comrade Leng says, Gadar got the news and managed to raise an alarm. When the PWG decided to start a cultural organization in DK in 1998, Comrade Leng was sent to head the Chetana Natya Manch. And here he is now, walking with me, wearing an olive green shirt, and for some reason, purple pyjamas with pink bunnies on them. "There are 10,000 members in CNM now", he told me. "We have 500 songs, in Hindi, Gondi, Chhattisgarhi and Halbi. We have printed a book with 140 of our songs.

Everybody writes songs." The first time I spoke to him, he sounded very grave, very single-minded. But days later, sitting around a fire, still in those pyjamas, he tells us about a very successful, mainstream Telugu film director (a friend of his), who always plays a Naxalite in his own films. "I asked him," Comrade Leng said in his lovely Telugu accented Hindi, "why do you think Naxalites are always like this?" — and he did a deft caricature of a crouched, high-stepping, hunted-looking man emerging from the forest with an AK-47, and left us screaming with laughter.

I'm not sure whether I'm looking forward to the Bhumkal celebrations. I fear I'll see traditional tribal dances stiffened by Maoist propaganda, rousing, rhetorical speeches and an obedient audience with glazed eyes. We arrive at the grounds quite late in the evening. A temporary monument, of bamboo scaffolding wrapped in red cloth has been erected. On top, above the hammer and sickle of the Maoist Party, is the bow and arrow of the Janatana Sarkar, wrapped in silver foil. Appropriate, the hierarchy. The stage is huge, also temporary, on a sturdy scaffolding covered by a thick layer of mud plaster. Already there are small fires scattered around the ground, people have begun to arrive and are cooking their evening meal. They're only silhouettes in the dark. We thread our way through them, (lalsalaam,lalsalaam,lalsalaam) and keep going for about fifteen minutes until we re-enter the forest.

At our new campsite we have to fall-in again. Another roll call. And then instructions about sentry positions and 'firing arcs'—decisions about who will cover which area in the event of a police attack. RV points are fixed again.

An advance party has arrived and cooked dinner already. For dessert Kamla brings me a wild guava that she has plucked on the walk and squirreled away for me.

From dawn there is the sense of more and more people gathering for the day's celebration. There's a buzz of excitement building up. People who haven't seen each other in a long time, meet again. We can hear the sound of mikes being tested. Flags, banners, posters, buntings are going up. A poster with the pictures of the five people who were killed in Ongnaar the day we arrived has appeared.

I'm drinking tea with Comrade Narmada, Comrade Maase and Comrade Rupi. Comrade Narmada talks about the many years she worked in Gadchiroli before becoming the DK head of Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghathan (KAMS). Rupi and Maase have been urban activists in Andhra Pradesh and tell me about the long years of struggle of women within the Party, not just for their rights, but also to make the Party see that equality between men and women is central to a dream of a just society. We talk about the '70s and the stories of women within the Naxalite movement who were disillusioned by male comrades who thought themselves great revolutionaries but were hobbled by the same old patriarchy, the same old chauvinism. Maase says things have changed a lot since then, though they still have a way to go. (The Party's Central Committee and Polit Bureau have no women yet.)

Around noon another PLGA contingent arrives. This one is headed by a tall, lithe, boyish looking man. This comrade has two names—Sukhdev, and Gudsa Usendi— neither of which is his. Sukhdev is the name of a very beloved Comrade who was martyred. (In this war only the dead are safe enough to use their real names.) As for Gudsa Usendi, many comrades have been Gudsa Usendi at one point or another. (A few months ago it was Comrade Raju.) Gudsa Usendi is the name of the Party's spokesperson for Dandakaranya. So even though Sukhdev spends the rest of the trip with me, I have no idea how I'd ever find him again. I'd recognize his laugh anywhere though. He came to DK in '88 he says, when the PWG decided to send one third of its forces from North Telengana into DK. He's nicely dressed, in 'civil' (Gondi for 'civilian clothes') as opposed to 'dress' (the Maoist 'uniform') and could pass off as a young executive. I ask him why no uniform.

He says he's been traveling and has just come back from the Keshkal Ghats near Kanker. There are reports of bauxite deposits—3 million tonnes—that a company called Vedanta has its eye on.

Bingo. Ten on ten for my instincts.

Sukhdev says he went there to measure the peoples' temperature. To see if they were prepared to fight. "They want squads now. And guns." He throws his head back and roars with laughter, "I told them it's not so easy, bhai." From the stray wisps of conversation and the ease with which he carries his AK-47, I can tell he's also high up and hands on PLGA.

Jungle post arrives. There's a biscuit for me! It's from Comrade Venu. On a tiny piece of paper, folded and re-folded, he has written down the lyrics of a song he promised he would send me. Comrade Narmada smiles when she reads them. She knows this story. It goes back to the 1980s, around the time when people first began trust to the Party and come to it with their problems—their 'inner contradictions' as Comrade Venu put it. Women were among the first to come. One evening an old lady sitting by the fire, got up and sang a song for the Dada log. She was a Maadiya, among whom it was customary for women to remove their blouses and remain bare-breasted after they were married.

Jumper polo intor Dada, Dakoniley

Taane tasom intor Dada, Dakoniley

Bata papam kittom Dada, Dakoniley

Duniya kadile maata Dada, Dakoniley

They say we cannot keep our blouses, dada, Dakoniley

They make us take them off, Dada,

In what way have we sinned, Dada,

The world has changed has it not Dada,

Aatum hatteke Dada, Dakoniley

Aada nanga dantom Dada, Dakoniley

Id pisval manni Dada, Dakoniley

Mava koyaturku vehat Dada, Dakoniley

But when we go to market Dada,

We have to go half-naked Dada,

We don't want this life Dada,

Tell our ancestors this Dada,

This was the first women's issue the Party decided to campaign against. It had to be handled delicately, with surgical tools. In1986 it set up the Adivasi Mahila Sanghathana (AMS) which evolved into the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan (KAMS) and now has 90,000 enrolled members. It could well be the largest women's organization in the country. (They're all Maoists by the way, all 90,000 of them. Are they going to be 'wiped out'? And what about the 10,000 members of CNM? Them too?) The KAMS campaigns against the adivasi traditions of forced marriage and abduction. Against the custom of making menstruating women live outside the village in a hut in the forest. Against bigamy and domestic violence. It hasn't won all its battles, but then which feminists have? For instance, in Dandakaranya even today, women are not allowed to sow seeds. In Party meetings men agree that this is unfair and ought to be done away with. But in practice, they simply don't allow it. So the Party decided that women would sow seeds on common lands, which belongs to the Jantana Sarkar. On that land they sow seed, grow vegetables, and build check dams. A half-victory, not a whole one.

As police repression has grown in Bastar, the women of KAMS have become a formidable force and rally in their hundreds, sometimes thousands to physically confront the police. The very fact that the KAMS exists has radically changed traditional attitudes and eased many of the traditional forms of discrimination against women. For many young women, joining the Party, in particular the PLGA, became a way of escaping the suffocation of their own society. Comrade Sushila, a senior office bearer of KAMS talks about the Salwa Judum's rage against KAMS women. She says one of their slogans was Hum Do Bibi layenge! Layenge! (We will have two wives! We will!) A lot of the rape and bestial sexual mutilation was directed at members of the KAMS. Many young women who witnessed the savagery then joined the PLGA and now women make up 45% of its cadre. Comrade Narmada sends for some of them and they join us in a while.

Comrade Rinki has very short hair. A Bob-cut as they say in Gondi. It's brave of her, because here, 'bob-cut' means 'Maoist.' For the police that's more than enough evidence to warrant summary execution. Comrade Rinki's village, Korma was attacked by the Naga Battalion and the Salwa Judum in 2005. At that time Rinki was part of the village militia. So were her friends Lukki and Sukki, who were also members of the KAMS. After burning the village, the Naga battalion caught Lukki and Sukki and one other girl, gang raped and killed them. "They raped them on the grass", Rinki says, " but after it was over there was no grass left." It's been years now, the Naga Battalion has gone, but the police still come. "They come whenever they need women, or chickens."

Ajitha has a bob-cut too. The Judum came to Korseel, her village and killed three people by drowning them in a nallah. Ajitha was with the Militia, and followed the Judum at a distance to a place close to the village called Paral Nar Todak. She watched them rape six women and shoot a man in his throat.

Comrade Laxmi who is a beautiful girl with a long plait, tells me she watched the Judum burn thirty houses in her village Jojor. "We had no weapons then," she says, "we could do nothing, but watch." She joined the PLGA soon after. Laxmi was one of the 150 guerillas who walked through the jungle for three and a half months in 2008, to Nayagarh in Orissa, to raid a police armoury from where they captured 1,200 rifles and 200,000 rounds of ammunition.

Comrade Sumitra joined the PLGA in 2004, before the Salwa Judum began its rampage. She joined she says, because she wanted to escape from home. "Women are controlled in every way," she told me. "In our village girls were not allowed to climb trees, if they did, they would have to pay a fine of Rs 500 or a hen. If a man hits a woman and she hits him back she has to give the village a goat. Men go off to the hills for months together to hunt. Women are not allowed to go near the kill, the best part of the meat goes to men. Women are not allowed to eat eggs." Good reason to join a guerilla army?

Sumitra tells the story of two of her friends, Telam Parvati and Kamla who worked with KAMS. Telam Parvati was from Polekaya village in South Bastar. Like everyone else from there, she too watched the Salwa Judum burn her village. She then joined the PLGA and went to work in the Keshkal ghats. In 2009 she and Kamla had just finished organizing the March 8th Women's day celebrations in the area. They were together in a little hut just outside a village called Vadgo. The police surrounded the hut at night and began to fire. Kamla fired back, but she was killed. Parvati escaped, but was found and killed the next day.

That's what happened last year on Women's Day. And here's a press report from a national newspaper about Women's Day this year.

Bastar rebels bat for womens rights Sahar Khan, Mail Today, Raipur, March 7, 2010

The government may have pulled out all stops to combat the Maoist menace in the country. But a section of rebels in Chhattisgarh has more pressing matters in hand than survival. With International Womens Day around the corner, Maoists in the Bastar region of the state have called for week- long "celebrations" to advocate womens rights.

Posters were also put up in Bijapur, a part of Bastar district. The call by the self- styled champions of womens rights has left the state police astonished. Inspector- general (IG) of Bastar T. J. Longkumer said, " I have never seen such an appeal from the Naxalites, who believe only in violence and bloodshed."

And then the report goes on to say

"I think the Maoists are trying to counter our highly successful Jan Jagran Abhiyaan (mass awareness campaign). We started the ongoing campaign with an aim to win popular support for Operation Green Hunt, which was launched by the police to root out Left- wing extremists," the IG said.

This cocktail of malice and ignorance is not unusual. Gudsa Usendi, chronicler of the Party's present knows more about this than most people. His little computer and MP3 recorder are full of press statements, denials, corrections, Party literature, lists of the dead, TV clips and audio and video material. "The worst thing about being Gudsa Usendi" he says, "is issuing clarifications which are never published. We could bring out a thick book of our unpublished clarifications, about the lies they tell about us." He speaks without a trace of indignation, in fact with some amusement.

"What's the most ridiculous charge you've had to deny?"

He thinks back. "In 2007, we had to issue a statement saying 'Nahi bhai, humney gai ko hathode say nahin mara.' (No brother, we did not kill cows with hammers.). In 2007 the Raman Singh Government announced a Gai Yojana (cow scheme), an election promise, a cow for every Adivasi. One day the TV channels and newspapers reported that Naxalites had attacked a herd of cows and bludgeoned them to death— with hammers— because they were anti-Hindu, anti-BJP. You can imagine what happened. We issued a denial. Hardly anybody carried it. Later it turned out that the man who had been given the cows to distribute was a rogue. He sold them and said we had ambushed him and killed the cows."

And the most serious?

"Oh there are dozens, they're running a campaign after all. When the Salwa Judum started, the first day they attacked a village called Ambeli, burned it down and then all of them, SPOs, the Naga Battalion, police, moved towards Kotrapal...you must have heard about Kotrapal? It's a famous village, it has been burnt 22 times for refusing to surrender. When the Judum reached Kotrapal, our militia was waiting for it. They had prepared an ambush. Two SPOs died. The militia captured seven, the rest ran away. The next day the newspapers reported that the Naxalites had massacred poor adivasis. Some said we had killed hundreds. Even a respectable magazine like Frontline said we had killed 18 innocent adivasis. Even K.Balagopal, the human rights activist, who is usually meticulous about facts, even he said this. We sent a clarification. Nobody published it. Later, in his book, Balagopal acknowledged his mistake.... But who noticed?"

I asked what happened to the seven people that were captured.

"The Area Committee called a Jan Adalat (Peoples Court). Four thousand people attended it. They listened to the whole story. Two of the SPOs were sentenced to death. Five were warned and let off. The people decided. Even with informers —which is becoming a huge problem nowadays— people listen to the case, the stories, the confessions and say "Iska hum risk nahin le sakte" (We're not prepared to take the risk of trusting this person) or, "Iska risk hum lenge" (We are prepared to take the risk of trusting this person.) The press always reports about informers who are killed. Never about the many that are let off. Never about the people who these informers have had killed. So everybody thinks it is some bloodthirsty procedure in which everybody is always killed. It's not about revenge, its about survival and saving future lives... Of course there are problems, we've made terrible mistakes, we have even killed the wrong people in our ambushes, thinking they were policemen, but it is not the way it's portrayed in the media."

The dreaded 'Peoples' Courts'. How can we accept them? Or approve this form of rude justice?

On the other hand, what about 'encounters' fake and otherwise—the worst form of summary justice—that get policemen and soldiers bravery medals, cash awards and out-of-turn promotions from the Indian Government? The more they kill, the more they are rewarded. "Bravehearts" they are called, the 'Encounter specialists'. 'Anti-nationals' we are called, those of us who dare to question them. And what about the Supreme Court that brazenly admitted it did not have enough evidence to sentence Mohammed Afzal (accused in the Dec 2001 Parliament Attack) to death, but did so anyway, because "the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

At least in the case of the Kotrapal Jan Adalat, the Collective was physically present to make its own decision. It wasn't made by judges who had lost touch with ordinary life a long time ago, presuming to speak on behalf of an absent Collective.

What should the people of Kotrapal have done I wonder? Sent for the police?

The sound of drums has become really loud. It's Bhumkal time. We walk to the grounds. I can hardly believe my eyes. There is a sea of people, the most wild, beautiful people, dressed in the most wild, beautiful ways. The men seem to have paid much more attention to themselves than the women. They have feathered headgear and painted tattoos on their faces. Many have eye make-up and white, powdered faces. There's lots of militia, girls in saris of breathtaking colors with rifles slung carelessly over their shoulders. There are old people, children, and red buntings arc across the sky.

The sun is sharp and high. Comrade Leng speaks. And several office-holders of the various Jantana Sarkars. Comrade Niti, an extraordinary woman who has been with the Party since 1997, is such a threat to the nation, that in January 2007 more than 700 policemen surrounded Innar village because they heard she was there. Comrade Niti is considered to be so dangerous, and is being hunted with such desperation, not because she has led many ambushes (which she has), but because she is an adivasi woman who is loved by people in the village and is a real inspiration to young people. She speaks with her AK on her shoulder. (It's a gun with a story. Almost everyone's gun has a story Who it was snatched from, how, and by whom.)

A CNM troupe performs a play about the Bhumkal uprising. The evil white colonizers wear hats and golden straw for hair, and bully and beat Adivasis to pulp—causing endless delight in the audience. Another troupe from South Gangalaur performs a play called Nitir Judum Pito (Story of the Blood Hunt). Joori translates for me. It's the story of two old people who go looking for their daughter's village. As they walk through the forest, they get lost because everything is burnt and unrecognizable. The Salwa Judum has even burned the drums and the musical instruments. There are no ashes because it has been raining. They cannot find their daughter. In their sorrow the old couple starts to sing, and hearing them, the voice of their daughter sings back to them from the ruins The sound of our village has been silenced, she sings. There's no more pounding of rice, no more laughter by the well. No more birds, no more bleating goats. The taut string of our happiness has been snapped.

Her father sings back My beautiful daughter, don't cry today. Everyone who is born must die. These trees around us will fall, flowers will bloom and fade, one day this world will grow old. But who are we dying for? One day our looters will learn, one day Truth will prevail, but our people will never forget you, not for thousands of years.

A few more speeches. Then the drumming and the dancing begins. Each Janatana Sarkar has its own troupe. Each troupe has prepared its own dance. They arrive one by one, with huge drums and they dance wild stories. The only character every troupe has in common is Bad Mining Man, with a helmet and dark glasses, and usually smoking a cigarette. But there's nothing stiff, or mechanical about their dancing. As they dance, the dust rises. The sound of drums becomes deafening. Gradually, the crowd begins to sway. And then it begins to dance. They dance in little lines of six or seven, men and women separate, with their arms around each other's waists. Thousands of people.

This is what they've come for. For this. Happiness is taken very seriously here, in the Dandakaranya forest. People will walk for miles, for days together to feast and sing, to put feathers in their turbans and flowers in their hair, to put their arms around each other and drink mahua and dance through the night. No one sings or dances alone. This, more than anything else, signals their defiance towards a civilization that seeks to annihilate them.

I can't believe all this is happening right under the noses of the police. Right in the midst of Operation Green Hunt.

At first the PLGA comrades watch the dancers, standing aside with their guns. But then, one by one, like ducks who cannot bear to stand on the shore and watch other ducks swim, they move in and begin to dance too. Soon there are lines of olive green dancers, swirling with all the other colours. And then, as sisters and brothers and parents and children and friends who haven't met for months, years sometimes, encounter each other, the lines break up and re-form and the olive green is distributed among the swirling saris and flowers and drums and turbans. It surely is a Peoples' Army. For now, at least. And what Chairman Mao said about the guerillas being the fish, and people being the water they swim in, is, at this moment, literally true.

Chairman Mao. He's here too. A little lonely, perhaps, but present. There's a photograph of him, up on a red cloth screen. Marx too. And Charu Majumdar, the founder and chief theoretician of the Naxalite Movement. His abrasive rhetoric fetishizes violence, blood and martyrdom, and often employs a language so coarse as to be almost genocidal. Standing here, on Bhumkal day, I can't help thinking that his analysis, so vital to the structure of this revolution, is so removed from its emotion and texture. When he said that only 'an annihilation campaign' could produce "the new man who will defy death and be free from all thought of self-interest"— could he have imagined that this ancient people, dancing into the night, would be the ones on whose shoulders his dreams would come to rest?

It's a great disservice to everything that is happening here that the only thing that seems to make it to the outside world is the stiff, unbending rhetoric of the ideologues of a party that has evolved from a problematic past. When Charu Mazumdar famously said, "China's Chairman is our Chairman and China's Path is Our Path" he was prepared to extend it to the point where the Naxalites remained silent while General Yahya Khan committed genocide in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), because at the time, China was an ally of Pakistan.

There was silence too, over the Khmer Rouge and its killing fields in Cambodia. There was silence over the egregious excesses of the Chinese and Russian Revolutions. Silence over Tibet. Within the Naxalite movement too, there have been violent excesses and it's impossible to defend much of what they've done. But can anything they have done compare with the sordid achievements of the Congress and the BJP in Punjab, Kashmir, Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat... And yet, despite these terrifying contradictions, Charu Mazumdar was a visionary in much of what he wrote and said. The party he founded (and its many splinter groups) has kept the dream of revolution real and present in India. Imagine a society without that dream. For that alone we cannot judge him too harshly. Especially not while we swaddle ourselves with Gandhi's pious humbug about the superiority of "the non-violent way" and his notion of Trusteeship

 "The rich man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he reasonably requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for the good of society."

How strange it is though, that the contemporary tsars of the Indian Establishment—the State that crushed the Naxalites so mercilessly— should now be saying what Charu Mazumdar said so long ago China's Path is Our Path.

Upside Down. Inside Out.

China's Path has changed. China has become an imperial power now, preying on other countries, other peoples' resources. But the Party is still right, only, the Party has changed its mind.

When the Party is a suitor (as it is now in Dandakaranya), wooing the people, attentive to their every need, then it genuinely is a Peoples' Party, its army genuinely a Peoples' Army. But after the Revolution how easily this love affair can turn into a bitter marriage. How easily the Peoples' Army can turn upon the people. Today in Dandakaranya, the Party wants to keep the bauxite in the mountain. Tomorrow will it change its mind? But can we, should we let apprehensions about the future, immobilize us in the present?

The dancing will go on all night. I walk back to the camp. Maase is there, awake. We chat late into the night. I give her my copy of Neruda's Captain's Verses (I brought it along, just in case). She asks again and again, "What do they think of us outside? What do students say? Tell me about the women's movement, what are the big issues now? She asks about me, my writing. I try and give her an honest account of my chaos. Then she starts to talk about herself, how she joined the Party. She tells me that her partner was killed last May, in a fake encounter. He was arrested in Nashik, and taken to Warangal to be killed. "They must have tortured him badly." She was on her way to meet him when she heard he had been arrested. She's been in the forest ever since. After a long silence she tells me she was married once before, years ago. "He was killed in an encounter too," she says, and adds with heart-breaking precision, "but in a real one."

I lie awake on my jhilli, thinking of Maase's protracted sadness, listening to the drums and the sounds of protracted happiness from the grounds, and thinking about Charu Mazumdar's idea of protracted war, the central precept of the Maoist Party. This is what makes people think the Maoists offer to enter 'peace talks' is a hoax, a ploy to get breathing space to regroup, re-arm themselves and go back to waging protracted war. What is protracted war? Is it a terrible thing in itself, or does it depend on the nature of the war? What if the people here in Dandakaranya had not waged their protracted war for the last thirty years, where would they be now?

And are the Maoists the only ones who believe in protracted war? Almost from the moment India became a sovereign nation it turned into a colonial power, annexing territory, waging war. It has never hesitated to use military interventions to address political problems— Kashmir, Hyderabad, Goa, Nagaland, Manipur, Telengana, Assam, Punjab, the Naxalite uprising in West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and now across the tribal areas of Central India. Tens of thousands have been killed with impunity, hundreds of thousands tortured.

All of this behind the benign mask of democracy. Who have these wars been waged against? Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Communists, Dalits, Tribals and, most of all against the poor who dare to question their lot instead of accepting the crumbs that are flung at them. It's hard not to see the Indian State as an essentially upper-caste Hindu State (regardless of which party is in power) which harbours a reflexive hostility towards the 'other'. One that in true colonial fashion, sends the Nagas and Mizos to fight in Chhattisgarh, Sikhs to Kashmir, Kashmiris to Orissa, Tamilians to Assam and so on. If this isn't protracted war, what is?

Unpleasant thoughts on a beautiful, starry night. Sukhdev is smiling to himself, his face lit by his computer screen. He's a crazy workaholic. I ask him what's funny. " I was thinking about the journalists who came last year for the Bhumkal celebrations. They came for a day or two. One posed with my AK, had himself photographed and then went back and called us Killing Machines or something."

The dancing hasn't stopped and it's daybreak. The lines are still going, hundreds of young people still dancing. "They won't stop", Comrade Raju says, "not until we start packing up."

On the grounds I run into Comrade Doctor. He's been running a little medical camp on the edge of the dance floor. I want to kiss his fat cheeks. Why can't he be at least thirty people instead of just one? Why can't he be one thousand people? I ask him what it's looking like, the health of Dandakaranya. His reply makes my blood run cold. Most of the people he has seen, he says, including those in the PLGA, have a Haemoglobin Count that's between 5 and 6, (when the standard for Indian women is 11.) There's TB caused by more than two years of chronic anaemia. Young children suffer from Protein Energy Malnutrition Grade II, in medical terminology called Kwashiorkor. (I looked it up later. It's a word derived from the Ga language of Coastal Ghana and means "the sickness a baby gets when the new baby comes." Basically the old baby stops getting mother's milk, and there's not enough food to provide it nutrition.) "It's an epidemic here, like in Biafra," Comrade Doctor says, "I have worked in villages before, but I've never seen anything like this."

Apart from this, there's malaria, osteoporosis, tapeworm, severe ear and tooth infections and primary amenorrhea —which is when malnutrition during puberty causes a woman's menstrual cycle to disappear, or never appear in the first place.

"There are no clinics in this forest apart from one or two in Gadchiroli. No doctors. No medicines."

He's off now, with his little team, on an eight-day trek to Abhujmad. He's in 'dress' too, Comrade Doctor. So if they find him they'll kill him.

Comrade Raju says that it isn't safe for us to continue to camp here. We have to move. Leaving Bhumkal involves a lot of good-byes spread over time.

Lal lal salaam, Lal lal salaam,

Jaane waley Sathiyon ko Lal Lal Salaam,

(Red Salute to departing comrades)

Phir milenge, Phir milenge

Dandakaranya jungle mein phir milenge

We'll meet again, some day, in the Dandakaranya Forest.

It's never taken lightly, the ceremony of arrival and departure, because everybody knows that when they say "we'll meet again" they actually mean "we may never meet again." Comrade Narmada, Comrade Maase and Comrade Roopi are going separate ways. Will I ever see them again?

So once again, we walk. It's becoming hotter every day. Kamla picks the first fruit of the Tendu for me. It's tastes like chikoo. I've become a tamarind fiend. This time we camp near a stream. Women and men take turns to bathe in batches. In the evening Comrade Raju receives a whole packet of 'biscuits'.

News

60 people arrested in Manpur Division at the end of Jan 2010 have not yet been produced in Court.

Huge contingents of police have arrived in South Bastar. Indiscriminate attacks are on.

On 8 Nov 2009, in Kachlaram Village, Bijapur Jila, Dirko Madka (60) and Kovasi Suklu (68) were killed.

On 24 Nov Madavi Baman (15) was killed in Pangodi village

On 3 Dec Madavi Budram from Korenjad also killed.

On 11 Dec Gumiapal village, Darba Division, 7 people killed (names yet to come)

On 15 Dec Kotrapal village, Veko Sombar and Madavi Matti, (both with KAMS) killed.

On 30 Dec Vechapal village Poonem Pandu and Poonem Motu (father and son) killed.

On Jan 2010 (date unknown) Head of the Janatana Sarkar in Kaika village, Gangalaur killed

On 9 Jan, 4 people killed in Surpangooden village, Jagargonda Area

On 10 Jan, 3 people killed in Pullem Pulladi village (no names yet)

On 25 January, 7 people killed in Takilod village, Indravati Area

On Feb 10 (Bhumkal Day) Kumli raped and killed in Dumnaar Village, Abhujmad,. She was from a village called Paiver.

2000 troops of the Indo Tibetan Border Patrol (ITBP) are camped in the Rajnandgaon forests 5000 Additional BSF troops have arrived in Kanker

And then 

PLGA quota filled.

Some dated newspapers have arrived too. There's a lot of press about Naxalites. One screaming headline sums up the political climate perfectly Khadedo, Maaro, Samarpan Karao, (Eliminate, Kill, Make them Surrender.) Below that Varta ke liye loktantra ka dwar khula hai (Democracy's door is always open for talks.) A second says the Maoists are growing cannabis to make money. The third has an editorial saying that the area we've camped in and are walking through, is entirely under police control.

The young communists take the clips away to practice their reading. They walk around the camp reading the anti-Maoist articles loudly in radio-announcer voices.

New day. New place. We're camped on the outskirts of Usir village, under huge Mahua trees. The mahua has just begun to flower and is dropping its pale green blossoms like jewels on the forest floor. The air is suffused with its slightly heady smell. We're waiting for the children from the Bhatpal school which was closed down after the Ongnaar Encounter. It's been turned into a police camp. The children have been sent home. This is also true of the schools in Nelwad, Moonjmetta, Edka, Vedomakot and Dhanora.

The Bhatpal school children don't show up.

Comrade Niti (Most Wanted) and Comrade Vinod lead us on a long walk to see the series of water harvesting structures and irrigation ponds that have been built by the local Janatana Sarkar. Comrade Niti talks about the range of agricultural problems they have to deal with. Only 2% of the land is irrigated. In Abhujmad, ploughing was unheard of until ten years ago. In Gadricholi on the other hand, hybrid seeds and chemical pesticides are edging their way in. "We need urgent help in the agriculture department", Comrade Vinod says. "We need people who know about seeds, organic pesticides, permaculture. With a little help we could do a lot."

Comrade Ramu is the farmer in charge of the Janatana Sarkar area. He proudly shows us around the fields, where they grow rice, brinjal, gongura, onions, kohlrabi. Then, with equal pride, he shows us a huge, but bone-dry irrigation pond. What's this? "This one doesn't even have water during the rainy season. It's dug in the wrong place" he says, a smile wrapped around his face, "it's not ours, it was dug by the Looti Sarkar." (The Government that Loots). There are two parallel systems of government here, Janatana Sarkar and Looti Sarkar.

I think of what Comrade Venu said to me They want to crush us, not only because of the minerals, but because we are offering the world an alternative model.

It's not an Alternative yet, this idea of Gram Swaraj with a Gun. There is too much hunger, too much sickness here. But it has certainly created the possibilities for an alternative. Not for the whole world, not for Alaska, or New Delhi, nor even perhaps for the whole of Chhattisgarh, but for itself. For Dandakaranya. Its the world's best kept secret. It has laid the foundations for an alternative to its own annihilation. It has defied history. Against the greatest odds it has forged a blueprint for its own survival. It needs help and imagination, it needs doctors, teachers, farmers.

It does not need war.

But if war is all it gets, it will fight back.

Over the next few days I meet women who work with KAMS, various office bearers of the Janatana Sarkars, members of the Dandakaranya Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan DAKMS, the families of people who had been killed, and just ordinary people trying to cope with life in these terrifying times.

I met three sisters, Sukhiyari, Sukdai and Sukkali, not young, perhaps in their forties, from Narainpur district. They have been in KAMS for twelve years. The villagers depend on them to deal with the police. "The police come in groups of two to three hundred. They steal everything, jewelry, chickens, pigs, pots and pans, bows and arrows" Sukkali says, "they won't even leave a knife." Her house in Innar has been burned twice, once by the Naga Battalion and once by the CRPF. Sukhiari has been arrested and jailed in Jagdalpur for 7 months.

 "Once they took away the whole village, saying the men were all Naxals." Sukhiari followed with all the women and children. They surrounded the police station and refused to leave until the men were freed. "Whenever they take someone away", Sukdai says, "you have to go immediately and snatch them back. Before they write any report. Once they write in their book, it becomes very difficult."

Sukhiari, who, as a child was abducted and forcibly married to an older man (she ran away and went to live with her sister), now organizes mass rallies, speaks at meetings. The men depend on her for protection. I asked her what the Party means to her. "Naxalvaad ka matlab humaara Parivaar (Naxalvaad means our family.) When we hear of an attack, it is like our family has been hurt." Sukhiari said.

I asked her if she knew who Mao was. She smiled shyly, "He was a leader. We're working for his vision."

I met Comrade Somari Gawde. Twenty years old, and she has already served a two-year jail sentence in Jagdalpur.

 She was in Innar village on 8 January 2007, the day that 740 policemen laid a cordon around it because they had information that Comrade Niti was there. (She was, but had left by the time they arrived.) But the village militia, of which Somari was a member, was still there. The police opened fire at dawn. They killed two boys, Suklal Gawde and Kachroo Gota. Then they caught three others, two boys, Dusri Salam and Ranai, and Somari. Dusri and Ranai were tied up and shot. Somari was beaten within an inch of her life. The police got a tractor with a trailer and loaded the dead bodies into it. Somari was made to sit with the dead bodies and taken to Narainpur.

I met Chamri, mother of Comrade Dilip who was shot on 6 July 2009. She says that after they killed him, the police tied her son's body to a pole, like an animal and carried it with them. (They need to produce bodies to get their cash rewards, before someone else muscles in on the kill.) Chamri ran behind them all the way to the police station. By the time they reached, the body did not have a scrap of clothing on it. On the way, Chamri says, they left the body by the roadside while they stopped at a dhaba to have tea and biscuits. (Which they did not pay for.) Picture this mother for a moment, following her son's corpse through the forest, stopping at a distance to wait for his murderers to finish their tea. They did not let her have her son's body back so she could give him a proper funeral. They only let her throw a fistful of earth in the pit in which they buried the others they had killed that day. Chamri says she wants revenge. Badla ku badla. Blood for blood.

I met the elected members of the Marskola Janatana Sarkar, that administers six villages. They described a police raid They come at night, 300, 400, sometimes 1000 of them. They lay a cordon around a village and lie in wait. At dawn they catch the first people who go out to the fields and use them as human shields to enter the village, to show them where the booby-traps are. ('Booby-traps' has become a Gondi word. Everybody always smiles when they say it or hear it. The forest is full of booby traps, real and fake. Even the PLGA needs to be guided past villages.) Once the police enter the village they loot and steal and burn houses. They come with dogs. The dogs catch those who try and run. They chase chickens and pigs and the police kill them and take them away in sacks. SPOs come along with the police. They're the ones who know where people hide their money and jewelry. They catch people and take them away. And extract money before they release them. They always carry some extra Naxal 'dresses' with them in case they find someone to kill. They get money for killing Naxals, so they manufacture some. Villagers are too frightened to stay at home.

In this tranquil-looking forest, life seems completely militarized now. People know words like Cordon and Search, Firing, Advance, Retreat, Down, Action! To harvest their crops they need the PLGA to do a sentry patrol. Going to the market is a military operation. The markets are full of mukhbirs (informers) who the police have lured from their villages with money. (Rs 1500 a month) I'm told there's a mukhbir mohallah—informers' colony— in Narainpur where at least four thousand mukhbirs stay. The men can't go to market any more. The women go, but they're watched closely. If they buy even a little extra, the police accuse them of buying it for Naxals. Chemists have instructions not to let people buy medicines except in very small quantities. Low price rations from the Public Distribution System (PDS), sugar, rice, kerosene, are warehoused in or near police stations making it impossible for most people to buy.

Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as

Any of the following Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [or] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

All the walking seems to have finally got to me. I'm tired. Kamla gets me a pot of hot water. I bathe behind a tree in the dark. But I can't eat dinner and crawl into my bag to sleep. Comrade Raju announces that we have to move.

This happens frequently, of course, but tonight it's hard. We have been in camped in an open meadow. We'd heard shelling in the distance. There are 104 of us. Once again, single file through the night. Crickets. The smell of something like lavender. It must have been past eleven when we arrived at the place where we will spend the night. An outcrop of rocks. Formation. Roll call. Someone switches on the radio. BBC says there's been an attack on a camp of Eastern Frontier Rifles in Lalgarh, West Bengal. 60 Maoists on motorcycles. 14 policemen killed. 10 missing. Weapons snatched. There's a murmur of pleasure in the ranks. The Maoist leader Kishenji is being interviewed. When will you stop this violence and come for talks? When Operation Green Hunt is called off. Any time. Tell Chidambaram we will talk. Next question It's dark now, you have laid landmines, reinforcement have been called in, will you attack them too? Kishenji Yes of course, otherwise people will beat me. There's laughter in the ranks. Sukhdev the clarifier says, "They always say landmines. We don't use landmines. We use IEDs."

Another luxury suite in the thousand star hotel. I'm feeling ill. It starts to rain. There's a little giggling. Kamla throws a jhilli over me. What more do I need? Everyone else just rolls themselves into their jhillis.

By next morning the body count in Lalgarh has gone up to 21, 10 missing.

Comrade Raju is considerate this morning. We don't move till evening.

One night people are crowded like moths around a point of light. It's Comrade Sukhdev's tiny computer, powered by a solar panel, and they're watching Mother India, the barrels of their rifles silhouetted against the sky. Kamla doesn't seem interested. I asked her if she likes watching movies. "Nahi didi. Sirf ambush video." (No didi. Only ambush videos.") Later I ask Comrade Sukhdev about these ambush videos. Without batting an eyelid, he plays one for me.

It starts with shots of Dandakaranya, rivers, waterfalls, the close up of a bare branch of a tree, a brainfever bird calling. Then suddenly a comrade is wiring up an IED, concealing it with dry leaves. A cavalcade of motorcycles is blown up. There are mutilated bodies and burning bikes. The weapons are being snatched. Three policemen, looking shell-shocked have been tied up.

Who's filming it? Who's directing operations? Who's reassuring the captured cops that they will be released if they surrender? (They were released, I confirmed later.)

I know that gentle, reassuring voice. It's Comrade Venu.

"It's the Kudur Ambush" Comrade Sukhdev says.

He also has a video archive of burned villages, testimonies from eyewitnesses and relatives of the dead. On the singed wall of a burnt house it says 'Nagaaa! Born to Kill!.' There's footage of the little boy whose fingers were chopped off to inaugurate the Bastar chapter of Operation Green Hunt. (There's even a TV interview with me. My study. My books. Strange.)

At night on the radio there's news of another Naxal Attack. This one in Jamui, Bihar. It says 125 Maoists attacked a village and killed 10 people belonging to the Kora Tribe in retaliation for giving police information that led to the death of 6 Maoists. Of course we know, the report may or may not be true. But if it is, this one's unforgiveable. Comrade Raju and Sukhdev look distinctly uncomfortable.

The news that has been coming from Jharkhand and Bihar is disturbing. The gruesome beheading of the policeman Francis Induvar is still fresh in everyone's mind. It's a reminder of how easily the discipline of armed struggle can dissolve into lumpen acts of criminalized violence, or into ugly wars of identity between castes and communities and religious groups. By institutionalizing injustice in the way that it does, the Indian State has turned this country into a tinderbox of massive unrest. The Government is quite wrong if it thinks that by carrying out 'targeted assassinations' to render the CPI(Maoist) 'headless' it will end the violence. On the contrary, the violence will spread and intensify, and the Government will have nobody to talk to.

On my last few days we meander through the lush, beautiful Indravati valley. As we walk along a hillside, we see another line of people walking in the same direction, but on the other side of the river. I'm told they're on their way to an anti-dam meeting in Kudur village. They're over ground and unarmed. A local rally for the valley. I jumped ship and joined them.

The Bodhghat Dam will submerge the entire area that we have been walking in for days. All that forest, all that history, all those stories. More than 100 villages. Is that the plan then? To drown people like rats, so that the integrated steel plant in Lohandiguda and the bauxite mine and aluminum refinery in the Keshkal ghats can have the river?

At the meeting, people who have come from miles away, say the same thing we've all heard for years. We will drown, but we won't move! They are thrilled that someone from Delhi is with them. I tell them Delhi is a cruel city that neither knows nor cares about them.

Only weeks before I came to Dandakaranya, I visited Gujarat. The Sardar Sarovar Dam has more or less reached its full height now. And almost every single thing the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) predicted would happen has happened. People who were displaced have not been rehabilitated, but that goes without saying. The canals have not been built. There's no money. So Narmada water is being diverted into the empty riverbed of the Sabarmati (which was dammed a long time ago.) Most of the water is being guzzled by cities and big industry. The downstream effects —salt-water ingress into an estuary with no river—are becoming impossible to mitigate.

There was a time when believing that Big Dams were the 'temples of Modern India' was misguided, but perhaps understandable. But today, after all that has happened, and when we know all that we do, it has to be said that Big Dams are a crime against humanity.

The Bodhghat dam was shelved in 1984 after local people protested. Who will stop it now? Who will prevent the foundation stone from being laid? Who will stop the Indravati from being stolen? Someone must.

On the last night we camped at the base of the steep hill we would climb in the morning, to emerge on the road from where a motorcycle would pick me up. The forest has change even since I first entered it. The chironjee, silk cotton and mango trees have begun to flower.

The villagers from Kudur send a huge pot of freshly caught fish to the camp. And a list for me, of 71 kinds of fruit, vegetables, pulses and insects they get from the forest and grow in their fields, along with the market price. It's just a list. But it's also a map of their world.

Jungle post arrives. Two biscuits for me. A poem and a pressed flower from Comrade Narmada. A lovely letter from Maase. (Who is she? Will I ever know?).

Comrade Sukhdev asks if he can download the music from my Ipod into his computer. We listen to a recording of Iqbal Bano singing Faiz Ahmed Faiz's 'Hum Dekhenge' (We will Witness the Day) at the famous concert in Lahore at the height of the repression during the Zia-ul-Haq years.

Jab ahl-e-safa-Mardud-e-haram, 

Masnad pe bithaiye jayenge

When the heretics and the reviled.

Will be seated on high

Sab taaj uchhale jayenge

Sab takht giraye jayenge

All crowns will be snatched away

All thrones toppled

Hum Dekhenge

Fifty thousand people in the audience in that Pakistan begin a defiant chant Inqilab Zindabad! Inqilab Zindabad! All these years later, that chant reverberates around this forest. Strange, the alliances that get made.

The Home Minister has been issuing veiled threats to those who "erroneously offer intellectual and material support to the Maoists." Does sharing Iqbal Bano qualify?

At dawn I say good-bye to Comrade Madhav and Joori, to young Mangtu and all the others. Comrade Chandu has gone to organize the bikes, and will come with me upto the main road. Comrade Raju isn't coming. (The climb would be hell on his knees). Comrade Niti (Most Wanted), Comrade Sukhdev, Kamla and five others will take me up the hill. As we start walking, Niti and Sukhdev casually, but simultaneously, unclick the safety catches of their AKs. It's the first time I've seen them do that. We're approaching the 'Border.' "Do you know what to do if we come under fire?" Sukhdev asks casually, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Yes," I said. "Immediately declare an indefinite hunger-strike."

He sat down on a rock and laughed. We climbed for about an hour. Just below the road, we sat in a rocky alcove, completely concealed, like an ambush party, listening for the sound of the bikes. When it comes, the farewell must be quick. Lal Salaam Comrades.

When I looked back, they were still there. Waving. A little knot. People who live with their dreams, while the rest of the world lives with its nightmares. Every night I think of this journey. That night sky, those forest paths. I see Comrade Kamla's heels in her scuffed chappals, lit by the light of my torch. I know she must be on the move. Marching, not just for herself, but to keep hope alive for us all.