{"id":3084,"date":"2020-01-10T09:30:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3084"},"modified":"2020-01-10T09:30:57","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T09:30:57","slug":"we-really-need-orwells-spirit-of-fighting-back-interview-with-alpa-shah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3084","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe really need Orwell\u2019s spirit of fighting back\u201d: Interview with Alpa Shah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alpa Shah has always striven to understand inequality, and how to address it. When we meet at her home in North London on a damp day in Autumn, my head is full of shadowy imagery from the anthropologist\u2019s book, Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerillas<\/a>. <\/em>It\u2019s a gripping first-hand account of the time Shah spent living with the Naxalites \u2013 an armed, Marxist Leninist and Maoist inspired guerrilla revolutionary group \u2013 and Adivasis, the indigenous communities of India. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nightmarch<\/em> is framed around Shah\u2019s dramatic 250-kilometre seven-night march with the guerrillas across hostile territory under the cover of darkness. It is a meditation on inequality in modern India, and the contradictions inherent in revolutionary ideals. This year, Shah was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m interested in hearing\nabout how the book came to be. After reading Geography at Cambridge, Shah tells\nme that she thought her concerns for a better world would be best addressed through\ninvolvement in international development projects. However, seeing a \u201cmismatch between policy decided in ivory\ntowers and what was happening on the ground\u201d, she decided to become an\nanthropologist in order to better understand the experiences of ordinary people.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany things happen to us\nbecause of chance\u201d, Shah posits. But I have a feeling that Shah\u2019s deep mistrust\nof modern capitalism was also a guiding light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism and revolution in\nIndia<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Taken as a whole, her body of academic work explores the dark underbelly of India <\/a>\u2013 one of the fastest growing large economies in the world \u2013 where capitalism has entrenched social difference to appalling extremes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2013 Shah has been\nleading a programme of research exploring why India\u2019s low castes and tribes,\nthe Dalits and Adivasis, remain at the bottom of the economic and social\nhierarchy despite economic growth. Seasonal migration is used to \u201csuper-exploit\nlabour\u201d in India, Shah tells me. Inherited inequalities of caste, class, gender\nand religion still matter greatly, even in the new economies. \u201cThere is a lot\nof state complicity\u201d in the perpetuation of inequality, she observes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in her career, Shah\nbecame particularly interested in the Adivasis,\nIndia\u2019s tribal people. Along with the Dalits\n(previously \u2018untouchable\u2019 groups) they are the most oppressed and disadvantaged\npeople in India, stigmatised as \u2018wild, savage and barbaric\u2019, yet together accounting\nfor an incredible one in twenty-five people in the world. She ended up living\nwith the Adivasis in the forests and hills of Jharkhand in eastern India,\nbecoming \u201cdeeply immersed into their lives and bodies\u201d for over four and a half\nyears. It was the Adivasis who first introduced Shah to the Naxalite rebels,\nand their endless dance of death between repressive state forces and their revolutionary\ndreams. She learned their language and lived among them as one of their\nown.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey in Nightmarch<\/em>\nwas born of necessity \u2013 walking at night is the only way that Naxalite\ntroops can travel undetected over state-controlled territory. \u201cThe reason why\nthe Naxalites are painted as such a big threat by the Indian state is because\nthe state wants access to the mineral resources beneath the land that they and\nthe Adivasis occupy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reaching beyond the academic enclosure<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

After those years spent in\nthe forests, Shah carried the \u201cburden of the stories for a long time\u201d, she\nexplains. \u201cMost of the people I met are either in prison, killed, or\ndisappeared.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an\nacademic, figuring out how to lay that burden down was a significant challenge.\nWith the intense polarisation of debate on the Naxalites and Adivasis depicting\nthem as either rebels with a cause or terrorists, \u201cso many lives were at stake\nthat I felt compelled to try and tell the complexity of those stories to a much\nwider audience \u2013 without dumbing down my scholarship.\u201d Shah needed to balance\nthis urge with the fact that attacks on academic freedoms and the pressure of\nresearch evaluation frameworks have coalesced to form \u201ca kind of scholarly\nenclosure\u201d where \u201cacademics cease to be public intellectuals\u201d. In the end, she\ndecided to reach beyond that enclosure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shah doesn\u2019t take easy sides\nin Nightmarch<\/em>, no more trusting of revolutionary dogma than she is of unbridled\ncapitalism. The guerrillas\u2019 ranks are swollen with people drawn by promises of a\ncasteless, classless world: downtrodden tribespeople, lost young men in search\nof belonging, women attracted to principles of gender equality, and\nintellectuals from higher castes prepared to die for the revolutionary cause. But\nShah emphasises in the book that many members will defect, be imprisoned, or\ndie. The central characters of Nightmarch<\/em> \u2013 Gyanji, Kohli, Vikas and Somwari\n\u2013 \u201chave all come together for very different reasons to take up arms to\nchange the world but who, in that process, also fall apart\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rice beer and gender politics<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The mechanics of how things\nfall apart \u2013 how \u201csuch movements carry within their own ranks the seeds of self-destruction\u201d\nis a key question for Shah. The \u201ccontradictions of class, caste, gender,\nreligion and capitalism\u201d are threads she weaves throughout the narrative of the\nrebels\u2019 march through India\u2019s nocturnal landscapes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the several contradictions Shah highlights, two stand out. First, despite their Maoist intentions, the Naxalites are forced to engage with in the capitalist economy to sustain themselves, she explains. \u201cThey get their funding through what they call ‘taxation’ (I once called it ‘extortion’) of development programmes in the area. It’s meant for the revolutionary movement, but pocketing this money becomes a way for the Adivasis to rise up the caste and class hierarchies\u2026 As Maoists, they maintain the economy is semi-feudal and semi-colonial. [But] they fail to recognise that they themselves are accelerating the spread of capitalism in their region\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second,\n\u201cthe Naxalites consider themselves as empowering for women. But despite this,\nthe patriarchy that is common in high caste households manifests itself within\nthe movement.\u201d Shah describes how \u2013 in a mark of gender egalitarianism unusual\nfor most Indian communities \u2013 Adivasi men and women will drink openly together.\nSadly, this custom was not valued by the Naxalite rebels, who \u201chad\nanti-drinking programmes, where they’d come and smash the beer pots used to\nmake rice beer and mahua flower wine, and thereby do great violence to the\nAdivasi women (and gender relations)\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nightmarch and the influence of Orwell <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While writing the book, Shah\u2019s unique position as participant observer allowed her to \u201csee the links between seemingly disconnected aspects of life\u201d \u2013 such as those between rice beer and gender politics. Nightmarch <\/em>is hugely inspired by George Orwell, she reflects. \u201cDown and Out in Paris and London<\/em> <\/a>and The Road to Wigan Pier,<\/em> or even Homage to Catalonia<\/em>, were all based on Orwell\u2019s own deep, bodily immersion into the lives of the people he was studying in order to write compellingly against the conditions which had created their circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The similarities with Orwell are marked. In Down and Out in\nParis and London,<\/em> Orwell puts on shabby clothes and feels he is instantly\ntransformed into a homeless person to the point where he does not even\nrecognise his own reflection. In Nightmarch<\/em>, Shah dresses up as a male\nsoldier. \u201cThe guerrilla leaders asked me to and this was purely for security\nreasons \u2013 the march with the guerrilla platoon took place at the peak of\nvery oppressive counterinsurgency operations\u201d. But for Shah, unlike Orwell, she\nfeels her different background is written on her body. \u201cYou can only disguise\nyourself up to a point\u2026 it\u2019s not only bodily differences but everyday practices\nthat perpetuate what we\u2019ve inherited\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the contradictions\nof the Naxalites leads to their decline, Shah still has great respect for the\nway of life she experienced while living amongst the insurgents. \u201cYou could say\nthat kindness was a revolutionary act\u201d, she agrees. The Naxalite sense of\nsolidarity, neighbourliness, and egalitarianism towards lower castes \u201cguided\ntheir humanness and nurtured easily-overlooked subtle interactions between\npeople\u201d. In contrast to the hard-edged consumerism and exploitation of wider\nsociety, \u201cit was a radically different way of being in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A final thought crosses Shah\u2019s mind. Had the Nightmarch <\/em>walked 250 kilometres north, rather than south, Shah and the Naxalite army she marched with would have ended up in Motihari, Bihar, where Orwell was born. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\nreally need Orwell\u2019s spirit of fighting back, and to keep alive the idea of a\nmore equal and just world\u201d she says. Ultimately, Shah sides with the underdog. Despite\nbrutal police repression in India, \u201cI take hope from the struggles on the\nground. People aren\u2019t just silently watching. They’re protesting across the\ncountry in different ways. The problem is how to unite the struggles.\nUnless you build alliances, you don’t have hope of a wider structural change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alpa Shah has always striven to understand inequality, and how to address it. When we meet at her home in North London on a damp day in Autumn, my head is full of shadowy imagery from the anthropologist\u2019s book, Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerillas. It\u2019s a gripping first-hand account of the time Shah spent living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":3096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1392,1403],"tags":[2299,2319],"coauthors":[1419],"class_list":["post-3084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-interviews","category-inequality","tag-india","tag-maoism"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/We-really-need-Orwells-spirit-of-fighting-back-Interview-with-Alpa-Shah-For-PQ-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3084"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}