A quick exchange of guns and a pledge to undertake a vasectomy is customary for India’s Maoist “comrades” when they wed in their isolated forest hideouts.
Some 10,000 to 20,000 heavily armed rebels are believed to be hiding out in India’s forests as followers of a revolutionary communist ideology that paints the state and landowners as the enemies of the people.
“This is how I got married,” says 36-year-old Ramesh Podiyani, a surrendered Maoist commander who fought for more than two decades in Chhattisgarh, a central state at the heart of India’s “Red Corridor.” The vasectomy, he explained, was because children could weaken a fighter emotionally, distracting him from the cause of waging class war and destroying capitalism.
“Comrades” undergo the surgery in private clinics or with sympathetic doctors, avoiding government hospitals where they might be detected.
Podiyani, who now works for a private company, grew up in a Maoist training camp from the age seven where, instead of going to school, he was trained with bows and arrows, then with guns and landmines.
“I killed several people, but I’m not sorry. It was my duty to kill as a comrade,” he said, sitting inside a police conference room in the town of Jagdalpur, 400km from Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur.
Podiyani and his wife served two years in prison after they surrendered to police and are now waiting for a promised government job and a house.
Most of the recruits who end up as Maoist fighters are from India’s marginalized tribal groups. Some are forcibly enlisted, others join by choice, attracted by the fight for the poor and justice.
“I was excited when I joined the Maoists. They gifted me a uniform and leather boots,” Podiyani says, adding that he was enlisted after his parents fled the village when the recruitment drive began.
Ratha Werna, a former Maoist soldier now training in a special police camp in Jagdalpur, is also prepared to speak openly about life in an organization that is challenging the authority of the government in 20 of India’s 29 states.
The strength of the decades-long insurgency has finally prompted the government to launch a major offensive, with thousands of police and paramilitary forces set to surge into the rebel strongholds.
“We thought the Maoists were the government and they were good because they were working for us,” says Werna, who was expelled by the Maoists after he failed to rob a bank in Raipur and is now a police de-miner.
Robbing banks, killing landlords, attacking police stations and holding up trains are regular activities for the guerrillas, who work in a highly structured organization topped by former teacher Mupalla Laxman Rao, better known as Ganapathi.
Inside the Maoist camps, there are strict rules forbidding corruption, lies and adultery and leaders keep a close eye on the conduct of every cadre, four former rebels said in a series of interviews. All disputes between the camp members are decided within 24 hours by the camp leader, with punishments ranging from demotion, detention to physical labor. Religion and superstition is also forbidden.
“I was not allowed to worship the trees and the birds in the camp,” said 32-year-old Dhuna, a former rebel and tribal villager from a Maoist-dominated area of the densely forested, impoverished state. “From humble forest dwellers we were forced to become brutal soldiers.”
RSS