Contesting publics

`The Maoists in India’ delves deep into one of the most intractable but under-reported insurgencies in the developing world – the decades long battle between the Indian state and Maoist groups who control significant parts of tribal India. Nirmalangshu Mukherji explains the devastating impact on India’s tribal population of neoliberalism and armed aggression by the State, as well as the impact of the armed struggle by the Maoists. Unlike most accounts, Mukherji takes an honest and unflinching look at each of the Maoists’ interventions and critically examines the ideology and programme proposed by their theoreticians and prominent intellectual sympathisers. `The Maoists in India’ goes beyond analysing the Maoist insurgency purely in terms of security considerations. It examines the idea of armed struggle in the context of a well-established parliamentary democracy and focusses on the Maoists’ own political philosophy, looking critically at whether their strategy can help to deliver social justice and liberation for India’s poor.