Over the last decade and a half, as vast parts of the Adivasi hinterland have been embroiled in a civil war between the Maoists and the security forces of the state, these tropes of difference have neatly coalesced with another related theme. In several writings that emerged in response to the initiation of military operations against the Maoists in 2009, the Adivasi rebel – constituting the basic cadre of the Maoist guerrilla army – was represented as a modern incarnation of a primitive rebel, who, by standing up armed in defence of his commons, epitomises the critique of modern capitalism and its individualistic values. In her celebrated essay Walking with the Comrades, based on her visit into the heart of the rebellion, noted writer Arundhati Roy sought to place the present Maoist movement within a trajectory of several tribal rebellions since the colonial period. In her words, the history of the “resistance” of the tribal people in this part of the country predated the Naxalites, and their ideological inspiration, the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, by several centuries. In a very evocative passage, she sought to mark off the distinctiveness of these (as a police officer told her) “greedless” people, in contrast…
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