Nightmarch

Winner of the 2020 Association for Political and Legal anthropology Book PrizeShortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the 2019 New India Foundation Book PrizeA first-hand account of India's widespread leftist insurgency, and the state's brutal response.In one of the world's most intractable and under-reported rebellions, the Naxalites have been engaged in a decades-long battle with the Indian state. Presented in the media as a deadly terrorist group, the movement is made up of Marxist ideologues and lower-caste and tribal combatants who seek to overthrow a system that has abused them.In 2010, anthropologist Alpa Shah embarked on a seven-night trek with some of these communist guerrillas, walking 250 kilometres through the dense, hilly forests of eastern India. Speaking to leaders and living for years with villagers in guerrilla strongholds, Shah seeks to understand why some of India's poor have shunned the world's largest democracy and taken up arms to fight for a fairer society – and asks whether they might be undermining their own aims."Nightmarch" is a compelling reflection on dispossession and conflict at the heart of contemporary India.