Are India’s Naxalites fighting for a doomed cause?

Alpa Shah PhD is Associate Professor – Reader in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her latest book Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas has been published by Hurst. Alpa Shah spent 18 months as a participant observer in Jharkhand and lived among Adivasis, tribal peoples outside the caste system. Her book explains why people from very different backgrounds have come together to take up arms to fight for a fairer society in the world’s longest standing insurgency, and how they may be undermining their own aims. Alpa Shah spoke to RaySel about the reasons for studying the Adivasi communities and their link with Naxalites.