1During the People’s War (1996–2006), and especially during the six-year state of emergency (2001–2006), the Kingdom of Nepal experienced a period of bloodshed. Most victims were killed by government forces, but their operations were hardly reported and never on a large scale. By contrast, Maoist military attacks were astonishing shows of force from the revolutionaries. Their suddenness, violence and unpredictability made them significant historical milestones that marked and changed the course of time for the people of Nepal, who were stunned by each and every one of them. Maoist attacks – the media’s favourite subject – made the headlines, with distressing photographs of bodies lined up, buildings gutted and weapons piled high. The following pages delve into these pivotal moments, as recounted by those directly involved in the action, in order to explore one of the most intriguing aspects of this revolutionary movement, which involved holding a gun in one hand and a pen in the other, in a country where literacy was not only a recent development but also limited to about a third of the rural adult population when the conflict began in February 1996.
- 1 Quoted in Thapa (2004).
‘The People’s War has turned everyone into a literature lover’, declared Comrade Prachanda, the supreme leader of the movement.1
2This sudden interest in literature contrasts with the previous period when literature was confined to a small world – the economic elite in urban centres and the social or ‘caste’ elite in other areas. The literature that circulated in this milieu originated there, with an over-representation of male authors from upper-caste or privileged families, while the literate rural population confined itself to reading the newspapers, ritual almanacs and religious texts, school textbooks and a few magazines, often in Hindi and focusing on Indian film stars.
3It is tempting to draw a parallel here with Italy between the two World Wars, as described by Gramsci in 1934 (Descendre and Zancarini 2019). Gramsci noted the interest of the ‘nation-people’ in foreign novels and concluded that the ‘cultivated class’ with its intellectual activity was detached from the nation-people, not because the nation-people were not interested in this intellectual activity, but because this class activity was perceived as being more foreign than actual foreigners in the eyes of the ‘nation-people’.
4Similarly, in Nepal, the sudden interest ‘of everyone’ in literature with the advent of the People’s War suggests that, for the first time, it was a matter of concern and interest to them. In mobilising the masses, the literary movement represented a symbolic revolution in the sense defined by Michel de Certeau (1994), as a subversive movement in which the place of knowledge passed into the hands of its objects, in which a common language overcame the compartmentalisation between intellectuals and manual workers, and where blasphemy desacralised the existing order.
- 2 Li Hsin-T’ien, An-shan-ti hung-hsing [Bright Red Star], Peking, JMWH, 1972, 172p.
5This is found in Maoist newspapers, which systematically brought together theoretical contributions from the movement’s intellectuals and a literary section that included reports of events and poems written by ordinary and often poorly educated activists or soldiers. The significance of the latter section in spreading the movement is highlighted in numerous autobiographical narratives of the People’s War. Among the earliest published ones, Comrade Etam’s account (2006) provides an interesting case. Etam, the son of the CPN(M) spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara (who later became Minister for Local Development), begins his memoirs with his youth in a village in Rolpa. He recalls his father’s secret activities, his frequent absences, the strangers who visited his home and the publications he brought back. ‘Daddy used to bring [the Maoist journal] Janadesh home. And even if I did not understand the theory, I was interested in the experiences and the very sweet poems’, he explains, highlighting the accessibility of this literature, even to young individuals. Indeed, Etam was less than twelve at the time, and the very early political sensitivity he recalls was a common trait among Maoist soldiers and activists. A district secretary and central member of the Magarant Mukti Morca even went as far as to respond to my question about her career by stating that she began her political life at the age of six. Like Etam, she asserted that she was initially drawn to revolutionary narratives, in her case to the Chinese novel ‘The Bright Star’, camkilo tārā.2
6The Maoist movement in Nepal, within which a reciprocal relationship between war and literary creation emerged, echoes the two poles of the war machine as defined by Deleuze and Guattari (1980: 526): one that ‘takes war as its object’ and forms a line of destruction, but is not its essence; the second that has as its object ‘the tracing of a creative line of flight’, which composes the space of the revolution and the movement in it. These two objects, in the context of Nepal, led the revolutionaries to carry a gun in one hand and a pen in the other, with the idea that the latter is a superior weapon to the former. Numerous texts support this principle, including these verses by the Maoist poetess Huri Gharti Magar (G M 2004, my translation):
- 3 The text refers to the author Krishna Lal Adhikari (1888–1923), whose book Makaiko kheti (...)
- 4 On the martyr Shukraraj Shastri Joshi (1894–1924), see Whelpton (2005: 80).
- 5 Nom de guerre of the Maoist writer and editor Krishna Sen (1956–2002), killed in police c (...)
More than the bullets of a thousand guns
the tip of the pen is imbued with power.
Wielding one’s pen on the field of paper
to cultivate letters and speak with a strong voice
the writer is more convincing.
Today the glare of pens for the autonomy of all
terrifies like lightning scares frightened dogs.
There is no remedy for this.
Neither Nero’s power lasted,
nor did Hitler’s Nazi rule,
nor the fascist power of Mussolini
nor did the old Rana power last,
nor can the power that wears the mask of democracy persist.
And even if,
Socrates was made to drink poison,
Galileo and Einstein were sent into exile,
Krishna Lal’s pen was broken,
the ‘Cultivation of maize’ was destroyed,3
Shukraraj’s Gita pravacan was hanged from the gallows4
Icchuk5 and many others were shot,
putting the final points in ellipsis,
the bullets did not kill them.
The irons of the gaols did not bind
their brave, fearless, frank and loyal art and thoughts. (…)
- 6 It should be noted, however, that certain bards found a new ‘patron’ in the Maoist (...)
7Huri Gharti borrows agrarian imagery, rarely applied to the literary sphere, where the page is a field and the pen a farm tool, bringing the figure of the revolutionary poet closer to that of the labouring soldier, arched over his hard work. The pen is then likened to a weapon, portrayed by the classical image once associated with the sword, of the force of its lightning flash. The tool-cum-weapon is ascribed a double operation, sweeping away the infamous figures of power and offering immortal destiny to intrepid thinkers. Through its many references, the poem takes on a scholarly tone, exploring a vast universe that spans from Greek and Roman antiquity to modern-day Nepal. Its history is hereby grafted onto a universal history and its protest heroes are elevated to the rank of a prestigious cohort, celebrated here not so much for their works as for the events that have marked the course of their lives. Indeed, no one has read Krishna Lal Adhikari’s ‘The Cultivation of Maize’, all copies of which were burnt except for one, it is said, although it has never been found; and Sukraraj’s Gita pravacan or ‘Teachings on the Gita’ refers to his philosophy of life. Interestingly, not all of the immortal figures mentioned are writers: two of them are renowned scholars recognised more for their scientific ideas than for their literary style. This diverse cohort reflects the realm of the Thought, bicār, which encompasses ‘literature’, sāhitya. The etymology of the term sāhitya refers to ‘togetherness’, and one of its definitions in ancient India was ‘harmonious coexistence of sound and sense’ (Krishnamoorthy 1985). Thus, unlike literature, sāhitya is not historically linked to the written word. Within this broad scope, non-fictional accounts of events bound society not only from above, in written form, but also from below, in oral form. In effect, the caste-based social organisation in Nepal has long reserved the monopoly of the written word for Brahmins, while the artistic realm of oral literature, dance and music has been rejected as impure activities. Literary narratives dealing with events, commonly known as ‘history’ in western Nepal, are oral epics and genealogies handed down by untouchable bards. In this context, history is a story, set to music, mimed and danced in a performance that is considered to have been handed down unchanged from generation to generation, even though it includes improvisation. However, despite this formal freedom and the biting humour it expresses, this art of performing historical narratives is neither subversive nor eccentric because it is framed by an asymmetrical relationship. Bardic recitation, performed on commission by those situated above, uses art and laughter from below (to paraphrase Bakhtin) to sing of their greatness and exploits.6
- 7 The first complete edition published in 1965 by Jagadamba Prakashan, Lalitpur, is 511 (...)
- 8 The first magazine in Nepali dates from the same period (1898), and the first newspaper fro (...)
8Just as oral literature is not as free as we might think, but rather determined by the context in which it is produced, the context of the genesis of Nepali written literature was incidental to its trajectory. Indeed, Nepali is traditionally a non-literary language. It was not used in a written form until the twentieth century, except for religious and administrative purposes, and literature in Nepali did not truly take off until 1950, a time when Nepal’s very modest readership (only 5% of the population could read at the time) began to grow. To highlight this context, the conditions of the creation, dissemination and reception of the first novel written in Nepali are revealing. It was originally written down to be read in serial form by its author, Girishallaba Joshi, to the women of the Rana harem for their entertainment, according to Kamal Diksit, author of the introduction to the first complete edition of the novel. The original transmission of the story, in 1899, was therefore entirely oral, despite the text’s length, of approximately 500 pages.7 Its form, which makes very little use of indirect speech and is particularly repetitive when read, reflects its origin as an oral text. Nevertheless, the first part of the novel was published shortly after it was written in 1903 and achieved great success.8 Again, the particular conditions of this success shed light on the status of literature in Nepali at the beginning of the twentieth century: Kamal Diksit notes that young people, who were prohibited by their elders from reading literary works in any language other than Sanskrit at the time, would hide in order to read it.
- 9 For a synthetic overview of Nepali fiction, see Taranath Sharma (2015).
9It is hardly surprising, then, that the major figures of Nepali literature who left their mark on the cultural landscape in the first half of the twentieth century and the 1950s–1960s are seen as revolutionaries, even though they came from wealthy backgrounds and belonged to an elite that had the priviledge of studying at a time when this was rare. And in keeping with the ‘revolutionary’ use of a language hitherto regarded as vulgar, only suitable for informal conversations (or for written communication with the authorities), literature in Nepali made social injustice its core business, in the form of denunciation.9
10Ignoring this larger legacy, the Maoist literary movement in Nepal is presented by one of its actors, Ashok Subedi, as the most recent period of progressive literature since the founding of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1949. Subedi distinguishes a first period from 1949 to 1960, with Krishna Chandra Singh Pradhan (1925–2010) as the emblematic figure, preferred to Bhupi Shercan, who displayed a ‘mixture of revolutionary consciousness and sarcasm’ (Subedi 2007: cha). A second period, from 1960 to 1989, covers the ‘dark night of the Panchayat’, with the spotlight on the writer Yuddha Prasad Mishra (1907–1990). However, until then, according to Subedi, progressive authors had only advocated ‘a bourgeois revolution’ and were content to ‘denounce social contradictions’ (ibid). The re-establishment of a multi-party system was a key moment, ‘thought to be the solution to the problems of the people’, but instead led to ‘increased exploitation, domination, murder and inequality’, culminating in the declaration of the People’s War on 13 February 1996. Of the 20 volumes from this third period (from 1990 to 2006) cited by the author, the first dates from 1993, another from 1994, whereas the other 18 were published during the People’s War (including five in 1998 and another five in 2005). Subedi, who deals not only with poetry but also with ‘memoirs’ (saṃsmaraṇ), sets out to define what is specific to the latter period. First of all, there is the authors’ revolutionary Marxist ideology, one that identifies class division as the source of exploitation and domination and defines revolution as the armed and ideological struggle waged by the dominated class to put an end to it (Subedi 2007: cha). Their texts also differ from those of their predecessors because of their ‘warlike environment’, which is ‘specific and unusual’ and because of the direct participation of the authors in the armed action, recording impressions and events on the spot (Subedi 2007: ja). This pervades their writings: ‘these are poems and memoirs filled with the courage, devotion, renunciation and dedication of revolutionary soldiers’, ‘nourished by revolutionary consciousness’ (ibid). However, for Subedi, the authors’ participation in the war and the immediacy of their texts is also the reason for a lack of ‘artistic sophistication’ and a ‘weakness’ in ‘style and structure’, shortcomings that he sees as compensated for by the fact that these texts are also bicār, thought or ideology (Subedi 2007: ja, my translation). In a series of bold comparisons, he adds: ‘The definition of poetry for the poets who participated in the revolution is revolutionary Marxist. According to them, the gun is a poem. The struggle is a poem. Work is a poem. Life is a poem. The poem is the life they seek and the first proclamation of life was a poem’.
11Through this interplay of equivalences, we discern a sublime domain called poetry, which is no longer based primarily on language but on the ideals that language helps to express and on actions, particularly the most radical of them all, which is to destroy and kill. The poetess whose book is introduced by this text from Subedi completes this picture with a poetic description of the birth of combatant poets from the substances of war:
We the germs of blood,
are born from revolution,
grow with gunpowder
and blood.
When exploitation blankets the earth,
when domination reaches the sky,
we begin to fight.
12The organic circularity that exists between action, text and author is thus complete from all points of view. Revolutionary action and its components are a poem that produces its actors, who in turn write the poem of their lives in action and ‘of the life they seek through that action’.
13Surprisingly for a Marxist writer and editor, Subedi makes no mention of a ‘class’ turn in progressive literature with the advent of the People’s War. The unprecedented voice of writers who are not only poorly educated and not very wealthy, but also far removed from the academic world and its circles, is ignored by him or at least passed over in silence. And this despite the fact that the short text preceding his own in the same book, signed by Madan, secretary of the Ramechap District Committee, states: ‘Literature, based on a class bias, presents an image of society that reflects the class (...) and is at the service of class construction’ (Madan 2007: ka, my translation).
14To gain a better understanding of this construction, let us examine how Lakshmi Prasad Caulagai (2007: 50–51, my translation), from Kalikot district, became a Maoist writer. He says he loved writing, but did not want to do it without fighting. So, despite his weak disposition, he joined military training with the Maoist party. Caulagai recalls, ‘I saw that Commander Comrade Parivartan, Comrade Suresh Paradi, Comrade Munal and others wrote poems, stories, and songs in their diaries and some of their texts were published. Comrades Deviram Devkota and Raj Hunwar from Jumla sent them to Janadesh and other newspapers. As I read them, enthusiasm grew within me. And by meeting people who worked for Janadesh…who told me “you must write”, I gained confidence…Yes, we consider that what is not written by a heroic soldier who has defeated death by being injured or disabled, is imaginary. It is difficult for history to remain true. It is necessary for us to write. If we cannot, history will ask us difficult questions’.
15Like Caulagai and his comrades, Maoist writers found a framework for independent promotion within the party and its own press and publishing organs, and even, in the case of many of them, in the People’s Liberation Army which acted as their publisher. This is not simply the emergence of a new literary genre, as Michael Hutt (2012: 108) says of conflict memoirs, but also the development of an eccentric counter-culture made possible by a reconfiguration of the literary production field and its general economy, as emphasised by Bourdieu (1992). The eccentricity of the Maoist literary movement can be seen in the renewal of the social and educational background of the writers, now from remote rural and mountainous areas, of a young age group, with many women, indigenous people and untouchables among their ranks. It is also a renewal of the reading public, attracting a wider variety of people and awaking the interest of ‘everyone’, as Prachanda suggested. Finally, it was made possible by a renewal of the publishing and distribution networks of literary production, with the publication of newspapers, magazines and books by Maoist publishers or press organs, and their marketing at political meetings, in Marxist bookshops or ‘under the table’, before the end of hostilities in 2006.
16Khagendra Acharya (2020: 32) offers a concise chronological and statistical overview of this literature in his study of 15 non-fiction books authored by Nepalese Maoists. The very first of these appeared in 2003 during the seven-month ceasefire that provided party members with free time, whereas before that date only short texts had appeared in Maoist magazines and newspapers. Reflecting on this period in the early years of the conflict, five of the six books published in 2003 are anthologies of these short texts. With the resumption of hostilities, ‘the publication of creative nonfiction almost came to a halt: only one book was released in the two years following the resumption of war’, in 2004 and 2005 (Acharya 2020: 33).
17It is important to note that these two years coincide with the peak of the armed movement and that each operation was described, sometimes by different actors, in the ‘main news’ section of the party newspapers, Janadesh and Janaawaj. Following the end of hostilities in the fall of 2006, many combatants set about writing their ‘memoirs’ of the conflict in the form of books. Hutt (2012: 108), citing an account by Kailash Rai in April 2012, mentions 43 of them. Like anthologies, these ‘memoirs’ are also assemblages of sorts, made up of independent, often unrelated parts, as most were written from notes taken during the hostilities. This literature gives a central place to the warlike events that marked the People’s War, at times providing particularly technical descriptions of military operations, as seen in Pasang’s (2008) or Abinash’s (2003) books, and at other times offering a more subjective and vivid narrative, as we will explore. My interest here in these narratives, however, focuses on their structure and its nature, which Subedi has described as weak, despite the strong sense of déjà vu that comes from reading them.
- 10 At the other end of the spectrum, some accounts by Maoist war reporters resemble pr (...)
18The armed attack can be presented as the quintessence of the narrative in the sense that this type of discourse is defined as a description of actions and events, that is, the narrative is a temporal thread that traces a transformation from an initial state to a final state. And here we can speak of its quintessence because the transformation in question during the armed attack is the most radical of all for the human being, to kill or be killed; and when, moreover, this armed action is revolutionary in nature and sets out to transform the world (through the transformation of its political, social and cultural organisation), not only does it provide material for a narrative, as a discourse narrating a transformation, but it takes the form of a narrative, with an introduction and a conclusion (the official declaration of war in February 1996, its official end in November 2006), punctuated in time and space by each action, with a function attributed to each protagonist of these actions, and lastly a ‘plot’ mapped out in codified stages of the way it unfolds, by its strategy and tactics. However, this pre-written narrative opens up the possibility of an adventure within an adventure, through subjectivity and unpredictable or unforeseen factors, which opens the door to the novel and contributes to the literary creation of remarkable characters. Such is the case of Sarul, alias Ajaya Shakti (2009), and his autobiography as a ‘living martyr’. Sarul grew up in a village struggling against a conservative headman during the early years of the Maoist movement. With the launching of the People’s War and his enrolment as a combatant, he took part in numerous military actions which he mostly evokes by describing the retreat with the wounded, the way he assisted them and his agonising helplessness once out of danger. When he is sent to the remote region of eastern Nepal, it is he who is wounded and, although his condition is not desperate, his comrades abandon him and fail to fulfill their promise of assisting him. He finds the strength to fight death thanks to the resources he has acquired as a revolutionary: literature, including a Chinese Maoist novel that inspired him, and images taken from Maoist poetry. Yet he owes his life to an old shepherd, a Buddhist monk and a young girl who took pity on him. Partly written in prison, where Sarul spent several months soon after his recovery, Playing with the Storm is an appeased text, free of bellicose exaltation, and uses a very different tone from the narratives written by the same author in the heat of the action. His extraordinary individual fate in the People’s War makes Sarul’s story a particularly compelling narrative, one that can withstand the test of time. However, the sorrows he describes are not absent from other memoirs, especially the feeling of helplessness in the face of death: Lakshmi Prasad Caulagai (alias Sailendra) writes: ‘Those who are hit by bullets on the battlefield scream, they ask for water and they cannot be given a drink because the confrontation with the enemy is in progress, because bombs are raining down from helicopters in the sky, because we can’t find a stretcher and we have to carry them on our backs. Even on a stretcher they say, “Comrade, I’m in pain”. And when we look at them, we see streams of blood flowing. Some say, “I’m hungry, comrade”, and we can’t give them anything to eat either. In a day or two they become martyrs. In fact, when comrades who were seriously injured were carried, tears flowed from their eyes, but I could do nothing to ease their pain, and I tormented myself for not being able to help them...Perhaps people will not believe me, but I had no other desire than to become a martyr with these heroic soldiers. And I think that many comrades on the front felt the same way’. ‘In the family made up of our communist-oriented group, we received our ideas from each other, we shared our joys and our sorrows, we felt confident and encouraged by this situation. When some of our comrades became martyrs, although we were not injured, our hearts were torn, our bodies were stiff, we could not sleep on the couch, we could not swallow food, we felt lost and alone on the paths, on the peaks and ridges, on the rivers that we had travelled with them, and when we met their families, waves of sadness carried us away and streams of tears flowed from our eyes’ (Caulagai 2007: 21 and 31–32, my translation).10
19But the revolutionary period was also narrated on the spot, with less room for emotion and more for action, and accounts of the main attacks, written immediately afterwards by participants in the operation, were published in the Maoist weeklies Janaawaj and Janadesh. These journals also reported on other events, such as meetings, but these, unlike accounts of armed action, were not considered worthy of inclusion in later anthologies. The intense feelings of grief caused by the deaths also have their place in these journals, but in different texts, in tributes to the martyrs, which often focus more on the writer’s grief than on the carreer and personality of the deceased.
20The armed attacks are presented as historical actions as soon as they occur, immediately ‘writing history’, and as having their own causality. As each armed action is regarded as a door that opens onto another armed action, they are linked together two by two. They are also often cited in a chain as if they spread on their own and formed the plot of revolutionary history, the series of events that contribute to transforming the world.
- 11 ‘By spreading the story of Chiraghat’, Punit (2056 VS/1999), my translation.
Yes…By spreading the story of Chiraghat, the heroes dance the parade,
Yes…In the bloody forts of the enemy, the mines explode,
Yes…In Sindhuli and Dhanusha, red embers ignite, …
Yes…yes…By spreading Bethan’s story, Bhattedanda explodes,
Yes…yes…By spreading the story of Tribeni, the Madi police station is annihilated,
Yes...yes...Look at Kalikot, friend, the struggle there is fierce,
Yes...yes...From Mechi to Kali, everywhere the torch of the People’s War is lit.
The storm of the people’s war shakes the earth and the sky,
Yes, yes, the power of the enemy is crumbling.11
- 12 Comrade Pradip, whose pen name is Balcan, was born into a poor Tamang family from M (...)
- 13 The negative portrayal of the revolutionary writer who confines himself to shaking his tabl (...)
21This sequence is also often depicted as a series of earthquakes that shake the established order, symbolised by the royal palace, causing the sky and the earth to tremble, like the ‘revolutionary storm’ in the verses quoted above. This seismic effect of armed action is an old image, already used in the war epics of western Nepal. Balcan, a writer and Maoist warrior whom I interviewed, used it to explain the difference between the fighter writer and the armchair writer.12 Writing had represented a ‘necessity’ of the war for him, he who did not find it easy to write, he said, because he was born into a modest Tamang family and did not study for long at school. He started writing, stories and poems, for the first time in his life because, he said, he did not want writers ‘who have never done anything but shake their table to write in his place’.13 In the Jutpani army camp where he was stationed when I met him in 2009, he spoke for a long time, encouraged by nods from his division commander, who had published his work, and another soldier-writer who had taken his words to heart.
22Balcan and his comrade explained that they wanted to write about the war ‘as it happened’, in a rough (rukho) and realistic (vāstavik) style: in short, to produce a story that captures the qualities of war and its harshness.
23The prose narrative would thus ideally aim to be a faithful reproduction of the reality, in contrast to the Maoist poetic form which is said to have an intrinsic ‘magical energy’ (jādumayi śakti) stemming from its form, ‘regularity’ and deviation from language conventions. Together with this, its style, based on inversion and deviation, and its vocabulary, made up of new or original words, make poetry by definition progressive in the eyes of Maoist literary critics (Pandeya 2006: 16–19). On the other hand, the written narrative in prose, as defined by Balcan, would be a testimony of the action by its very actors. To perfect its strict adhesion to the reality, prose narrative needs to adapt its form to what it describes, but in a different manner, by stripping the language of artifices, if we are to stick to its presentation by Balcan.
24Poetry, however, permeates many Maoist accounts of armed operations, particularly through the use of the same images and metaphors. For example, Surya Majhi (2005) peppers his account of the ‘VK operation’ with poetic and metaphorical imagery. He compares the soldiers to brides getting ready for their wedding: ‘Like brides adorned with gold and silver, the PLA soldiers were adorned with their weapons as jewellery, a necklace of bullets and a bag of bombs’ (Majhi 2005). He then uses olfactory and gustatory imagery to make the reader understand his impatience to fight. He evokes the anticipation of the sun, which, while trapped by clouds and fog, observes their great gathering from its zenith. He then compares the attack to an apocalypse in which the Chure mountain range sinks deep into the earth and the summit of Mount Everest collapses. In the helicopters flying overhead, he sees vultures scavenging for carrion. Finally, he says that he found enough energy to act when the blood shed by his comrades flowed and concentrated in his pulse, allowing him to walk through a bloodbath while carrying his wounded comrades. Here we are somewhere between a war report and a prose poem, which nevertheless follows the development of the military operation and its peculiarities, that is the thread of the action which we shall now examine in more detail.
25Maoist narratives of armed attack often begin with general reflections on the revolution and Prachanda’s path, placing the operation in its ideological context. Then starts the description of collective action which invariably follows a sequence of codified stages: the initial march to a meeting point, the meeting with comrades from elsewhere, the instructions for the attack, the approach, the attack and the outcome of the operation. In this manner, the structure of the action forms the structure of the narrative.
26While the final destination of the walk, its length and purpose are usually unknown to the narrator, the journey is an action in itself and even a promise of a greater action that inspires enthusiasm. The narrative sweeps the reader along with a small group that accompanies the narrator, and involves the reader in their emotions: ‘During the journey, extreme joy was felt’, says Ratna KC (2003), speaking on behalf of the group. The journey itself reinforces the notion of revolution as a journey along the path of Prachanda, on which revolutionaries progress. As Ratna K C says: ‘I, who am engaged on the easy path of Prachanda’s path, am participating in this great journey that brings courage and enthusiasm’.
27During the long walk, the different aspects of the landscape are described as being as many images of the revolution: the anti-proletarian fog dissipates in the revolutionary sky, revealing the horizon, the progress on steep climbs serves as a reminder for the group that the People’s War is an ascension to victory, and the waves of the streams they cross paint a picture of the bloody revolution. In this universe where abstract images of the revolution come to life, the marching fighters receive signs of their own heroism from those they encounter. Along the way, Ratna K C says, elderly villagers exclaim: ‘How beautiful our red soldiers are, marching in single file, like a garland of flowers’. When they pause at villagers’ homes, their hosts provide them with added energy and determination to fight for their liberation. Their feelings are particularly intense when they meet the families of martyrs: ‘As we listened to the martyrs’ families recount their memories of the war, our bodies heated up and filled with excitement and energy that circulated through our veins faster than our blood’ (KC 2003, my translation).
28Another type of intense emotion grips the fighter when he reaches the rendezvous point where a large number of PLA soldiers are gathered. Surya Majhi (2005, my translation) recounts: ‘We blended into the large formation of the PLA, the way a small river blends into the ocean. Wandering here and there, I felt lost. Except for the 6th, all the brigades were new to us. In this huge formation, we were all looking for familiar comrades’. The striking effect of this sudden encounter is well depicted by Bahu (2002), who describes how individual physical sensations disappear during a wartime expedition to be replaced by a sense of merging with an immense, terrible yet magnificent armed collective. Bahu tells of the Ghorahi attack in which he took part. The march to this place took three or four days, and from the beginning, he says, they lost their appetite and the feeling of thirst, cold and fatigue. They walked in the sun and did not sleep at all during those days until they finally reached a large meadow where they were allowed to sleep. Other groups joined them and, when Bahu awoke, the sight of the People’s Army was so captivating that he ‘lost himself in contemplation’ and felt the urge to ‘blend in with the crowd’.
29Experiences of large PLA gatherings are rare moments that fill the soldier with enthusiasm for revolutionary greatness, which he sees represented physically by the size of the army. However, this moment is also filled with uncertainty because the fighters do not know why they are gathered: it could be for a political meeting or it could be the prelude to a major armed operation. They express their impatience to be informed and their desire to fight. The nature of the preparations or the style of the leaders’ speeches give them clues to interpret. Prabhat (2003: 60, my translation) recalls: ‘Some were cooking, some were preparing rations, some were washing. Some were preparing medicines and, when you saw them, you could easily guess that we were preparing for an attack’. Surya Majhi (2005, my translation) reached the same conclusion based on the ‘smell’ of the speeches: ‘In the same way that we can smell from a distance that something is being fried in butter or oil, it was not difficult to identify the smell of the speech of Brigade Commander Pavel who was talking about the next front and giving instructions to the activists. I said to myself: this is what it must smell like for those who have already tasted the nectar of battle. At times we could imagine that it was a big programme, but the smell of a big centralised attack reached us’.
- 14 For an analysis of individual ignorance within the Maoist movement, see Lecomte-Tilouine (...)
30Even when an attack is planned, not everyone who is sent to the place to gather for an attack will actually participate. This is the case of Etam who recounts how he was taken on long and complicated ‘marchings’, from Dang to Salyan, from Salyan to Surkhet and from there to Jajarkot. He was again sent back to Surkhet before finally arriving in Dailekh. He was kept in the dark about the purpose of these moves,14 until they finally reached this place: ‘Only then, did we learn that Dailekh was our target’. The military leaders of the western region were gathered there but Etam and some of his comrades were not allowed to stay with them and were immediately sent back to Rolpa to get some things. On their way back through Jajarkot they stayed at the Jiuni commune, one of those collective production centres that served as shelters for the PLA. They finally reached Kalikot where they received ‘figure coaching’ from Pasang in the cold Phalgun rain. A rain, he says, that they did not feel because they were focused on the instruction, their hearts filled with ‘the flame of furor’ that occupies the soldier at the time of action (Etam 2006: 17). Etam arrived in Mangalsen on the final day of the attack and it took them only ‘45 minutes to capture the military camp’. Although his exact role during the attack itself is unclear, he expresses disdain for the opposing camp, stating: ‘58 murderers were neutralized (lit frozen) as they attempted to fight while intoxicated with alcohol. After cleaning up the murderers, we searched the barracks’.
31Unlike Etam, who has been sidelined, perhaps because he is the son of the party spokesman, most of the men, assembled after a long march in small groups at a rallying point situated far from all settlements, finally receive military instruction. The commissar and the commander disclose the party’s plan to them and each soldier is informed of his task. This last instruction, according to Vibhishika (2003: 63), gives them ‘greater awareness and responsibility’. It usually involves studying the map of the camp to be attacked. Prabhat recalls (2003: 60): ‘On that day, we all concentrated on the map of a police station located in a vast expanse of beautiful grassland... On the map, drawn on a large sheet of paper, all the windows, doors, bunkers and trenches of the station were clearly visible. The comrade commander showed us every part and explained: ‘This is a bunker, this is a sentry post, this is a trench and this is an ambush group, etc’. Then came the ‘rush’, hatār. Everyone fulfilled the task for which they were responsible. The different groups prepared themselves and took their newly cleaned weapons.
32The soldiers now leave the rendezvous point in different groups and via different routes. Each group knows exactly where to go and at what time to stand ready. The moment of leaving for the attack is described as a proud one, as Prabhat (2003: 61) recalls: ‘I felt very proud to be part of the attack with three or four hundred PLA soldiers dressed and armed... We shook hands with our comrades who were not involved in the operation. Waving red handkerchiefs, they bid us farewell until we were out of sight’. However, Prabhat also sensed apprehension and attributed the same feeling to his comrades. Quoting Prachanda’s famous slogan ‘We cry while laughing, we laugh while crying’, he elaborated: ‘each of us thought that a comrade with whom he had eaten rice from the same plate and slept on the same mat might fall in the battle’ (Prabhat 2003: 61, my translation).
33During the approach, the environment is perceived as oscillating between two extremes: it is generally considered unfavourable at first, whether because it is raining or snowing, because the night is too dark or, on the contrary, too clear. The task of each revolutionary is to ‘turn the obstacle into an advantage’, an idea expressed by this formula, used in different circumstances by different authors. See, for example, how Samathing Kshatri (2003: 58) recounts the approach to the Panchkule police station: ‘The moon was almost full and the night was bright. Marching in these conditions was unfavourable (anukul) and it was necessary to turn it into an advantage (pratikul) during the battle’. He adds a hint of humour: ‘The night was clear, but what was clear to us was that we were going to fight’. (Kshatri 2003: 58).
34Many accounts also claim that the soldiers are so focused on the impending attack that they are oblivious to the wind, snow, cold, rain, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Ratna K C (2003, my translation) describes this moment in these words: ‘Playing in the storm and snow and overcoming all obstacles, the PLA continued to march forward. The troops of red men, all bright and brave, advanced without faltering. Happy and smiling, they showed no signs of fatigue. Beaten by the cold, the soldiers tried not to freeze, then began to run, bursting into laughter’. This expression of joy during the approach is equated with a celebration of the group’s future success, as Vibhishika (2003: 64, my translation) recounts: ‘During the march, some comrades danced, others sang: it was their way of preparing for victory’. This technique is an ancient instrument of war, already described in the epics of western Nepal, where bards are said to have sung about the coming victory on the way to war.
35At this stage, the assault group plays a crucial role, with their attitude described as both different and infectious: ‘Probably because the soldiers of the assault group seemed particularly excited and alert, we all became so’ (KC 2003). As for the assault group soldiers, like Agrim, they express not only joy but also the fury of the battle they are about to begin: ‘I was very happy to be in the assault group... I watched the expressions of my comrades and in the eyes of each of them I saw a kind of glare (camak), in the expression of each of them I saw the anger of revenge... I was impatient to plant the flag of liberation in the chest of the enemy’ (Agrim 2004).
36Often during the approach, the group receives news of the martyrdom of some of their comrades. This causes intense grief which they transform into anger and a desire for revenge. As Ratna KC (2003) describes: ‘The news of the martyrdom of our comrades made us shed tears of rage and we clenched the fist of cruelty (kaṭhoratā muṭṭhiharu) and the volcano of revenge exploded’. This event occurs frequently enough to be considered another tool of war. It has also been used in planning military operations, with some military units and attacks being named after martyrs. For example, Operation VK was carried out in the name of the martyrs Vishal and Kumar. Revenge, badalā, a Nepali term borrowed from Arabic, conveys the notion of equality, of returning the favour, or even a little more, since the initial killing is also seen as a debt, riṇ, to which interest, byāj, has to be added.
37The various groups of Maoist fighters follow, by rule, a tactic of ‘surrounding’ the enemy camp and of taking them by surprise. Hence, they are also always the first to open fire. To describe the attack, the narrator often uses onomatopoeia mimicking the sounds of the weapons used. It should be noted that assaults usually occur at night, making the auditory aspect of the attack the most prominent. The assault is intense and brief, as is its description which is always brief but compelling. ‘The fire was opened. Then the sky and the earth began to tremble simultaneously... The bombs exploded like thunder in the sky... Drayān, durum... the 81s were firing above our heads. The hot red bullets whizzed past our ears without hitting us...In the enemy camp at Jumla Khalanga there were cries of panic. They were engulfed in smoke and a fierce fire was rising’ (K C 2003). Once the defences have been breached and the soldiers in the outposts have been ‘neutralised’, the Maoist commander addresses the enemies trapped in the besieged camp, sometimes using a megaphone, inviting them to surrender and to hand over their weapons in exchange for their lives. This is known as the kasam, the oath.
38The course of action is so well regulated that the narrative can begin at any of its stages, as in the account of the operation against Panchkule police station by Samathing Kshatri (2003: 58), which begins with the verbal injunction of the oath, without any contextualisation being necessary to understand it: ‘Hey brother policemen, surrender your weapons and save your lives. Our fight is not against you, but against the power of the kingdom. We came here for the weapons. You are also sons and daughters of the people. Surrender your weapons and cooperate. We guarantee total protection of your lives’.
39The revolutionary soldiers describe how they temporarily lose control of their bodies and emotions before an attack, and regain their senses once victory is assured. Despite thoughts of revenge with owed interest, they prioritise limiting the number of casualties. Ajaya Shakti (2003), for example, reflects on the outcome of the Dumkibas commando with these words: ‘Only 4 enemies were reduced to ashes in the fire of revenge for 9 dead or missing [on our side]’. Nevertheless, this pacification is not achieved spontaneously but on command, as several accounts indicate that once the situation has turned in their favour, the commander takes up the megaphone to calm down his own soldiers.
40Most narratives describing armed attacks conclude with quantitative results, providing a detailed list of the seized weapons and ammunition, the number of prisoners and the number of casualties on both sides.
41Maoist narratives of armed actions ressemble the fairy tale defined by Vladimir Propp, that is a narrative in which the structure is identical. In the narrative of the armed attack, however, the structure is not inherent to a specific narrative genre, but rather reflects how the story is constructed from an external perspective, by those who planned the action.
42In some way, these heroic stories are pre-written narratives in which individual fate, and therefore heroism as we understand it is secondary. Such a withdrawal of individuality is both a product of the ideology of the movement, and of its carefully planned collective actions. ‘The party is my vital breath, the revolution is my life’, says Sangharsha. Ananta (2007: 4) expresses the same idea from the opposite end: ‘The People’s war is in itself a philosophy, an art, a literature, a direction of action and a laboratory in which the science of war is tested and developed. At the same time, it is a great historical epic written from a vast ocean of blood, sweat and tears. The great People’s war is itself an open book. The study and synthesis of its greatness, science, splendour and aesthetics will last for generations’.
43These words bring us back to the structure of the narrative and its relationship to the action that defines it as such. Obviously, in the context of a military organisation, we cannot follow to the letter Paul Ricœur’s (1983) scheme, according to which the narrative, through its concordance of time, domesticates reality and achieves a synthesis of the heterogeneous into a temporally coherent whole. In fact, in the case studied, the division of time occurs beforehand, with a set order of the action, reflected in the common structure of the narratives depicting armed attacks that simply follow the party tactics and plans. However, the narratives offer different points of view within the pre-configured actions, which gives a particular direction or colour to each of them and a specific inflection in the timing of each stage. By organising the time of events in this way, the Party transformed reality into a pre-written story, even one whose author is not really the writer, ie the Maoist fighters/writers. The latter often depict themselves as its nāyak, protagonists, actors or heroes, or those who enact rather than act. As Balcan, the Maoist Brigade Commander and writer with whom I discussed, told me, ‘we are the protagonists/actors/heroes of this story and we ourselves must pass it on to future generations’, clearly pointing out that he enacted a narrative, which he recounted. Yet the story they enacted required bravery and, in this regard, they were also depicted as bir, heroes, in the sense of people who perform remarkable actions in real life. In this manner, Maoist combatants juxtaposed the two meanings of hero in the Western language, as the main character of a story and as a person esteemed for his or her bravery or achievments, in a context where these two meanings are not merged, at least in the language, where it is expressed by two different terms, nāyak and bir. By writing down the story they enacted, Maoist fighter-writers contributed to the construction of the historical period of the People’s War as a world apart, not only in the course of time, but also within the cultural landscape of Nepal, a world that displays a vertiginous tautological and collective nature.