Review: Hello, Bastar - The Untold Story of India's Maoist Movement

Hello, Bastar - The Untold Story of India's Maoist Movement by Rahul Pandita
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I highly recommend this book to everyone who have an opinion on Naxalism and rebel movement and who are really interested in India and wants to know about it. If you haven't read this book than you don't know properly about India and its one of the biggest radical movement. This book is sole story teller of the true account of the Naxalism and their movement. You can have a different opinion about this topic for the sake of country but you can't ignore the point of views of the author. He started with low point and less interested things but ended with so much interest and analytical vigor in it that i cried. It will give you a wholesome account of Naxalism, its history, ideologies, army, vision, violence, lifestyle, help, hate, anger etc. All in all highly-highly recommended. I person can't claim full knowledge of topic without reading this book, because the author did ground level research to write this book. May be so many things can be false according to political parties or intellectual or people but they don't have any proof. And the author has. The poverty?
The urban agenda, The rebel and History's harvest are the most important essay of the book which will bring to to the level where so less people knows about.
The description of real India is -
'Amalendu's crime, Kalpana's crime, is the crime of all those who cannot remain unmoved and inactive in an India where a child crawls in the dust with a begging bowl; where a poor girl can be sold as a rich man's plaything; where an old woman must half-starve herself in order to buy social acceptance from the powers-that-be in her village; where countless people die of sheer neglect; where many are hungry while food is hoarded for profit; where usurers and tricksters extort the fruits of labour from those who do the work; where the honest suffer whilst the villainous prosper; where justice is the exception and injustice the rule; and where the total physical and mental energy of millions of people is spent on the struggle for mere survival.(Page no. 65 of this book) I completely agree what has said above. I end my review with the Poem from the book itself -
It's thousands of years old,
their anger,
thousands of years old,
is their bitterness,
I am only returning their
scattered words,
with rhyme and rhythm,
and you fear that,
I am spreading fire.



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