Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ethics and aesthetics of self-making among female insurgents in the Naxalite and Maoist movements, and its dialogic relationship with elite and popular representations of these extreme left movements in postcolonial India.

Paper long abstract:

Since independence, women in armed left-wing movements have been active participants in an ongoing struggle for social change in postcolonial India. Their participation in key revolutionary moments such as Tebhaga, Telengana, Naxalite and contemporary Maoist movements seeks not only to undermine existing class relations in the countryside, but also to transform gender relations in their respective contexts. The image of a female insurgent challenges traditional stereotypes of women as passive and inherently peaceful. This paper examines the ethics and aesthetics of self-making among female insurgents in the Naxalite and Maoist movements, and its dialogic relationship with elite and popular representations of these extreme left movements in postcolonial India. From a close reading of oral histories, media representations, novels, and films, I attempt to point to two contradictory tendencies in women's narratives of revolutionary participation. On the one hand, female insurgents' narratives of agency undermine and unsettle the master narratives and patriarchal imaginations of Naxalism/Maoism. Yet, on the other hand, these women's self-narratives of heroic participation as well as their representations in popular discourses mirror or even mimic elite, masculinist representations of sacrifice and bravery. Gender subjectivities forged in the crucible of these revolutionary upheavals are, thus, marked by a curious set of contradictions that lie at the heart of self-making practices among female insurgents. The ethics of gender empowerment in these "revolutions within revolutions" are, likewise, better understood in terms of their ambiguities and ambivalences than by positing an artificial coherence that seamlessly weaves together the politics of gender and class.