Windows into a revolution: ethnographies of Maoism in South Asia

Abstract

Even after the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990, it was possible for the Maoists to represent Nepal as still being dominated by the King and a feudal elite. Since the beginning, their campaign was against the monarchy even though violent confrontation did not escalate until 2001, after the Royal Massacre in which King Birendra and all his family was killed (Lecomte-Tilouine 2004). [...]historically embedded cross-border sociological issues, such as caste, mean that it makes sense to ask comparative questions about that issue in both countries. [...]some political scientists even argue that revolutionary processes and outcomes are determined by structures (rather than human agency) and that it is thus irrelevant to seek the experiences of the participants (see 123 230 A. Shah, J. Pettigrew especially Skocpol 1979). While these former Naxalites interviewed by Donner were clearly involved in a very different stage of the movement to Pettigrews rural youth in Nepal, in both cases, alternative visions of gender roles offered by the movement were a great attraction to those who joined the movement. [...]in the Nepal case, as is true of Jharkhand, development and education, and perhaps economic liberalisation, created the alternative visions of modernity and expectations for the future that set the stage for the spread of the revolutionary movement.