Maoist women struggle with authority

Smriti Dewan is a young theatre artiste. One day she fell down and hurt herself during physical practice. Her instructor told her that she could take a few days off instead of performing up to the last day. But Smriti was having none of it. “Why should I leave?” she protested. “I am supposed to stay till the last day, and I will.”

Smriti, 23, spent more than four years as a Whole Timer (WT) in the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), taking part in cultural activities like singing and dancing. The discipline with which she approaches tasks today is a remnant of those days. “We followed strict rules for everything,” recounts she, “we did everything on time, we did whatever we were supposed to do.”

Many other former WT women recall their regulated life with fondness. “It’s true that we lived under an iron rule, but we were happy in it,” says Sharada Mahat, 34, who was a WT political worker during the decade-long conflict. She recounted that everything from what they should eat, to how they executed their military operations, and even to who they married, was decided by the party. “We felt that it was as it should be, that life should be ordered and rules and regulations should be followed by all.”

Anoopam, 31, a former combatant from Jajarkot, recounts that women strove to prove they were capable of whatever rules were set for them. “Even during military operations, women would make sure they reached their target on time and did whatever was expected of them, even if it meant a cost to their health,” she remembers.

Spending a significant amount of time as WT in the Maoist party has left many women with a complicated relationship with authority. On the one hand, they have deep respect for authority, order and regulation, which they have carried into their lives even after they stopped being WT. On the other hand, their attitude towards official authority, including the army and police, is the exact opposite.

Some of them were inspired to join the Maoists after someone close to them was abused by the authorities. Anoopam’s cousin was killed in 1998 by the police, while some others, like Sharada, suffered at their hands in prison. Sharada was arrested for her political activism and spent three months in custody and several more months in prison. Her lower back still hurts sometimes from the beating she received then. Throughout their life underground, these women were used to calling the army and police ‘enemy’. Now that they have assimilated back into society, the question of how to address and view them seems to perplex them.

They have tried myriad approaches, and each woman has a different stand.  Sharada has tried to rationalize her feelings. “I don’t think of them as ‘enemy’ anymore,” says Sharada, “now that the conflict is over, I see them as normal people.” But she also admitted that she is still scared when she sees them suddenly. Her intuitive reaction takes over despite the logical conclusions she arrived at.

Anoopam, a veteran of more than 40 military operations, seems to be working towards a closure on this issue, telling herself that the army and police were just doing their duty. “They have taken the salt of the government, so they had to do what they did. I am sure they are not evil or anything,” she explains, her eyes reflecting a maturity born out of experience.

But many still struggle to accept an authority they had learnt to detest. Sushila Rana*, 28, a former combatant from Rukum, is one of them. “The enemy is indiscriminate,” she explains. Some teachers in her village were killed by the police even though they had never supported Maoists. “The teachers never even gave food and shelter to our seniors because they did not like Maoists, but a shell thrown from a hilltop cannot tell a Maoist and non-Maoist apart.” Such incidents helped consolidate her faith in her own organization, which she believed was more logical and wise. She still has traces of vengeance for the army and police that inflicted such deep wounds.

Extreme incidents that left a deep impact also served to create a binary viewpoint regarding authority for these women. In contrast to the highhanded government authority they saw as indifferent outsiders, they saw their own side as a true “people’s party” that was sensitive to the issues of the people and took decisions accordingly. Uma Bhujel, a noted Maoist leader, differentiates between an imposed authority and an ideologically credible one in her book Banda Parkhal Dekhi Khula Akash Samma. “The ‘enemy’ is not intellectually convinced of its authority, but is merely a rented mercenary,” she writes, implying that the party hierarchy she herself accepted was infused with belief.

This belief had significant ramifications on the women’s worldviews. Once they were convinced that they were on the ‘right’ side, they came to believe in a black and white picture where their side can do no wrong. Sharada believes that Maoists never inflicted the kind of torture that she herself received from the police, Smriti believes that the Maoists did not hassle villagers, and it was Maoist pretenders who gave real Maoists a bad name. In fact, multiple reports paint a more nuanced picture where atrocities were committed by both sides.

In contrast to the draconian authority in government military institutions, Sushila believes the decisions taken by her own party were democratic. “There were many discussions, and we were allowed to have our input,” she recounts, again despite contradictory reports of many incidents of coercion by the Maoists. She herself had wanted to join the Nepal Army after the conflict, but was persuaded to opt out and join the Young Communist League (the party’s youth wing) instead. She did it—against her will—because for her, “the party’s command was the most important thing.”

Years spent defying one kind of authority and blindly submitting to another has left these women with disparate relationships with authority. They believe that society should live under certain rules, and that regulations and punishments should be applicable to all, but most of them question authority that is imposed. However, once they believe that what they are doing is right, they are likely submit to it fully. Ideological coaching seems to have had an important role in shaping these attitudes, where the decisive factor is whether or not the ideology of an authority convinces them as ‘right’.

*name changed

(An old article, published in July 2014 in Republica)