Hello, Bastar

Hello, Bastar tells how a small group of men and women who believed in revolution entered Bastar, in Central India, in 1980 and built a movement that New Delhi now calls the country's gravest internal security threat. Rahul Pandita traces how Maoism took root across roughly ten Indian states, and how its followers carried out deadly attacks on the Indian state in the name of the poor and the marginalised.

Pandita had direct access to the top Maoist leadership. His book draws on extensive reporting on the ground and on long interviews with leaders including the supreme commander Ganapathi and Kobad Ghandy, along with others who are now jailed or have been killed in police encounters.

The result is both firsthand storytelling and sharp analysis. It offers a rare look at the lives of Maoist guerrillas and of the Adivasi people who live in the so-called Red zone.