Films

One film that was repeatedly screened was Do Bigha Zameen or Two Acres of Land, made in 1953 about the plight of a small farmer in Nehru's India.

Another popular film was The Axis of War which includes a depiction of Mao's long march.

Interestingly, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon is a roaring hit among the young cadres.

The guerrillas often invited locals to join their late-night soirees when they stayed near villages.

Most villagers had never seen a film before the Maoists showed them one.

"Families finish dinner early and come here to watch the late-night show whenever there is one," said one villager.

At the end of the day, I would lie down with up to a dozen guerrillas in one of the cramped tents.

As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn't help thinking how the peace of the night - despite the snoring of sleeping rebels and the buzzing of countless mosquitoes - belied the dangers that surrounded us.

Camp routine

On days when we were not moving camp, I would rest on my makeshift bed of a plastic sheet, and watch the "comrade-soldiers" swinging their guns to instructions being shouted out by a platoon commander.

rebels are active in swathes of central and eastern India

Ganita, 18 and a deft hand with a rifle, also gave me a detailed account of their daily chores.

Maoists participate in "community service", she said, such as helping elderly farmers, digging village wells and providing basic health care to locals.

This week Ganita was assigned to kitchen work.

Her kitchen was spread under one tent. Breakfast was limited to rice cooked with turmeric and ground nuts, while both lunch and dinner were just lentil soup and rice.

However, during my stay, frog, wild boar and monitor lizard meat were served a few times.

Evenings were dedicated to the study of party literature.

Published by the publicity wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the writings highlighted party strategy and criticised the Indian state. They have about 12 magazines and the main one is published in the local tribal language, Gondi.

Each camp had one or two solar-powered car batteries that were used to power LED lamps that lit tents at night.

A couple of times each week, everybody assembled for a singing session in one of the plastic tents.

Local Gondi tunes were fused with revolutionary lyrics and hymns were sung to the memory of martyrs. The singing session would end with the BBC's Hindi news bulletin on the radio - its future is in doubt because of spending cuts.

"This is our only source of objective information," Maoist spokesperson in south Chhattisgarh, Gudsa Usendi

Violent rebellion began in 1967 in West Bengal village of Naxalbari

·         Violent rebellion began in 1967 in West Bengal village of Naxalbari and spread over rural areas of central and eastern India

·         Led by elusive military commander Kishenji, supported by between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters

·         More than 6,000 killed since rebellion began

·         Bloodiest attacks on security forces include 76 killed in April 2010 ambush; 55 killed in 2007 attack on police post

·      

Every time a camp is set up, the commander conducts a roll-call and updates camp members about their responsibilities if they come under attack.

Akash, 18, was in charge of my security at the first camp. He also gave me a few lessons in self defence.

He slept for about four hours each night: two hours were spent guarding the camp from under a mohua tree in drenching rain.

Nonetheless, he never failed to wake me up early for my walks through several kilometres of rain-sodden forest.

Though the purpose of these walks was to take me to villages and camps in the Maoist-controlled Dandakaranya forest, I learned the rebels walked long distances every few days for their own safety.

"If we stay in a place for long, chances are that information of our stay will get out and we will get encircled."

The constant movement, he told me, also helps them gather information about the whereabouts of security forces from villagers.

The relationship with villagers in areas they control is generally positive, but not always. Maoist will kill suspected informers and that has the potential to create a climate of fear. But they are also aware that harming ordinary villagers will simply erode their support base.

But this is a highly polarised area. In areas controlled by the paramilitary units there is little support for the Maoists - and villagers who display such sympathies have uncertain fates.

INDIA'S MAOIST INSURGENCY

If we stay in a place for long, chances are that information of our stay will get out and we will get encircled” AkashMaoist rebel Somji, one of the men who collected me between a small town in south Chhattisgarh and the thick central Indian forest, picked up speed as we approached. A tall man standing guard with a rifle flung over his shoulder whistled and people started rushing towards us. In under a minute, the camp members stood in formation and began singing a welcome song. Each member in the queue raised their fist to whisper "lal salaam" - "red salute". Mostly aged between 15 and 30 years old, the men and women in the camp wore rubber sandals, olive green battle fatigues and carried guns of various makes. India's Maoist rebels say they are fighting for the rights of indigenous tribespeople and the rural poor. But the battle has been brutal: they frequently launch deadly attacks on India's security forces and those thought to support them. In April 2010 Chhattisgarh was the site of the bloodiest Maoist attack yet on the security forces - 75 troops were killed. Paramilitary forces also launched attacks on tribal communities to restrict Maoist activities.

Camp security

Maoist platoons normally set up their camps in a semi-circle with one tent in the centre - the "headquarter".

India Maoist rebels 'killed in gun battle'

Six Maoist rebels have been killed in a gun battle in the Indian state of Bihar, police say.

One policeman was injured in the clash in East Champaran district late on Sunday.

Ten rebels, including three women, were arrested in possession of arms and ammunition, a senior police official said.

Indian forces are battling Maoists in several states. The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as India's biggest internal security challenge.

The police said that the gun battle began after policemen and paramilitary forces surrounded a rebel hideout in Dharmaha village in East Champaran.

Separately, three rebels were arrested from Rohtas district, police said.

A government offensive against the rebels - widely referred to as Operation Green Hunt - began last October.

It involves 50,000 troops and is taking place across five states - West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. 

Watch: Daily life inside a Maoist forest hideout in India

Thousands of people have been killed in the bloody Maoist insurgency across swathes of central and eastern India. The BBC's Suvojit Bagchi, who was granted unprecedented access to a Maoist camp in the depths of the Chhattisgarh jungle, describes the rebels' precarious life

Split of groups

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In 2004, a small group split from the CPN(M) to form Janatantric Terai Mukti Morcha.Till today this group has split up into more than five groups and said to have no specific ideological destiny. The group accused the CPN(M) of not guaranteeing the autonomy of the Terai region[2]. The name is in Nepalese which means "Terai Peoples Liberation Front"[3] in English. The Jwala Singh faction of the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha (JTMM-J) was formed by Nagendra Kumar Paswan a.k.a. Jwala Singh in August 2006 after he broke away from the Jaya Krishna Goit led JTMM. Jwala Singh is a former CPN-Maoist cadre and had joined Goit when he floated the JTMM. Later, he developed differences with Goit over the strategies to be adopted for the liberation of the Terai and establishment of an independent Terai state. In 2009, a faction under Matrika Yadav split from UCPN(M) to reorganise the previous Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) i.e. CPN(M).

Linkage with fraternal parties

According to available information, the Maoists of Nepal have well-established linkages with Indian revolutionary communist organizations, primarily with the Communist Party of India (Maoist), currently leading a protracted "people's war" throughout the subcontinent. The first signs of contacts were reportedly registered during 1989-1990, when the two groups started collaborating in order to expand their influence. According to Indian government analysis, they began the process of laying a corridor, which is now widely referred to as the Revolutionary Corridor (RC) extending from Nepal to across six Indian States, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa andMadhya Pradesh. This entire area has been identified in Maoist literature as the Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ). The CRZ was organized by the Nepal and Indian members of the Naxalite movement, in a meeting at Siliguri in the Indian State of West Bengal during August 2001. Indian Maoists are known as Naxalites (or Naxals) in reference to a popular uprising that began decades ago centered in the village of Naxalbari.

Nepalese Maoists had sent their delegates to the March 2001 Congress of PWG held at Abuz Marh in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. The establishment of CRZ gave a wider space and platform for all the proscribed Nepal and Indian Naxalite organizations to strengthen their bases in both the countries.

The CPN(M) is a participating organization of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), a global association of revolutionary communist parties. In July 2001, ten regional Maoist groups formed the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organization of South Asia (CCOMPOSA), in which the Nepalese Maoists, PWG, MCC, Purbo Banglar Sarbahara Party (Bangladesh), Communist Party of Ceylon(Sri Lanka) and other Indian communist parties became members. The appearance of graffiti in remote villages in Naxalite-strongholds, in Rayakal and Mallapur mandals (administrative unit) of Karimnagar district in Andhra Pradesh, hailing CCOMPOSA points the spread of the idea of a common front of revolutionary communist groups in South Asia. Moreover, the Central Committee of the Maoists, in late-January 2002, passed a resolution stating that it would work together with the PWG and the MCC in fighting the ban imposed on the latter two organisations in India, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002. A year earlier, in 2001, the Maoists had sent a senior leader named Gaurav as a fraternal delegate to attend the 9th Congress of the PWG. Reports indicate that the Maoists and the PWG have also formed the Indo-Nepal Border Region Committee to coordinate their activities in North Bihar and along the India-Nepal border.

During the people’s war, the Maoists also gathered a lot of support from organizations in South Asia, which was very important in carrying out the struggle with certain pace. Having visited several districts in India, Maoist chairman Prachanda studied the challenges of launching an armed struggle. Chairman Prachanda drafted war policies and tactics staying in India. Chairman Prachanda says, “First and foremost, there was the RIM Committee. There were important ideological and political exchanges. From the RIM committee we got the experience of theCommunist Party of Peru, the two line struggle there, and also the experience in Turkey, the experience in Iran and the experience in thePhilippines.” The CPN Maoist also participated in a South Asian Conference where they held discussions with the people’s war group and Maoist communist Centre groups. The party believes in achieving a lot from this meet about conducting a people’s war.

Having realized the necessity of spreading the party’s message to the world, the party came up with a decision to host a website which was to spread the knowledge about Nepalese revolution. Thus, www.cpnm.org was hosted with the help of some of the fraternal Maoist organization in Europe. The CPN Maoist currently after the jump into the ‘mainstream’ politics played an initiative role in introducing a Maoist Communist Party in Bhutan as well. The new party in Bhutan is said to have greatly inspired from the Nepalese People’s War and want to have a same practice there.