'She Goes to War-Women Militants of India' review: Up in arms

What drives women to move against the state

When one hears of militancy, the first image that springs to mind is a gun-toting man. What about the women who are part of these movements? This is where Rashmi Saksena’s She Goes To War provides an answer. Featuring 16 women militants from five Indian states — Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland — the book offers a perspective on what drives these women to move against the state.

What is interesting is that Saksena lets the women's voice dominate. More important, she does not judge them for their decisions or paint them as victims who were forced into something against their wishes. The women are matter-of-fact about why they did what they did, whether it is Ruhi crossing over to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir or Bhima becoming a Naxal motivator in Chhattisgarh or Avuli Chishi Swu making an arduous trek from Nagaland to China for training.

The first-person narrative also drives home the differences in attitudes to the women. In Kashmir, Ruhi thinks she will be trained in arms and be on the frontline. Instead her friends are kidnapped and, after an aborted escape attempt, she accepts an offer of marriage from her trainer as “a way to escape humiliation.” In contrast are the accounts of the women from the Northeast who were accepted as partners. Avuli talks of trekking into China without realising that it would take months. When the women got their monthly periods, “we trudged with blood on our legs and stained uniforms.” The men “ignored the telltale patches, pretending they had not seen the bloodstains to save us embarrassment.”

Chhattisgarh presents a slightly different perspective. The women here seem to see joining the Naxal movement as a break from their otherwise dreary life. When they get married and have children, they give up arms, surrender and get back to a ‘normal life’. Many of these women are now employed with the State government and even with the police.

However, the book is let down by a lack of background. The militant movement in each State has its own complexities and history. A reader with no idea of the background will find the going tedious and repetitive. Also the quotes from the Kashmiri women and the tribals of Chhattisgarh are presented in transliteration of Hindi. First, Hindi is not the language of either State. Second, there was no need for a transliteration and then translation. The latter would have done just as well and the reading experience would have been better. But these are minor irritants in what is finally an interesting and readable book.

She Goes to War: Women Militants of India ; Rashmi Saksena, Speaking Tiger Books, ₹499.