Rendezvous With Rebels: Journey to Meet India's Most Wanted Men

Review of Rajeev Bhattacharyya's Rendezvous with Rebels: Journey to Meet India's Most Wanted Man

2012

Terrorist militancy in India is explicable in terms of a constellation of factors and none is sufficient by itself to account for terrorism. Any blueprint to counter terrorism must be as multifaceted as the causes of terrorism. An integrated approach and methodology is necessary to counter the menace of terrorism in India. Apart from the economic dimension of terrorism, its ideological, cultural and psychological aspects must figure prominently in any policy agenda to combat the terrorist threat. The transformation of terrorists is impossible without a transformation of the attitude of the Government which often itself assumes the role of terrorist. The abolition of terrorism must be preceded by the abolition of state terrorism. India in the new millennium is confronted with a multiplicity of challenges the most potent among which, is the menace of terrorist militancy. Terrorism with its portentous national and international ramifications, has posed a formidable problem for policy m...

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2020

He is currently completing a second monograph that examines connections between US Intelligence activity and American diplomacy in South Asia, a nexus of the ongoing 'War on Terror'.

Social Movements are an inevitable part of societies because they become a means of socio-cultural changes through collective mobilization. The idea of ‘social mobilization’ depends on degree of unrest, social distance, monopoly over resources, ideology, and existing authority. These factors create a relative deprivation that is beginning point of any movement. Keeping in view of major debates on social movement, the present paper explores basic consequences of ‘insurgency movements’ in South Asia. In Indian context, the paper would examine what kind of factors and socio-political consequences lead to insurgency movements’, especially how an ideology takes root at one place and later on spared other parts of the territory with special reference to the ‘Mizo’ and the Nagaland – insurgency incident. The paper interprets how these movements receive support from local government with ‘vote-politics’ while after changing the regime preparators become hurdle for the nation.

Economic & Political Weekly, 2020

2013. Economy and Society 42 (3): 480-506

UNDP, 2020

Economic and Political Weekly, February 2011

Based on the memories of elderly Naga and Mizo villagers in North east India who underwent grouping in the 1950s and 1960s, this article shows how the concept of ‘success’ and failure’ used by studies of grouping is flawed, betraying a bureaucratic calculus. Whatever the overt reasons given for grouping, what underlies it is the assumption that all people in a given area, whether civilian or combatant, are potentially hostile. Grouping is thus an act of war rather than effective counterinsurgency. The article describes the process of grouping, forced labour, surveillance and starvation in the camps. While descriptions of the process of grouping are consistent, people’s opinions vary on its implications for their own lives, depending on their past and current location.

The Round Table, 2017