Beyond Guns and Guerrillas, a Different Image of Bastar

Nine former Maoist women walking the runway in traditional Kosa silk offer a striking glimpse of Bastar’s difficult transition from insurgency to civilian life.

For decades, the dominant images emerging from Bastar has been that of Maoist terror and encounters with security forces. However, a picture that emerged earlier this month from Chhattisgarh shattered the stereotype of jungles and guns. Nine former Maoist women from Bastar recently walked a fashion runway in Raipur, dressed in traditional Kosa silk and handloom wear. The occasion was the National Handloom Day celebration at the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Auditorium. It was their first time on a ramp. But this was no ordinary fashion show. It was conceived as part of the rehabilitation and reintegration of women who had once been involved in the armed Maoist movement.

The contrast was striking. Women who had once lived in the forests of Bastar as part of an armed insurgency were now on a public stage, wearing traditional Chhattisgarh textiles and taking part in a cultural event. The significance of the image lies not in fashion but in what it says about what happens when an insurgency begins to lose its hold over people and places.

Beyond Surrender

The government increasingly describes its approach to left-wing extremism in terms of security, development and rehabilitation. In March 2025, Chhattisgarh announced a new Naxalite Surrender/Victim Relief and Rehabilitation Policy offering financial assistance, education, employment and other rehabilitation support to help surrendered Maoists return to the mainstream. The Union government's rehabilitation framework also includes vocational training and financial assistance. Surrender and rehabilitation have long been treated in government policy as part of a broader effort to reintegrate those who have exited violence into the normal social order.

But capitulation and reintegration are not the same thing. A government record can register a surrender. Reintegration is far harder to measure. A former cadre has to earn a living, rebuild social relationships, acquire skills and, eventually, be recognised for who she is today rather than what she was affiliated with yesterday. That is what made the Raipur event unusual. These women did not appear before an audience as surrender statistics. They participated in a cultural and public event centred on textiles and local identity. That distinction matters.

The Maoist conflict in Bastar has created its own visual language. The region is routinely depicted through images of heavily armed security forces moving through forests, Maoist camps, weapons seized in encounters, destroyed roads and the aftermath of attacks. While the violence of left-wing extremism is real, and its human toll has been immense, they are not the whole story.

Bastar is a region of distinctive communities, cultural traditions, crafts, forests and agriculture, increasingly connected to markets and public institutions.

The women in Kosa silk introduced another dimension to that picture. The imagery was of rehabilitation rather than conflict, culture rather than war, and civic participation rather than armed mobilisation. It does not erase the past, nor should it. Recovery is not about pretending that the past did not happen. It is about creating spaces in which people who have abandoned violence can build futures that are not permanently defined by it.

Rebuilding Identities

The participation of women makes the image especially significant. Women have played an important role in Maoist organisations in central India, with involvement ranging from logistical and organisational work to armed activity. Their rehabilitation, therefore, cannot end with separating them from an armed network. It also requires rebuilding their social and economic identities.

The image of a former Maoist woman in traditional handloom attire captures that transition with unusual clarity. She is in a public space and performing a role entirely different from that of her previous life. Clothing itself becomes a form of signalling.

Kosa silk and handloom replace the camouflage and guns associated with insurgency. The wilderness is replaced by a stage; the armed organisation by an audience; an identity associated with conflict by one associated with culture. The symbolism should not be overstated. A ramp walk cannot establish that rehabilitation is complete. But it can suggest what rehabilitation is intended to achieve.

This raises a larger question for the government: what does “mainstream” actually mean? Is it simply the absence of armed activity? Or does it mean having a job and a home, acquiring skills, accessing education, participating in the local economy and being able to live without being perpetually defined by past involvement in the insurgency?

Chhattisgarh’s rehabilitation policy recognises the importance of livelihood and employment. In areas affected by left-wing extremism, government policy has increasingly sought to connect rehabilitation with development. A former cadre who surrenders still faces a simple question: what will I do tomorrow?

The answer cannot always be another government event. It has to be a sustainable livelihood.

Handloom, handicrafts, agriculture, forest produce, construction, small businesses and vocational training can all play a role. The objective should be to turn rehabilitation assistance into economic independence. The Raipur event offers a useful example because handloom is not merely a symbol of National Handloom Day. It can connect rehabilitation with the region's existing cultural and economic fabric. When such activities are tied to real markets, training and incomes, they become more than symbolic gestures.

The celebration also carries a warning. There is a danger that glossy images of former Maoists on a runway could obscure the harder questions that begin after the applause ends.

Where will these women find jobs? What will they produce? Will their communities accept them? Do they have access to education and healthcare? Can they earn independent incomes? And, most importantly, can they eventually stop being described primarily as “former Maoists”?

That last question is particularly important. Successful rehabilitation should gradually diminish the label itself. A surrendered person should not be permanently defined by having once been a guerrilla.

The Raipur ramp walk is best understood as a metaphor, not as evidence that rehabilitation has been completed. It cannot demonstrate that the deeper social and economic problems of Bastar have been solved. It cannot erase the bloodshed of the Maoist conflict. Nor can it substitute for security, governance or development.

But it offers another way of thinking about the end of an insurgency. An armed movement does not truly disappear merely because its members lay down their weapons. Its end becomes meaningful when those who belonged to it are able to live ordinary civilian lives as farmers, mechanics, entrepreneurs, students, artisans or, for the nine women in Raipur, as models for a few minutes on a fashion runway.

The image matters because India's discussion of Naxalism has largely focused on how the state fights an insurgency. The next question should be what the state builds once the insurgency is over.

Bastar’s future cannot be defined merely by the absence of guns from its landscape. It also needs livelihoods, schools, markets, cultural institutions and opportunities. The women dressed in Kosa silk offered one glimpse of that possibility. For a few moments, the story of Bastar was not about what these women had once been. It was about what they might carry with them into the future.

(The writer is a columnist and climate researcher with experience in political analysis, ESG research and energy policy. Views personal.)