ABSTRACT
With the boom in iron ore manufacturing in the early 2000s, there has been a war raging in the forests of central India, pitting Maoist insurgents against state-backed paramilitary forces. Accordingly, this chapter considers how the Maoists and the overall struggle for environmental justice by Adivasi communities expose the inter-imperialist rivalry to control mining interests that fuel the great transition to green capitalism. In this sense, the Maoists’ eco-militancy reveals the murky understory of the green capitalist complex of which extractivism is an essential component as it spreads its appendages across the Global South. The eco-politics of the Maoists protracted war against the Indian state enables us to extend the analysis of guerrilla ecologies into the present moment while also providing a framework for understanding the struggle against extractivism from below. As such, my argument is that the history of the Maoist insurgency should be rewritten as part of an internationalist struggle for radical environmental justice.
