Introduction

Summary

In 2008, two years after the end of the Maoist People's War, one still had to walk above the monsoon clouds to get to the village of Thabang—the capital of the Maoist base area of Nepal during the civil war of 1996–2006. With the monsoon in full swing and landslides in full force, the short stretch of the unpaved motorable road leading to Thabang from the nearest bazaar town had to be trodden on foot. Two days of walking would bring one to a scenic village on a plateau about 2,000 metres above sea level, nestled among the hills reaching much higher. Red flags flying over the village gates marked the territory of Thabang as belonging to the Maoist stronghold. With electricity still non-existent, except in the Maoist Women's Model Village in one of the hamlets, and with a few landline phones being the only means of reaching the wider world, Thabang in 2008 could still be characterized as a ‘remote’ place (see Figures I.1– I.4).

In 2008, the traces of the People's War and the Maoist regime of governance were everywhere: the rustic ‘hotel’ was run by members of the Maoist commune; the village medical shop was run by one of the Maoist ‘barefoot doctors’, part of the medical brigades who took care of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) fighters during the war; the strongest drink one would get from the Maoist-run cooperative ‘hotel’ was tea, generously spiced with cardamom and black pepper, since commercially brewed alcohol was still banned in the entire village (see Figures I.5 and I.6). The Maoist commune, founded at the height of the conflict in 2004, was still full of life, its members working in the communal fields and developing ideas for organic farming. Children from the main village and the commune were still attending the Maoist Model School, where Maoist textbooks were used to instil communist values in children right from the first grade. The names of some of the children in the Maoist Model School—‘Sunmukti’ (freed from gold), ‘Yuddha’ (war), ‘Sangharsha’ (struggle)—served as a living memory of a set of values that preoccupied the generation of their parents, who had participated in the Maoist revolutionary endeavour only a few years ago.