This is an extract from a book Yeh jangal hamara hain on the history of the revolutionary Maoist movement in Dandakaranya forests. This is a Hindi translation, by Parnandi Nirmala, of the original text in Telugu titled Ee Adavi Maade” by Shankar, a witness of the movement.

In the first chapter titled “Jangal hamara hain, jangal ki zameen hamari hain,” the author traces the importance of land struggle in the movement. “In the jungle two kinds of land struggles happened,” writes Shankar, “one, in which poor farmers had to fight with the forest officials to claim their right over forest land and the other was against the landlords who exploited the labour of adivasis to make forest land cultivable. The movement was built around reclaiming land from the landlords and distributing it among the tribals.”