The Lowland was one of my first picks for my summer reading list. Having studied Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake in English class, I knew I enjoyed her prose and incredibly developed characters, so I was excited to see what her newer novel had to offer.
While The Lowland bears many parallels to her other novels and short stories, with tropes of Indian immigrants navigating complex family and romantic relationships with a backdrop of New England academia, it was set apart by its Naxalite communism component.
The novel follows many generations of a family, beginning with two brothers, Subhash and Udayan. Inseparable and opposed, the brothers grew up together, both incredibly smart, but with deeply contrasting personalities. Subhash is timid, faithful, and obedient, while Udayan is bold, curious, and revolutionary. As the two grow, Subhash pursues academia, studying at a local college before moving to Rhode Island for graduate school, to continue his research on marine biology. Udayan continues his studies, but for him, college is a space to meet other revolutionaries, and he becomes deeply engrossed in the Naxalite communist uprising that was spreading across India. As he takes greater and greater roles in the movement, carrying out violent acts, the police search furiously for those in the movement. Eventually, this leads to his execution; shot in the lowland in front of his mother, father, and newly pregnant wife, Gauri.
Seeking to free Udayan’s wife from a life of solitude and rejection with her in-laws, Subhash marries her and brings her with him to Rhode Island. As the story continues, we see their child grow up, unaware of her true parentage, while Gauri grapples with her new life and the loss of Udayan. As the story concludes, we see the fourth generation of the family as their daughter, Bela, has a child of her own.
Having finished the book, I found the prose and characters to be quintessential Lahiri, but the Naxalite backdrop unexpectedly sparse. While it was detailed in bits and pieces, through snippets the brothers heard over the radio, or anecdotes Udayan offered in his letters to Subhash, readers were largely left in the dark. Towards the end of the book, Gauri had the opportunity to share her experiences with a researcher studying the Naxalite movement, and I hoped this would be a moment of resolution, where we could learn more about the movement, and see Gauri share her story, but she declined, pretending she had no affiliation with it. I found myself disappointed, and wanting to learn more about the history, leaders, and outcome of the movement.
After reading other reviews, I found other readers asking the same question, or simply noting the lack. Taking the research upon myself, I looked into the Naxalite movement.
Beginning with the Naxalbari uprising of 1967, when peasants in Naxalbari, West Bengal revolted, supported by the Marxist Communist Party of India. The movement, led by Charu Majumdar and inspired by Chinese Maoism, took its name from the town of its origin. They sought to seize land from their wealthy, oppressive feudal landowners. With this, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of India was formed, and many students began to join the Naxalites. Here, we begin to see where Udayan fit into the movement as, in the book, we watched him travel to West Bengal, living with the peasant farmers, hiding in sheds, and living off little food to understand their experiences and better devote himself to the movement.
Based on eight documents written by the Indian Maoist Charu Majumdar, Naxalism’s principal values were to address the wealth disparity between feudal landowners and peasants through violent struggle and revolution. They believed the Indian constitution did not adequately protect the poor peasants, allowing them to suffer, forever tied to their lands without owning them. Motivated by their severe impoverishment, many peasants who lacked electricity, clean water, and other basic services from the Indian government threw their support behind the Naxalites, sometimes receiving aid and social services in return.
The Indian government responded harshly to the rise of Naxalism. The Indian Armed Forces were mobilized in support of the police, and, in 1971, Operation Steeplechase was launched. This was a large army-police operation carried out over two months in West Bengal, where they engaged in “area domination”, committing many human rights violations and arresting, interrogating, and killing members of the insurgency. This operation, though not explicitly named in The Lowland, was evidently what led to Udayan’s murder, and it effectively crushed the Naxalite movement. Despite this, Indian communism persisted and experienced resurgences in the 1990s, early 2000s, and fairly recently. In 2019, there were numerous Maoist attacks targeting state forces, such as the burning of 27 state vehicles and varied attacks on police officers.
History Unfiltered 
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