Ideology and Right-wing Militia Governance: The anti-Maoist Salwa Judum militias in India

What is the impact of ideology on militia governance? This paper analyzes the literature on ideology and insurgency (Gutiérrez-Sanín & Wood 2014) and applying it to militias, to analyze how right-wing ideology shapes militia-civilian interactions. I introduce an original typology mapping how militia-state linkages and militia-society ideological alignment shape patterns of violence and governance. The paper uses a comparative framework examining right-wing paramilitaries fighting leftist insurgencies, focusing on the AUC in Colombia, the Rondas Campesinas in Peru, and a detailed plausibility probe of the Salwa Judum militias in India, to show that these right-wing conservative militias engage in coercive governance (Reno 2015) that selectively benefits ideologically aligned landed elites and the state, but uses violence and provides “negative governance” to the rural peasants who are poorer and often support the leftist rebels.