This research is set within the five-decade long internal conflict between the Indian state and the Maoist insurgents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in central India, it seeks to understand the intended and unintended consequences of the Indian state’s policy of surrender and rehabilitation of ex-guerrillas. Through participant observation, interviews and sharing of space, the study explores the linkages between the policy of disarmament and historically marginalised Adivasi (indigenous) communities. It studies the inter-play of identity and power assertion vis-à-vis the state’s (mis) interpretation of disarmament and reintegration and its linkages with state-society structures that perpetuate marginality. The study employs methods of criticality to understand the everyday lived experiences of individuals and communities who are influenced by this ‘surrender policy’, as they continuingly endure pervasive violence on them, and their homeland over past seven decades of history of independent India. The study intersects the sub-disciplines of critical peace studies and the study of South Asia. The project attempts to unpack the conceptualisation of disarmament in instances of protracted low-intensity internal armed conflict. Breaking away from traditional research into disarmament that follows a linear trajectory of conflict mediation or resolution, peace agreements and DDR (disarmament demobilisation and reintegration), the study embraces the call for a ‘local turn’ in critical peace and conflict studies. ‘Surrender’ in this instance, does not come at the end of a ‘peace’ process, and the boundaries between the categories of war, counterinsurgency and peacebuilding are often fluid from the ‘local’ perspective. The research focusses on moving beyond the state-centric discourse on disarmament and shifts the reference of analysis to the community whose members become the primary actors in the processes of disarmament and reintegration and peace-making. Set against the backdrop of forms of subaltern resistance to traditional state led assertions of power, the Maoist guerrilla isn’t just a revolutionary to be reformed but is also an agent restricted by the overarching structural oppression through state practices. Embedded in historical marginalization, Adivasis form the large guerrilla armies as well as being the custodians of their land and forests. Analysis of the Maoist conflict is therefore restricted by imagining it as a conflict between two actors. The counterinsurgency and ‘winning hearts and minds’ strategy translated in the state’s practices of violence management inadvertently views the Adivasis as ‘the Other’— distant from ideas of modernity and political agency. Deep-rooted notions of liberal peacebuilding meanwhile ignore Adivasi agency altogether. The study makes an argument for acknowledging Adivasi and indigenous political and lifeworld, which is resisting structural inequality and the ‘civilising project’ of the state. This requires us to deliberate about the pitfalls of liberal peacebuilding—where local agency is sutured into modernity through practices of disarmament as an aid to counterinsurgency practices.