As usual the woman is out of her mind! She rails for
railing's sake!
In one single interview, she cannot keep her
ideological position constant. Unless being anti
something (in her case, her perception of India) can
be called an ideology.
I hear she is getting out of political writing /
speaking and into doing another book. Good for her -
Great for us!
And how dare she not mention the glorious struggles in
Assam - after mentioning the Maoists, Kashmir - even
Nagaland!
--- Chandan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
---------------------------------
ZNet| On Indiaâs Growing Violence: âItâs
Outright War and Both Sides are Choosing Their
Weaponsâ A {
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color: 0000FF; text-decoration: underline }
Sender's Comments: Read it. Will do you
good.
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ZNet | A Community of People Committed to Social
Change
On Indiaâs Growing Violence: âItâs
Outright
War and Both Sides are Choosing Their Weaponsâ
Louvre Abu Dhabi
Arab Peace Initiative
Bolivia's Morales
Road Map Overtaken
Peace, Democracy,
Iraq?
Most Recent
>From Arundhati Roy
Breaking
the News
'And His Life Should Become Extinct'
India and the U.S.
A Fury Building Up Across
India
Bush in India: Just Not Welcome
by
Arundhati Roy and Shoma Chaudhury
Tehelka
March 26, 2007
The following is an interview with Arundhati Roy,
conducted by Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka.
There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the
country. How do you read the signs? In what context
should it be read?
You donât have to be a genius to read the signs. We
have a growing middle class, reared on a diet of
radical consumerism and aggressive greed. Unlike
industrializing Western countries, which had colonies
from which to plunder resources and generate slave
labor to feed this process, we have to colonize
ourselves, our own nether parts. Weâve begun to eat
our own limbs. The greed that is being generated (and
marketed as a value interchangeable with nationalism)
can only be sated by grabbing land, water and
resources from the vulnerable. What weâre witnessing
is the most successful secessionist struggle ever
waged in independent India â the secession of the
middle and upper classes from the rest of the country.
Itâs a vertical secession, not a lateral one.
Theyâre fighting for the right to merge with the
worldâs elite somewhere up there in the
stratosphere. Theyâve managed to commandeer the
resources, the coal, the minerals, the bauxite, the
water and electricity. Now they want the land to make
more cars, more bombs, more mines â supertoys for
the new supercitizens of the new superpower. So itâs
outright war, and people on both sides are choosing
their weapons. The government and the corporations
reach for structural adjustment, the World Bank, the
ADB, FDI, friendly court orders, friendly policy
makers, help from the âfriendlyâ corporate media
and a police force that will ram all this down
peopleâs throats. Those who want to resist this
process have, until now, reached for dharnas, hunger
strikes, satyagraha, the courts and what they thought
was friendly media. But now more and more are reaching
for guns. Will the violence grow? If the âgrowth
rateâ and the Sensex are going to be the only
barometers the government uses to measure progress and
the well-being of people, then of course it will. How
do I read the signs? It isnât hard to read
sky-writing. What it says up there, in big letters, is
this: the shit has hit the fan, folks.
You once remarked that though you may not resort to
violence yourself, you think it has become immoral to
condemn it, given the circumstances in the country.
Can you elaborate on this view?
Iâd be a liability as a guerrilla! I doubt I used
the word âimmoralâ â morality is an elusive
business, as changeable as the weather. What I feel is
this: non-violent movements have knocked at the door
of every democratic institution in this country for
decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at
the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
The nba had a lot going for it â high-profile
leadership, media coverage, more resources than any
other mass movement. What went wrong? People are bound
to want to rethink strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins
to promote satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, itâs time for us to sit up and think. For
example, is mass civil disobedience possible within
the structure of a democratic nation state? Is it
possible in the age of disinformation and
corporate-controlled mass media? Are hunger strikes
umbilically linked to celebrity politics? Would
anybody care if the people of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti
mines went on a hunger strike? Irom Sharmila has been
on a hunger strike for six years. That should be a
lesson to many of us. Iâve always felt that itâs
ironic that hunger strikes are used as a political
weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway.
We are in a different time and place now. Up against a
different, more complex adversary. Weâve entered the
era of NGOs â or should I say the era of paltu shers
â in which mass action can be a treacherous
business. We have demonstrations which are funded, we
have sponsored dharnas and social forums which make
militant postures but never follow up on what they
preach. We have all kinds of âvirtualâ resistance.
Meetings against SEZs sponsored by the biggest
promoters of SEZs. Awards and grants for environmental
activism and community action given by corporations
responsible for devastating whole ecosystems. Vedanta,
a company mining bauxite in the forests of Orissa,
wants to start a university. The Tatas have two
charitable trusts that directly and indirectly fund
activists and mass movements across the country. Could
that be why Singur has drawn so much less flak than
Nandigram? Of course the Tatas and Birlas funded
Gandhi too â maybe he was our first NGO. But now we
have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a lot of
reports, but whom the sarkar is more than comfortable
with. How do we make sense of all this? The place is
crawling with professional diffusers of real political
action. âVirtualâ resistance has become something
of a liability.
There was a time when mass movements looked to the
courts for justice. The courts have rained down a
series of judgments that are so unjust, so insulting
to the poor in the language they use, they take your
breath away. A recent Supreme Court judgment, allowing
the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume construction though it
didnât have the requisite clearances, said in so
many words that the questions of corporations
indulging in malpractice does not arise! In the ERA of
corporate globalization, corporate land-grab, in the
ERA of Enron and Monsanto, Halliburton and Bechtel,
thatâs a loaded thing to say. It exposes the
ideological heart of the most powerful institution in
this country. The judiciary, along with the corporate
press, is now seen as the lynchpin of the neo-liberal
project.
In a climate like this, when people feel that they are
being worn down, exhausted by these interminable
âdemocraticâ processes, only to be eventually
humiliated, what are they supposed to do? Of course it
isnât as though the only options are binary â
violence versus non-violence. There are political
parties that believe in armed struggle but only as one
part of their overall political strategy. Political
workers in these struggles have been dealt with
brutally, killed, beaten, imprisoned under false
charges. People are fully aware that to take to arms
is to call down upon yourself the myriad forms of the
violence of the Indian State. The minute armed
struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks
and the colors fade to black and white. But when
people decide to take that step because every other
option has ended in despair, should we condemn them?
Does anyone believe that if the people of Nandigram
had held a dharna and sung songs, the West Bengal
government would have backed down? We are living in
times when to be ineffective is to support the status
quo (which no doubt suits some of us). And being
effective comes at a terrible price. I find it hard to
condemn people who are prepared to pay that price.
You have been traveling a lot on the ground â can
you give us a sense of the trouble spots you have been
to? Can you outline a few of the combat lines in these
places?
Huge question â what can I say? The military
occupation of Kashmir, neo-fascism in Gujarat, civil
war in Chhattisgarh, MNCs raping Orissa, the
submergence of hundreds of villages in the Narmada
Valley, people living on the edge of absolute
starvation, the devastation of forest land, the Bhopal
victims living to see the West Bengal government
re-wooing Union Carbide â now calling itself Dow
Chemicals â in Nandigram. I havenât been recently
to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, but we know
about the almost hundred thousand farmers who have
killed themselves. We know about the fake encounters
and the terrible repression in Andhra Pradesh. Each of
these places has its own particular history, economy,
ecology. None is amenable to easy analysis. And yet
there is connecting tissue, there are huge
international cultural and economic pressures being
brought to bear on them. How can I not mention the
Hindutva project, spreading its poison
sub-cutaneously, waiting to erupt once again? Iâd
say the biggest indictment of all is that we are still
a country, a culture, a society which continues to
nurture and practice the notion of untouchability.
While our economists number-crunch and boast about the
growth rate, a million people â human scavengers â
earn their living carrying several kilos of other
peopleâs shit on their heads every day. And if they
didnât carry shit on their heads they would starve
to death. Some fucking superpower this.
How does one view the recent State and police violence
in Bengal?
No different from police and State violence anywhere
else â including the issue of hypocrisy and
doublespeak so perfected by all political parties
including the mainstream Left. Are Communist bullets
different from capitalist ones? Odd things are
happening. It snowed in Saudi Arabia. Owls are out in
broad daylight. The Chinese government tabled a bill
sanctioning the right to private property. I donât
know if all of this has to do with climate change. The
Chinese Communists are turning out to be the biggest
capitalists of the 21st century. Why should we expect
our own parliamentary Left to be any different?
Nandigram and Singur are clear signals. It makes you
wonder â is the last stop of every revolution
advanced capitalism? Think about it â the French
Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese
Revolution, the Vietnam War, the anti-apartheid
struggle, the supposedly Gandhian freedom struggle in
India⦠whatâs the last station they all pull in
at? Is this the end of imagination?
The Maoist attack in Bijapur â the death of 55
policemen. Are the rebels only the flip side of the
State?
How can the rebels be the flip side of the State?
Would anybody say that those who fought against
apartheid â however brutal their methods â were
the flip side of the State? What about those who
fought the French in Algeria? Or those who fought the
Nazis? Or those who fought colonial regimes? Or those
who are fighting the US occupation of Iraq? Are they
the flip side of the State? This facile new
report-driven âhuman rightsâ discourse, this
meaningless condemnation game that we are all forced
to play, makes politicians of us all and leaches the
real politics out of everything. However pristine we
would like to be, however hard we polish our halos,
the tragedy is that we have run out of pristine
choices. There is a civil war in Chhattisgarh
sponsored, created by the Chhattisgarh government,
which is publicly pursing the Bush doctrine: if
youâre not with us, you are with the terrorists. The
lynchpin of this war, apart from the formal security
forces, is the Salva Judum â a government-backed
militia of ordinary people forced to take up arms,
forced to become SPOs (special police officers). The
Indian State has tried this in Kashmir, in Manipur, in
Nagaland. Tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds
of thousands tortured, thousands have disappeared. Any
banana republic would be proud of this record. Now the
government wants to import these failed strategies
into the heartland. Thousands of adivasis have been
forcibly moved off their mineral-rich lands into
police camps. Hundreds of villages have been forcibly
evacuated. Those lands, rich in iron-ore, are being
eyed by corporations like the Tatas and Essar. Mous
have been signed, but no one knows what they say. Land
acquisition has begun. This kind of thing happened in
countries like Colombia â one of the most devastated
countries in the world. While everybodyâs eyes are
fixed on the spiraling violence between
government-backed militias and guerrilla squads,
multinational corporations quietly make off with the
mineral wealth. Thatâs the little piece of theater
being scripted for us in Chhattisgarh.
Of course itâs horrible that 55 policemen were
killed. But theyâre as much the victims of
government policy as anybody else. For the government
and the corporations theyâre just cannon fodder â
thereâs plenty more where they came from. Crocodile
tears will be shed, prim TV anchors will hector us for
a while and then more supplies of fodder will be
arranged. For the Maoist guerrillas, the police and
SPOs they killed were the armed personnel of the
Indian State, the main, hands-on perpetrators of
repression, torture, custodial killings, false
encounters. Theyâre not innocent civilians â if
such a thing exists â by any stretch of imagination.
I have no doubt that the Maoists can be agents of
terror and coercion too. I have no doubt they have
committed unspeakable atrocities. I have no doubt they
cannot lay claim to undisputed support from local
people â but who can? Still, no guerrilla army can
survive without local support. Thatâs a logistical
impossibility. And the support for Maoists is growing,
not diminishing. That says something. People have no
choice but to align themselves on the side of whoever
they think is less worse.
But to equate a resistance movement fighting against
enormous injustice with the government which enforces
that injustice is absurd. The government has slammed
the door in the face of every attempt at non-violent
resistance. When people take to arms, there is going
to be all kinds of violence â revolutionary, lumpen
and outright criminal. The government is responsible
for the monstrous situations it creates.
âNaxalsâ, âMaoistsâ, âoutsidersâ: these
are terms being very loosely used these days.
âOutsidersâ is a generic accusation used in the
early stages of repression by governments who have
begun to believe their own publicity and canât
imagine that their own people have risen up against
them. Thatâs the stage the CPM is at now in Bengal,
though some would say repression in Bengal is not new,
it has only moved into higher gear. In any case,
whatâs an outsider? Who decides the borders? Are
they village boundaries? Tehsil? Block? District?
State? Is narrow regional and ethnic politics the new
Communist mantra? About Naxals and Maoists â wellâ¦
India is about to become a police state in which
everybody who disagrees with whatâs going on risks
being called a terrorist. Islamic terrorists have to
be Islamic â so thatâs not good enough to cover
most of us. They need a bigger catchment area. So
leaving the definition loose, undefined, is effective
strategy, because the time is not far off when weâll
all be called Maoists or Naxalites, terrorists or
terrorist sympathizers, and shut down by people who
donât really know or care who Maoists or Naxalites
are. In villages, of course, that has begun â
thousands of people are being held in jails across the
country, loosely charged with being terrorists trying
to overthrow the state. Who are the real Naxalites and
Maoists? Iâm not an authority on the subject, but
hereâs a very rudimentary potted history.
The Communist Party of India, the CPI, was formed in
1925. The CPI (M), or what we now call the CPM â the
Communist Party Marxist â split from the CPI in 1964
and formed a separate party. Both, of course, were
parliamentary political parties. In 1967, the CPM,
along with a splinter group of the Congress, came to
power in West Bengal. At the time there was massive
unrest among the peasantry starving in the
countryside. Local CPM leaders â Kanu Sanyal and
Charu Mazumdar â led a peasant uprising in the
district of Naxalbari which is where the term
Naxalites comes from. In 1969, the government fell and
the Congress came back to power under Siddhartha
Shankar Ray. The Naxalite uprising was mercilessly
crushed â Mahasweta Devi has written powerfully
about this time. In 1969, the CPI (ML) â Marxist
Leninist â split from the CPM. A few years later,
around 1971, the CPI (ML) devolved into several
parties: the CPM-ML (Liberation), largely centered in
Bihar; the CPM-ML (New Democracy), functioning for the
most part out of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar; the CPM-ML
(Class Struggle) mainly in Bengal. These parties have
been generically baptised âNaxalitesâ. They see
themselves as Marxist Leninist, not strictly speaking
Maoist. They believe in elections, mass action and â
when absolutely pushed to the wall or attacked â
armed struggle. The MCC â the Maoist Communist
Centre, at the time mostly operating in Bihar â was
formed in 1968. The PW, Peopleâs War, operational
for the most part in Andhra Pradesh, was formed in
1980. Recently, in 2004, the MCC and the pw merged to
form the CPI (Maoist) They believe in outright armed
struggle and the overthrowing of the State. They
donât participate in elections. This is the party
that is fighting the guerrilla war in Bihar, Andhra
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
The Indian State and media largely view the Maoists as
an âinternal securityâ threat. Is this the way to
look at them?
Iâm sure the Maoists would be flattered to be viewed
in this way.
The Maoists want to bring down the State. Given the
autocratic ideology they take their inspiration from,
what alternative would they set up? Wouldnât their
regime be an exploitative, autocratic, violent one as
well? Isnât their action already exploitative of
ordinary people? Do they really have the support of
ordinary people?
I think itâs important for us to acknowledge that
both Mao and Stalin are dubious heroes with murderous
pasts. Tens of millions of people were killed under
their regimes. Apart from what happened in China and
the Soviet Union, Pol Pot, with the support of the
Chinese Communist Party (while the West looked
discreetly away), wiped out two million people in
Cambodia and brought millions of people to the brink
of extinction from disease and starvation. Can we
pretend that Chinaâs cultural revolution didnât
happen? Or that millions of people in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe were not victims of labor camps,
torture chambers, the network of spies and informers,
the secret police. The history of these regimes is
just as dark as the history of Western imperialism,
except for the fact that they had a shorter life-span.
We cannot condemn the occupation of Iraq, Palestine
and Kashmir while we remain silent about Tibet and
Chechnya. I would imagine that for the Maoists, the
Naxalites, as well as the mainstream Left, being
honest about the past is important to strengthen
peopleâs faith in the future. One hopes the past
will not be repeated, but denying that it ever
happened doesnât help inspire confidenceâ¦
Nevertheless, the Maoists in Nepal have waged a brave
and successful struggle against the monarchy. Right
now, in India, the Maoists and the various
Marxist-Leninist groups are leading the fight against
immense injustice here. They are fighting not just the
State, but feudal landlords and their armed militias.
They are the only people who are making a dent. And I
admire that. It may well be that when they come to
power, they will, as you say, be brutal, unjust and
autocratic, or even worse than the present government.
Maybe, but Iâm not prepared to assume that in
advance. If they are, weâll have to fight them too.
And most likely someone like myself will be the first
person theyâll string up from the nearest tree â
but right now, it is important to acknowledge that
they are bearing the brunt of being at the forefront
of resistance. Many of us are in a position where we
are beginning to align ourselves on the side of those
who we know have no place for us in their religious or
ideological imagination. Itâs true that everybody
changes radically when they come to power â look at
Mandelaâs ANC. Corrupt, capitalist, bowing to the
IMF driving the poor out of their homes â honoring
Suharto, the killer of hundreds of thousands of
Indonesian Communists, with South Africaâs highest
civilian award. Who would have thought it could
happen? But does this mean South Africans should have
backed away from the struggle against apartheid? Or
that they should regret it now? Does it mean Algeria
should have remained a French colony, that Kashmiris,
Iraqis and Palestinians should accept military
occupation? That people whose dignity is being
assaulted should give up the fight because they
canât find saints to lead them into battle?
Is there a communication breakdown in our society?
Yes.
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