[A response from Niloufar Bhagvat, posted in other forum]:
Dear Arundhati ,
You know me more by reputation than personally . You
are being subjected to a WITCH HUNT because you have
dared to expose the nature of the MOUs and the poor financial
returns to the government exchequer and to the Indigenous
people affected losing their hearth and homes not because
you are a Maoist . They do not care if you are a Bolshevik ,
a Communist , a Maoist so long as you do not write or
speak the TRUTH .
It is not the romantic habitat of the tribal people
who are ALSO THE PEOPLE OF INDIA which bothers
them , it is when you expose that just as Judges have
to recuse themselves from decisions in respect of Petitions
/Cases in which they have or had an interest , similar probity
is required from everyone taking an oath to protect the
Constitution of India ( which I still believe in ) despite the
fact that it is being openly flouted .
I admire your courage and your innocence , your freedom
from fear . Though I believe that any movement which has
to succeed must create the kind of consensus among the
widest section of people which Mahatma Gandhi created.
He was not perfect which political leader is . But he was
fearless , speaking his mind out at the degeneration and
lack of political freedom and the decay of India and its
villages .
You may be aware that EN RAMMOHAN FORMER
DG , BSF and an expert in Counterinsurgency warfare
has described the condition of the tribal people and
peasantry in the affected areas just as you have done ,
the only difference is that he does not capture the beauty
of the forests , the survival against all odds , the innocence,
the ignorance among people called Maoists of who Mao
was , which you have done . But the abject conditions and
injustice has been referred to by him . He has castigated
the failure of land reforms , the exploitation of adivasis and
their deprival of forest rights and trampling of the rights of
the SC /STs for centuries by the upper caste as the main reason
articulating as you did :
" The point is that in any insurgency , people take to guns
because they feel they have no choice . In this case the tribal
are being taught by the Maoists to fight for their rights....."
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU WROTE
AND SAID AND WHAT MR.RAMHOHAN STATES IS THAT
YOU DESCRIBE THE FORESTS , THE PEOPLE , THEIR WAY
OF LIFE , THEIR EMBRACING A PATH FOR WHAT THEY
SEE AS SURVIVAL IN LITERARY AND WHAT IS TERMED
AS ROMANTIC LANGUAGE .
The difference is that you homed on to the MOUs and the
necessity of recusing oneself from decisions because of
past associations . However you are in good company .
The eminent Civil Servant D.BANDHOPADHYAY WHO
IMPLEMENTED THE FIRST PHASE OF LAND REFORMS
IN WEST BENGAL WHICH RESULTED IN THE LONGEVITY
OF THE LEFT FRONT GOVERNMENT UNTIL THEY
DRIFTED .........D.BANDOPADHYAY REFERS TO
A MISSION SENT BY THE COUNCIL ON SOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT IN THE LATE NINETIES COMPRISING
HIMSELF , MUKCHUND DUBEY AND B.N.YUGANDHAR
none of them so called Maoists . This mission was shocked to find
that in the Koraput -Raigadha area of Orissa , the district
administration
was "subverting the law' to acquire lands for giant national and
transnational aluminium producting companies. When the tribals
organized peaceful resistance police repression was unleashed .
To-morrow if we turn the people of the cities on to the street
and take away their livelihood indiscriminately where will they
go and what will they do
Both D. Bandyopadhyay and B.D. Sharma who are
specialists on the peasantry and tribal questions in India
have written extensively . We cannot write of tribal
India as much as we cannot write of urban India . The
indiscriminate seizure and conversion of forest and agricultural
land will create an enormous food and water crisis . The
advocates of indiscriminate urbanisation and elimination
of all tribal people and small peasants except us all
to EAT INDUSTRIES AND MINERALS .
The Maoist represent the tribal people and the
peasantry who consider themselves disinherited
by present policies . No one does anything wrong
or subversive by reporting on their situation and
what they believe . Least of all a writer of international
repute with a known humane viewpoint .
I would like to invite your attention to
what Justice Krishna Iyer has written
in the Hindu on the Opinion page of
14th July 2010 . He has pronounced a
verdict on the Political and Legal system.
Yours was a literary verdict , his is LEGAL
and cannot be ignored .
You are precious to us like Dr. Binayak
Sen as you both express what we cannot
immediately see , as the reports are from
regions which are inaccessible . I have walked
in the tribal regions of Maharashtra and Gujarat
as a teenager and then as a young adult , I know
what you feel the sheer innocence, the vulnerability,
the generosity which know no limits ,the beauty
of the homes and huts , the community spirit
where everything is shared, the freedom from
greed , the trees in all their splendour ,
the abandon of the dancing ...................a
part of my life which is most precious , which
I relive secretly . To have met such people and
seen the beauty of their habitat , lakes and waterways
then pristine pure .......and I remember the curse of
the NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS ON THE
WHITEMAN WHO DESTROYED THEIR ECOLOGY
AND ASKED THEM TO SELL BROOKS IN WHICH
THEY COULD HEAR THE VOICES OF THEIR ANCESTORS.
A warm embrace . You did right by informing us . The
task of building a wider consensus to save India from
toxic and malignant growth remains .With all those suffering
injustice reaching out to each other for a truly democratic
society when representatives are not purchased by financial
power . So we too Arundhati are dreaming dreams .
If we stand with the people of Iraq against occupation
we have to stand with people who are evicted
from their forests, homes and villages without
any alternative . This too is occupation as
the Constitution of India prohibits seizure of
the land of peasants and the tribal people .It is
mandatory for the tribal and peasant communities
to have a stake in all development which is beneficial
and not MALIGNANT .
Apologies for calling you a Romantic , I have
been one for a greater part of my life and it is
this quality which sometimes brought out the
best in me .Admiral Bhagwat sends you a salute
and his warm regards .
But remember we still need to put in place
balanced development policies which include
industrialization and agriculture and forestry
with forest rights . Who can preserve the
forests better than those who know them .
A WARM EMBRACE . IN SOLIDARITY .
Please read Justice Krishna Iyer ( 95) and
E.N.RAMMOHAN and all the others
who will soon have to be rounded up
AS SUBVERSIVE .My mother has
added to the list , she says that Mahatma
Gandhi was a Leftist and she should know
having been a follower in her youth !!!!!!
About literature , a famous revolutionary
once said that Tolstoy had described
the condition of the Russian peasantry
better than any political leader and he
stood for an alliance between working
people and the peasantry and all nationalities
including people in far away regions surviving
on hunting , something our Left Front Communists
have forgotten.
We are a very diverse country and this
diversity itself is a celebration of life
in multicoloured hues while the Companies
and Corporations seek to deprive us of
ALL ROMANCE OF LIFE AND
DIFFERENT LIVELIHOODS AND
HABITATS ..........IT MUST ALL BE
TURNED INTO CEMENT , MINERALS
LIKE THE MIDAS TOUCH OF GOLD ,
every mountain , every stream , every
forest glade , every island , every fish ,
every bird , every tree , every windswept
place ...........
Niloufer Bhagwat
On Jun 15, 3:37 pm, Venugopalan K M <[email protected]> wrote:
> Operation Green Hunt's Urban Avatar
>
> By Arundhati Roy
>
> 14 June, 2010
> The Dawn
>
> "..The day after the meeting, the Press Trust of India (PTI) put out a
> brazenly concocted account of what I had said.
>
> The PTI report was first posted by the Indian Express online on June
> 3rd 2010 at 13.35 pm. The headline said: "Arundhati backs Maoists,
> dares authorities to arrest her.."
>
> "...Surprisingly the one-day-old report was published by several
> newspapers in several languages and broadcast by TV channels on June
> 4th, many of whose own reporters had covered the event accurately the
> previous day and obviously knew the report to be false. The Economic
> Times said: "Publicity seeking Arundhati Roy wants to be Aung San Su
> Kyi". I'm curious - why would newspapers and TV channels want to
> publish the same news twice, once truthfully and then falsely?
>
> "..That same evening (June 4th), at about seven O'clock, two men on a
> motorcycle drove up to my home in Delhi and began hurling stones at
> the window. One stone nearly hit a small child playing on the street.
> Angry people gathered and the men fled. Within minutes, a Tata Indica
> arrived with a man who claimed to be a reporter from Zee TV, asking if
> this was "Arundhati Roy's house" and whether there had been trouble.
> Clearly this was a set up, a staged display of 'popular anger' to be
> fed to our barracuda-like TV channels. Fortunately for me, that
> evening their script went wrong. But there was more to come. On June
> 5th the Dainik Bhaskar in Raipur carried a news item "Himmat ho to AC
> kamra chhod kar jungle aaye Arundhati" (If she has the guts Arundhati
> should leave her airconditioned room and come to the jungle) in which
> Vishwaranjan, the Director General of Police of Chhattisgarh
> challenged me to face the police by joining the Maoists in the forest.
> Imagine that- the police DGP and me, Man to Man. Not to be outdone, a
> Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Chhattisgarh, Ms Poonam Chaturvedi
> announced to the press that I should be shot down at a public
> crossroad, and that other traitors like me should be given the death
> sentence. (Perhaps someone should tell her that this sort of direct
> incitement to violence is an offense under the Indian Penal Code.)
> Mahendra Karma, Chief of the murderous 'peoples' militia the Salwa
> Judum which is guilty of innumerable acts of rape and murder, asked
> for legal action to be taken against me. On Tuesday June 8th the Hindi
> daily Nayi Duniya reported that complaints have been filed against me
> in two separate police stations in Chhattisgarh, Bhata Pada and Teli
> Bandha, by private individuals objecting to my "open support for the
> Maoists.
>
> Is this what Military Intelligence calls psyops (psychological
> operations)? Or is it the urban avatar of Operation Green Hunt? In
> which a government news agency helps the home-ministry to build up a
> file on those it wants to put away, inventing evidence when it can't
> find any? Or is PTI trying to deliver the more well-known among us to
> the lynch mob so that the government does not have to risk its
> international reputation by arresting or eliminating us? Or is it just
> a way of forcing a crude polarization, a ridiculous dumbing down of
> the debate-if you're not with "us" you are a Maoist? Not just a
> Maoist, but a stupid, arrogant, loudmouthed Maoist. Whatever it is,
> it's dangerous, and shameless, but it isn't new. Ask any Kashmiri, or
> any young Muslim being held as a "terrorist" without any evidence
> except baseless media reports. Ask Mohammed Afzal, sentenced to death
> to "satisfy the collective conscience of society."
>
> Now that Operation Green Hunt has begun to knock on the doors of
> people like myself, imagine what's happening to activists and
> political workers who are not well known. To the hundreds that are
> being jailed, tortured and eliminated. June 26th is the thirty-fifth
> anniversary of the Emergency. Perhaps the Indian people should declare
> (because the government certainly won't) that this country is in a
> state of Emergency. (On second thoughts, did it ever go away?) This
> time censorship is not the only problem. The manufacture of news is an
> even more serious one.."
>
> http://www.countercurrents.org/roy140610.htm
>
> --
>
> You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot
> build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you
> will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a
> whole.
> -AMBEDKAR
>
> http://venukm.blogspot.com
>
> http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
>
> http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
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