Thanks, Raghu. One striking thing in the Roy article is the distance portrayed between whatever is actually going on in the tribal areas and what gets into the mainstream media, in light of the filter of abject government lies.
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:17 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Max Sawicky <[email protected]> wrote: > >> No redeeming virtues of the Maoists in this situation? >> >> Looks like a replay of how the US Gov dealt with Native Americans, and >> how settler states and imperial powers deal with indigenous peoples. >> Expropriate their land and resources, lie to them continuously and >> shamelessly, relocate them, exterminate them in the end. Accurate in the >> Indian context? >> > > > > Several thoughts on the Indian Maoists ("Naxalites"). > > - The "mainstream media" discourse in India is dominated by the educated > urban middle class. This is basically the top 30% or so of the Indian > poopulation which has done really well from neoliberalism (which is a huge > number of people), but does not include the ultra-rich 1%. > > - The rebels operate over a vast area, but are nevertheless very much a > regional movement in India. The only contact most middle-class Indians have > with this insurgency is what they read in the papers. It is quite abstract > like the long-running insurgencies in Kashmir and in the North-east. Not > all that different from what Iraq is to ordinary US citizens. > > - Among this politically powerful middle class in India, the Naxals are > mostly regarded with fear and loathing. The more progressive elements of > this class may admit some sympathy with the plight of the tribal > population, but doesn't go much farther than that. > > - Arundhati Roy herself is far to the left of this dominant mainstream > discourse. As such she is too easily dismissed as an extremist, not that > different from what Noam Chomsky represents in mainstream US discourse. > > - Here's the take of one of the leading bourgeoisie intellectual and > historian Ramachandra Guha on the Naxal rebellion. Guha is always worth > reading because his views are much more representative of the middle-class > opinion in India than Roy's. > http://ramachandraguha.in/archives/tag/naxalites > > - Apart from the Naxals, there have been many other smaller-scale > insurgencies often associated with charismatic personalities all of whom > are lumped as "bandits" by the Indian state. The most famous of these are > Phoolan Devi and Veerappan. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoolan_Devi > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veerappan > > - The tribals and settled populations of India have co-existed in a tense > relationship for centuries. So this is not really like the US expension > into native American territory. However, the exploitation of the tribal > regions and resources seems to have been very substantially intensified in > recent years, so quite possibly this is a whole new phase in this history. > > > > -raghu. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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