Thursday, November 11, 2010
Understanding Arundhati Roy on Kashmir
By P. Chacko Joseph
October 26th, 2010
Frontier India
When I was a kid, my father had annual leave to go to wherever he wishes. Normally, he would choose to go to his home in Kerala. For me it was the dreaded month of the year. Take a train to Kerala where there was hardly any electricity, mosquito and other insect bites, trying to talk in Malayalam and worse to eat Kerala Fat Rice. I admit there were joys too. The Kerala Porrota and egg pattice were my favorite things. I have / had a cousin too. We have had many arguments together. The first ever was when he told me that sun revolves around Kerala. I asked him how? He then traced out with his finger pointing up in the sky on how sun rose and how it set down. I told him it rises similar way in the place my father was posted. And it has been same in the places I had been with him. He explained that, what I saw was sun from far rising and setting in Kerala. I had another doubt. I asked him if it goes the other way, then there must be another place behind Kerala. He told me that the place was empty.
I held the belief, until I got to study solar system. I was devastated. I challenged my cousin during my next annual leave. He told me that this is what I get via capitalistic system of education. Unfortunately for him, he too had the similar geography book on his table. He reasoned that if he does not write the same things in the book, the capitalistic system wouldn’t let him pass. This was the second time heard the word “Capitalistic.” So, I asked him what it was. He explained that an imperialistic country America dictated what we studied. True, those days American hand and profits were bad words.
Next trip, he told me was how Indian ministers were bought by imperialistic America. Especially Morarji Desai and Indra Gandhi. He said the only way to save India was via communism. He spoke passionately about his Chairman Mao. Here, I differed. I said its an enemy country. He said I was foolish. He gave me 3 scenarios. China should capture US; Communist should take over India; or India should be divided into small countries. This is the only way forward he said.
Next time, he said that “You know, kerala politics directly effects US politics!” I was laughing uncontrollably.
Slowly, as we both matured, I used to give him solid arguments back. For example, “I will buy you a ticket to your fatherland China.”
Once he showed me some chocolates his UNGLE (uncle) brought from Gulf. I told him that Mars and M&M were from imperialistic US. He should not eat it and I can make a sacrifice by eating it for him. He said that, since his UNGLE brought it from Gulf, its ok, he can eat it.
But, as I grew up, and came in contact with other Keralites, I realised that I was up against some kind of romanticism. Also, they say that every Kerala child is born with a red (communist) flag in the hand. I stopped arguing. Besides, me and my cousin got busy with our own lives. He was practicing Law as I last heard.
Similarly, on yahoo chat (late 1990), I went into a mallu chat room. I introduced myself as from Dubai. The mallu crowd was on me with words like paradesi and other unmentionable words. The funny part was, I told them that I can get people visas to Dubai and every one changed the tune. I was a chat room hero.
People like Arundhati Roy have grown in this kind of environment. They live in their own fantasy land that mix with communist ideas. Just that this one is famous, got some money from imperialist publisher (like my cousins UNGLES chocolates) and a mike to talk into. Arundhati just mouthed off what could be an “average Kerala talk.” The kind when they discuss politics.
This talk is no different from CPI (M) support for china or Baglihar Dam. You can understand why Prakash Karat and Arundhati Roy are so famous in Srinagar. These people have been picked up by the powers that be for their idiocracy.
Monday, November 08, 2010
DemocracyNow Interviews know-nothing Arundhati Roy..AGAIN!
Amy Goodman, fawns Arundhati Roy over know nothing, attention seeker from India. This woman, who's only claim to fame is having written one measly book is a darling of the western left and an "authentic" source when they want a comment on India. What qualifies this woman to address, economic, social, cultural issues is anyone's guess, but she's brown, looks good and allows the left to bash India without seeming racist.
While this interview was being recorded, These "Maoist rebels" killed eight people in Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. Four killings, including that of a woman, were reported from West Midnapore district in Bengal, where Maoists ‘punished’ people for defying their 24-hour shutdown against US President Barack Obama's visit. The woman Sandhya Mahato, was killed because her son was in the police and she had been warned that he should give up his job. Her husband was also missing.
In Jharkhand, Maoists blew up Sadbahani railway station in Palamau district and two government buildings. In Bihar they blew up railway track near Kurhani railway station in the Hajipur-Muzaffarpur section resulting in 10 wagons of a goods train derailing. Maoists also torched trucks and mobile phone towers.
In Orissa, about 60 rebels stormed into the Gamphakunda school premises under Kalimela police station and blew up a newly-constructed two-story school building that to benefit children from to the lowest castes..
All this to protest US President Obama's visit. In a written statement, they call him "the gang leader of US imperialism" and the world's "Enemy Number One," and urge people to use the slogan "Go back Obama."
Arundhati has been a vocal supporter for these murders. She also recently vocally supported an Islamic fundamentalist who wants Kashmir to become an Islamic state and separate from secular India because he claims, Islam does not allow Muslims to live under non-Islamic conditions.
The only thing connecting these two violent movements, one Islamic fundamentalist and the other communist, with are both causes supported ardently by Arundhati Roy are their anti-India stance.
How can the secular Western Left support and cheer this woman?
Acclaimed Indian Author Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, Poverty and India’s Maoist Rebel
AMY GOODMAN: We move now to Arundhati Roy. Maoist rebels in India called for a strike Monday to protest President Obama’s visit. The Indian media reports, according to the police, Maoists blew up a new school building this morning and killed four people in the eastern Indian states or Orissa and Bihar.
Well, last month, I had the chance to sit down with author Arundhati Roy in London about the Maoists in India. But first I began by asking her for her assessment of President Obama.
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, I think the big lesson today is that—look at the richest country in the world, America, having attacked and made war on the poorest countries but not being able to win those wars. You know, they have not been able to win. And here’s the lesson. You know, you couldn’t win Vietnam, you couldn’t win Afghanistan, couldn’t win Iraq, cannot win Kashmir. You know, there has to be—Obama, I mean, he’s involved in all these war crimes. It’s not as though—you know, he has expanded the war in Afghanistan, moved it into Pakistan. You know, Pakistan is a country that is in such a lot of trouble because of this. You know, right when 9/11 happened, I remember writing saying you forced them to raise the Taliban in their midst, and now you want them to garret the pit that they grew in their own backyard. It’s going to lead to civil war. You know, you didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. And that has happened, you know? America has interfered with Pakistan from the beginning, and Pakistan now paying a terrible price for that. I mean, I don’t know if it had a choice, when—you know, when America wants to interfere, it doesn’t give anyone a choice. So it’s destroyed Afghanistan, it’s destroyed Pakistan, it’s destroyed Iraq. And it will destroy India, if—because India doesn’t have the spine. The Indian government is just willingly allowing this to happen, the U.S. to dictate everything. So, today, Obama, I mean, whatever he’s doing in America is a separate thing. But certainly outside, he’s no less of—I mean, his foreign policy is not all that different from George Bush, you know? And if they start a war in Iran, they won’t win it. You know, I mean, it’s not possible. These wars cannot be won. So it’s about time somebody realized that and decided to change the way the world thinks about war and thinks about weapons and thinks about putting soldiers on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati, since we last spoke, assassination has taken place—well, at least one—in India. Can you talk about what happened?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* It was—I mean, as you know now, there’s an almost full-fledged war going on. Actually, there are several wars are going on in India. There’s Kashmir, which is up in flames now, and there’s what’s happening in the northeast. But what I’ve been writing about recently is the war on tribal people in the tribal heartland of India, where something like 200,000 paramilitary troops have been called out to really push through about, I don’t know, 200 or more memorandums of understandings with mining companies and infrastructure companies. And there’s—it’s all being fought in the name of clearing the forests of the Maoist guerrillas.
And as the war escalates, there have been, you know, attacks and counterattacks, but really people, the poorest people in the world, are in a lot of trouble now. And there was a lot of pressure to ask for peace talks, you know, because these poor people in the villages, the tribal people, are kind of under siege—no medicines, no food, no ability to come out of the forest. And so, the government actually has been—you know, because it needs to keep on this mask of being a great democracy, it sort of offers peace talks, on the one hand, and then undermines them, on the other.
But the assassination was the assassination of a man who is known as Azad. His real name was Cherukuri Rajkumar, and he is a sort of senior leader in the politburo of the Maoist party, appointed by the party to be the negotiator in the peace talks. And somehow, you know, the carrying back and forth of these documents pulled him up to the surface. And while he was traveling on a train with a young journalist, he was caught by the police and taken to the remote forests of North Telangana, a place called Adilabad, and shot. Of course, they said, you know, he was killed in an armed encounter and so on, which they always say, but post-mortem report says that he was killed at point-blank range, along with this young journalist. So, you know, my point has always been that the government needs this war. To clear the land, it needs this war. And in a situation like this, you know, just at the beginning of peace talks, if one side kills the envoy of the other side, it’s sort of reasonable to assume that that side does not want peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the Maoists—what it represents?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* See, the Communist Party of India, of course, is an old party, which has splintered into the Communist Party-Marxist. And then in 1969, there was something called the Naxalite Uprising, with the sort of precursors of what is today the Maoist party. And, you know, there’s a huge debate, of course, between the orthodox left and the Maoists, because the orthodox left more or less functions in the cities and is more or less a bourgeois party now, you know, whereas the Maoists have operated—they believe in the sort of militant armed overthrow of the Indian state. But for years, they’ve been working among the tribal people in the forests, and they do have a sort of people’s liberation guerrilla army now.
AMY GOODMAN: Of how many?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Thousands. One doesn’t know. I mean, I don’t really know the exact figure. But right now, the Maoists are just the militant end of a bandwidth of resistance movements who are fighting the onslaught of this kind of "India shining" India, which is really about grabbing land from the poor, you know, and turning them either into mines or into special economic zones. I mean, when I wrote about dams ten years ago, I was talking about the fact that just dams alone had displaced 33 million people. Today, with the reforms and the structural adjustment that the IMF demanded of our country, India, which you know—you know, in America and in Europe is known as the country with the second-highest growth rate in the world, but today, you know, we have more poor people in India than 26 of Africa’s poorest countries put together. You have—
AMY GOODMAN: More poor people in India than 26 African countries?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Africa’s poorest countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Poorest countries.
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Put together.
AMY GOODMAN: How many poor people is that that you have in India?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* That’s—you know, for example, you have 830 million people living on less than 20 rupees a day. That’s less than half a dollar a day, 830 million people, you know? So, that is where the struggle is now. You know, you have the guerrillas in the forest, you have the militants in the villages, you have the Gandhians on the street, but on the whole, they’re all fighting the same battle right now.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think needs to happen? What are you calling for?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* At the moment—I think, at the moment, there needs to be a ceasefire, and I need—from both sides. And I think that the government should come clean on all these contracts and MOUs that it’s signed. And everybody should know exactly what is on the cards, what local people want. You know, all these public hearings and all the sort of rituals of democracy have just been marginalized, you know? But we really need to know what the plans are. Why should it be secret? Why should it be a secret what’s happening to the forests and the rivers and the people and the mountains and the mines?
AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel threatened? I mean, a number of critics have said you are now the most prominent spokesperson for a violent revolution in India. What is your response to that?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* No, I am not a spokesperson for the Maoists. But the government wants everybody who doesn’t agree with it—they want to call all of us Maoists, you know? I have never, ever said that I’m a spokesperson for the Maoists. I have—you know, I have my own views on them, which I have written about. You know, I admire some things; I criticize other things, and so on.
But, you know, I mean, Azad was murdered. Many—this is the government’s way of dealing with dissent. They have—you know, one of the things that they’re very, very upset about is that it had sort of thought that the Maoists are in the forest, we’ll just encircle them, demonize them, and finish them off, you know? And when people in urban areas started to complicate the whole debate and say it’s not that simple, you know, this is not acceptable to us, these policies and so on, they started to target those people, who they seem to be almost more annoyed with, because they don’t know what to do with many of us.
AMY GOODMAN: You have an interesting quote in your piece in Outlook: "When the government uses the ploy of peace talks to draw [the] deep-swimming fish up to the surface and then kill them, do peace talks have a future? Does either side want peace or justice? Perhaps our Preamble should read, 'We, the upper castes and classes of India, [having] secretly resolved to constitute India into a Corporate, Hindu, Satellite State...'”
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, you know, this was—I’ve written a lot in this piece about what happens when a government, you know, institutes a constitution or its—a democracy only functions with a constitution as its legal and moral base. So, when that government is vandalizing the constitution, and in fact, whether it’s the Maoists or whether it’s any of the other resistance movements, if you listen to what they’re saying right now, they’re only people demanding their constitutional rights. So the government is vandalizing the constitution. The "terrorists," in quote-unquote, are demanding their constitutional rights. So I said, look, if the government is not going to respect the constitution, then maybe we should change the constitution, whose preamble, the Indian constitution, says we are a secular, democratic, socialist republic. So change it and say we are a corporate, Hindu, satellite state.
______________
Democracy now should know better, they did an earlier interview with her after the Mumbai Terrorist attacks. Here is Arundhati after that heinous crime, criticizing India and Indians. Yes, here is a supposed leftist, blaming the victims!!
In contrast here is Salman Rushdie taking a principled stand on this matter: Asked to comment on Arundhati Roy's remarks disparaging the "iconic" status accorded to the Taj in the context of 26/11, he said: "I thought that particular remark in her piece was disgusting. The idea that the deaths of the rich don't matter because they are rich is disgusting. The idea that 12 members of the Taj staff who heroically gave their lives to save many of the guests are to be discounted because they are, presumably, lackeys of the rich—this is nauseating. This is amoral. She should be ashamed of herself."
While this interview was being recorded, These "Maoist rebels" killed eight people in Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. Four killings, including that of a woman, were reported from West Midnapore district in Bengal, where Maoists ‘punished’ people for defying their 24-hour shutdown against US President Barack Obama's visit. The woman Sandhya Mahato, was killed because her son was in the police and she had been warned that he should give up his job. Her husband was also missing.
In Jharkhand, Maoists blew up Sadbahani railway station in Palamau district and two government buildings. In Bihar they blew up railway track near Kurhani railway station in the Hajipur-Muzaffarpur section resulting in 10 wagons of a goods train derailing. Maoists also torched trucks and mobile phone towers.
In Orissa, about 60 rebels stormed into the Gamphakunda school premises under Kalimela police station and blew up a newly-constructed two-story school building that to benefit children from to the lowest castes..
All this to protest US President Obama's visit. In a written statement, they call him "the gang leader of US imperialism" and the world's "Enemy Number One," and urge people to use the slogan "Go back Obama."
Arundhati has been a vocal supporter for these murders. She also recently vocally supported an Islamic fundamentalist who wants Kashmir to become an Islamic state and separate from secular India because he claims, Islam does not allow Muslims to live under non-Islamic conditions.
The only thing connecting these two violent movements, one Islamic fundamentalist and the other communist, with are both causes supported ardently by Arundhati Roy are their anti-India stance.
How can the secular Western Left support and cheer this woman?
Acclaimed Indian Author Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, Poverty and India’s Maoist Rebel
AMY GOODMAN: We move now to Arundhati Roy. Maoist rebels in India called for a strike Monday to protest President Obama’s visit. The Indian media reports, according to the police, Maoists blew up a new school building this morning and killed four people in the eastern Indian states or Orissa and Bihar.
Well, last month, I had the chance to sit down with author Arundhati Roy in London about the Maoists in India. But first I began by asking her for her assessment of President Obama.
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, I think the big lesson today is that—look at the richest country in the world, America, having attacked and made war on the poorest countries but not being able to win those wars. You know, they have not been able to win. And here’s the lesson. You know, you couldn’t win Vietnam, you couldn’t win Afghanistan, couldn’t win Iraq, cannot win Kashmir. You know, there has to be—Obama, I mean, he’s involved in all these war crimes. It’s not as though—you know, he has expanded the war in Afghanistan, moved it into Pakistan. You know, Pakistan is a country that is in such a lot of trouble because of this. You know, right when 9/11 happened, I remember writing saying you forced them to raise the Taliban in their midst, and now you want them to garret the pit that they grew in their own backyard. It’s going to lead to civil war. You know, you didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. And that has happened, you know? America has interfered with Pakistan from the beginning, and Pakistan now paying a terrible price for that. I mean, I don’t know if it had a choice, when—you know, when America wants to interfere, it doesn’t give anyone a choice. So it’s destroyed Afghanistan, it’s destroyed Pakistan, it’s destroyed Iraq. And it will destroy India, if—because India doesn’t have the spine. The Indian government is just willingly allowing this to happen, the U.S. to dictate everything. So, today, Obama, I mean, whatever he’s doing in America is a separate thing. But certainly outside, he’s no less of—I mean, his foreign policy is not all that different from George Bush, you know? And if they start a war in Iran, they won’t win it. You know, I mean, it’s not possible. These wars cannot be won. So it’s about time somebody realized that and decided to change the way the world thinks about war and thinks about weapons and thinks about putting soldiers on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati, since we last spoke, assassination has taken place—well, at least one—in India. Can you talk about what happened?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* It was—I mean, as you know now, there’s an almost full-fledged war going on. Actually, there are several wars are going on in India. There’s Kashmir, which is up in flames now, and there’s what’s happening in the northeast. But what I’ve been writing about recently is the war on tribal people in the tribal heartland of India, where something like 200,000 paramilitary troops have been called out to really push through about, I don’t know, 200 or more memorandums of understandings with mining companies and infrastructure companies. And there’s—it’s all being fought in the name of clearing the forests of the Maoist guerrillas.
And as the war escalates, there have been, you know, attacks and counterattacks, but really people, the poorest people in the world, are in a lot of trouble now. And there was a lot of pressure to ask for peace talks, you know, because these poor people in the villages, the tribal people, are kind of under siege—no medicines, no food, no ability to come out of the forest. And so, the government actually has been—you know, because it needs to keep on this mask of being a great democracy, it sort of offers peace talks, on the one hand, and then undermines them, on the other.
But the assassination was the assassination of a man who is known as Azad. His real name was Cherukuri Rajkumar, and he is a sort of senior leader in the politburo of the Maoist party, appointed by the party to be the negotiator in the peace talks. And somehow, you know, the carrying back and forth of these documents pulled him up to the surface. And while he was traveling on a train with a young journalist, he was caught by the police and taken to the remote forests of North Telangana, a place called Adilabad, and shot. Of course, they said, you know, he was killed in an armed encounter and so on, which they always say, but post-mortem report says that he was killed at point-blank range, along with this young journalist. So, you know, my point has always been that the government needs this war. To clear the land, it needs this war. And in a situation like this, you know, just at the beginning of peace talks, if one side kills the envoy of the other side, it’s sort of reasonable to assume that that side does not want peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the Maoists—what it represents?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* See, the Communist Party of India, of course, is an old party, which has splintered into the Communist Party-Marxist. And then in 1969, there was something called the Naxalite Uprising, with the sort of precursors of what is today the Maoist party. And, you know, there’s a huge debate, of course, between the orthodox left and the Maoists, because the orthodox left more or less functions in the cities and is more or less a bourgeois party now, you know, whereas the Maoists have operated—they believe in the sort of militant armed overthrow of the Indian state. But for years, they’ve been working among the tribal people in the forests, and they do have a sort of people’s liberation guerrilla army now.
AMY GOODMAN: Of how many?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Thousands. One doesn’t know. I mean, I don’t really know the exact figure. But right now, the Maoists are just the militant end of a bandwidth of resistance movements who are fighting the onslaught of this kind of "India shining" India, which is really about grabbing land from the poor, you know, and turning them either into mines or into special economic zones. I mean, when I wrote about dams ten years ago, I was talking about the fact that just dams alone had displaced 33 million people. Today, with the reforms and the structural adjustment that the IMF demanded of our country, India, which you know—you know, in America and in Europe is known as the country with the second-highest growth rate in the world, but today, you know, we have more poor people in India than 26 of Africa’s poorest countries put together. You have—
AMY GOODMAN: More poor people in India than 26 African countries?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Africa’s poorest countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Poorest countries.
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Put together.
AMY GOODMAN: How many poor people is that that you have in India?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* That’s—you know, for example, you have 830 million people living on less than 20 rupees a day. That’s less than half a dollar a day, 830 million people, you know? So, that is where the struggle is now. You know, you have the guerrillas in the forest, you have the militants in the villages, you have the Gandhians on the street, but on the whole, they’re all fighting the same battle right now.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think needs to happen? What are you calling for?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* At the moment—I think, at the moment, there needs to be a ceasefire, and I need—from both sides. And I think that the government should come clean on all these contracts and MOUs that it’s signed. And everybody should know exactly what is on the cards, what local people want. You know, all these public hearings and all the sort of rituals of democracy have just been marginalized, you know? But we really need to know what the plans are. Why should it be secret? Why should it be a secret what’s happening to the forests and the rivers and the people and the mountains and the mines?
AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel threatened? I mean, a number of critics have said you are now the most prominent spokesperson for a violent revolution in India. What is your response to that?
ARUNDHATI ROY:* No, I am not a spokesperson for the Maoists. But the government wants everybody who doesn’t agree with it—they want to call all of us Maoists, you know? I have never, ever said that I’m a spokesperson for the Maoists. I have—you know, I have my own views on them, which I have written about. You know, I admire some things; I criticize other things, and so on.
But, you know, I mean, Azad was murdered. Many—this is the government’s way of dealing with dissent. They have—you know, one of the things that they’re very, very upset about is that it had sort of thought that the Maoists are in the forest, we’ll just encircle them, demonize them, and finish them off, you know? And when people in urban areas started to complicate the whole debate and say it’s not that simple, you know, this is not acceptable to us, these policies and so on, they started to target those people, who they seem to be almost more annoyed with, because they don’t know what to do with many of us.
AMY GOODMAN: You have an interesting quote in your piece in Outlook: "When the government uses the ploy of peace talks to draw [the] deep-swimming fish up to the surface and then kill them, do peace talks have a future? Does either side want peace or justice? Perhaps our Preamble should read, 'We, the upper castes and classes of India, [having] secretly resolved to constitute India into a Corporate, Hindu, Satellite State...'”
ARUNDHATI ROY:* Well, you know, this was—I’ve written a lot in this piece about what happens when a government, you know, institutes a constitution or its—a democracy only functions with a constitution as its legal and moral base. So, when that government is vandalizing the constitution, and in fact, whether it’s the Maoists or whether it’s any of the other resistance movements, if you listen to what they’re saying right now, they’re only people demanding their constitutional rights. So the government is vandalizing the constitution. The "terrorists," in quote-unquote, are demanding their constitutional rights. So I said, look, if the government is not going to respect the constitution, then maybe we should change the constitution, whose preamble, the Indian constitution, says we are a secular, democratic, socialist republic. So change it and say we are a corporate, Hindu, satellite state.
______________
Democracy now should know better, they did an earlier interview with her after the Mumbai Terrorist attacks. Here is Arundhati after that heinous crime, criticizing India and Indians. Yes, here is a supposed leftist, blaming the victims!!
In contrast here is Salman Rushdie taking a principled stand on this matter: Asked to comment on Arundhati Roy's remarks disparaging the "iconic" status accorded to the Taj in the context of 26/11, he said: "I thought that particular remark in her piece was disgusting. The idea that the deaths of the rich don't matter because they are rich is disgusting. The idea that 12 members of the Taj staff who heroically gave their lives to save many of the guests are to be discounted because they are, presumably, lackeys of the rich—this is nauseating. This is amoral. She should be ashamed of herself."
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Where's the Love, Arundhati?
by Vijai (Wayfaring Stranger)
In the wake of the Maoists' killing of 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in India, so many thoughts come to mind. What makes the difference between the shrill desperate voices of rebels and the powerful redemptive works of people like Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti and organizations like the International Justice Mission?
Writer Arundhati Roy said last year that the Maoists were justified in their violence because the government has been unjust to them. Ms. Roy, no stranger to controversy, has been consistent in placing the blame squarely on the government (and by implication the relatively better off society that supports it) for several ills — capitalism, free trade, military purchases and upgrades (notably on nuclear weapons), large private or government projects that displace thousands of people from their own lands without adequately compensating them, the Kashmir issue and the social and economic inequality in India.
A few weeks ago she published an article in the Guardian about her interview with the Maoists, the first time a journalist received an invitation to talk to them.
A fair reading of Ms. Roy's articles convinces us of the pain she feels in coming to acquaintance with the tragic history of these peoples and the injustice they have been victims of. A writer by profession and "activist" on the behalf of oppressed people by calling, she gets this information and does what she does best — write articles about it. These articles are clearly sympathetic to the oppressed people, and the people they kill are frequently the "emerging superpower" (full of hubris), policemen who are trained to kill in cold blood, fight like a guerrilla, use high tech weapons and training from Israel and other countries against the poor.
I wonder, has Ms. Roy ever thought about talking to some of these police men and women, their spouses, their parents, their kids? Some of these are ex-Maoists who help the police in tracking down violent criminals, trying to redeem some of their terrible past. Who are these people who are engaged in a war with the Maoists? Are they simply paid vassals of big government, corporations, landowners, et al — in short, glorified thugs who are only to eager to draw blood? If they were not around, would those of us who are not Maoists exist at all? For it seems to me that the Maoist vision of — as so many such revolutionaries of the past have envisioned in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea and other places — that their vision of India is not so much cooperation but a reversal of dominance and power.
Ms. Roy often says that Maoist violence is triggered by events so horrifying that one cannot help but take arms against the government— cases of rape, humiliation, murder, forced eviction and so on. I have worked with people in the slums and others who minister to them in large cities like New Delhi and Chennai. These people are largely peaceable, going about their work diligently but thankful for the opportunity to learn from the social workers I was with. We worked with the kids, giving them basic education, sometimes material benefits, support with getting jobs or setting up businesses, medical care and very often emotional and moral support. One of my most abiding memories is that of a little girl who had lost her mother to heart disease, refusing to come out of her tiny hut. When another kid let her know that we were there, she came out hugged one of our woman team members and cried for several minutes. Their trust and pain have changed me as a person. I see that the only answer to their pain is our love and commitment.
Back to my earlier question: what makes an organization like IJM or World Serve go quietly about freeing bonded laborers in Tamil Nadu or sexual slaves in the Philippines? Is it the rush of power that comes from leading them out of the unjust system? Or could it be the promise of a new world order in which every one could be equal?
Dr. Paul Farmer described his remarkable efforts in Haiti as the "Long Defeat" — a series of soul-wrenching battles which often seem destined to be lost. But hope, in his case rooted in his Christian conviction, gives us rumours of other glories and keeps us fighting.
One has to ask as the old Bud Light commercial used to ask— Where is the love, Arundhati? I thought once that you had the love. When you were heroically and peacefully opposing the dam construction at Narmada. Besides your protest, I wonder what those long years achieved in getting the erstwhile residents of those lands to settle in communities that would have benefiited them. What have you gained for them that our society lost in the process of the dam construction? Yes, I know that the Narmada Bachao Andolan has materially helped them. Have you truly rallied the Indian people to be giving, to be generous and organize to help these people? No, you have simply raised a call to fight the good fight. Isn't it far easier to carry a placard and shout your platitudes from the rooftops than to actually sacrificially give of yourself to help people?
The Maoists can fight until the cows come home and achieve nothing in the process. The phrase 'Cooperation not Competition' has been around in social networks for some time now- meaning that small communities organized together, doing things that build societies and economies will win the day. Those who simply want to fight the good fight will end up the way they have been ending up for centuries, whether they win or lose- create other inequalities which yet others will rise up to fight.
In the wake of the Maoists' killing of 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in India, so many thoughts come to mind. What makes the difference between the shrill desperate voices of rebels and the powerful redemptive works of people like Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti and organizations like the International Justice Mission?
Writer Arundhati Roy said last year that the Maoists were justified in their violence because the government has been unjust to them. Ms. Roy, no stranger to controversy, has been consistent in placing the blame squarely on the government (and by implication the relatively better off society that supports it) for several ills — capitalism, free trade, military purchases and upgrades (notably on nuclear weapons), large private or government projects that displace thousands of people from their own lands without adequately compensating them, the Kashmir issue and the social and economic inequality in India.
A few weeks ago she published an article in the Guardian about her interview with the Maoists, the first time a journalist received an invitation to talk to them.
A fair reading of Ms. Roy's articles convinces us of the pain she feels in coming to acquaintance with the tragic history of these peoples and the injustice they have been victims of. A writer by profession and "activist" on the behalf of oppressed people by calling, she gets this information and does what she does best — write articles about it. These articles are clearly sympathetic to the oppressed people, and the people they kill are frequently the "emerging superpower" (full of hubris), policemen who are trained to kill in cold blood, fight like a guerrilla, use high tech weapons and training from Israel and other countries against the poor.
I wonder, has Ms. Roy ever thought about talking to some of these police men and women, their spouses, their parents, their kids? Some of these are ex-Maoists who help the police in tracking down violent criminals, trying to redeem some of their terrible past. Who are these people who are engaged in a war with the Maoists? Are they simply paid vassals of big government, corporations, landowners, et al — in short, glorified thugs who are only to eager to draw blood? If they were not around, would those of us who are not Maoists exist at all? For it seems to me that the Maoist vision of — as so many such revolutionaries of the past have envisioned in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea and other places — that their vision of India is not so much cooperation but a reversal of dominance and power.
Ms. Roy often says that Maoist violence is triggered by events so horrifying that one cannot help but take arms against the government— cases of rape, humiliation, murder, forced eviction and so on. I have worked with people in the slums and others who minister to them in large cities like New Delhi and Chennai. These people are largely peaceable, going about their work diligently but thankful for the opportunity to learn from the social workers I was with. We worked with the kids, giving them basic education, sometimes material benefits, support with getting jobs or setting up businesses, medical care and very often emotional and moral support. One of my most abiding memories is that of a little girl who had lost her mother to heart disease, refusing to come out of her tiny hut. When another kid let her know that we were there, she came out hugged one of our woman team members and cried for several minutes. Their trust and pain have changed me as a person. I see that the only answer to their pain is our love and commitment.
Back to my earlier question: what makes an organization like IJM or World Serve go quietly about freeing bonded laborers in Tamil Nadu or sexual slaves in the Philippines? Is it the rush of power that comes from leading them out of the unjust system? Or could it be the promise of a new world order in which every one could be equal?
Dr. Paul Farmer described his remarkable efforts in Haiti as the "Long Defeat" — a series of soul-wrenching battles which often seem destined to be lost. But hope, in his case rooted in his Christian conviction, gives us rumours of other glories and keeps us fighting.
One has to ask as the old Bud Light commercial used to ask— Where is the love, Arundhati? I thought once that you had the love. When you were heroically and peacefully opposing the dam construction at Narmada. Besides your protest, I wonder what those long years achieved in getting the erstwhile residents of those lands to settle in communities that would have benefiited them. What have you gained for them that our society lost in the process of the dam construction? Yes, I know that the Narmada Bachao Andolan has materially helped them. Have you truly rallied the Indian people to be giving, to be generous and organize to help these people? No, you have simply raised a call to fight the good fight. Isn't it far easier to carry a placard and shout your platitudes from the rooftops than to actually sacrificially give of yourself to help people?
The Maoists can fight until the cows come home and achieve nothing in the process. The phrase 'Cooperation not Competition' has been around in social networks for some time now- meaning that small communities organized together, doing things that build societies and economies will win the day. Those who simply want to fight the good fight will end up the way they have been ending up for centuries, whether they win or lose- create other inequalities which yet others will rise up to fight.
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