Archive for the ‘Arundhati Roy’ Category
Posted by Mike E on August 25, 2010
This following article attacks one of the world’s most important revolutionary movements — the Maoist insurgency in India.
It starts with an aggressive dismissal of Arundhati Roy and her passionate reporting from a Maoist liberated zone. This article moves on to dismiss the revolutionary movement’s accomplishments, its connection with the people, its goals of New democracy and its historical antecedents in the Naxalite uprising. The whole discussion radiates a gut-level dislike of revolutionary violence.
For all those reasons, Kasama was reluctant to make the article available here. After all, we don’t agree with the overall verdict, tone or method (to put it mildly).
However a growing revolutionary movement will have such detractors. There is value in knowing (and vetting) their arguments. This piece originally appeared as part of Platypus Review 26 (August 2010) on the website of the Platypus Affiliated Society.
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Posted in Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), Communist Party, India, Maoism, Naxalite, Shining Path, communism, peoples war, revolution | 176 Comments »
Posted by onehundredflowers on April 15, 2010
This was originally posted on kafila.org. It’ was a comment to a piece originally written by Jairus Banaji.
“Only a “civic” anxiety could have mis-read what Arundhati painfully tries to make us see. That certain people are not living under conditions we can even imagine unless we witness and hear it. Does human life have to carry as complex a message that intellectual discourses carry?! What the hell do we mean by “social change” when all that it can mean is something of a middle-class passport to “conscious political” livelihood?! Whereas, the SOCIAL itself is UNDER THREAT in certain societies and CHANGE can only mean either daily annihilation or resistance?!”
A response to Jairus Banaji
By Manash
I must confess I found the highly reputed Jairus Banaji’s response to Arundhati utterly disappointing and irrelevant. I will simply raise a few questions against his reading of Arundhati’s article and leave it there.
Banaji asks, “But where does the rest of India fit in? What categories do we have for them?” –
Well, the irony is, the rest of India does “fit in” somehow, somewhere, in the scheme of things, unlike those hungry tribal boys who eat up their bananas on their way to meet a “kaamraid” and understand defending life with guns. Unless these tribals are psychopaths, I don’t understand any meaningful explanation for them to live the way they are doing. And as far as the “rest of India” is concerned, the “categories” of civil society and all such civil discourses keep the academia, the media, the law, and the government going. Why should civil-society suddenly, deliberately feature in a debate which is precisely about people who are forced to lead an un-civic life?! Why should pro-civil society intellectuals behave like judges in their suggestive remarks about the tribals being innocent victims of (Maoist) politics? Are we to believe that the whole debate which involves the life and death so many poor people needs a kind of judge-versus-vanguard quarrel?! I feel “Who are with the Maoists?” isn’t the question we face. The question we face is: Who are with the tribals?
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, peoples war, south asia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by onehundredflowers on April 15, 2010
This was originally posted on kafila.org. H/T to J. Ramsey.
Arundhati Roy’s powerful article Walking with the Comrades touched off an intense debate within India. To provide a snapshot, we are posting a critique and a response to Roy’s piece.
“…[A]re we seriously supposed to believe that the extraordinary tide of insurrection will wash over the messy landscapes of urban India and over the millions of disorganised workers in our countryside without the emergence of a powerful social agency, a broad alliance of salaried and wage-earning strata, that can contest the stranglehold of capitalism? Without mass organisations, battles for democracy, struggles for the radicalisation of culture, etc., etc.? Does any of this matter for her?”
Response to Arundhati Roy: Jairus Banaji
This is a guest post by JAIRUS BANAJI
Arundhati Roy’s essay “Walking with the Comrades” is a powerful indictment of the Indian state and its brutality but its political drawbacks are screamingly obvious. Arundhati clearly believes that the Indian state is such a bastion of oppression and unrelieved brutality that there is no alternative to violent struggle or ‘protracted war’. In other words, democracy is a pure excrescence on a military apparatus that forms the true backbone of the Indian state. It is simply its ‘benign façade’. If all you had in India were forest communities and corporate predators, tribals and paramilitary forces, the government and the Maoists, her espousal of the Maoists might just cut ice. But where does the rest of India fit in? What categories do we have for them? Or are we seriously supposed to believe that the extraordinary tide of insurrection will wash over the messy landscapes of urban India and over the millions of disorganised workers in our countryside without the emergence of a powerful social agency, a broad alliance of salaried and wage-earning strata, that can contest the stranglehold of capitalism? Without mass organisations, battles for democracy, struggles for the radicalisation of culture, etc., etc.? Does any of this matter for her?
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, peoples war, south asia | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 13, 2010
The following appeared in Outlook (April 12). The implications, danger and urgency of this should speak for itself. Arundhati Roy has just publicly stepped out in defense of the tribal people and Maoist fighters targeted by the Indian governments Operation Green Hunt.
Chhatisgarh Police Mulls Action Against Arundhati Roy
First came the report in today’s Hindi daily Nai Duniya, published from Bhopal, with the dateline Raipur, that the police in Chhattisgarh was considering action against author Arundhati Roy under under Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act-2005. And then came the corroboration from various police sources.
Apparently, one Vishwajit Mitra, has lodged a complaint at the Telibanda police station in Raipur, pointing out that the contents and photographs of Arundhati Roy’s essay Walking With The Comrades, published in the March 29 issue of Outlook could attract action as an offence under Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act-2005.
The complaint has also been sent to the governor Shekhar Dutt, Chief Minister Raman Singh and Director General of Police Vishwaranjan, demanding legal action against Arundhati Roy.
Nai Duniya had earlier reported that DGP Vishwaranjan had confirmed receipt of the complaint and asked the State Intelligence Bureau to enquire into the merits of the case against the Booker prize winning author.
The Indian Express quotes the police as saying: “We are examining it to find out whether any offence has been committed”.
The complainant, Vishwajit Mitra, told The Indian Express that Arundhati’s essay had sought to not only “glorify” the Maoists but also denigrate the country’s established system, including the judiciary. “Referring to a Maoist ‘Jan adalat’, she says in her essay that “in most jan adalats, at least the collective is physically present to make a decision. It’s not made by judges who’ve lost touch with ordinary life”, he pointed out, alleging that the writer also sought to justify Maoist other activities.
“Let the police investigate into my complaint and take a position. I am also keeping my options open to move the appropriate court to initiate legal action against the writer”, he said.
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Posted in Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, Naxalite | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 11, 2010
photo by Arundhati Roy
Kasama has received the following detailed overview of the Indian government’s building offensive against revolutionary forest strongholds of tribal peoples and Maoist fighters. This came to us from A World To Win news service.
Operation Green Hunt: India’s state terror
5 April 2010. A World to Win News Service. Indian authorities have reported that the anti-Maoist military offensive called Operation Green Hunt has suffered significant blows.
On 3 April guerrillas killed at least 10 policemen and injured 10 more in a landmine attack on a police bus in the eastern state of Orissa. On 5 April, in Dantewada district in the state of Chhattisgarh, they first ambushed soldiers carrying out a jungle patrol and then ambushed a second unit sent to rescue the first. As we go to press fighting is reported to be continuing. India’s Home Minister P Chidambaram said “Something has gone very wrong. They seem to have walked into a trap set by the [Maoists] and casualties are quite high” – the security forces are said to have lost 72 soldiers. Soutik Biswas, reporting from Delhi for BBC, describes the attack as “a blow to the government” and concludes that “the government is in for a long and difficult war.”
In late 2009, with an array of military forces, hi-tech support and utmost cruelty, the government of India launched Operation Green Hunt. India is economically on the move and its rulers are eager to upgrade their partnership with global imperialism. They cannot tolerate the fact that large swaths of the country are no longer under their control, and are determined to crush anything that stands in their way, especially the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the masses hungry for radical change who make up the army they lead.
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Posted in AWTW news, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, Naxalite, communism, peoples war, revolution | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 21, 2010
Arundhati Roy during a visit to the forest where she broke the taboo of of interviewing Maoist guerrillas in their base areas.
Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerrillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk. This essay was published on Friday in Delhi’s Outlook magazine. Arundhati Roy made the pictures in this 20,000 word essay available exclusively to Dawn.
The following was first posted on Dawn.com. Kasama urges all readers to give it close attention and wide circulation. We urge all our readers to share and download this new pamphlet. It makes it much easier for people to study this important work by Arundhati Roy describing the revolutionary fighters and people of India’s Maoist political base areas. This pamphlet includes many of Roy’s remarkable photographs from her trip that bring the text to life.
* * * * * * *
Walking with the Comrades
by Arundhati Roy
The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.
I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), Communist Party, India, Maoism, Marxist theory, communism, mass line | 33 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on November 19, 2009
Arundhati Roy
“Sri Lanka solution” threatened for Maoist-led uprising in India – Excerpts from Arundhati Roy
16 November 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Indian government is preparing “Operation Green Hunt”, a counter-insurgency operation on an unprecedented scale. As many as a hundred thousand soldiers and other security forces are to be sent into the forested hills of eastern and central India to crush the rebellion of adivasi (tribal peoples) led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). This is no short-term incursion: the authorities have announced that they plan to station massive numbers of troops in the tribal areas for years to come.
Several commentators have warned of the danger that the Indian government plans to seek a “Sri Lanka solution”, modelled on the recent protracted government offensive there. Massive ground forces and air assaults were used to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and then hundreds of thousands of the region’s civilian population were imprisoned in detention camps, where most still languish. Now what may be permanent military bases are being built in the Tamil heartland. The Indian government no doubt noted the implicit U.S. approval for that operation. At the U.S ‘s behest, the IMF granted the Sri Lankan government a huge financial package almost immediately after the massacre.
Following are excerpts from an article by Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy that appeared in the October 31 issue of the Sri Lanka Guardian (srilankaguardian. org). The full article online gives much more detail for her arguments and a more all-around representation of her views. The November 2009 issue of People’s March (peoplesmarch. googlepages. com, or bannedthought. net) has two recent statements by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and other material on this offensive.
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh [one of several tribal peoples in the region] long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain…
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Posted in AWTW, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), Communist Party, India, Maoism, Naxalite, peoples war, revolution | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on October 26, 2009
Posted in >> analysis of news, >> communist politics, Arundhati Roy, CPI(Maoist), India, Maoism, Naxalite, communism, peoples war, revolution | 2 Comments »
This following article attacks one of the world’s most important revolutionary movements — the Maoist insurgency in India. 
