India
Is Colonising Itself
By Arundhati Roy
& Shoma Chaudhuri
26 March, 2007
Tehelka
There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country.
How do you read the signs? Do you think it will grow more in the days
to come? What are its causes? In what context should all this be read?
You don’t have to be
a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle class, being 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 labour to feed this process, we have to colonize
ourselves, our own nether parts. We’ve 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 we’re witnessing is the most successful
secessionist struggle ever waged in Independent India. The secession
of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It’s
a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They’re fighting for
the right to merge with the world’s elite somewhere up there in
the stratosphere. They’ve 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 –
super toys for the new super citizens of the new superpower. So it’s
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 ‘friendly’ corporate media and a police force
that will ram all this down peoples’ 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 ‘growth rate’ and the sensex are going to be the only
barometres the government uses to measure progress and the well-being
of people, then of course it will. How do I read the signs? It isn’t
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?
I’d be a liability
as a guerilla! I doubt I used the word ‘immoral’-morality
is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather. What I feel is
this: Non-violent movements have, for decades knocked on the door of
every democratic institution in this country and have been spurned and
humiliated. Look at the Bhopal Gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
The NBA for example, had a lot going for it, high profile leadership,
media coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went
wrong? People are bound to want to re-think strategy. When Sonia Gandhi
begins to promote Satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos it’s
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 umblically linked to celebrity politics? Would anybody
care if the people of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti mines went on a hunger-strike?
Sharmila Irom has been on a hunger strike for six years. That should
be a salutary lesson to many of us. I’ve always felt that it’s
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. We’ve entered
the era of NGOs – or should I say the era of palthu shers - in
which mass action can be a treacherous business. We have demonstrations
which are funded, we have sponsored dharnas and social forums which
posture militantly but never follow up on what they preach. We have
all kinds of ‘virtual’ 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, and why they have not targeted, boycotted, gheraoed?
Of course the Tatas and Birlas funded Gandhi too – maybe he was
our first NGO. But now we have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a
lot of reports,but who 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. ‘Virtual 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 didn’t have the requisite clearances said in so many
words, that the question 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, that’s
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
‘democratic’ processes, only to be humiliated eventually,
what are they supposed to do? Of course it isn’t as though the
only options are binary – 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 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 -- can you give
us a sense of the fissures you are seeing on the ground. What are the
trouble spots you have been to? Can you outline a few of the combat
lines in these places?
Huge question – what
can I say? The military occupation of Kashmir, neo-facism 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 – now
calling itself Dow Chemicals - in Nandigram. I haven’t been recently
to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharshtra, 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 is 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 errupt once again. I’d
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, human scavengers - earn their living
carrying several kilos of other peoples’ shit on their heads every
day. And if they didn’t 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 – 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 don’t 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 – is the last stop of every
revolution advanced capitalism? Think about it - the French Revolution,
the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnam War, the
Anti- Apartheid struggle, the supposedly Gandhian Freedom struggle in
India…what’s the last station they all pull in at? Is this
the end of imagination?
The Maoist attack
in Bijapur -- the death of 55 policemen. Are the rebels only a flip
face of the State?
How can the rebels be the
flip side of the state? Would anybody say that those who fought against
Apartheid – however brutal their methods - 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 ‘human rights’
discourse, this meaningless condemnation game that we all are 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 Chattisgarh sponsored, created by the Chattisgarh
Government which is publicly pursing the Bush doctrine – if you’re
not with us, you are with the terrorists. The lynch pin of this war,
apart from the formal security forces, is the Salwa Judum – 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 – one of the most devastated countries in the world.
While everybody’s eyes are fixed on the spiraling violence between
government backed militias and guerilla squads, multinational corporations
quietly make off with the mineral wealth. That’s the little piece
of theatre being scripted for us in Chattisgarh.
Of course it’s horrible
that 55 policemen were killed. But they’re as much the victims
of Government policy as anybody else. For the Government and the Corporations
they’re just cannon fodder – there’s 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 guerillas the police and SPOs they killed were the armed
personnel of the Indian State, the main, perpetrators of repression,
torture, custodial killings, false encounters. The ones whose professional
duties involve burning villages and raping women. They’re not
innocent civilians – if such a thing exists - 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 – but who can? Still,
no guerrilla army can survive without local support. That’s 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 – revolutionary,
lumpen and outright criminal. The government is responsible for the
monstrous situations it creates.
The term Naxals and
Maoists and outsiders is being used very loosely these days. Can you
declutter it.
‘Outsiders’
is a generic accusation used in the early stages of repression by governments
who have begun to believe their own publicity and can’t imagine
that people have risen up against them. That’s the stage the CPI
(M) 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 what’s
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 – well… India
is about to become a police state in which everybody who disagrees with
what’s going on risks being called a terrorist. Islamic terrorists
have to be Islamic – so that’s 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 we’ll all be called Maoists or Naxalites, terrorists
or terrorist sympathisers and shut down, by people who don’t really
know – or care -who Maoists or Naxalites are. In villages of course
that has begun – 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? I’m not an
authority on the subject, but here’s a very rudimentary potted
history.
The Communist Party of India
the CPI was formed in 1925. The CPI (M) Communist Party Marxist- split
from the CPI in 1964 and formed a separate party. Both of course were
parliamentary political parties. In 1967 the CPI (M) along with a splinter
group of the Congress, came to power in West Bengal. At the time there
was massive unrest among starving peasantry in the countryside. Local
leaders of the CPI(M) – Kanu Sanyal and Charu Mazumdar 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 Siddharta Shankar Ray. The naxalite uprising was mercilessly
crushed - Mahashweta Devi has written powerfully about this time. In
1969 the CPI (ML) – Marxist Leninist split from the CPI (M). A
few years later around 1971, the CPI (ML) devolved into several parties:
the CPI -ML (Liberation) largely centred in Bihar, CPI –ML (New
Democracy) functioning for the most part out of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar,
the CPI-ML (Class Struggle) mainly in Bengal. These parties have been
generically baptized ‘Naxalites.’ They see themselves as
Marxist Leninist, not strictly speaking Maoist. They believe in elections,
mass action and, when, absolutely pushed to the wall or attacked- armed
struggle. The MCC – the Maoist Communist Centre at the time mostly
operating in Bihar was formed in 1968. The PW Peoples 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 don’t
participate in elections. This is the party that is fighting the guerilla
war in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand.
The Indian state
and media largely view the Maoists as "internal security"
threat. Is this the way to look at them?
I’m 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?
Wouldn't their regime be an exploitative autocratic violent one as well?
Isn't their action already exploitative of ordinary people? Do they
really have the support of ordinary people?
I think it’s 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 away discreetly) 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 China’s cultural revolution didn’t
happen? Or that that millions of people in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe were not victims of labour 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 peoples’ faith in the future. One hopes the past will
not be repeated, but denying that it ever happened doesn’t help
inspire confidence….Nevertheless, in this part of the world, the
Maoists in Nepal have waged a brave and successful struggle against
the monarchy in Nepal. Right now in India the Maoists and the various
Marxist Leninist Groups are leading the fight against immense injustice
in India. 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, even worse than
the present government. Maybe, but I’m not prepared to assume
that in advance. If they are, we’ll have to fight them too. And
most likely someone like myself will be the first person they’ll
string up from the nearest tree – 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 have are beginning
to align ourselves on the side of those who we know have no place for
us in their religious or ideological imagination. It’s true that
everybody changes radically when they come to power – look at
Mandela’s ANC. Corrupt, capitalist, bowing to the IMF, driving
the poor out of their homes – honouring Suharto the killer of
hundreds of thousands of Indonesian communists with South Africa’s
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 can’t find saints
to lead them into battle?
Is there a communication
breakdown in our society?
Yes.
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