Videos
Indian Television on Naxalism – Agenda 2010 : Red Corridor
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Video: Girl takes on Indian soldier for molesting her
Assam India: A young girl thrashed an Indian soldier for trying to molest her, she beats him with bricks in front of public. The incident was captured on a cellphone camera
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Arundhati Roy on Green Hunt
Activist and writer Arundhati Roy shares her thoughts on the importance of the Naxalite uprising, Indian democracy. Speech given at a Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee panel opposing Operation Green Hunt, Nov. 23, 2009
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Rally against War on People (17th December, 2009)
On 17th December a rally was held in New Delhi (from Ramlila Ground to Parliament Street) to protest the state’s ongoing offensive against the people of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashra. People from many states joined the rally. For more information…http://radicalnotes.com/journal/2009/12/11/rally-against-war-on-people-december-17-2009/
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Video: GN Saibaba on Adivasis’ Struggle for Survival
G. N. Saibaba, of the Revolutionary Democratic Front speaks about the state’s war on the Maoists and the tribal people.
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Human rights activists raise voice against operation greenhunt
The central government has launched operation greenhunt against the naxals in Chhattisgarh. But h
uman rights activists in the region are stepping up their campaign against it, saying, the tribals face many atrocities.
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Operation against Naxals hurting peoples interest: Medha Patkar
New Delhi, December 16(ANI):Addressing a news conference in New Delhi on Tuesday, Indias renowned social activist Medha Patkar expressed that the Offensive by Indian security forces against Maoist rebels in the country is hurting people’s interests. The central government recently launched a major offensive against Naxals, with an aim to curb their increasing violence.
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Activist reveals Police-Mafia nexus in Narayanpatna
Testimony of activist Indu Mallick who went through a harrowing experience while attending the funeral of tribal leaders killed by police in Narayanpatna.
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Development flows from the barrel of the gun
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Police repression and administrative high-handedness is becoming a common phenomenon in the country today, when the project-affected people protest against development-induced displacement and demand justice on account the serious consequences. It’s but an irony that instead of ameliorating the sufferings of the displaced and the project affected people and working for their humane and just resettlement and rehabilitation, the Government machinery resorts to brutal violence on them whose lives are already at stake on account of the development projects. This is a clear case of human rights violation.
While such acts of the state sponsored barbarism are to be condemned and the guilty punished by the court of law, one must understand how such crimes are committed by the law enforcing authorities on the just demands and rights of the people so that public opinion is created against such oppression.In a recent orientation programme to the Govt. officials from various Ministries on resettlement and rehabilitation of the project displaced and affected people, organized by Council for Social Development and held at Indian nternational Centre, New Delhi, the author was asked to present some case studies on the phenomenon and impact of displacement.
He showed the participants a video film on human rights violation at the behest of development projects, entitled “When people assert their rights over land, water and forest DEVELOPMENT FLOWS FROM THE BARREL OF THE GUN”. It was a video clipping of five cases of police tyranny on the displaced and the project affected people in five different states. They were the Bauxite Mining at Kashipur in Orissa, the Commercial Harbour at Umbergaon in Gujarat, the Steel Plant at Nagarnar in Chhattisgarh, the World Bank Forestry Project at Mehendikhera in Madhya Pradesh and the Koel-Karo Hydel Power Project in Jharkhand. Ten minutes of each video clipping was so powerful that the viewers were moved nearly to tears. There was a good discussion on the film at the end and a desire was expressed that greater awareness to such realities be brought about in the civil society for appropriate action. It indeed was an eye opener to all the present.An effort is made here to present these case studies in the written form to understand how the state repression is same all over the country in displacement situations.
The content of the presentation is taken almost verbatim from the script of the film to make it more real and effective. But certainly nothing like viewing the film itself to understand the extent and nature of human rights violation all in the name of national development. This video film is directed and produced by Biju Toppo and Meghnath of AKHRA, Jharkhand. Dr. Ram Dayal Munda is the overall narrator. He describes and comments on each of the cases briefly. The rest of the story is told by a number of social activists, professionals and the victims themselves.
AKHRA
Shastri NagarKanke Road
Ranchi 834008
Jharkhand – India
Phone 91-651-2231693e
Mail: akhra.ranchi@gmail.com
CPI (Maoist) Martyrs Week – July 28 – August 3
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When one sees a group of Maoists singing and dancing against a backdrop of hills, with people watching, or a memorial being wrapped with party flags and people shouting slogans along with the Maoists – it is the Maoist way of honouring their dead colleagues.The martyrs’ week that ended on Monday offered Maoists in South Orissa an opportunity to get closer to the local people whose support they need the most, especially when they fear a major offensive by central security forces. Maoists have a very strong presence in Malkangiri, Koraput and Rayagada districts and in the last 15 months they have killed over 100 policemen and 12 civilians.They have raided police armories and mines. Many believe the success of their strikes depends mainly on the support they get from the local people.”We carry out our activities with the support of the local people. Our line is the class line and mass line. We are not terrorists, as branded by the government,” said B Sonu , Spokesperson, Andhra-Orissa Border Committee, CPI-Maoist.Whether it was out of fear or commitment, a large gathering of local people, wherever the Martyrs’ Week was observed, was clear evidence of the clout the Maoists enjoy in this hilly and remote zone – a serious challenge for the security forces.
CPI (Maoist) marks 9th anniversary ofPeoples Liberation Guerrilla Army
Bihar,December 04 (ANI) Members of a banned Maoist outfit in Bihar celebrated the ninth anniversary of the creation of Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA).
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When the State Declares War on the People: Video – Gopal Menon
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A 15 minute Trailer on the Human Rights Violations in Chhattisgarh resulting from Operation Green Hunt.SynopsisWe have been hearing many stories about the human rights violations before and after Operation Green Hunt was announced. Allegations and counter-allegations have been going around. Fact-finding investigations have uncovered the atrocities security forces are committing in these areas, but now those very findings are being questioned.At such a time it is crucial to present the reality and tear the veils obscuring the truth. When the State Declares War on the People is a 15-minute trailer by Gopal Menon based on his recent coverage of the ground reality in Chhattisgarh. This short film contains exclusive interviews with victims and their testimony including 1 1/2 year old Suresh who had three fingers chopped off his left hand, an old man who was electrocuted and whose flesh was ripped off with knives, women raped by Special Police Officers and CRPF.The film also presents the views of Arundhati Roy and Mahesh Bhatt, two eminent citizens who have been closely following developments in Chhattisgarh. The clear intention of the State – to wipe out all resistance through terror in the name of fighting the Maoists – is demonstrated in this film.About the DirectorGopal Menon is an activist-filmmaker focusing on caste, communalism and nationality. He was arrested twice while trying to go to Lalgarh and beaten with rifle butts and lathis. He was detained in Dantewada too. This is a trailer of a larger film on the Indian State’s war on the people.Some of Menon’s earlier films are Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence, Hey Ram!! Genocide in the Land of Gandhi, PAPA 2 (about disappearances in Kashmir) and Resilient Rhythms (a rainbow overview of the Dalit situation) amongst others.The trailer for this film is available on YouTube in two parts:
Inside Maoist land, Lalgarh: CNN IBN Special Report
Being inside Lalgarh, West Bengal, is like entering another country, a different timezone. It is the liberated area where the state government is desperately trying to regain some foothold. Lalgarh is an area of ruthless confrontation, where a group of armed combatants who don’t believe in the Constitution dictate the pace of life. They have made the jungles their home, the adivasis their friends and the state and police their enemy number one.
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Video: Anger against Narayanpatna killings
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23 November 2009
Podapadar Village
Narayanpatna Block
Koraput District
Orissa.
Tribal leader K Singana and Andru’s funeral, where thousands of people have gathered.
They were killed on 20 November by Orissa police and Indian Reserve Battalion in front of the police station during a peaceful demonstration against molestation of woman by armed forces.
CHHATTISGARH : RALLY OF ANTI-DISPLACEMENT MOVEMENTS
IN RAIPUR ON 6TH OCTOBER.
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The unrelenting loot of the abundant mineral resources of Chhattisgarh – iron ore, coal, limestone, bauxite, and even diamond and uranium has meant the total stranglehold of big corporates – foreign and Indian – over the State’s bureaucracy, polity, and even judiciary.
Multinationals Holcim and Lafarge have gobbled up the Indian cement companies and persist in earning super profits from the illegal exploitation of contract labour; Vedanta can get away with, and is in fact ably assisted by the State administration in, the criminal cover up of murder by negligence of nearly a hundred workers in a recent chimney collapse; Jindal and Monnet specialise in managing the pollution control department and so the Raigarh district, labouring under black clouds, drying water sources and disappearing forest cover, sees public hearing after public hearing where the public is never heard and clearances are granted, (Jairam Ramesh honestly called these environmental public hearings “match fixing” by the companies); a rash of sponge iron factories – mushroom in Raipur; Tata and Essar, with a little help from Collector Sahab, manipulate gram sabhas in the scheduled areas in gross violation of the PESA Act and employ every trick in the game to coerce people to accept compensations for land. Read the rest of this story
Visuals of Ganapati, CPI Maoist General Secretary
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New Delhi, Oct 24,: A video showing the Maoist ideologue Muppala Laxman Rao alias Ganapathy has been displayed by a section of media on Saturday.Ganapathy, who is the General Secretary of the banned Communist party of India (Maoist) appeared in public for the first time. He was in disguise for over 25 years.In the video Ganapathy was shown addressing the Maoist cadres during the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in an undisclosed location at Dandakaranya region.Ganapathy who hails from Karimnagar District of Andhra Pradesh is one of the founding members of the terror outfit.Security analysts feel that after the arrest of Maoists ideologue Kobad Ghandy, the other leaders like Kishanji and Ganapathy are coming out in public platforms.They also feel that is an attempt by the red ultras to gain more publicity for their cause.
Arundhati Roy : Indian democracy in a state of emergency
In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue explore today with Arundhati Roy.
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Kiran Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy.
Let’s start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the ‘Beacon is fading,’ you say it’s being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?
Arundhati Roy: It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.
Karan Thapar: So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.
Arundhati Roy: Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world’s most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.
Karan Thapar: So the state of India’s dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed? Read the rest of this entry »
ran Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. In her latest series of essays, Arundhati Roy sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy.
Let’s start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the ‘Beacon is fading,’ you say it’s being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?
Arundhati Roy: It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.
Karan Thapar: So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.
Arundhati Roy: Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world’s most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.
Karan Thapar: So the state of India’s dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed?
Arundhati Roy: It’s proving that there is a structural violence. Mahasweta Devi (Magsaysay Award-winner Bengali novelist) said a few years ago in Frankfurt about the Indian democracy as a tapestry with parts of it as silken and parts of it tattered but it all holds together. Now, what has happened is that the silken parts have sequined and the tattered parts are torn and the poor are falling in. And the Indian state is following them with guns, with helicopter gunships. We are in crisis. We have an ecological crisis.
Karan Thapar: Let’s pick up the issue of the poor that they are actually falling through the holes in the tapestry. How do you view the NREGA which was specifically designed to give relief and succour to the very poorest of the poor. Don’t you believe that it has been effective?
Arundhati Roy: It’s important, it’s effectiveness is debatable. It is also working as a honeypot around which corrupt people have flocked and have tried their best to prevent it.
Karan Thapar: Are the failings so great that they undermine the essential core of NREGA?
Arundhati Roy: No, I am not critical of the Employment Guarantee Act but what I am saying is that it was passed in order to mitigate a structural dispossession that was going on. So we shouldn’t confuse that mitigation with the structural problem.
Karan Thapar: So you are saying that structurally Indian democracy works to the disadvantage of the poor?
Arundhati Roy: What I have said is that democracy has become fused with free-market capitalism. And it is this that has made a serious erosion and hollowed up these institutions. So if you look at the Supreme Court or if you look at the corporate media or ministers, Parliamentarians and MPs have interests in shares and what is going on, if you look at the massive levels of corruption, what we are looking at is a very structural problem.
Karan Thapar: Would you be happier if instead of fusing with a free market economic system Indian democracy had fused with socialist system? In other words, what I am questioning is that is it the ideology that you bring to this issue that actually determines your conclusion about democracy?
Arundhati Roy: Socialism has had its problems too. I am not a supporter of Stalinism nor am I a person who is totally uncritical of what happened in China or the Soviet Union, so I am not talking about merely ideologically, but certainly socialism has a language of justice that capitalism does not have.
Karan Thapar: Doesn’t capitalism actually produce higher living standards overall for people, doesn’t it guarantee to them the liberties of individuality which gets suppressed, are you not ignoring all of that?
Arundhati Roy: It guarantees a higher living standards for a few at the cost of the many. And that’s the situation we find ourselves in a country where we have more and more billionaires and a large vast portion of people who are dispossessed, who are homeless, who are being cutoff from their resources.
Karan Thapar: Can I ask you a blunt question? Sixty years after Indian democracy came into being, do you believe that India’s poor and dispossessed have benefited?
Arundhati Roy: No, I don’t. I believe that they have some security and some more than others. We in Delhi have democracy where as in the jungles of Dantewada, they don’t have democracy.
Karan Thapar: You are saying that a vast majority of the poor have not benefited?
Arundhati Roy: I don’t think that it is that simple. For example, the Dalit issue. There is a form of representation that is going on yet the people that have fallen through the hole, people I am talking about who do not have representation, the people who are malnutritioned, who are living in conditions of famine and now the Army is being called out against them.
Karan Thapar: I am not sure whether you can say that the Army is being called out against them, but let me quote to you a critic of your essay, Harsh Mander, in particular a critic of your ‘dismissal’ of democracy …
Arundhati Roy: Dismissal, please is not the word.
Karan Thapar: Cynicism?
Arundhati Roy: Neither cynicism.
Karan Thapar: Sort of questioning?
Arundhati Roy: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you. “With all its failings and betrayals, the guarantees contained in India’s secular democratic Constitution have made a significant difference to the lives of its dispossessed people. They would have been even poorer than they are now, more insecure, more oppressed without democracy. Of this, I am convinced.” You are radically disagreeing with someone like Harsh Mander?
Arundhati Roy: I am sorry to say but this is a silly point because it suggests that what I am saying is we shouldn’t have democracy, we should have some other old discredited authoritarian system. It is not.
Karan Thapar: I am not sure if he is suggesting that. He is suggesting that your questioning is unjustified, that you are finding flaws where they don’t exist.
Arundhati Roy: Come on. Look at the human development index and what it is saying. My point is that there are problems in our system and we need to face them.
Karan Thapar: What would have produced a better human index for India?
Arundhati Roy: For example when some keep repeating the word ‘democracy’, they are refusing to see the fact that what I am saying is that the fusion of corporate globalisation and democracy has created this situation. A system in which you don’t have the free-market policies.
Karan Thapar: So what policies would you want, socialist policies?
Arundhati Roy: No, a different policy. Come on! Do you want me to give you a manifesto right here?
Karan Thapar: I suspect that it’s your ideological aversion to the free market that has conditioned your suspicion or your questioning of democracy.
Arundhati Roy: Well, you are right because I do have an ideological aversion to the free market and its fusion with democracy has corrupted what democracy was meant to me. But when you are saying what’s your solution, it is that we have to look. You know it has taken years and years of decision making of corruption, of injustice, refusing to look at the problems saying we would have been much better or we would have been much worse of it if it was somewhere else, so let’s not critique what is going on now. My thing is that everytime something happens, for example, if you just give me two minutes I would like to say it that we call ourselves a democracy but as a society we tolerate the 68,000 dead in Kashmir, we tolerate deeply undemocratic laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, we had the Sikh genocide and what happened in Gujarat, all of these things I question.
Karan Thapar: And the Prime Minister apologised for what happened to the Sikhs, Sonia Gandhi visited the Golden Temple.
Arundhati Roy: Would it be enough for you Karan, if someone killed your parents and raped your wife and the Prime Minister apologises?
Karan Thapar: The Chinese haven’t apologised for the Tiananmen Square.
Arundhati Roy: It doesn’t matter. The point is when we accept these kinds of injustices and absorb them and the Government thinks by apologising or dissimulating it’s over, but they all settle in us like toxins and we become a pretty barbaric society.
Karan Thapar: So you are saying that the weight of all that has gone wrong in 60 years is now sinking us?
Arundhati Roy: It is.
Karan Thapar: Is it beyond correction?
Arundhati Roy: Well, it’s not beyond correction, it would not be beyond correction if instead of patting ourselves on the back and saying we are so much better off now, we looked at what’s going wrong and we went out and insisted that we start moving on the paths to justice.
Karan Thapar: So your essays are in a sense a wake up call to the Indian people, you are saying look at the black side of our democracy, stop patting yourself and ignoring?
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely. I mean look at everything that’s going wrong.
Karan Thapar: So you are not dismissing it, you are actually asking the Indians to open their eyes and see the truth.
Arundhati Roy: Yes, absolutely.
Karan Thapar: Let’s come to how you view the Maoists’ struggle. In your essay, ‘Listening To Grasshoppers’ you write almost with approval that the poor are crossing over quietly while the world is not looking to the side of the arms struggle. Do you even support or perhaps even approve the Maoists’ struggle?
Arundhati Roy: As we have been talking earlier that there has been a massive dispossession, a structural violence against the poor of this country, we are talking about tens of millions dispossessed and malnutritioned. We are talking about 180,000 farmers who have committed suicide but most of all what worries me is this binary that has been put out – the state versus the Maoists. Sometimes even I am guilty of that. But the fact is that for the last 20 years, there have been a whole array of peaceful struggles, a whole array of voices, including mine saying, look you don’t pay attention to this nonviolence resistance by default you condone violence.
Karan Thapar: So you are saying that the Maoists have been driven to take up arms because they have been pushed to the perimeters of Indian society?
Arundhati Roy: Look, so now what’s happening is that the poor who are being faced with this violence have taken up arms. I am not sure that all of them are Maoists, I think there is a very big problem about how the State defines Maoists and who they are willing to kill and call a Maoist.
Karan Thapar: Leave the definition of Maoist aside. Are the poor and the dispossessed, who you say have been driven to the perimeters, justified in taking up arms?
Arundhati Roy: If I was a person who has been dispossessed, whose wife has been raped or have been pushed of their lands, and who is being faced with ‘police force’, I would say that I am justified in taking up arms if that’s the only way I have to defend myself.
Karan Thapar: If the Maoists and the poor are justified in taking up arms, then is the State, particularly the state where the government is popularly elected and represented, justified in taking up arms in defence?
Arundhati Roy: I think we should stop thinking about who is justified because we are in a situation now in which what is happening is that there is face-off and there are two armies apart from the fact that there are all these nonviolent resistant movements which are not being listened to, which are not being spoken or written about. You have an army of very poor people being faced down by an army of the rich that are corporate backed and I am sorry but it is like that. So you cannot extract a morality from the heinous acts of violence that each commits against the other. You have to pull back and look at what’s going on and we have to understand that this war the government of India cannot win because the poor don’t have weapons, the poor don’t have money but they are huge numbers. And what you are seeing is a conflation of terrorism and poverty. The poor today are being called terrorists.
Karan Thapar: Not necessarily except in your interpretation, I think there is a distinction that others draw but let me come to the issue of violence because that is critical. Quite understandably and rightly, you condemn what you call ‘state violence’. But do you equally, emphatically, unequivocally condemn the Maoists when they butcher someone like Francis Induwar or when they assume the power to be judge, jury and prosecutor in a multitude of cases, do you condemn them?
Arundhati Roy: I think that this equivalence is a stupid thing and violence is not the issue because I do condemn anybody whether it’s the Maoists or whether it’s the state, anybody who kills a person in custody, I condemn.
Karan Thapar: So do you condemn the killing of Francis Induwar?
Arundhati Roy: Absolutely, I condemn it. I do not approve of it. I don’t think anyone in their right senses would. However, as I said what I think or don’t think and these moral positions are not the point. Of course, all of us are very uncomfortable with violence but there it is, it’s happening. The point is why? Why don’t we ask why? Who should the poor go to, which court?
Karan Thapar: The ‘why’ we know because you have explained it earlier as the conflation between democracy and free-market policies which is leading to the subjugation and the repression and the exploitation of the poor. The question is what do you do about it. You have said earlier this week that a military solution to the Maoists’ struggle is not an option. What then is the solution?
Arundhati Roy: I think the solution is to understand that the State needs to regain the faith of the poor. It needs to woo the poor again. And it cannot be done over a weekend.
Karan Thapar: How?
Arundhati Roy: I think the first thing would be to pull back the army and to stop this nonsense about air force will fire in self-defence and all that.
Karan Thapar: No military operations even if it includes just police and paramilitary?
Arundhati Roy: No military operations. I would say that that is going to provoke a situation.
Karan Thapar: What’s the second thing?
Arundhati Roy: Then I would say that you should come out with all the MoUs that you have signed for all the mineral wealth which is really the key issue. I mean just the bauxite in Orissa is worth 4 trillion that’s with 12 zeros.
Karan Thapar: Do you really believe that the dispossessed and poor in Orissa would be concerned about the MoUs signed by the Government of India, they are not aware of them.
Arundhati Roy: Are you joking? They know it better than you or me. This is what I would say – come clean, tell us what the MoUs are and the companies involved.
Karan Thapar: After coming clean, what’s the next stage?
Arundhati Roy: For example, on October 12, there was supposed to be a public hearing in Lohandigura (Madhya Pradesh) where Tata is setting up a steel factory, in the name of operation “Green Hunt”. There were barriers that prevented people from going there and expressing what they had to – their approvals or disapprovals.
Karan Thapar: So you are saying let people express themselves and voice their dissents?
Arundhati Roy: Let them voice their dissent, let them be at these public hearings, make all the MoUs public, remove your army and then let’s see what happens.
Karan Thapar: If the Government were prepared to take your advice, would you in return go to the Maoists and say it now behooves you to also abjure your violence. If the Government is reaching out with one hand, you must return with the other. Will you take that step?
Arundhati Roy: If you are talking about me as an individual, I am nobody but I am sure there are people who would take that step. It has been done before. In the interest of the future of this country, all of us are concerned.
Karan Thapar: What you are saying is that the initiative should come from the Government first.
Arundhati Roy: I think so. There should be unconditional talks.
Karan Thapar: My last question. How do you see the situation developing?
Arundhati Roy: My fear is that because of its economic interest, the Government and the establishment actually needs a war, it needs to militarise and for that it needs an enemy and so in a way what the Muslims were to the BJP, the Maoists are to the Congress and once you have created this enemy that you are going to go after, there is going to be a lot of violence. That’s how mining corporations have worked historically.
Karan Thapar: So you see a greater potential for bloodshed and violence?
Arundhati Roy: Unless we can get together and stop it, which we must. A military solution will destroy us.
Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy a pleasure talking to you.
Kishenji To NDTV: Train drivers not hijacked,
All reports are false
Maoists hold ‘Jan Adalat’ in Bihar
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We will not leave our village (Gaon Chodab Nahin)
The song describes the present day exploitation of tribal land and forests in the name of development.
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Govt at war with Maoists to aid MNCs: Arundhati Roy
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Telugu song: Aagadu Aagadu by Gaddar
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Inside Story – Maoist Movement in India
Al Jazeera, 17 August 09
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Inside Story – India’s battle against its people
Al Jazeera 29 Sep09
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<p style=”text-align: left;”><strong><a href=”http://connect.in.com/karan-thapar/profile-159263.html” target=”_blank”><span style=”color: #307dc3;”>Kiran Thapar</span></a>:</strong> <em>Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. In her latest series of essays, <a href=”http://connect.in.com/arundhati-roy/profile-27453.html” target=”_blank”><span style=”color: #307dc3;”>Arundhati Roy</span></a> sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy. </em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><em>Let’s start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the ‘Beacon is fading,’ you say it’s being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world’s most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.</p><div class=”bluetopbottom”>
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<p class=”Blut12″><a href=”https://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/govt-at-war-with-maoists-to-aid-mncs-arundhati-roy/” target=”_blank”><strong>Govt at war with Naxals to aid MNCs: Arundhati</strong></a></p>
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<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So the state of India’s dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed?</em></p><div id=”_mcePaste” style=”overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 298px; width: 1px; height: 1px;”><strong><a href=”http://connect.in.com/karan-thapar/profile-159263.html” target=”_blank”><span style=”color: #307dc3;”>ran Thapar</span></a>:</strong> <em>Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. In her latest series of essays, <a href=”http://connect.in.com/arundhati-roy/profile-27453.html” target=”_blank”><span style=”color: #307dc3;”>Arundhati Roy</span></a> sounds deeply dismissive of the Indian democracy and perhaps supportive of the Maoist struggle. Why does she take these positions? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Arundhati Roy. </em>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><em>Let’s start with your cynical view of Indian democracy. In your essays, you say the ‘Beacon is fading,’ you say it’s being hollowed out and emptied of meaning, you say that Indian democracy no longer can be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we dreamt it would. Why have you come to this conclusion?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It is pretty obvious that in the last 60 years of our democracy what we have is a situation in which the poor are getting poorer and poorer, the rich are getting richer. I am not suggesting by this that we should go back to some older form of discredited despotic or colonial regime. I am trying to analyse what is the problem with democracy now. Why are the institutions of our democracy – the courts, media and Parliament – letting the people down? In a democracy, they are meant to act as checks and balances but actually they are serving as a cover to be as undemocratic as possible.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are suggesting two important things. Firstly, you are saying that the institutions of democracy have actually failed to act as checks and secondly, you are saying that the poor, who I presume are the vast majority of India, are not benefiting from Indian democracy sufficiently.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Of course they have protection but the fact is that we are now in a situation of emergency. The human developmental index shows that more than 80 per cent of the people of India are living in conditions of extreme poverty. We have the world’s most malnutritioned children. The Dalits and the Adivasis are living in conditions of famine by any world indicators when more than 50 per cent of them are malnutritioned.</p><div class=”bluetopbottom”>
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<p class=”Blut12″><a href=”http://www.ibnlive.com/news/govt-at-war-with-naxals-to-aid-mncs-arundhati/103627-3.html” target=”_top”><strong>Govt at war with Naxals to aid MNCs: Arundhati</strong></a></p>
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<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So the state of India’s dispossessed and poor is proof that Indian democracy has failed?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It’s proving that there is a structural violence. Mahasweta Devi (Magsaysay Award-winner Bengali novelist) said a few years ago in Frankfurt about the Indian democracy as a tapestry with parts of it as silken and parts of it tattered but it all holds together. Now, what has happened is that the silken parts have sequined and the tattered parts are torn and the poor are falling in. And the Indian state is following them with guns, with helicopter gunships. We are in crisis. We have an ecological crisis.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Let’s pick up the issue of the poor that they are actually falling through the holes in the tapestry. How do you view the NREGA which was specifically designed to give relief and succour to the very poorest of the poor. Don’t you believe that it has been effective?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It’s important, it’s effectiveness is debatable. It is also working as a honeypot around which corrupt people have flocked and have tried their best to prevent it.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Are the failings so great that they undermine the essential core of NREGA?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> No, I am not critical of the Employment Guarantee Act but what I am saying is that it was passed in order to mitigate a structural dispossession that was going on. So we shouldn’t confuse that mitigation with the structural problem.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are saying that structurally Indian democracy works to the disadvantage of the poor?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> What I have said is that democracy has become fused with free-market capitalism. And it is this that has made a serious erosion and hollowed up these institutions. So if you look at the Supreme Court or if you look at the corporate media or ministers, Parliamentarians and MPs have interests in shares and what is going on, if you look at the massive levels of corruption, what we are looking at is a very structural problem.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Would you be happier if instead of fusing with a free market economic system Indian democracy had fused with socialist system? In other words, what I am questioning is that is it the ideology that you bring to this issue that actually determines your conclusion about democracy?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Socialism has had its problems too. I am not a supporter of Stalinism nor am I a person who is totally uncritical of what happened in China or the Soviet Union, so I am not talking about merely ideologically, but certainly socialism has a language of justice that capitalism does not have.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Doesn’t capitalism actually produce higher living standards overall for people, doesn’t it guarantee to them the liberties of individuality which gets suppressed, are you not ignoring all of that?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It guarantees a higher living standards for a few at the cost of the many. And that’s the situation we find ourselves in a country where we have more and more billionaires and a large vast portion of people who are dispossessed, who are homeless, who are being cutoff from their resources.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Can I ask you a blunt question? Sixty years after Indian democracy came into being, do you believe that India’s poor and dispossessed have benefited? </em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> No, I don’t. I believe that they have some security and some more than others. We in Delhi have democracy where as in the jungles of Dantewada, they don’t have democracy.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>You are saying that a vast majority of the poor have not benefited?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I don’t think that it is that simple. For example, the Dalit issue. There is a form of representation that is going on yet the people that have fallen through the hole, people I am talking about who do not have representation, the people who are malnutritioned, who are living in conditions of famine and now the Army is being called out against them.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>I am not sure whether you can say that the Army is being called out against them, but let me quote to you a critic of your essay, Harsh Mander, in particular a critic of your ‘dismissal’ of democracy … </em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Dismissal, please is not the word.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Cynicism?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Neither cynicism.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Sort of questioning?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Yes.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Let me quote to you. “With all its failings and betrayals, the guarantees contained in India’s secular democratic Constitution have made a significant difference to the lives of its dispossessed people. They would have been even poorer than they are now, more insecure, more oppressed without democracy. Of this, I am convinced.” You are radically disagreeing with someone like Harsh Mander?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I am sorry to say but this is a silly point because it suggests that what I am saying is we shouldn’t have democracy, we should have some other old discredited authoritarian system. It is not.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>I am not sure if he is suggesting that. He is suggesting that your questioning is unjustified, that you are finding flaws where they don’t exist.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Come on. Look at the human development index and what it is saying. My point is that there are problems in our system and we need to face them.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>What would have produced a better human index for India?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> For example when some keep repeating the word ‘democracy’, they are refusing to see the fact that what I am saying is that the fusion of corporate globalisation and democracy has created this situation. A system in which you don’t have the free-market policies.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So what policies would you want, socialist policies?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> No, a different policy. Come on! Do you want me to give you a manifesto right here?</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>I suspect that it’s your ideological aversion to the free market that has conditioned your suspicion or your questioning of democracy.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Well, you are right because I do have an ideological aversion to the free market and its fusion with democracy has corrupted what democracy was meant to me. But when you are saying what’s your solution, it is that we have to look. You know it has taken years and years of decision making of corruption, of injustice, refusing to look at the problems saying we would have been much better or we would have been much worse of it if it was somewhere else, so let’s not critique what is going on now. My thing is that everytime something happens, for example, if you just give me two minutes I would like to say it that we call ourselves a democracy but as a society we tolerate the 68,000 dead in Kashmir, we tolerate deeply undemocratic laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, we had the Sikh genocide and what happened in Gujarat, all of these things I question.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>And the Prime Minister apologised for what happened to the Sikhs, <a href=”http://connect.in.com/sonia-gandhi/profile-328.html” target=”_blank”><span style=”color: #307dc3;”>Sonia Gandhi</span></a> visited the Golden Temple.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Would it be enough for you Karan, if someone killed your parents and raped your wife and the Prime Minister apologises?</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>The Chinese haven’t apologised for the Tiananmen Square.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It doesn’t matter. The point is when we accept these kinds of injustices and absorb them and the Government thinks by apologising or dissimulating it’s over, but they all settle in us like toxins and we become a pretty barbaric society.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are saying that the weight of all that has gone wrong in 60 years is now sinking us?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> It is.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Is it beyond correction?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Well, it’s not beyond correction, it would not be beyond correction if instead of patting ourselves on the back and saying we are so much better off now, we looked at what’s going wrong and we went out and insisted that we start moving on the paths to justice.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So your essays are in a sense a wake up call to the Indian people, you are saying look at the black side of our democracy, stop patting yourself and ignoring?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Absolutely. I mean look at everything that’s going wrong.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are not dismissing it, you are actually asking the Indians to open their eyes and see the truth.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Yes, absolutely.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Let’s come to how you view the Maoists’ struggle. In your essay, ‘Listening To Grasshoppers’ you write almost with approval that the poor are crossing over quietly while the world is not looking to the side of the arms struggle. Do you even support or perhaps even approve the Maoists’ struggle?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> As we have been talking earlier that there has been a massive dispossession, a structural violence against the poor of this country, we are talking about tens of millions dispossessed and malnutritioned. We are talking about 180,000 farmers who have committed suicide but most of all what worries me is this binary that has been put out – the state versus the Maoists. Sometimes even I am guilty of that. But the fact is that for the last 20 years, there have been a whole array of peaceful struggles, a whole array of voices, including mine saying, look you don’t pay attention to this nonviolence resistance by default you condone violence.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are saying that the Maoists have been driven to take up arms because they have been pushed to the perimeters of Indian society?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Look, so now what’s happening is that the poor who are being faced with this violence have taken up arms. I am not sure that all of them are Maoists, I think there is a very big problem about how the State defines Maoists and who they are willing to kill and call a Maoist.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Leave the definition of Maoist aside. Are the poor and the dispossessed, who you say have been driven to the perimeters, justified in taking up arms?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> If I was a person who has been dispossessed, whose wife has been raped or have been pushed of their lands, and who is being faced with ‘police force’, I would say that I am justified in taking up arms if that’s the only way I have to defend myself.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>If the Maoists and the poor are justified in taking up arms, then is the State, particularly the state where the government is popularly elected and represented, justified in taking up arms in defence?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I think we should stop thinking about who is justified because we are in a situation now in which what is happening is that there is face-off and there are two armies apart from the fact that there are all these nonviolent resistant movements which are not being listened to, which are not being spoken or written about. You have an army of very poor people being faced down by an army of the rich that are corporate backed and I am sorry but it is like that. So you cannot extract a morality from the heinous acts of violence that each commits against the other. You have to pull back and look at what’s going on and we have to understand that this war the government of India cannot win because the poor don’t have weapons, the poor don’t have money but they are huge numbers. And what you are seeing is a conflation of terrorism and poverty. The poor today are being called terrorists.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Not necessarily except in your interpretation, I think there is a distinction that others draw but let me come to the issue of violence because that is critical. Quite understandably and rightly, you condemn what you call ‘state violence’. But do you equally, emphatically, unequivocally condemn the Maoists when they butcher someone like Francis Induwar or when they assume the power to be judge, jury and prosecutor in a multitude of cases, do you condemn them?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I think that this equivalence is a stupid thing and violence is not the issue because I do condemn anybody whether it’s the Maoists or whether it’s the state, anybody who kills a person in custody, I condemn.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So do you condemn the killing of Francis Induwar?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Absolutely, I condemn it. I do not approve of it. I don’t think anyone in their right senses would. However, as I said what I think or don’t think and these moral positions are not the point. Of course, all of us are very uncomfortable with violence but there it is, it’s happening. The point is why? Why don’t we ask why? Who should the poor go to, which court?</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>The ‘why’ we know because you have explained it earlier as the conflation between democracy and free-market policies which is leading to the subjugation and the repression and the exploitation of the poor. The question is what do you do about it. You have said earlier this week that a military solution to the Maoists’ struggle is not an option. What then is the solution?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I think the solution is to understand that the State needs to regain the faith of the poor. It needs to woo the poor again. And it cannot be done over a weekend.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>How?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I think the first thing would be to pull back the army and to stop this nonsense about air force will fire in self-defence and all that.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>No military operations even if it includes just police and paramilitary?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> No military operations. I would say that that is going to provoke a situation.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>What’s the second thing?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Then I would say that you should come out with all the MoUs that you have signed for all the mineral wealth which is really the key issue. I mean just the bauxite in Orissa is worth 4 trillion that’s with 12 zeros.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Do you really believe that the dispossessed and poor in Orissa would be concerned about the MoUs signed by the Government of India, they are not aware of them.</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Are you joking? They know it better than you or me. This is what I would say – come clean, tell us what the MoUs are and the companies involved.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>After coming clean, what’s the next stage?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> For example, on October 12, there was supposed to be a public hearing in Lohandigura (Madhya Pradesh) where Tata is setting up a steel factory, in the name of operation “Green Hunt”. There were barriers that prevented people from going there and expressing what they had to – their approvals or disapprovals.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you are saying let people express themselves and voice their dissents?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Let them voice their dissent, let them be at these public hearings, make all the MoUs public, remove your army and then let’s see what happens.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>If the Government were prepared to take your advice, would you in return go to the Maoists and say it now behooves you to also abjure your violence. If the Government is reaching out with one hand, you must return with the other. Will you take that step?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> If you are talking about me as an individual, I am nobody but I am sure there are people who would take that step. It has been done before. In the interest of the future of this country, all of us are concerned.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>What you are saying is that the initiative should come from the Government first. </em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> I think so. There should be unconditional talks.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>My last question. How do you see the situation developing?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> My fear is that because of its economic interest, the Government and the establishment actually needs a war, it needs to militarise and for that it needs an enemy and so in a way what the Muslims were to the BJP, the Maoists are to the Congress and once you have created this enemy that you are going to go after, there is going to be a lot of violence. That’s how mining corporations have worked historically.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>So you see a greater potential for bloodshed and violence?</em></p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Arundhati Roy:</strong> Unless we can get together and stop it, which we must. A military solution will destroy us.</p>
<p id=”font_text” class=”txt”><strong>Karan Thapar:</strong> <em>Arundhati Roy a pleasure talking to you.</em></p>
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Indian Vanguard 
بهروز نوائی said
cannot tell you why i liked the girl throwing stones on the soldier who went into the shop asking for something begin touching her… and she said i’ll break you or …
Still towns re towns. what i hear about Adivasi people’ treatment takes nothing less than a large, large and on going revolution. things don’t get resolved overnight at all. thousands of years of living in caste feudal system needs a lot of action and cultural revolutions.