Violence

Violence



http://www.tehelka.com/story_main28.asp?filename=Ne31a0307Its_outright_CS.asp
*EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW*

*'It's outright war and both sides are choosing their weapons'*

*Chhattisgarh. Jharkhand. Bihar. Andhra Pradesh. Signposts of fractures gone
too far with too little remedy. Arundhati Roy in conversation with Shoma
Chaudhury on the violence rending our heartland*

*Singur and Nandigram make you wonder — is the last stop of every
revolution advanced capitalism? *
*There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country. How do you
read the signs? In what context should it be read?*

You don't have to be a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle
class, reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed. Unlike
industrialising Western countries, which had colonies from which to plunder
resources and generate slave labour to feed this process, we have to
colonise 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 — supertoys for the new supercitizens 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 people's 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 barometers 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 guerrilla! 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 knocked at the door of every democratic
institution in this country for decades, and have been spurned and
humiliated. Look at the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The
nba 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 rethink 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 umbilically linked to
celebrity politics? Would anybody care if the people of Nangla Machhi or
Bhatti mines went on a hunger strike? Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger
strike for six years. That should be a 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 paltu shers — in which mass action
can be a treacherous business. We have demonstrations which are funded, we
have sponsored dharnas and social forums which make militant postures 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? 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 whom 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.

*Anyone listening? *nobody
*Abhinandita D. Mathur*
*We are in the era of sponsored dharnas and NGOs the sarkar is
comfortable with. The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real
political action*
There was a time when mass movements looked to the courts for justice. The
courts have rained down a series of judgements that are so unjust, so
insulting to the poor in the language they use, they take your breath away.
A recent Supreme Court judgement, allowing the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume
construction though it didn't have the requisite clearances, said in so many
words that the questions of corporations indulging in malpractice does not
arise! In the ERA of corporate globalisation, 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
eventually humiliated, 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 the violence of the Indian State. The minute armed
struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks and the colours 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 travelling a lot on the ground — can you give us a sense of
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-fascism 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, Maharashtra, 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 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 erupt 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 people's shit
on their heads every day. And if they didn't carry shit on their heads they
would starve to death. Some f***ing 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 might of the gun:* The Maoists march during their Ninth Convention
in Chhattisgarh
*AP Photo*
*These are times when to be ineffective is to support the status quo.
And being effective comes at a terrible price*
*The Maoist attack in Bijapur — the death of 55 policemen. Are the rebels
only the flip side 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 are all 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
Chhattisgarh sponsored, created by the Chhattisgarh government, which is
publicly pursing the Bush doctrine: if you're not with us, you are with the
terrorists. The lynchpin of this war, apart from the formal security forces,
is the Salva 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 spiralling violence between
government-backed militias and guerrilla squads, multinational corporations
quietly make off with the mineral wealth. That's the little piece of theatre
being scripted for us in Chhattisgarh.

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
guerrillas, the police and spos they killed were the armed personnel of the
Indian State, the main, hands-on perpetrators of repression, torture,
custodial killings, false encounters. They're not innocent civilians — if
such a thing exists — by any stretch of imagination.

*We were here: *After the Jehanabad jailbreak
*AP Photo *
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
diminshing. 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.

*'Naxals', 'Maoists', 'outsiders': these are terms being very loosely used
these days. *

'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 their own people have risen up against them. That's the stage
the CPM 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.

*We are coming: *A demonstration against the acquisition of land in
Singur
*AP Photo *
*The government has slammed the door in the face of every attempt at
non-violent resistance. The government is responsible for the situations it
creates *
The Communist Party of India, the CPI, was formed in 1925. The CPI (M), or
what we now call the CPM — the Communist Party Marxist — split from the CPI
in 1964 and formed a separate party. Both, of course, were parliamentary
political parties. In 1967, the CPM, along with a splinter group of the
Congress, came to power in West Bengal. At the time there was massive unrest
among the peasantry starving in the countryside. Local CPM leaders — 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 Siddhartha Shankar
Ray. The Naxalite uprising was mercilessly crushed — Mahasweta Devi has
written powerfully about this time. In 1969, the CPI (ML) — Marxist Leninist
— split from the CPM. A few years later, around 1971, the CPI (ML) devolved
into several parties: the CPM-ML (Liberation), largely centred in Bihar; the
CPM-ML (New Democracy), functioning for the most part out of Andhra Pradesh
and Bihar; the CPM-ML (Class Struggle) mainly in Bengal. These parties have
been generically baptised '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, People's 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 guerrilla war in Bihar,
Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

*The Indian State and media largely view the Maoists as an "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 discreetly away), 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 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 people's faith in the
future. One hopes the past will not be repeated, but denying that it ever
happened doesn't help inspire confidence… Nevertheless, the Maoists in Nepal
have waged a brave and successful struggle against the monarchy. Right now,
in India, the Maoists and the various Marxist-Leninist groups are leading
the fight against immense injustice here. 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,
or 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 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.