Walking with the Comrades...Arundhati Roy on her journey into the insurgent base areas.

[RosaLuxembourg]

Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk. This essay was published on Friday in Delhi’s Outlook magazine. Arundhati Roy made the pictures in this 20,000 word essay available exclusively to Dawn.

Really worth reading...

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...comrades-aj-07

[Lapsedmethodist]

Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk. This essay was published on Friday in Delhi’s Outlook magazine. Arundhati Roy made the pictures in this 20,000 word essay available exclusively to Dawn.

Really worth reading...

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...comrades-aj-07

I know a bit about the naxalites having been in West Bengal during the time when they were a force. They are, almost without exception, dangerous nutters on the middle-class side and their policy of cowardly assassination of teachers, "landlords" and traffic policemen has reduced them to looking to Indias backward casts and tribals for support. They have no coherent policies and if (shudder) they ever gained power they would copy Pol Pot.

[RosaLuxembourg]

I know a bit about the naxalites having been in West Bengal during the time when they were a force. They are, almost without exception, dangerous nutters on the middle-class side and their policy of cowardly assassination of teachers, "landlords" and traffic policemen has reduced them to looking to Indias backward casts and tribals for support. They have no coherent policies and if (shudder) they ever gained power they would copy Pol Pot.

They control roughly a third of the country...Arent you a zionist?

[C. Flower]

They control roughly a third of the country...Arent you a zionist?

Would either of those things answer LM's points about the naxalites ?

[Lapsedmethodist]

They control roughly a third of the country...Arent you a zionist?

No they don't control roughly a third of the country No I'm not a Zionist.
You need to get out more.

[Sam Lord]

They do not control a third but are certainly very active in a lot of areas. This will come as a surprise to many people.

I think lapsedmethodist's assessment of them is pretty trite and somewhat eliteist in its dismissal of India's lower castes and tribals.

Roy has a more thoughtful assessment. It is not a matter of someone turning to the tribals as LM thinks. As Islam has become the garb which people in the Middle East have adopted in their struggle against oppression so has Maoism become the garb the tribals have assumed in India. They have been struggling against oppression for a long time however.

[Lapsedmethodist]

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I think lapsedmethodist's assessment of them is pretty trite and somewhat eliteist in its dismissal of India's lower castes and tribals.

Roy has a more thoughtful assessment. It is not a matter of someone turning to the tribals as LM thinks. . They have been struggling against oppression for a long time however.

Well sunshine my assessment of them may well be trite, but it's a triteness brought about by the fact that I know the Naxalites up front and personal; some of them having tried to kill my wifes father for example. I am old enough to have been in West Bengal at the time of both the Pathan invasion of what was then East Bengal and at the time of the Naxalite insurgency. They - the Naxalites - were and are middle-class sociopaths and the tribals will not gain anything from their association with them.

[RosaLuxembourg]

Would either of those things answer LM's points about the naxalites ?

Yes because they point out that they are a mass movement and not just a bunch a middle class brats with guns and also why he is bound to say what he does considering his vantage point on other things.

[Sam Lord]

Well sunshine my assessment of them may well be trite, but it's a triteness brought about by the fact that I know the Naxalites up front and personal; some of them having tried to kill my wifes father for example. I am old enough to have been in West Bengal at the time of both the Pathan invasion of what was then East Bengal and at the time of the Naxalite insurgency. They - the Naxalites - were and are middle-class sociopaths and the tribals will not gain anything from their association with them.

You would think that the Naxalites were the only ones doing any killing but in fact a great deal of their original leadership was murdered by the Indian State. Look at Mazumdar who died in police detention a few days after being taken in.

".... the police were encouraged to liquidate Naxalites through `encounters’ – a catchword invented to palm off unilateral extra-judicial killing of suspects as an outcome of a fierce battle between the police and the Naxalites ! The publicity department of the Calcutta police circulated highly exaggerated reports of such false encounters in the newspapers. Thirdly, policemen who scored points in such `encounters’, were amply rewarded by the authorities. Thus, we find the CPG of November 29, 1973 announcing the award of the police medal for gallantry to sub-inspector Ranajit Guha Neogy for killing a Naxalite on September 9, 1971, praising him for displaying “exemplary courage and devotion to duty at a great personal risk.”

Those at the receiving end of the bravery of Guha Neogy (who acquired notoriety as a brutal torturer in the interrogation cell of the Lalbazar police headquarters of Calcutta in the 1970s) and survived his atrocities have a different story to tell – how his force used to raid Naxalite hideouts , select some young boys, make them stand in a single file and then riddle them with bullets."

If you are concerned about killing you need look no further than the ruling class in India. They are old hands at organising a pogrom or two, murder, torture, etc.

[RosaLuxembourg]

Geniune movements of the "swinish multiude" will always be demonized. Arundhati Roy seems to be someone more trustworthy than LapsedMethodist.

[Lapsedmethodist]

Geniune movements of the "swinish multiude" will always be demonized. Arundhati Roy seems to be someone more trustworthy than LapsedMethodist.

1950's cant. They beheaded their victims in the 60's/70's and they still do so today. Typical of revolutionary freedom fighters they prey on the very people they purport to be liberating; extracting taxes for protection.

[Sam Lord]

1950's cant. They beheaded their victims in the 60's/70's and they still do so today. Typical of revolutionary freedom fighters they prey on the very people they purport to be liberating; extracting taxes for protection.

You are very good at repeating the propaganda of the Indian Ruling classes. A well informed commentator points out below why there is a sudden hue and cry about beheadings, etc. It seems to have something to do with natural resources. Your concern about Naxalite tax collection also seems to be misplaced when compared to the government officials trousering development money, the cops extorting at every turn, and the corrupt politicians. WHy did you forget to mention all this?


"The most important question here needs to be answered is why there are so many hues and cries on “Naxalism” though it is not a new issue. The Naxalism has been flourishing in India for last 4 decades. There were several cases of beheading people, many police pickets were blown up in the past and train was also hijacked for 16 hours in 2006 in Jharkhand. The matter of the fact is the Central and State governments were never serious in addressing the issue of Naxalism and now when the problem is utterly intensified, they are crying foul with the clear intention of burying the failure of the entire system of governance. The government officials were busy in bagging money of the development and welfare schemes meant for the poor. The law enforcement agencies were quite active in collecting money in the police stations, check-posts and other places. And the politicians engaged themselves in capturing power through every ways and means. Consequently, the Naxalism is growing day by day.

However, the main reason is that the so-called ‘Red Corridor’ is full of minerals, where the Adivasis have been residing for centuries. The Multi-National Companies are eyeing on the minerals of the regions and the government is all set to sell it in the market rate therefore it has signed hundreds of MoUs with these MNCs. Since, the Adivasis of these areas strongly feel that they have been betrayed, neglected and dispossessed in the name of development, industrialization and the national interest in India for last 6 decades after the Independence therefore they are resisting against unjust displacement. Consequently, the industrialization process has come to a halt. The Corporate Home Minister P. Chidambaram knows the best way to get the land clear is brand the Adivasis as Naxalites, capture the land and hand it over to the Multi-National Companies."

http://www.countercurrents.org/dungdung071109.htm

[Lapsedmethodist]

Sam Lord..... so how will a Shining Path type insurgency help the situation ? I imagine that it will have the opposite effect; that of allowing the corporations to operate behind the veil of counterinsurgency.

[RosaLuxembourg]

Sam Lord..... so how will a Shining Path type insurgency help the situation ? I imagine that it will have the opposite effect; that of allowing the corporations to operate behind the veil of counterinsurgency.

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are “still” possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable."

Walter Benjamin 1940

[Lapsedmethodist]

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are “still” possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable."

Walter Benjamin 1940

So I was right?