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http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india
Arundhati Roy on Obamas Wars, India and Why Democracy Is The Biggest
Scam in the World
We speak with acclaimed Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy
on President Obama, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, India and
Kashmir and much more. Roy also talks about her journey deep into
the forests of central India to report on the Maoist insurgency.
[includes rush transcript]
uest:
Arundhati Roy, award-winning Indian writer and renowned global
justice activist. Her latest book is Field Notes on Democracy:
Listening to Grasshoppers. Her most recent article is published in
the Indian magazine Outlook called Walking with the
Comrades<http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?264738>
ANJALI KAMAT: We spend the rest of the hour with acclaimed Indian
writer and activist Arundhati Roy on the dark underbelly of India,
a country that prides itself on being known as the worlds largest
democracy.
Earlier this month, when Forbes published its annual list of the
worlds billionaires, the Indian press reported with some delight
that two of their countrymen had made it to the coveted list of the
ten richest individuals in the world.
Meanwhile, thousands of Indian paramilitary troops and police are
fighting a war against some of its poorest inhabitants living deep
in the countrys so-called tribal belt. Indian officials say more
than a third of the country, mostly mineral-rich forest land, is
partially or completely under the control of Maoist rebels, also
known as Naxalites. Indias prime minister has called the Maoists
the countrys gravest internal security threat. According to official
figures, nearly 6,000 people have died in the past seven years of
fighting, more than half of them civilians. The governments new
paramilitary offensive against the Maoists has been dubbed Operation
Green Hunt.
Well, earlier this month, the leader of the Maoist insurgency,
Koteswar Rao, or Kishenji, invited the Booker Prize-winning novelist
Arundhati Roy to mediate in peace talks with the government. Soon
after, Indias Home Secretary, G.K. Pillai, criticized Roy and others
who have publicly called state violence against Maoists, quote,
genocidal.
G.K. PILLAI: If the Maoists are murderers, please call the Maoists
murderers.
Why is it that if Maoists murders in West Midnapore last year from
June to December 159 innocent civilians, I dont see any criticism
of that? I can call it159, if government have done it, a lot of
people would have gone and said its genocide. Why is that not
genocide by the Maoists?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Arundhati Roy recently had a rare journalistic
encounter with the armed guerrillas in the forests of central India.
She spent a few weeks traveling with the insurgency deep in Indias
Maoist heartland and wrote about their struggle in a 20,000-word
essay<http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738> published
this weekend in the Indian magazine Outlook. Its called Walking
with the Comrades.
Were joined now here in New York by the world-renowned author and
global justice activist. She won the Lannan Foundation Cultural
Freedom Prize in 2002 and is the author of a number of books,
including the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things.
Her latest collection of essays, published by Haymarket, is Field
Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.
Arundhati Roy, welcome to Democracy Now!
ARUNDHATI ROY: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go into the very interesting journey you
took, you arrive here on the seventh anniversary of the US invasion
of Iraq. You were extremely outspoken on the war and have continued
to be. I remember seeing you at Riverside Church with the great
Howard Zinn, giving a speech against the war. What are your thoughts
now, seven years in? And how its affected your continent, how its
affected India?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I think theyou know, the saddest thing is that
when the American elections happened and you had all the rhetoric
of, you know, change you can believe in, and even the most cynical
of us watched Obama win the elections and did feel moved, you know,
watching how happy people were, especially people who had lived
through the civil rights movement and so on, and, you know, in fact
what has happened is that he has come in and expanded the war. He
won the Nobel Peace Prize and took an opportunity to justify the
war. It was as though those tears of the black people who watched,
you know, a black man come to power were now cut and paste into the
eyes of the worlds elite watching him justify war.
And from where I come from, its almostyou know, you think that they
probably dont even understand what theyre doing, the American
government. They dont understand what kind of ground they stand on.
When you say things like We have to wipe out the Taliban, what does
that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban
is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know,
America created anyway.
Iraq, the war is going on. Afghanistan, obviously, is rising up in
revolt.
Its spilled into Pakistan, and from Pakistan into Kashmir and into
India. So were seeing this superpower, in a way, caught in quicksand
with a conceptual inability to understand what its doing, how to
get out or how to stay in.
Its going to take this country down with it, for sure, you know,
and I think its a real pity that, in a way, at least George Bush
was so almost obscene in his stupidity about it, whereas here its
smoke and mirrors, and people find it more difficult to decipher
whats going on. But, in fact, the war has expanded.
ANJALI KAMAT: And Arundhati, how would you explain Indias role in
the expanding US war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? This is a climate
of very good relations between India and the United States.
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, Indias role isIndias role is one of, at the
moment, trying to position itself, as it keeps saying, as the natural
ally of Israel and the US. And India is trying very hard to maneuver
itself into a position of influence in Afghanistan. And personally,
I believe that the American government would be very happy to see
Indian troops in Afghanistan. It cannot be done openly, because it
would just explode, you know, so there are all kinds of ways in
which they are trying to create a sphere of influence there.
So the Indian government is deep into the great game, you know,
there, and of course the result is, you know, attacks in Kashmir
and in Mumbai, not directly related to Afghanistan, but of course
theres a whole history of this kind of maneuvering thats going on.
AMY GOODMAN: For an American audience, and perhaps for an audience
just outside of the region, if you could really talk to us about
an area youve been focusing a great deal on, of course, and that
is Kashmir. Most people here know it as a sweater. Thats what they
think of when they hear Kashmir.
ARUNDHATI ROY: OK, mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: So, starting there, if you can tell us what is going
on thereeven place it for us geographically.
ARUNDHATI ROY: OK. Well, Kashmir, as they say in India, you know,
is the unfinished business in the partition of India and Pakistan.
So, as usual, it was a gift of British colonialism. You know, they
threw it at us as they walkedI mean, as they withdrew. So Kashmir
used to be an independent kingdom with a Muslim majority ruled by
a Hindu king. And duringat the time of partition in 1947, as there
wasyou know, as you know, almost a million people lost their lives,
because this line that was drawn between India and Pakistan passed
through villages and passed through communities, and as Hindus fled
from Pakistan and Muslims fled from India, there was massacre on
both sides.
And at that time, oddly enough, Kashmir was peaceful. But then,
when all the independent princedoms in India and Pakistan were asked
to actually accede either to India or Pakistan, but Kashmir, the
king was undecided, and that indecision resulted in, you know,
Pakistani troops and non-official combatants coming in. And the
king fled to Jamu, and then he acceded to India. But he wasyou know,
there was already a movement for democracy within Kashmir at that
time. Anyway, thats the history.
But subsequently, theres always been a struggle for independence
or self-determination there, which in 1989 became an armed uprising
and was put down militarily by India. And today, the simplest way
of explaining the scale of whats going on is that the US has 165,000
troops in Iraq, but the Indian government has 700,000 troops in the
Kashmir valleyI mean, in Kashmir, security forces, you know, holding
down a place with military might. And so, its a military occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Were going to break and then come back to your travels
in Kashmir, Arundhati Roy, award-winning Indian writer, renowned
global justice activist. Her new book is a book of essays; its
calledField Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. Shes
here in the United States for just a little while. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Hum Dekhen Ge by Iqbal Bano. This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. Im Amy Goodman, with
Anjali Kamat. Our guest for the rest of the hour, Arundhati Roy,
the award-winning Indian writer, renowned global justice activist.
Her latest book, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.
You recognize that music, Anjali?
ANJALI KAMAT: Yes, Hum Dekhen Ge by Iqbal Bano. Arundhati Roy, your
latest article in Outlook, Walking with the Comrades, you end the
piece by talking about this song that so many people rose up in
Pakistan listening to this song, and you place it in a completely
different context. Start by talking about whats happening in the
forests of India. What is this war that India is waging against
some of the poorest people, people known as tribals, indigenous
people, Adivasis? Who are the Maoists? Whats happening there? And
how did you get there?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, its been going on for a while, but basically,
you know, I mean, there is a connection. If you look at Afghanistan,
Waziristan, you know, the northeast states of India and this whole
mineral belt that goes from West Bengal through Jharkhand through
Orissa to Chhattisgarh, whats called the Red Corridor in India, you
know, its interesting that the entire thing is a tribal uprising.
In Afghanistan, obviously, its taken the form of a radical Islamist
uprising. And here, its a radical left uprising. But the attack is
the same. Its a corporate attack, you know, on these people. The
resistance has taken different forms.
But in India, this thing known as the Red Corridor, if you look at
a map of India, the tribal people, the forests, the minerals and
the Maoists are all stacked on top of each other. You know, soand
in the last five years, the governments of these various states
have signed MOUs with mining corporations worth billions of dollars.
ANJALI KAMAT: Memoranda of understanding.
ARUNDHATI ROY: Memorandums of understanding. So as we say, its
equally an MOU-ist corridor as it is a Maoist corridor, you know?
And it was interesting that a lot of these MOUs were signed in 2005.
And at that time, it was just after this Congress government had
come to power, and the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, announced
that the Maoists are Indias gravest internal security threat. And
it was very odd that he should have said that then, because the
Maoists had actually just been decimated in the state of Andhra
Pradesh. I think they had killed something like 1,600 of them. But
the minute he said this, the shares in the mining companies went
up, because obviously it was a signal that the government was
prepared to do something about this, and then started this assault
on them, which ended up as Operation Green Hunt, which is where now
tens of thousands of paramilitary troops are moving in to these
tribal areas.
But before Operation Green Hunt, they tried another thing, which
was that they armed a sort of tribal militia and backed by police
in a state like Chhattisgarh, where I was traveling recently, they
just went into the forest.
This militia burned village after village after village, like
something like 640 villages were, more or less, emptied. And it
wasthe plan was whats known as strategic hamletting, which the
Americans tried in Vietnam, which was first devised by the British
in Malaya, where you try and force people to move into police wayside
camps so that you can control them, and the villages are emptied
so that the forests are open for the corporates to go.
And what happened actually was that out of thein this area, in
Chhattisgarh, out of, say, 350,000 people, about 50,000 people moved
into the camps. Some were forced, some went voluntarily. And the
rest just went off the government radar. Many of them went to other
states to work as migrant labor, but many of them just continued
to hide in the forests, unable to come back to their homes, but not
wanting to leave. But the fact is that in this entire area, the
Maoists have been there for thirty years, you know, working with
people and so on. So its a veryits not a resistance that has risen
up against mining. It preceded that a long timeyou know, by a long
time. So its very entrenched.
And Operation Green Hunt has been announced because this militia,
called the Salwa Judum, failed, so now they are upping the ante,
because these MOUs are waiting. And the mining corporations are not
used to being made to wait. You know, so theres a lot of money
waiting.
And, I mean, what I want to say is that we are not using this word
genocidal war lightly or rhetorically. But I traveled in that area,
and what you see is the poorest people of this country, who have
been outside the purview of the state. Theres no hospital. Theres
no clinic. Theres no education. Theres nothing, you know? And now,
theres a kind of siege, where people cant go out of their villages
to the market to buy anything, because the markets are full of
informers who are pointing out, you know, this person is with the
resistance and so on. Theres no doctors. Theres no medical help.
People are suffering from extreme hunger, malnutrition. So its not
just killing. You know, its not just going out there and burning
and killing, but its also laying siege to a very vulnerable population,
cutting them off from their resources and putting them under grievous
threat. And this is a democracy, you know, so how do you dohow do
you clear the land for corporates in a democracy? You cant actually
go and murder people, but you create a situation in which they
either have to leave or they starve to death.
ANJALI KAMAT: In your piece, you describe the people you traveled
with, the armed guerrillas, as Gandhians with guns. Can you talk
about what you mean by that and howwhat you think of the violence
perpetrated by the Maoists?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, you know, this is a very sharp debate in India
aboutI mean, you know, even the sort of mainstream left and the
liberal intellectuals are very, very suspicious of Maoists. And
everybody should be suspicious of Maoists, because, you know, they
dothey have had a verya very difficult past, and there are a lot
of things that their ideologues say which do put a chill down your
spine.
But when I went there, I have to say, I was shocked at what I saw,
you know, because in the last thirty years I think something has
radically changed among them. And the one thing is that in India,
people try and make this difference.
They say theres the Maoists, and then theres the tribals. Actually,
the Maoists are tribals, you know, and the tribals themselves have
had a history of resistance and rebellion that predates Mao by
centuries, you know? And so, I think its just a name, in a way. Its
just a name. And yet, without that organization, the tribal people
could not have put up this resistance. You know, so it is complicated.
But when I went in, I lived with them for, you know, and I walked
with them for a long time, and its an army that is more Gandhian
than any Gandhian, that leaves a lighter footprint than any climate
change evangelist. You know, and as I said, even their sabotage
techniques are Gandhian. You know, they waste nothing. They live
on nothing. And to the outside worldfirst of all, the media has
been lying about them for a long time. A lot of the incidents of
violence did not happen, you know, which I figured out. A lot of
them did happen, and there was a reason for why they happened.
And what I actually wanted to ask people was, when you talk about
nonviolent resistanceI myself have spoken about that. I myself have
said that women will be the victims of an armed struggle. And when
I went in, I found the opposite to be true. I found that 50 percent
of the armed cadre were women. And a lot of the reason they joined
was because for thirty years the Maoists had been working with women
there. The womens organization, which has 90,000 members, which is
probably the biggest feminist organization in India, now all 90,000
of those women are surely Maoists, and the government has given
itself the right to shoot on sight. So, are they going to shoot
these 90,000 people?
AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, the leader of the Maoists has asked you
to be the negotiator, the mediator between them and the Indian
government. What is your response?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Look, I wouldnt be a good mediator. You know, thats
not mythose are not my skills. I think that somebody should do it,
but I dont think that it should be me, because I just have no idea
how to mediate, you know? And I dont think that we should be jumping
into things that we dont know much about. And I certainlyI did say
that. You know, I mean, itsI dont know why they mentioned my name,
but I think there are people in India who have those skills and who
could do it, because its very, very urgent that this Operation Green
Hunt be called off. Very, very urgent, you know, but it would be
silly for someone like me to enter that, because I think Im too
impatient. Im too much of a maverick. You know, I dont have those
skills.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember, back to Kashmir, when President Obama was
running for president, Senator Obama, in an interview, talked about
Kashmir, and he talked about it as a kind of flashpoint, said that
we have to resolve the situation between Indiabetween India and
Pakistan around Kashmir so that Pakistan can focus on the militants.
Can you talk about it as being a flashpoint and what you think needs
to be done there?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I think, you know, unfortunately, the thing
about Kashmir is that India and Pakistan act as though Kashmir is
a problem. But really for them both, Kashmir is a solution. You
know, Kashmir is where they play their dirty games. And they dont
want to solve it, because whenever they have, you know, internal
problems, they can always pull uppull this bunny out of the hat.
So its reallyI really think that these two countries are not going
to solve it, you know?
And what is happening is that there is a population of people who
have been suffering untold misery for so many years, you know, and
once again so many lies have been told about it. The Indian media
is justthe falsification that its involved with about Kashmir is
unbelievable. Like two years agoor was it last year? Two years ago,
there was a massive uprising in Kashmir. I happened to be there at
the time. Ive never seen anything like this. You know, there were
millions of people on the street all the time. And
AMY GOODMAN: And they were rising up for?
ARUNDHATI ROY: They were rising up for independence. You know, they
were rising up for independence. And then, that uprising wasyou
know, when they rose up with arms, that was wrong. When they rose
up without arms, that was wrong, too.
And the way it was defused was with an election. An election was
called. And then everybody was shocked, because there was a huge
turnout at the elections.
And all theyou know, we have many election experts in India who
spend all their time in television studios analyzing the swing and
this and that, but nobody said that all the leaders of the resistance
were arrested. Nobody asked, what does it mean to have elections
when there are 700,000 soldiers supervising every five meters, all
the time, all year round? They dont have to push people on the end
of a bayonet to the voting booth, you know? Nobody talked about the
fact that there was a lockdown in every constituency. Nobody wondered
what does it mean to people who are under that kind of occupation.
The fact that they need somebody to go to, you know, when someone
disappearsor, you know, they need some representative.
So now, once again, the violence has started. You know? Its a
permanent sort of cycle where, obviously in the interest of
geopolitical jockeying, any sense of morality is missing. And of
course its very fashionable to say that, you know, there isnt any
morality involved in international diplomacy, but suddenly, when
it comes to Maoists killing, morality just comes riding down on
your head. You know, so people use it when they want to.
ANJALI KAMAT: And Arundhati, in both India and the United States,
as these wars expand, as the military occupations, as you delineated,
in Kashmir, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, as they expand, what is your
message to antiwar activists, to peace activists around the world,
here and in India? What do you think people need to be doing?
ARUNDHATI ROY: See, I think I just want to say one thing more, which
is that in Kashmir, you have, as I said, 700,000 soldiers who have
been turned into an administrative police force. In India, where
they dont want to openly declare war against the Adivasis, you have
a paramilitary police, which is being trained to be an army. So the
police are turning into the army. The army is turning into the
police. But to push through this growth rate, you know, you have
basically this whole country is turning into a police state.
And I just want to say one thing about democracy. You know, in
India, the electionsthe elections werethey cost more than the
American elections. Much more. This poor country costs much more.
The most enthusiastic were the corporates. The members of parliament
area majority of them are millionaires.
If you look at the statistics, actually this big majority it has
ten percent of the vote. The BBC had a campaign where they had
posters of a dollar bill$500 bill sort of molting into an Indian
500 rupee note with Ben Franklin on one end and Gandhi on the other.
And it said, Kya India ka vote bachayega duniya ka note? meaning
Will the Indian vote save the market? You know? So voters become
consumers. Its a kind of scam thats going on.
So the first message I would have to peace activists isI dont know
what that means, anyway. What does peace mean? You know, we may not
need peace in this unjust society, because thats a way of accepting
injustice, you know? So what you need is people who are prepared
to resist, but not just on a weekend, not peace but not just on the
weekend. In countries like India, now just saying, OK, well march
on Saturday, and maybe theyll stop the war in Iraq. But in countries
like India, now people are really paying with their lives, with
their freedom, with everything. I mean, its resistance with
consequences now.
You know, it cannot beit cannot be something that has no consequences.
You know? It may not have, but youve got to understand that in order
to change something, youve got to take some risks now. Youve got
to come out and lay those dreams on the line now, because things
have come to a very, very bad place there.
AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, we want to thank you very much for being
with us.
Her latest book is called Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to
Grasshoppers.
I look forward to being with you and Noam Chomsky in Cambridge in
a week.
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