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“Walking with the Comrades” is an engrossing account of the under currents of social, political and economic direction of India. Arundhati Roy’s unassuming question sums up the book, “Can you leave the water in the rivers? The trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain?”
The book questions the accepted ideas of what constitutes progress, development and indeed civilization itself. It condemns both the Indian State and the Maoists for their war over power, land, ideology, mineral riches, rights and ecology. Contrary to popular belief about A Roy’s inclinations, the militant behavior of the Maoists has no sympathy or support in the book. She expresses clear skepticism whether these Naxalites would do anything different if in power than those currently in power. She draws a picture for us to understand the conundrum of the extreme circumstances under which these people live, the boundaries to which they are pushed, and why and how the resistance movements have come about. She aptly states, “If you pay attention to many of the struggles taking place in India, people are demanding no more than their constitutional rights”. Beneath the forests of India lies billions of dollars worth of minerals. Approximately 24 types of minerals including iron, bauxite, copper, chromium, gold, lead, manganese, zinc and coal, are found in nearly 50 percent of India’s total landmass of 3.20 million sq km. India’s considerable mineral resources are being coveted not just by the Indian industry, but increasingly by foreign capital. There is international demand for these natural resources and pressure on the Administration. Roy exposes the conflict of interest of various top level Politicians with the exponential growth in the mining industry. Fueled by the furious pace of development in foreign countries, the production of iron ore, bauxite, chromium, coal and natural gas has doubled and even tripled from mid-1990s to mid-2000 in India. But this huge spiraling production has contributed a measly 2.5% to the country’s GDP in the last ten years. In southern mineral-rich Karnataka state, for instance, royalties from mining have remained a static 0.7 to 0.8 percent of total revenues even while the value of these minerals have shot up manifold. Of 1.2 billion people in India, 700 million continue to live under $2 a day while 50 Indian billionaires top the Forbes wealthiest people charts. On one hand, we are the fastest growing nations, but on the other hand less than 6% employment comes from the industrialization, 40% of students drop out by secondary school, 230 million Indians are suffering from malnutrition and 6 lakh villages are in desperate poverty with access to limited or simply no water, electricity, hospitals, etc. According to the 2001 census, there are more than 90 million tribal people in India, with large concentrations in the eastern and central Indian states, such as Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. The human development report of the eastern Orissa state, the country’s richest mineral-bearing State, is an abysmal low of 0.404. To make matters worse, almost all of these minerals are exported; thus not benefitting India even indirectly in terms of our own infrastructural growth. The gross ecological damage, health degradation, uncontrolled pollution and scale of social irresponsibility are horrendous. In the meanwhile, the industrialists across the globe are trading Futures in the stock market waiting on the secretly signed MoUs (Memorandum of Understanding) to materialize, over the dead bodies of the tribals & police. Here is a disarming account that I want to share from the book. The Maoists invite A.Roy to spend time with them. In order for them to recognize each other, she had to arrive at a given location with camera, tika and coconut and look for the person with a cap, Outlook magazine and bananas. Upon reaching the destination, she met a young boy with a cap, but he was carrying neither the magazine nor the bananas. He said, he couldn’t find the magazine and he ate the bananas since he got very hungry on the way. And from here she began her journey with the Naxalites whom the government portrays as the “Internal Security Threat” (an over simplified and exaggerated term for a very complex issue). In an earlier blog, I have captured some other excerpts from the book: http://ourglobaldiary.weebly.com/chandnis-blog/excerpts-walking-with-the-comrades-by-arundhati-roy She covers intriguing personal accounts of various tribal people, that was made possible only because she spent one on one time spent with them over several days by living, eating, and experiencing their way of life. Their life’s tragic stories start to feel like getting to know of the losses in a friend’s life. She exposes the human rights violation performed at catastrophic levels in the name of “Operation Green Hunt” by the State. It is typical of the Government to kill the key liaison for peace-talks between the Maoists and the State while holding make-believe peace talks. (Alongside the urban Indian asks rather naively, “but why don’t they hold peace talks”?) The oppressive government is becoming more and more hostile towards its own marginalized citizens that suffer poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, and caste and gender discrimination. Legalizing of unfair practices via new laws and policies is brought to light. The Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution provides protection to the Adivasi (indigenous) people living in the Scheduled Areas. This constitutional right is under threat of being amended to effect transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals and corporate bodies. Since 2000, India has begun liberalizing the mining industry; there are laws and amendments being passed to even allow 100% Foreign Direct investment with almost no controls and nil accountability. India ranks among the five largest markets in the world for coal, steel and aluminum. But we fail to ask the critical question…at what cost? Committees set up by the Government acknowledged (but this information was intentionally dropped from the final released reports) that facts are being misrepresented for the purpose of forcibly acquiring land for private industry. The media is working hand in glove with the establishment, twisting and faking stories in favor of the powerful & the influential, eroding one’s belief in the daily news headlines.The author also covers women’s issues and rural health problems in the book. She has written at great length about the need for “personal integrity” in our leaders and decries the extent of killing of people in this internal combat. Reading this collection of essays requires one to keep an open mind to a different point of view. I really appreciate her voice and this book despite the highly acerbic remarks, especially in the last essay. After all, someone has to say it. It exposes us to other people’s reality. That someone can still write such essays reinforces that Indians continue to live in democracy and there is still hope. Arundhati Roy is a Booker Prize winner and has written a screenplay for a TV film that won 2 National awards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy This book has 3 essays all of which can also be read online: Mr. Chidambaram’s War – http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262519 Walking with the Comrades – http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738 The Trickledown Revolution – http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267040
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The Introduction of the book ‘Walking with the Comrades’ is so compelling that I wanted to share a snippet of it here:  “The Minister says that for India’s sake, people should leave their villages and move to the cities. He’s a harvard man. He wants speed. And the numbers. Five hundred million migrants, he thinks, would make a good business model.
Not everybody likes the idea of their cities filling up with the poor. A judge in Mumbai called the slum dwellers pickpockets of urban land. Another said, while ordering the bulldozing of unauthorized colonies that people who couldn’t afford it shouldn’t live in cities. When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and quarries. Their homes were occupied by hunger and policemen. Their forests were filling up with armed guerillas. War had migrated too. From the edges of India, in Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, to its heart. So the people returned to the crowded city streets and pavements. They crammed into the hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was meant for them.” Another excerpt from the first page of the first chapter of the book “Chidambaram’s War” – “The low flat topped hills of south Orissa have been the home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the Bauxite they contain. For the Kondh it’s as though god has been sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ. Perhaps the Kondh are supposed to be grateful that their Niyamgiri hill, home to their Niyam Raja, God of Universal Law, has been sold to a company with a name like Vedanta (the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of Knowledge). It’s one of the biggest mining corporation in the world and is owned by Anil Agarwal, the Indian billionaire who lives in London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Vedanta is only one of the many multinational corporations closing in on Orissa. If the flat topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India, whose homeland is similarly under attack. In our smoky crowded cities, some people say, “So what? Someone has to pay the price of progress.’ Some even say, ‘Lets face it, these are people whose time has come. Look at any developed country. Europe, the United States, Australia – they all have a ‘past’. Indeed they do. So why shouldn’t “we”? -Arundhati Roy Appeal to save Soni SoriUpdate on 4/28/2012: Various Non Profits & Human Rights Organizations are running campaigns to save Soni. Over last few months, I have taken the issue of Soni Sori torture to my heart. Please see the bottom of this blog to see what you can do to save her. UPDATE on May 2nd, 2012: http://iadhri.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/supreme-court-directs-chhattisgarh-government-to-bring-soni-sori-to-aiims-for-treatment/ See bottom of this page for information on this topic from Dec 2011. Tehelka is running a campaign to save Soni Sori since atleast last month: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ws030412spLanding.asp and http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ne140412Arrest.asp For the uninitiated: Soni Sori is an Adivasi school teacher from Dantewada who was arrested on Oct 4, 2011. The charges against her are possibly completely false. Anyhow, since then she has been brutally tortured and sexually abused while in police custody in Chhattisgarh. Despite doctors from NRS Medical Hospital having confirmed that stones had been inserted into her vagina and rectum, Soni Sori has received no proper medical attention. She has been passing blood with her urine, is having difficulty to sit or get up, and has lost considerable weight. More than six months after she was tortured, Soni remains imprisoned in Chhattisgarh and has received none of the follow-up medical treatment she badly needs. During this time, no investigation or action has been initiated against the officers implicated in torturing her. Soni’s petition is still pending before the Supreme Court, and in the meantime, her health condition continues to deteriorate. Unless she receives medical attention soon to treat the injuries she sustained in police custody and infections developed as a result, there is a very real possibility that by the time the petition comes up for hearing, there will no longer be someone left alive to offer any justice to. The brutal treatment meted out to Soni Sori, and the prevailing situation of conflict and repression in Chhattisgarh, cause grave concern about Soni in particular, and the situation of women (and men) prisoners, in general. We should be outraged and ashamed at this inhuman treatment of a woman in India. Such shameful behaviors are like a slap in the face of our civil liberties. Police is supposed to protect people, not victimize them. Indian Government must take strict action to protect its innocent citizens and punish the police that is misusing its powers. Power of changing the world is in the hands of people i.e. You and Me. We always complain that Government didn’t do this or that. Today, it is OUR turn to do something for fellow citizens. We must take charge and not let even a single case of such torture continue. There are several Non-profit Organizations already doing the work for us. All you need to do is send them, from the comforts of our safe and luxurious homes, your name and affiliation (if any) as an endorsement. Please sign these appeals to save Soni Sori: 1. http://iadhri.wordpress.com/ Email to [email protected] with your endorsement. 2. https://www.change.org/petitions/save-soni-sori-and-punish-chattisgarh-police-savesonisori Petition can be signed online on this website itself. I have already sent my endorsements. I encourage you to do the same. My heart-felt gratitude for reading this, (hopefully) endorsing this, and spreading the word to your friends and family. Soni Sori After reading this article, I cried for several hours. My heart was filled with terror. Just reading about such a harrowing experience on another woman/ human being feels so terrifying that it is a matter of concern as to how Soni Sori is living through this ghastly encounter. I wonder where she gathers the strength and the spirit to keep fighting?
I am very ashamed that such incidents happen in India even today. Where is the Government of India when its citizens need it the most? How is it allowing the pathetic Chhattisgarh police to get away with something so abominable? Where are the People of India when it is time to speak up? Where is the mainstream media that covers some ridiculous gossip news on bollywood stars but fails to write a single line on this story? Original Article: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ne151011coverstory.asp  “Independence begins at the bottom… A society must be built in which every village has to be self sustained and capable of managing its own affairs… It will be trained and prepared to perish in the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from without… This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbours or from the world. It will be a free and voluntary play of mutual forces… In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever widening, never ascending circles. Growth will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual. Therefore the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi |
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