With chapters of my book having come back with edits and with a new chapter I have been working on together with talking to the cover designer, I have been on a blog-break of late.
However when sensational things like Arundhati Roy justifying the reign of terror unleashed by the Naxals and Kamal Khan hurling a waterbottle at designer delicate-flower Rohit Verma (who weeps like somebody has died when asked to cook) on Big Boss Tritiyaa happen then I am forced to break the silence.
Sensational yes. Surprising no. After all both Ms. Roy and Mr. Khan push the envelope of outrageousness for the expressed purpose of self-promotion, a game known as Rakhiopoly wherein one is forced to continually raise the bar of provocativeness in order to keep oneself in the public gaze.
That is however where the similarity between the two ends. Because MNS’s-worst-nightmare KRK, with his silver gun locket and his “I am a multimillionaire whose milk comes from Netherlands” fondness for the endowed “Ka-Laudia” , is immensely endearing and totally entertaining.
Whereas Ms. Roy’s recycling of Chomskian rhetoric (“You have an army of very poor people being faced down by an army of rich that are corporate-backed”) in a way even Pritam would scoff at being unimaginatively unoriginal and her monumental hypocrisy (“If all corporations are evil, why does she take payments from publishing houses and if the environment is being destroyed, why does she let trees be destroyed to enable her to make money off selling her prose?”) is plain tiresome.
Yet what provokes me to post is that for many what she says about Naxals finds resonance in that Naxals are considered to be “independent” Robin Hoods fighting the system on behalf of the dispossessed, a militant reaction to state-oppression from tribals and other marginalized folks. This explains why the arrest of people like Chhatradhar Mahato is met with email petitions (like this one) [the argument being that Mahato is not a Naxal but a tribal leader even though Naxals were holding hostages demanding the release of “non-Naxal” Mahato) and people, like our prime minister, go to great lengths to point out that Naxals are not terrorists .
The argument as to who is a “terrorist” and who is “misguided youth” is a never-ending one (For instance, in the Western “liberal” media, the people who attacked WTC are terrorists but those who attacked the Indian parliament are “militants”) that has been fought over so many times that it is not worth going into again. However what requires comment is that Naxals are anything but the “little guys fighting for justice pushed into a corner” that their PR people like Ms. Roy would have us believe. They are an organized army-like entity with a leadership structure whose principal goal is the destruction of the Indian state and the rule of law. They terrorize the populations they claim to protect, extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed and engage in violence against people who do not represent the state. Their arms are sophisticated, they are financed by India’s enemies and they are allied with SIMI tapping into their organization and their funding channels.
However unlike your average SIMI terrorists who at least publicly are condemned by one and all, the Naxals have widespread support and sympathy among the chattering classes (who ironically will be the first persons strung on trees and their possessions taken if the Naxals attain their aims). In an age where the battle is not only fought with guns and bombs but also with TV cameras and boom mics, this makes the Naxals even more dangerous.
In West Bengal, allied with the state “opposition” (who are ironically part of the government at the Center and playing a heinous double game [Link] of opportunistic collusion) and provided full support by the intellectual base in Kolkata consisting of a motley crowd of marginal actresses/directors/theater personalities/poets one of whom even donning Maoist fatigues while meeting the “non Naxal Naxal leader” Chattradhar Mahato , they have won a string of major victories by weakening the state and derailing development. And not coincidentally after their major victories, the armed insurgency in the region has also seen a remarkable escalation with the state government finding their hands bound by the deluge of public opinion, misguided and all-informed it is, in favor of the “tribals” –a campaign of misinformation orchestrated by Naxal sympathizers in the media and influential sections of the intelligentsia.
Given this, it becomes contingent on us to raise our voices, even when a book needs editing and release deadlines approach and annual evaluations are due and midterms need grading and project work need to be completed, to call out the Naxals for what they are.
Terrorists. Deshdrohis.
Which incidentally is the name of Kamal Khan’s iconic movie.
The Greatbong Blog & Podcast 
First!
Second !! .. 🙂
Third.. now I will read the blog.
The author is discussing an important topic and the first 2 commenters are practicing their counting skills.
As a matter of fact, all those counting, begging for ipods are retards fit to be featured on Big Boss.
Isn’t Arundhati’s surname Roy?
@Dhananjay: Corrected. For most Bongs, Roy, Ray—same difference.
You know Arnab,
It’s a disgrace that the Naxalites are hero-worshipped by some of the intellectuals. However, if one person steals money; it’s a crime – when all do it; it’s a social problem.
I don’t think that application of military strength is a solution to the Naxalite menace. There can not be a one dimensional solution to this problem. The state has to understand the root cause and try to remove corruption, proverty and hunger in those areas. (Avg. income of Lalgarh residents in Rs. 25 per day; whereas the CPM leader there had a huge house at his disposal)
I am quite sure that almost all the Naxalite leaders have chosen this way of life just to gain money and power – nothing else. However, those corrupted criminals (terrorists) have found a huge support base, the villagers. The root cause hence is the reason that drives this job-less, food-less villagers into this extreme form of protest. Add to this the atrocity of the politico and you almost have a non-curable cancer to deal with.
We all have a role to play in removing this mess. Powerless people like us can discuss about this and cause awareness amongst general public. More powerful persons like you (:D) can use blog or media to create awareness and discourage intellectuals to interfere with state. General public awareness can also make the state answerable to us and justify its measures.
Hopefully, this would reduce this issue to a large extent.
Regards,
Sowmik
PS: All the best for your book.
@SID – a decent post (and protest) is always appreciated by fellow readers. Please refrain from trying to get publicity in this way – it hurts.
aren’t-we-dotty roy is a known offender in this case, often churning out ridiculous statements meant to offend people. nothing new, just like her ‘let kashmir go’ balderdash. i figure lampooning them and not really fighting them on ‘ideology’ makes for cooler heads and takes the wind outa their sails. isn’t taking them seriously and giving them importance what they kinda pray for 🙂
loved it, relished it 🙂
by the way, who about having a fashion show for Naxals?
or do you thing this guy is male version of Arundhati Roy?
Where exactly has she justified the reign of terror, except in the headline writer’s mind? *If* I were such a person (dispossessed, wife raped, only way to defend myself, etc.) *I would say* I am justified in taking up arms. First of all, it is clear that she is not such a person (she has no wife, as far as I know), so there is no question of that condition being true in her case. Even if she were such a person, she is not saying taking up arms is justified in an absolute sense. She is only saying such a person would think it is justified. What is so sensational about it? Don’t the jihadis think they are justified in taking up arms against the kaffirs? Lots of people think they are justified in whatever they do.
I watched that interview and she explicitly said there is no question of justifying violence. That the IBN sub-editor thought it fit to write such a headline is a sad reflection on our media. That you chose to repeat it on your blog…
Naxal is emerging as a strong brand now. And if the supporters are anything to go by, they will soon achieve a heroic status! What is Rakhi-devi doing? Ma’m please do something, you aren’t in news for a week now!!
I think the issue is graver and more nuanced than we tend to think. It’s just not a question of the army crushing a rebellion of a few people with foreign arms. There is, apparently, a core band of 3000 odd Naxals who are ideology driven and want to destroy the state by any means possible in order to establish their version of an egalitarian society. However, they get a lot of support from the tribals and the “dispossessed” (sadly, in spite of the CPM making a joke out of their use of the term “shorbohara”, those people do exist).
Who will the army fight – if you see beyond the few popular pictures naxals in battle fatigues, a la LTTE, you will realize the the majority of the so called revolutionaries are in tattered clothes, loincloths, holding bows anbd arrows and axes, not guns. They are desperately poor, and frequently landless – the government having taken their land away for mining and other development projects without even asking them. They are easy prey for the Naxal ideologues and commanders – cannon fodder who will do what they are asked without question because they are trying to survive. The alternative is starvation.
We need police and military intervention against the Ghandys and Mahatos, but what will killing a few more tribals serve other than worsening the situation. The entire country is full of these tribals and low caste people – who have nothing but their lives to tenuously hold on to. There is simply no way even the army can fight them on a sustained basis. We have to engage them with opportunity, money, development – there is simply no other way. They are not ideologues, they are just the bullets fired by the ideologues at the government.
Well said Arnab. I completely agree with your thoughts. Naxalism is probably the biggest threat to India today. Every day, they are getting braver and braver, attacking schools, planting bombs and even halting trains. I watched Arundhati Roy’s interview and although her sentiment [that the rich are becoming richer at the cost of the poor becoming poorer], this is just one of those clever emotional arguments that these writers, actors and so-called intellectuals use to wreck public opinion. On one hand they will go and participate in rallies and show how they care for the poor and on the other, they’ll wear flashy clothes and speak ‘angrezi’ like no one else can. If you really want to be the voice of the poor or the downtrodden, do something worthwhile for them [Baba Amte]. It’s very easy to give commentary because you’re a celebrity. You know its bound to create ripples. In the interview she said something like, “If my wife were to be raped and my land were to be seized from me, I will have no option but to take up arms”. Well, if this is so, why then has she been so critical of Gujarat where the Hindus butchered Muslims? One could very well argue in that case that since Muslims have committed so many atrocities on Hindus over all the ages, now the Hindus are justified in retaliating.
I’m not supporting what happened in Gujarat. I too, feel it is a shame for a country like India. But I just hate the double standards of these writers and elite class who claim to be the voice of the poor. What’s the loss in supporting rebels as long as one’s own ass does not get on fire? Idealism is something which only the elite can afford to think of. For the man on the street, he has no time.
And the worst part is this very same common man gets influenced by these lofty ideals and indulges in arson and violence while Arundhati Roy relaxes in her palatial house somewhere coming up with more rubbish.
She spoke about how cynical she has become of Indian democracy. I’m just glad that idiots like her are not ruling the country else we would have been a Cambodia or Cuba by now.
i was talking of the same on my blog just a few days back.. can be read at yoursimplenews.blogspot.com
So this is how it’s done. I have to make a dam (which will drown hunderds of square mile of forest) the water will be used for irrigation by highly productive farmer which will increase farm productivity many folds and in process will make everyone rich and happy. Just a small catch these forests are infested with lakhs of so called tribals.
So how long these folks are living there?
thousands of years.
Do they speak any standard Indian language?
No
Do they vote?
You kidding me.
Good then flood the darn place, we’ll see where they run. Would be kinda fun. If they run to cities we’ll kick there ass there too. Piece of cake.
What if they take up arms?
Well in this case we’ll have just call them “Terrorists. Deshdrohis. Maoist”
Once you stamp them with Maoist, it won’t take us a day take them out.
I just don’t get it why these tribals won’t understand if they just roll over and die peacefully today then all their grand children would go to IITs.
You can’t help someone so stupid.
PS: Repeat the above steps for any Bauxite, Iron, Coal mine. Works like charm.
i generally believe in the “focus on the message, don’t shoot the messenger” policy. But i make exceptions for traitors & hypocrites such as Ms A.Roy
Greatbong, good luck for your book. Eagerly waiting for it!
Do you watch Bigg Boss3? And pati Patni aur Woh?
I would hate interruption of your work on the book (which Im awaiting) but what about a review of these stellar reality shows, just like the one you had done for Rakhi Ka Swayamvar?
BTW – whats yr book about?
@ Dhananjay : Roy (as in Arundhathi Roy) isnt a Bengali “surname” Roy but a Kerala Christian First Name “Roy”. Her mother is Mary Roy.
GB, are you trying to say that there is no “state” violence unleashed on tribals ? That these tribals and marginalized are held at gun point by naxals ? Why do you think that naxals enjoy much patronage in all these tribal areas and villages ? Are you tring to say tht this sudden escalation in violence and the govt: rhetoric against naxals is not due to the fact tht the Central govt: is in a hurry to hand over the mineral rich areas (currently falling under the “red corridor” to MNCs ?
Why cant the govt: try to address the root issues that create naxal vioence ? Why cant they bring in extensive land reform acts ? Why cant govt control atrocities unleashed on these poor tribals by the local Jamindars and politicians ? In Nandigram, wasnt there widespread rape and loot by the CPM goons on unlicensed motor bikes, in true Khmer rouge and Indonesian style ?
And taking over acres of fertile lands and throwing out the poor farmers by giving some very little money without providing any alternative land for farming, in the name of industrialisation and development – be it in Bengal or kerala or Maharashtra – is not ON at all. I have seen the same thing happen In Bangalore, where the corp. headquarters of WIPRO and INFY is built. All the real estate companies and middlemen and middle class have profited from the artifical escalation of costs. Farmers are the only losers here. They have nowhere to stay, no land to cultivate. This practice should stop.
Govt: should control the vested interests everywhere.. be it real estate industrial or any other sector…
Unless and until “development and industrialisation activities” become “fair, and transparent” and also provides equal opportunity for everyone, we can see an evergrowing influence of naxals in India.
@ Dhananjay : Roy (as in Arundhathi Roy) isnt a Bengali “surname” Roy but a Kerala Christian First Name “Roy”. Her mother is Mary Roy.
GB, are you trying to say that there is no “state” violence unleashed on tribals ? That these tribals and marginalized are held at gun point by naxals ? Why do you think that naxals enjoy much patronage in all these tribal areas and villages ? Are you tring to say tht this sudden escalation in violence and the govt: rhetoric against naxals is not due to the fact tht the Central govt: is in a hurry to hand over the mineral rich areas (currently falling under the “red corridor” to MNCs ?
Why cant the govt: try to address the root issues that create naxal vioence ? Why cant they bring in extensive land reform acts ? Why cant govt control atrocities unleashed on these poor tribals by the local Jamindars and politicians ? In Nandigram, wasnt there widespread rape and loot by the CPM goons on unlicensed motor bikes, in true Khmer rouge and Indonesian style ?
And taking over acres of fertile lands and throwing out the poor farmers by giving some very little money without providing any alternative land for farming, in the name of industrialisation and development – be it in Bengal or kerala or Maharashtra – is not ON at all. I have seen the same thing happen In Bangalore, where the corp. headquarters of WIPRO and INFY is built. All the real estate companies and middlemen and middle class have profited from the artifical escalation of costs. Farmers are the only losers here. They have nowhere to stay, no land to cultivate. This practice should stop.
Govt: should control the vested interests everywhere.. be it real estate industrial or any other sector…
Unless and until “development and industrialisation activities” become “fair, and transparent” and also provides equal opportunity for everyone, we can see an evergrowing influence of naxals in India.
Mohan: My point exactly. But then GB and his ilk has always been waiting for Ms. Roy to talk about anything to pounce on her with glee like that bumbling fool from ‘your tv’…arnab goswami. GB also had the gall to actually justify todays media in one of his writeups…that was hilarious. Just like CNN-IBN did, even GB has used distorted versions of the fact to justify his hypothesis. When land belonging to the marginalized are handed over to the corporate bastards to build SEZs that will only benefit one section of the society…it is easy for expatraits n their like to sit in their comfy abodes and have issues with those opposing ‘growth’ and ‘development’.
Hemanshu: But in these days of SEZs sprouting like weeds and the state catering to only the corporate class (a case in point the 2G spectrum scandal)…who is bothered about a few lakh indeginous people who can and should get wasted away by the rolling juggernaut of ‘development’ and ‘liberalization’. After all those bloody, illiterate, ugly tribals are a blot on our landscape of shiny glass facades and concrete and steel structures.
GB and his oh-he-is-so-bloody-hilarious group of commenters remind me of those class of people who partake in discussions and debates that happen on TV and raise their hands when the Bharkha Dutt’s ask them to raise their hands to show how many of them think politicians are always corrupt..and then she extrapolates it to proving how the majority of Indians think it is so. Its another matter that most of them sitting there will not take the effort to cast their votes when they have the opportunity.
Sad. Very sad.
GB, you know this ‘Right is Left’ argument has been stretched so far in the present world with a large number of armchair analysers, writers, politicians, tv anchors, NGOs, bloggers and almost anyone who can speak or write in Englis… that it has become pathetically funny.
Every person can create an argument – Why? Even Osama has supporters.
In this situation, it is important – very important to “to raise our voices, even when a book needs editing and release deadlines approach and annual evaluations are due and midterms need grading and project work need to be completed”
Thank you for doing just that !
And to other Naxal sympathisers – Hemanshu & Rags, didn’t you read GB’s lines – (who ironically will be the first persons strung on trees and their possessions taken if the Naxals attain their aims).
Whatever you may say might be right but this extent of organised violence with sophisticated arms cannot be misguided youth. Or You could be blind.
Right. Sad. Very sad. And the fact that people actually justify violence? Even sadder. Justifying the Naxal violence does seem to provide some people with the ‘intellectual kick’.The kind of kick you get when you are in college & trying out some kind of ‘smoke’. You know its wrong/illegal/harmful to health….but what the heck..it’s fun…& more often than not..the ‘in’ thing.
In a democracy..there would always be grievances. I have a grievance about high ‘per square feet rates’. I have a problem with the lack of development in the NE. I do have a very serious problem with people who berate Sachin Tendulkar.
and…I do have a problem..with people who strut around with Kalashnikovs parading as the messiahs of the poor. and as I understand that there is a world beyond the ‘I'(used liberally in the preceding lines), hence I do not point a Kalashnikov at anyone who doesn’t share my point of view & brand them as ‘class enemies’.
Well, as the comment board shows, Ms. Roy is not alone in supporting violence, she seems to have a lot of supporters.
Yes, the Indian state has failed tribals (as it has failed a lot of other groups/communities, in fact, when you think of it, has it served anyone except for a miniscule number of politicians/bureaucrats/babus?) — does that justify the use of violence? And I’m sick of all those arguements about ‘being left with no choice but to pick up arms and wreck the exploiter state’.
If tomorrow, every marginalized and dispossessed group in India decides that ‘enough is enough’ and ‘I’ll take up arms so that they can hear me’, I can see us becoming a Pakistan within days.
And in fact, I don’t even need to be actually marginalized and exploited to pick up arms, I just need to ‘think’ and ‘believe’ that I’m being exploited. (Reference – a poster above trying to say that Ms. Roy didn’t defend violence, she just did a psychoanalysis of how the violent guy thinks).
And it’s funny to read expressions like ‘corporate bastards’ and ‘evil state’ — carry it on, guys!
PS: I thought Ms. Roy had renounced her Indian citizenship (or was very close to doing it) – when does she immigrate to socialist heavens like Cuba or to Pakistan to aid their anti-imperialistic crusade against the evil capitalist US? What’s keeping her stuck in the evil state of India, with its ‘sham of a democracy’ and corporate bastards/politician axis of elite?
@GB,
although i am an ardent fan of SRK could not resist myself to share this pice of new with you…may interest u http://movies.rediff.com/report/2009/oct/29/is-srk-the-rahul-that-lashkar-is-looking-for.htm
insert the ‘e’ and ‘s’ accordingly pls.
“Why cant the govt try to address the root issues that create naxal violence ?”
Shhhh! Don’t speak about the root causes. Don’t you know that only intellectuals and liberals talk about root issues?
The Society of Prevention of Thinking about Root Causes, a wing of intellectual-hating Thought Police will mock you if dare speak about root causes.
Desist or face public humiliation!
“Right. Sad. Very sad. And the fact that people actually justify violence? Even sadder. Justifying the Naxal violence does seem to provide some people with the ‘intellectual kick’.”
As a retard, who was formerly an intellectual, I now only justify state violence, and of course violence towards delicious chicken, goats, pigs, cows etc. And of course towards all the Fish!
“I do have a problem..with people who strut around with Kalashnikovs parading as the messiahs of the poor. and as I understand that there is a world beyond the ‘I’(used liberally in the preceding lines), hence I do not point a Kalashnikov at anyone who doesn’t share my point of view & brand them as ‘class enemies’.”
You should, my friend! Join the police force. As a cop, you have license to point your rifle or lathi towards anyone who dares protest against the forced takeover of their lands by mining corporations. You have license to brand adivasis as maoists/terrorists and kick their ass, as another ex-intellectual Hemanshu points out. Once you have branded them as deshdrohis, you can hand them upside down by their gonads till they confess that they are maoists planning to takeover the country!
And don’t worry about the consequences. You will never be punished since no one will ever know about your crimes. GB will not write about you since he gets his daily dose of newz only from anti-intellectual newspapers who have all their correspondents stationed in Syndney or Melbourne to report racist attacks against Indian students.
Serious doubt. If the naxals and the people they claim to represent are all over, if their support is so widespread, why can’t they stand in elections and win seats and influence policies? Or, is it that they don’t have enough support?
The Naxals are nothing more than a mafia who indulge in extortion and run a parallel government. The fact that the naxal leader Mahato has an insurance policy of Rs 1 crore in his name is proof that these Naxal leaders are just as corrupt as the politicians they claim they are fighting against.
I suggest that Mao-ists should be renamed as Khao-ists
“If tomorrow, every marginalized and dispossessed group in India decides that ‘enough is enough’ and ‘I’ll take up arms so that they can hear me’, I can see us becoming a Pakistan within days.”
You are so right, my friend. How can we let this glorious nation of INDIA become a Pakistan? India should stay just like India, a place where if you are rich or well-connected with the centers of power, you can get away with anything, including killing pregnant women.
As an intellectual, I used to feel disturbed that characters like Babu Bajrangi could get away with murder despite video-taped confessions of their crimes. But now as a retard, I don’t worry about Babu Bajrangis, since I don’t even live in India. I’ve stopped thinking for myself and let Arnab Goswami of Times Now do all the thinking for me !
Everyone, please read this interview of Babu Bajrangi.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107After_killing.asp
After reading it, if like me, you too think that it’s not a big deal that this man has not been sentenced to death by our judiciary..Congratulations! You have purged yourself of every bit of intellect from your brain.
“The Naxals are nothing more than a mafia who indulge in extortion and run a parallel government. The fact that the naxal leader Mahato has an insurance policy of Rs 1 crore in his name is proof that these Naxal leaders are just as corrupt as the politicians they claim they are fighting against.”
Deshpremee, As an intellectual, I would have have thought that if our politicians are as corrupt and mafia-like as Naxals, if out industrialists are land-grabbers and trying to create a parallel state(tax-free SEZ’s) shouldn’t we flush them out too with as much ruthlessness as we wish to exterminate the Naxals.
But thankfully, I’m no longer an intellectual and don’t think about such complicated dichotomies..As a retard, I now only want Naxals to be exterminated. Let the politicians, industrialists, bureaucrats and their ilk continue to bleed the country dry as they have been doing so for the past 60 years.
All administrative problem is due to corruption,bad planning & extremism .
Vigilance can be increased using technology.
Broadband is increasing getting cheaper in india…but i dont see any E- education and E-Governance projects.
Most of us dont know methods to stem corruption ..(like using RTI ACT to get info abt usage of funds..there are very few online resources/help abt RTI ACT).
Should n’t we be able to put a constant watch/track on key people. We need groups like Anonymous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
http://connect.in.com/mamta-banerjee/profile-543.html
Frankly no violence anywhere by anyone could be justified.. I am no sympathiser of NAXALS.. I hate CPM more than I hate naxals.. and I hate A Roy and her antics and her writings from the bottom of my heart..
Having said that, How can somebody turn a blind eye to the fact that the GoI (and the diff: state govts) have completely failed a huge amount of India’s population ? Naxal menace is nothing new.. Naxalbari happened in WB long back.. naxals in Kerala were killed and the movement was dealt with a iron hand almost 35 years back.. How do they thrive even today ? How does their influence grow ?
Isnt the sole reason for tht the repeated faliure of GoI ?
Why the heck cant the govt: rule be for the people of India ? Why is Indian govt: moving more and more the US way, that of being a govt: “of the business for the business by the business” ?
No.. carpet bashing of ppoliticians also not going to help – 4 the simple reason that they are also one among us.. among u and me.. they cant be different than you and me.. they reflect you and me..
If the govt: can bring in rules to create fiefdoms under the SEZ act, that too in such speed, how wud u explain the continued ignorance of a whole set of population ? It cant be a rule that the govt: will faciliate big businesses and the big business wud do their bit by doing charity towards poor.. Which self respecting person wud live by Charity ?
Let the govt: stop doing nonsense like creation of Salwa Judum.. let the govt: bring in “rule of law” in the rural milieu of India instead of some jamindar-police-neta nexus trying to deliver law of the jungle even today…
Address the root causes if you want to solve the issue. Otherwise wait for the naxals to do their mistakes and wait till they turn against the villagers and tribals. and keep paying the price for that wait.
And some guys here are asking a qn: -“I dont like Sachin Tendulkar getting out in a cricket match and it makes me angry. How wud u feel if I take an AK47 and point it at u for that” ?
What can anyone say to this ? Once can feel symapthetic to the absolute lack of sensitivity and understanding and even common sense ..
I can only hope that you never get a chance to face it in your life !!!!
Dear, we r not talking abt some cricketer’s or some bollywood scoundrel’s antics.. U r talking abt a huge set of underprivileged population who had to struggle everyday for their pitiful existence.. about what he shd do when his last straw of agricultural land is being grabbed by the govt:… when hes thrown out of the only place he has.. when he doesnt know what to do with the paltry money (if at all he got it)..
what wud u want him to do ? come to the city and be ur servant ?
No.. these are not some huge existential issues.. these are very siple things a legally elected govt: must be thinking abt arrive at an equitable solution.. Our governmental machinery have failed in it miserably…
“What can anyone say to this ? Once can feel symapthetic to the absolute lack of sensitivity and understanding and even common sense ..
I can only hope that you never get a chance to face it in your life !!!!”
Rags dear, I think you have strayed onto a wrong blog. This is a place where Mithunda and Sachin Tendulkar are treated as gods and underprivileged people as insignificant organisms on par with the FISH!
Let the intellectuals worry about the pitiful existence of these creatures. We only understand the law of every ocean, sea, river, lake and pond – that the big fish eat the small fish. Period. You see, we are now big fish. Having migrated to greener pastures, we are insulated from the troubled existence of tiny fish. Why should we care about their agricultural lands being grabbed by the govt? We know that no government in the world will dare touch us. After all, we have Arnab Goswami on our side! He will raise hell to give us justice. Look how he fights day and night to provide justice to our brothers in Sydney.
I too hate A Roy, because she battles for the small fish. Do you know why? Because that booker prize money has spoiled her. She doesn’t need money that Bennett & Coleman pays to Arnab Goswami to battle for us.
Rags dear, the guy who compared irritation of Sachin Tendulkar getting out with the anger of losing your land to land-grabbers must have been inspired by the Great Bong himself, who makes such an outlandishly similar comparison of A Roy with the notorious KRK..
“Sensational yes. Surprising no. After all both Ms. Roy and Mr. Khan push the envelope of outrageousness for the expressed purpose of self-promotion, a game known as Rakhiopoly wherein one is forced to continually raise the bar of provocativeness in order to keep oneself in the public gaze.”
The benefit of not being an intellectual is that I can actually laugh uproariously at the comparison of a man whose milk comes from Holland, whose water comes from Paris, a man whose arrogance of his wealth is beyond comparison and whose intellectual level is sub-zero with a lady who walks with the likes of intellectuals like Noam Chomsky.
As an intellectual, I would have found this comparison incongruous, but now as an ex-intellectual, I find it extremely funny and marvel at his wit in coining up smart new words like Rakhiopoly!
“@Sid -> As a matter of fact, all those counting, begging for ipods are retards fit to be featured on Big Boss.”
So are the ones who get irritated by this ritual.
Long back, I was speaking to a VHP volunteer who runs a “Ekal Vidyalaya School” in a village very close to Naxalbari (where this entire Pol Pot copycat movement started).
The volunteer said thus-
“When I went to the villages where our One teacher schools and empowerment through education ahd taken root, the village elder came to me and said, Babu…When the Naxals came to us, they gave us the gun and asked us to kill for our rights. You took away the gun away gave us the pen, and asked us to do the same. This works much better.”
For all those who have sympathy with the Naxal movemement for whatever reasons, they NEED TO DO A SERIOUS STUDY OF POL POT AND HIS RULE IN CAMBODIA.
Ideologically and tactically the Naxal movement in India, follows the Pol Pot model of “agrarian prolitariat revolution” started by Mao, down to the comma and semi colon. After it became successful in Cambodia, it led to the extermination of more than 2 million people. The Khmer Rouge as they were known, would take back Cambodia 100 years behind other countries. The rest ofcourse is history as they say.
Be aware, be very careful. This part of the world (India subcontinent) cannot afford such casual and misguided chivalry. It would be no time before hyenas and Jihadis start pouncing on the festering wounds….again.
Time to get our house in order…sincerely and without slicing our veins.
GB: “However unlike your average SIMI terrorists who at least publicly are condemned by one and all, the Naxals have widespread support and sympathy among the chattering classes (who ironically will be the first persons strung on trees and their possessions taken if the Naxals attain their aims). In an age where the battle is not only fought with guns and bombs but also with TV cameras and boom mics, this makes the Naxals even more dangerous.”
Yes, absolutely! After all, Mao went after the intellectuals in China. Isn’t it ironical that intellectuals are sympathizing with maoists despite knowing the history of maoism?
As an intellectual, I used to believe that these intellectuals were not really sympathetic to maoists, only to the problems of tribals and farmers whose livelihood was being destroyed by encroaching mining companies. At least, I never sympathized with maoists, only with the poor adivasis.
But now that I’ve stopped being an intellectual, I realize my folly. I realize that if I speak about the poor, the marginalized and the dispossessed I risk being seen as a sympathizer of gun-totting extortioners because the non-intellectual majority don’t like to think too much or think correctly.
As a retard, I’m beginning to understand the simplistic logic of non-intellectuals where raising your voice against the injustices of state equals sympathy for the maoists. So now I’ve stopped caring about the injustices suffered by the marginalized. As an ex-intellectual, now I only care about the threat of destruction of this nation from maoists.
Man !!! All I wanted to convey was that violence should not be the means to sort out any form of grievance ..however genuine the grievance may be.
Hence the examples.
I may have genuine grievances as an individual/member of a community/linguistic group/nationality etc ..but if I take the path of an “armed struggle” to address these grievances we would simply end up with a battle torn wasteland.
There are better ways to channelize anger against a system than resorting to violence.
& BTW…Deep3rdMan does have a valid point. If the Naxals have such a support base..why don’t they fight the elections…get a sizeable no. of seats & take control of the administration. Anyone would welcome them..irrespective of their intellectual status.
@ Shuvadeep:
The Naxals follow a “manual” that has been historically followed and developed by ideologues like Mao. Mao himself though gave up this ideology after acheiving power). People like Pol Pot in Cambodia followed it through to the end.
The “manual” DOES NOT allow for any democratic procedure in order to achieve power. In fact democratic thought process is looked down upon in Naxal thought process, because democratic systems are considered slave to the “Bourgouse class”.
The Naxals (and their ideological predecessors) have a very simple social model that they strive to achieve. It is a cyclic movement of a hourglass.
Each half of the hourglass represents the haves (bourgouse) and have-nots (proletariat). The population keeps moving back and forth between the two cyclically and each time the have-nots are violently striving to become the “bourgouse class”.
So essentially you have a constantly violent revolution.
Its impossible to see Naxals as “very poor people” whom the state has supposedly left on the brink of starvation when they pose Al Queda style with semi automatic weapons. Clearly they have adequate resources to hold vast stretches of India hostage and run a parallel government. Those who wage violent war against the state have no further claim to the rights of a citizen.
The state (whatever its previous failings) can’t provide infrastructure and other resources to areas not within its control. Hence the need of the hour is to restore order FIRST and only then talk about reconciliation and development.
@ all
If you study the development of the Naxal movement, you will see that their basic ideological problem was and still is “democracy”.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) and later CPI(M) joined the democratic process, back in the 60s. This made the “true Communists” as the Naxals would like to call themselves, very angry and they felt betrayed. The idea of a Proletariat dictatorship as has historically been demonstrated by “great revolutionaries”(sic) like Lenin and Stalin and later by Mao and Pol Pot, is what a Naxalites peak of acheivement would be.
Now since both Lenin and Stalin represented a industrialized country in the 1900s and their revolution started from Urban industrial centers, it doesnt fit into the Indian context. So the Naxal ideals are Mao and Pol Pot. They both represented rural Proletariat. Such is the blind faith of the Naxals in Mao and Pol Pot, that before taking any decision, they actually pour through propaganda literature from Mao and Pol Pot to see what they did in similar scenarios.
What pisses Naxals off-
1. Education
2. Development
3. Democracy
4. Formalized spirituality (Hindu Dharma in the case of India and the subcontint, Buddhism, Daoism and Confusianism in the case of Cambodia, and China respectively )
I am really surprised at the vitriol generated by the Tendulkar example.
How I wish that the statement be read(understood) before coming to the absurd(& unintellectual like) conclusion that I am comparing the plight of adivasis with some cricketing grievance.
Is it really that tough to fathom that the point was If everyone starts solving(or attempts to solve) their problems/grievances with the gun you would have nothing left ?
& I reiterate…Deep3rdMan’s question about ‘why don’t Maoists participating in elections’ stands unanswered.
Shuvadeep
Plese read my response.
What is wrong with you people????
Which part of A Roy’s interview supported this violence? Which sentence of her multiple books and article supports killing of people?
Why are people so uncomfortable when someone opines something different? All these self-righteous Roy haters, can’t you refute all the facts she states with your sources, instead of stoning her. I have never seen anyone refuting her with facts, just making comments.
I am no intellectual, I am not even an avid reader. I don’t know the difference from right wing politics or left wing politics. I don’t know capitalism, socialism, populism. But, I do happen to have an opinion about right and wrong; and if someone like Arundhati can stimulate that, then let it be, however sinister her interests are. No matter how many times you accuse her of trying to get publicity and creating sensation.
O’ dear Greatbong. You should know the difference between expressing opinion and throwing stone because you don’t like someone’s face. You are even writing a book now. Come on. What kind of non-sense is this? A write should know better.
@Rishi: Can you help by suggest a book(s) that would help understand the history of Naxalism in India and how it has evolved to its current form?
Thanks in advance.
BTW this is another reason why GB’s blog is so interesting: So many people with different (and valid in their own respect) points of view. There has to be an open public debate to initiate any change in mindset. Kudos to one and all. Let the debating continue…
“For all those who have sympathy with the Naxal movemement for whatever reasons, they NEED TO DO A SERIOUS STUDY OF POL POT AND HIS RULE IN CAMBODIA.”
As as intellectual, I had no sympathy for anyone, since without knowing someone personally it wasn’t possible for me to be sympathetic towards anyone. But having tremendous curiosity I liked to get to the depth of every issue. I had done a serious study of Pol Pot and found conflicting reports about him and his rule.
Why does John Pilger, who has never been accused of distorting facts, and even won awards for outstanding journalism, believe that US & UK were complicit in the killings of 2 million Cambodians?
According to Pilger, “Declassified United States government documents leave little doubt that the secret and illegal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it was critical in Pol Pot’s drive for power.”
Further more “In fact, the US had been secretly funding Pol Pot in exile since January 1980. The extent of this support – $85m from 1980 to 1986 – was revealed in correspondence to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
According to Noam Chomsky, Pot Pol committed his worst atrocities in 1978, when US was supporting him.
Google ‘How Thatcher gave Pol Pot a hand by John Pilger’ for details.
As an intellectual, I often used to wonder, how a war-criminal like Henry Kissinger, (whose list of atrocities matches Pot Pol) who carpet-bombed Cambodia for over 14 months resulting in killing of over 6 lac Cambodians could win Nobel Peace Prize?
But now as a retard, I’ve stopped reading John Pilger or Noam Chomsky. If I want to know about Pot Pol, I trust Wikipedia to provide me with all there is to know about him and his reign of terror.
Now that the burden of intellect has been removed, I don’t have to wonder why nations like US or UK commit kill millions to protect free markets or create free markets where they don’t exist. As an intellectual, I saw no difference between Mao/Pot Pol and Nixon/Kissinger. But now, as a retard I know that Pot Pol was a monster who murdered millions, while Kissinger was an angel of peace who killed half a million Cambodians to make peace with Vietnam.
PS: If you are not an intellectual, please don’t watch the movie ‘The trials of Henry Kissinger’. It will fuck up your mind badly
@ Rishi
An answer from the ‘intellectuals’ who have not ‘purged’ their ‘conscience’..is what I am looking for. Hence I said ..the question is still unanswered.
BTW…Ramakrishna Mission & BharatSevaSram Sangh are two organisations that do work among adivasis & the rural poor. Haven’t really spotted a Kalshnikov brandishing RK Mission guy or a BHarat Sevasram Sangh member as yet.
They can be case studies in example that you can equip the poor & the adivasis with education to ensure a better future…rather than pushing them into the abyss of violence ensuring destruction..this way or the other.
Err…Kissinger was no Angel ..may be/may not be.
The interesting thing is that the sole defence of Pol Pot rests on Kissingers status as an Angel 🙂
& BTW…Francis Induwar’s beheading is enough to f*** up my mind.
The pictures of the two police officers in Sankrail in a poll of bllod is enough to f*** up my mind. ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger’ is more disgusting than a beheading? I seriously doubt.
& for Ex-Intellectual…I would really be interested in knowing his opinion about why the Maoists should/should not join the electoral process or what exactly (in his opinion) is stopping the Maoists from fighting elections if they are Messiahs?
“Is it really that tough to fathom that the point was If everyone starts solving(or attempts to solve) their problems/grievances with the gun you would have nothing left ? & I reiterate…Deep3rdMan’s question about ‘why don’t Maoists participating in elections’ stands unanswered.”
As as intellectual, I would have asked you who gives people like Kissinger or Bush the right to kill millions? I would have asked why don’t you demand hanging of Babu Bajrangi? I would have given you example of US attacking Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden and attacking Iraq believing it had a right to preemptively attack the country without mandate from UN.
As as intellectual, I used to believe that superpowers like US had no right to solve their imaginary or hallucinatory (US was clearly hallucinating that Iraq had WMD’s) problems using bombs, guns and tanks.
But as a retard, like every other retard, I have accepted that some people have a right to commit genocides, some don’t.
I recall one of your older posts on the Singur issue where you theorized that Mamta di was becoming more of a Marxist than the CPM itself…..very very accurate call indeed.
@Greatbong : What book are you writing ? When is the first edition coming out ? That’s a pleasant surprise, will wait for it.
Coming back to this blog : Quite a few of the commentators have made valid points —
1. The battle against naxals should also include battle against the ideology. The tribals who have not been included in this “Developing Economy Surge” have to be empowered through proper education and healthcare. There should be an effort on war footing for this to happen.
2. Middlemen should be excluded (including politicians )from land acquisition deals. The company should negotiate with the farmers/settlers.
3. Violent people (like naxal fighters) should be exterminated. We should trim down frivolous ministries like “Culture”, “Tourism”, “Info & Broadcasting” etc and spend more money in paying and equipping our security men. Once they are well paid it will be easier to hold them accountable for what they do.
@ Ex-Intellectual
Two wrongs do not make a right.
It seems class equality means If X has committed a genocide Y should also have equal opportunity to do so.
BTW….rants aside…(& keeping aside dragging Bush, Kissinger, King Of Manchuria, the Defense Secretary of Timbaktu)…you still havenot figured out what should the Maoists do with democracy ? Considering their ‘popularity'(as indicated by you). Care to explain ? Or all we get is Bush & Shrubs?
To Ameya and all:
References of my analysis are based on Naxals own literature
-Naxals disdain for popular democracy and elections ( writings from Charu Mazumder, founder ideologue fo the Naxal movement)
“Boycott Elections!”: International Significance of the Slogan, Cahru Mazumder 1968
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/1968/12/x01.html
Hate, Stamp and Smash Centrism, Charu Mazumder 1970
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/1970/05/x01.htm
“The interesting thing is that the sole defence of Pol Pot rests on Kissingers status as an Angel 🙂 & BTW…Francis Induwar’s beheading is enough to f*** up my mind. The pictures of the two police officers in Sankrail in a poll of bllod is enough to f*** up my mind. ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger’ is more disgusting than a beheading? I seriously doubt.”
Yes, since like me, you are also not an intellectual, one beheading is bound to fuck up your mind, while lives of 6,00,000 Cambodians killed by Kissinger would be just an inconvenient statement.
As a reformed ex-intellectual, I’m slowly and surely learning to treat millions killed in Vietnam, Cambodia or Iraq as mere statistics. I’m also trying very hard to increase the temperature of my blood while watching pics of blood-stained Induvar. Since Arnab Goswami is my hero, I’m sure I’ll learn very fast how to get my blood boiled whenever maoists behead some cop or some racist aussie attacks an Indian student in Sydney.
“for Ex-Intellectual…I would really be interested in knowing his opinion about why the Maoists should/should not join the electoral process or what exactly (in his opinion) is stopping the Maoists from fighting elections if they are Messiahs?”
Arre, even as an intellectual I had a very poor opinion of Maoists and thought of them as glorified gangsters, now like you I think they should be flushed out from their caves/trees/shitholes and sent to that part of Hell where their idol, Mr. Mao is burning..
Friends:
If you really want to help our brothers and sisters who have been disadvantaged by inequitable distribution of economic returns and progress (whoa re currently falling victims to Naxals pernicious ideology), please actively join and donate to the following groups among others and help them reach out to as many underpreviledged areas as possible.
Ekal Vidyalaya
http://ekalindia.org/ekal_new/index.php
Seva Bharati
http://www.sevabharathi.org/
@ ex-intellectual
“Deshpremee, As an intellectual, I would have have thought that if our politicians are as corrupt and mafia-like as Naxals, if out industrialists are land-grabbers and trying to create a parallel state(tax-free SEZ’s) shouldn’t we flush them out too with as much ruthlessness as we wish to exterminate the Naxals.”
Yes we should flush them out – by punishing them in a court of law or by voting them out of office at the next election.
Thankfully we have the constitutional powers whereby the will of the people prevail (even if we as individuals might not agree with the will of the majority all the time).
Now compare it with what options you would have as a citizen in the land of Mao : NONE. This year alone there have been more than 70 land riots in China by peasants thrown out of their land. They were crushed by the full might of the Chinese state, and there is nothing anybody can do to dislodge their rulers from power.
Is this really the utopia which the Maoists believe will emancipate the dispossessed and the weak?
It is easy to point out the flaws of democracy, but do you have an alternative which is better?
“Democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all the alternatives.”
@ Shuvadeep
Very true. Bharat Sevashram Sangha and RK Mission have done more for the disadvantaged rural communities than the Maoists and Pol-Potists can ever do.
All without firing a bullet.
“Two wrongs do not make a right. It seems class equality means If X has committed a genocide Y should also have equal opportunity to do so.
BTW….rants aside…(& keeping aside dragging Bush, Kissinger, King Of Manchuria, the Defense Secretary of Timbaktu)…you still havenot figured out what should the Maoists do with democracy ? Considering their ‘popularity’(as indicated by you). Care to explain ? Or all we get is Bush & Shrubs?”
Yes, as an intellectual I had enough intellect to understand that two rights don’t make a right. As a follower of Gandhi and great believer in his doctrine of non-violence, I too believed that an eye for an eye would make the world go blind.
But now as a retard, I’ll be watching George Bush lecture us on how to be a good leader at HT Leadership summit.
“Now compare it with what options you would have as a citizen in the land of Mao : NONE. This year alone there have been more than 70 land riots in China by peasants thrown out of their land. They were crushed by the full might of the Chinese state, and there is nothing anybody can do to dislodge their rulers from power. Is this really the utopia which the Maoists believe will emancipate the dispossessed and the weak? It is easy to point out the flaws of democracy, but do you have an alternative which is better? Democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all the alternatives.”
Yes, I completely agree with you. To repeat what I said in my previous comment “they should be flushed out from their caves/trees/shitholes and sent to that part of Hell where their idol, Mr. Mao is burning..”
PS: Even as an intellectual, I’d no sympathy or belief in maoism.. Please read my previous posts.
@ Ex-Intellectual
Whats ur age?
@Shuvadeep
Please, I don’t want to hear. “If at age 20 you are not a Communist you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains”
Trust me, I never was a commie, not even at the age of 20, not when I was an intellectual and definitely not now when I’m a retard..
@Shuvadeep,
In case you are wondering what my political or economic leanings were when I was an intellectual, let me tell you I had none. I don’t have any opinion on which economic model or political system is best, but being a man of science, I used to believe every action causes reaction. Extrapolating this theory to the realm of life, I figured that positive actions would cause positive reactions and negative actions would cause negative reactions.
Like some commentators above, I used to talk about cause and effect, but one fine day while I was blabbering away as usual about action and reaction, I was mercilessly attacked by members of The Society of Prevention of Thinking about Root Causes, wing of intellectual-hating Thought Police.
Mentally traumatized by their vicious mocking, I flushed out every trace of intellect I had (now it exists only as a memory) and regressed to my current state of retardation.
why naxals took to arms? Thank mr. rishi. I know now.
Arbav, please stick to the filmi/cricket posts. These are really outta your league.
@Ex-intellectual:
I think Shuvadeep’s question is very valid.
Many of us have serious concerns about your physcial (and mental) age.
You have not answered a single question posed to you, instead treating us to a tour of recent world history.
And since you were “trying very hard to increase the temperature of my blood while watching pics of blood-stained Induvar”, I think we understand where you are coming from.
Keep your Kalashnikov clean.
@Ex-intellectual
And if I were you, I would go easy on the attempts at self-mocking sarcasm. It’s really beginning to grate now…
@ Ex-Intellectual
Happy New Month
Spot the difference
Goal: Utopia; destruction of the nation state [check]
Means: Violence [check]
Kidnapping/hostage taking? [check]
Hijacking? [check]
Guns? [check]
Bombs? [check]
Beheadings? [check]
Killing civilians? [check]
Killing state security forces? [check]
Grievances: USA/India, capitalism, democracy, economic progress, development, prosperity [check]
Driven by: ideology, visions of their version of a perfect world, power lust [check]
Enemies: State; Anybody who is not ‘us’ [check]
Justification: George Bush, Henry Kissinger, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Mao-said-so [check]
Jihadis or Ex-intellectual’s friends?
Hmmmm….This Ex-intellectual guy is quite impressive..
After reading his comments I am starting to like him.
Way to go boy!!
@ Arnab: Excellent article and to the point on the urban intellectuals. These types of goofs supported the original Naxal-bari movement as well.
@Rishi: Never thought I’d see the day, but you are spot on.
@Supporters, Fellow Travellers, Bad Commies, etc.:
1. As already mentioned, if every poor person decided to pick up arms against the system then we’d have chaos.
2. Look, too many of us disrespect the Indian state. It is fashionable for some intellectuals and urban folks. I too decry state activities when it comes to things in the economy: Public Sector Enterprises, etc.. Have all of you molly coddled, city educated, probably NRI types thought how much a regular police-man makes, the arms (.303) they have to fight with, their living and working conditions? Have you thought what the postal service or the Railways pays its 4th class employees and the living conditions? I don’t mean the Baboos in the offices, but the station masters, the engine drivers, etc.? Sorry, even grinding poverty does not justify killing anyone, least of all other poor people with families!
Finally, I am fully in support of the Indian Army liquidating these Maoists and pacifying these areas. The Maoists were basically informed that “look if the situation gets out of hand then we’ll unleash the army”. They didn’t listen, politicked, killed more policemen. Now, the army is here. It will be brutal, it always is; just ask anyone who lived in the late sixties and early seventies Bengal; but that’s that. For justice to prevail and development to take place you must have order first: words by Mr. K.P.S. Gill on his tenure in Assam.
Finally, quoting a brilliant sociologist, Barrington Moore, “modernization is violent”. The peasants can die either through forced reallocation of labor, which is fast and superbly brutal (basically Stalinism). Or, the peasantry can die slowly through the demands of industrialization and the redundancy of labor in capital intensive agriculture (The Industrial Revolution). Government subsidies in France and US retain a show agricultural sector, but these are no way practicable and actually depress the world food market that should be dominated by many of the poorer countries’ products. Simple Truth: There is nothing called an agrarian First World Country. The sentence is a paradox in and of itself. Historically, Argentina came close, but the economic-political contradictions of the system destroyed its trajectory. So, in short, singing paens to the peasantry might sound humane, romantic and be an obvious best seller for a book, but in brute economic history it is neither practicable nor desirable.
Sorry to be rude,
Vasabjit Banerjee
you have very little clue about the Naxal movement
neither do I
so shhh
@K: Seems like a troll to me.
People like K are the bane of Indian democracy: let’s all just shut up! Shut up and just allow it to go on?
VB
@Ex-Intellectual:
So, now, we know from your rants that you hate (or at least used to hate, when you were an intellectual) Bush, Kissinger and Bajrangi amongst others (not without reasons, presumably justified, too) but I still don’t understand how exactly do all these tie up with Maoists or Naxals?
@Dumdum_er_aantel :
“I have never seen anyone refuting her with facts, just making comments. ”
I don’t know how long have you been following this blog for but Ms. Roy and her duplicity has been pointed out a number of times before, in fact, GB even did an entire post on it (I remember one, there might be more) and if I remember correctly, the comment board had a lot more examples/facts/sources of her hypocrisy. Also, refutation of her stands/views/whims, based on facts and sources is actually not very hard to find if you search around.
So, before accusing others of biases, you would probably be better off reading them avidly. Thanks!
——————————————————
Also, it’s ironical that most of the ‘class enemies’ that Naxals choose to massacre are policemen or CISF or the like (presumably, for being the symbols of the state). To me, at least, neither Mr. Induvar, nor the two policemen killed in Sankrail appeared to be exploiters (the kidnapped policeman at Sankrail, reportedly, even ran a school for locals).
@Shubho,
I pity you. At least I’ve experienced the state of being an intellectual. You, it seems have been lacking in intellect throughout your life. I’ve answered every single question put to me, except for my biological age which is I think is irrelevant to the conversation. The kind of statements you make ‘Keep your Kalashnikov clean’ shows that your mental age is similar to the commentators who pollute rediff boards. (Insulting me will get you nowhere. Even as a retard, I know how to insult back. It’s not really rocket science, you know)
If you are feeling grated, its really not my problem. But if I were you, I would go and read the GB’s ‘Gunda’ review again where all commentators irrespective of their intellectual levels agree that its a must watch classic movie. It would soothe your nerves to find hundreds of commentators agreeing with your opinion.
@Yuyutsu:
“So, now, we know from your rants that you hate (or at least used to hate, when you were an intellectual) Bush, Kissinger and Bajrangi amongst others (not without reasons, presumably justified, too) but I still don’t understand how exactly do all these tie up with Maoists or Naxals?”
Nope, even as an intellectual, I never hated the Bushes or Bajrangis of the world. I’m a man of science, not a man of hate. I merely observe the crimes of these men and the effects of their actions.
When did I say they tie up with maoists or naxals? As an intellectual, I had a poor opinion of them, and now as a Arnab Goswami fan, I hate them with as much intensity as my friend, Shubro, who like me is a retard, believing every nonsensical notiont that enters his puny mind without any evidence to support that notion.. for e.g that I’m a Jehadi who keeps company with Kalashnikovs.
“But if I were you, I would go and read the GB’s ‘Gunda’ review again where all commentators irrespective of their intellectual levels agree that its a must watch classic movie.”
This is priceless. 😀 😀
I don;t know how/what to respond. Severe shock has crippled my vocab.
GB da …please help. 😀
“As already mentioned, if every poor person decided to pick up arms against the system then we’d have chaos.”
Yes, I agree with you. If my maid picks up arms against me, there would be chaos in my house. As an intellectual too, I was against people picking up arms and creating chaos. Of course, reading about the state of the nation, I foolishly believed that there was already chaos in this country.
But now, I have shut my eyes to the chaos of the countryside, where caste violence, stupidity, orthodox traditions, land-grabbing of the poor etc ensure that the lives of these miserable people is always in chaos.
I now believe that someday democracy will work for them, high-caste landlords won’t harass them, cops won’t lock them up and do experiments on their private parts, government wouldn’t steal their land or relocate them in the name of development. That day may be several decades or centuries away, but in the meantime we should crush these pests whom these foolish intellectuals hail as revolutionaries. (I was an intellectual, but I never believed that revolutions succeed. As a student of history, I was well-aware that after the end of every revolution, the oppressed become the new oppressors. Every intellectual I know is aware of history. So, I wonder who are the intellectuals who see maoists as revolutionaries)
Going round & round & round….yawn…
BTW…you forgot to mention Kissinger, Bush, Aristotle, Harry Potter, Voldemort etc in your last comment 😀
“BTW…you forgot to mention Kissinger, Bush, Aristotle, Harry Potter, Voldemort etc in your last comment :D”
I’m so sorry! With time my memories are slowly fading, Shuvadeep. But how could I’ve avoided talking about Kissinger while Pot Pol was being presented as an example of maoist monsters one should be wary of? If you can link the fate of every tortured adivasi with the activities of Pot Pol or Mao, whats the harm in linking every land-grabbing activity of Tatas or Vedanta with land-grabbing activities of Bush or Kissinger?
I wish you had pulled up Rishi Khujur as well for dragging Pol Pot into the discussion.
@Ex-Intellectual:
1. After revolutions the oppressed never ever become the oppressors. Read some history books on Russia, China, France, etc. (not published by Raduga, Central or Progress Publishers). Two reasons: first, there are too many oppressed people to overcome collective action problems; second, the people who can offer resources (information, money, guns, etc.) to overcome the collective action problems, first, ally with the poor, and, second, retain themselves in power. In short, there is always an oligarchy that takes over: Russia and China (middle class intellectuals); Mexico (small business interests and landlords); Cambodia (middle class intellectuals); France (middle class intellectuals and small business men). On second thoughts, it seems that the middle class intellectuals are the one thing in common in post-revolutionary regimes.
2. Order and Justice is akin to the chicken and egg problem. Here’s the catch though: when everyone around you owns a gun, the winner is the one with the biggest gun. So, power can flow from the barrel of a gun, but justice cannot.
Perhaps, if one’s arguments are both unscientific in method and empirically invalid, they ought to be called pseudo instead of formerly intellectuals. You should come back with post-modern arguments next time. You were saying something about your maid…. 🙂
Cheers,
Continuing to swat flies in D.F.
If I had ‘pulled up’ Rishi Khujur who (according to you) was already ‘dragging’ Pol Pot, I would have ended up with a situation where Rishi KHujur is standing beside me with POl POt by his side.:D
Considering Pol Pot’s reputation, I was not really comfortable with the idea of having him around & hence desisted from ‘pulling’ Rishi Khujur.
@Vasabjit Banerjee
Yes, I completely agree with you. I made that statement in a general sort of way. But you are absolutely right that the oppressed are too many and oligarchies soon takes over after every revolution. We can see in our own UP, how Mayawati was voted to power on the plank of justice for dalits, but who is now wasting tax-payers erecting temples for herself.
“Here’s the catch though: when everyone around you owns a gun, the winner is the one with the biggest gun. So, power can flow from the barrel of a gun, but justice cannot.”
Yes, absolutely. Justice is elusive in this world. And so are solutions to the problems confronting us.
“Perhaps, if one’s arguments are both unscientific in method and empirically invalid, they ought to be called pseudo instead of formerly intellectuals.”
What’s unscientific about my statement that every action results in a reaction? Everyone from Newton to Narendra Modi accepts it as an empirically tested scientific fact.
Thought provoking post and even more interesting comments.
GB – do not agree with the roy bashing. I do not think Roy is trying to say that all naxal activity is justifiable.
She is trying to just say that all kinds of rebellion spring from dissatisfaction with the performance of the powers to be and if we do not take cognizance of the failure of the state machinery there will be no difference between the state machinery and the naxals other than the fact that the state machinery is carrying out their functions under the guise of legality.
And while she does stress on corporate greed etc., once in a while I do not think she is making a limited point, but its more like if the state exercises its powers in a questionable manner what right do we as the junta have to point accusing fingers at people who chose to object to such acts also in a questionable manner.
I do agree that rebellions have generally only resulted in dictatorships but then there is a large populace with an opinion that a rebellion may not always result in a dictatorship (I do agree that the evidence indicates otherwise but then we do live in eternal hope for change right).
Also dont you get this feeling that the powers to be of today are of the view that they can get away with anything. A little naxalite activity may actually turn out to be an alarm clock for them to do the right things at least once in a while. A naxalite movement as we all know cannot survive without people support and while one or two people can definitely be misled i dont think it is possible for a large section of the populace to always be misled.
GOI loves moaist .. no seriously they do. It’s a win-win situation for both GOI and Moaist. Let me explain how. GOI is committed to eradicate poverty and sometimes to do it at an accelerated rate it’s essential to eradicate/exterminate poor to. So at the moment these ‘tribals’ are bothering us in forest of Andra, valley of Satpura, mines of Bastar all the way up to the Jharkhand and Bihar. There is no centralized policy to work for the welfare of these blokes. As you can imagine the state apparatus all though very dedicated to the cause is no way as efficient as center. We need a centralized will to deal with it. Apart from being poor, disfranchised with now sustainable way to lead their lives what else do have in common? You need a name for them. That’s where the maoist came as a savior. Maoist have identified with the cause of these tribals and have their own grand agenda to create a ‘red state’.
So now this crowd has a name, maoist. All I have to do get rid of ‘them’ is call them maoist. Sure GB or Pranb won’t talk about 17 maoist killed in some deep forest. Those bugger had it coming. And when 5 years down the line Arundhati bicker about thousands killed in the name of maoist, who cares, the bitch is crazy anyways.
@Ex-intellectual: Do you blog? If you don’t then please do.
@Ex-Intellectual:
Good lord man…enough already!
I don’t think I can ever use the word ‘intellectual’ in a sentence again…talk about word abuse!
Just curious though…how many tribal families can be fed for a month with the street price of one Kalashnikov?
GB is surprisingly quiet.
GB..can we hebb your attention pliss ? 😀
Quite amazing, the discussions we are having here! Just goes to show what we educated urban young Indians are really good at-talking/typing in flawless English, expressing our opinions in a strong way, clearly telling whats wrong and whats right, and whipping up an intellectual storm on the net! Can someone please tell me, how the f*** is all this supposed to address the issue? The real issue on the ground is much more complex than all of us wish to think. You cant just brand one set the heroes and one the villains, its an extremely complicated issue- the tribals of India are probably the poorest lot, they struggle for their existence everyday, and when criminals like Mahato approach them with an enticement of money/food, they just respond to their most basic instinct. It is a wrong way of expression- no doubt, but if we really want to tackle this, it is we youth who need to dirty our hands, enter politics (a must), social work (I am invloved in the same, so pls, no barbs on what are you doing!!), get rid of our apathy and cynicism right now, get involved on the ground (it doesnt mean you need to give up your full-time jobs- not yet!) and act, instead of keeping on talking, and saying India has been failed. If it has been failed, it is because we have allowed it to fail, all of us are equally responsible for this mess! Time to own up and start acting guys! And I, coming from the youth brigade, do believe we are an extremely apathetic bunch. So, just as a pilot, how many of the commenters here are prepared to give an hour of their week(end) to social work? Responses pls….
@Hemanshu..
You are the man. You understand how things really work on the ground better than both intellectuals and retards. But I’m afraid if you keep telling the truth the way it is they will soon brand you as a conspiracy theorist!
@Shubho,
As an ex-intellectual, I still have sympathy for them and would do my utmost to ensure that the word ‘intellectual’ doesn’t become a dirty word in this country. You know what happens to a society where intellectuals are looked upon with suspicion. Both the rightists and leftists see them as their enemies and hang them from flagpoles Everyone hates the intellectuals – fascists, communalists, maoists and of course the retards.. 🙂
“how many tribal families can be fed for a month with the street price of one Kalashnikov?”
How would I know? I’m ex-intellectual, ex-gandhian man of science. Ask such stupid questions to the men who wield Kalashnikovs.
That’s the classic leftist way of expressing dissent- unfailingly siding the minority and blaming everything on Capitalism. However, as we have seen, that is where the benefits of Leftist action end- support incendiary revolutions, turn the tables and then just sit on you ass. Their goal of social and economic equity is never achieved in this fashion. Rather, the chasm is widened, progress is stalled and innovation is stymied.
Capitalism, with its own pitfalls, has at least given us many innovations like the computer, motor car and the internet. These things would have never been an output of a communist world. So if A hurts B and B exacts retribution by killing innocent C and D, you are asking me to sympathize with B as A is rich and B lives in abysmal poverty? Pretty soon C and D will follow the cycle, maybe A will be overturned and a new A will come to power. But nothing will change. Change is only possible through better social governance, policies and a better justice system. None of that will be affected by sympathizing with the retributive measures taken by B. We all know that A is the biggest culprit. So do you have the balls to be a nation with limited or no A? No….the leftists will never like that. They like that big brother. Their big brother that is.
The problem with people like Ray is that she will do everything to prevent the dam from being built, but will never come up with an idea as to how to bring those people living around the dam to come out of poverty. As things like job creation, enterprise etc are alien to the Leftist culture. Its all about benefits….I wont do anything….gimme this benefit and that….if you cannot…suck the rich. How does that money come from? How is the sausage made? I don’t care and don’t want to know. I just want it. OK? One can still empathize with her views as far as eminent domain etc is concerned, but she becomes unbearable when she starts singing that M’s are being persecuted tune. What is irksome also is her failure to differentiate fact from opinion in her ejaculations, whether it be written or oral (pun not intended). Her polemic is also superfluous, and is hardly ever substantiated by facts, figures or statistics. This makes her stance predictable and in the absence of rational arguments, questionable. But its good soap opera, tugs heartstrings of fellow leftists many miles away and helps sell books.
Its not Ray my dear.. Its Roy, as in Roy Thomas or Roy Mathew or Roy Dias ( its not the same as Ray) .. Its not Arnab Roy bur Arnab Ray.. Its not Arundhathi Ray but Arundhathi Roy..
I have no problem with GB’s blog and his interesting takes on Mithunda.. I love Mithunda and believe that he belongs to the league of gr8 actors of India like Balraj Sahni, Mammootty, Mohanlal, Ompuri, Naseeruddin Shah, Kamalhaasan, Soumitra-da.. etc…Mrigaya, Tahader Katha, Gudia and many many more films bear ample proof for this.. I love the Bengali and Malayalam songs of Salil-da… I eagerly forllow this blog for the last 3 years and take part in many discussions on cricket, films and politics etc..
I hate Commies.. I hate CPM more.. I hate all the presiding deities of commies like Stalin, Marx, Pol-Pot etc even more… I hate modern fakes like Arundhathi Roy.. I hate every word of hers.. I hate Indian secularists and their obvious double standards.. I hate China and chinese supporters in India.
I have huge faith in Indian democracy – and thats def. not the form thats preached by US.. I think US shd learn from India on how to be much more inclusive of the people.. I feel tht US is a govt: that takes care of their business interests alone. I vote in every elections.
All this doesnt prevent me from saying that the Governments of India shd have a more inclusive way of governance and all these fly-by-night middlemen, real estate sharks etc shd be reined in and the lowest common denominators in villages fighting casteism, oppression jamindari, land grabbing etc shd be protected. Capitalism provides them charity. They dont need charity. They need respect and equal opportunity.
It was ydays news tht the district collector led a grp of Dalits into a temple n TN where their entry is prevented for years together. This is a reality for a lower caste marginlized people which they face for centuries together. even today, they are facing it.
All that I am saying is that if the Governments shirk from their duty, like they have been doing ever since Independence, they WILL have to face serious issues like Naxalism. They can never root it out.
“That’s the classic leftist way of expressing dissent- unfailingly siding the minority and blaming everything on Capitalism.”
Although I’m neither a leftist nor a anti-left capitalist, I like the concept of private property which I see as one of the main pillars of almost every economic system that is not ultra-left. Can you tell me the names of any leftist who are ultra-left, those who believe that private property should be abolished and that state should be the sole owner of land?
If anything, most of the leftists, socialists, intellectuals, human-right activists, liberals, thinkers etc are raising their voices to protest against the violation of the fundamental property rights that were guaranteed to every citizen of this country, but abolished by Indira Gandhi allowing government the power to acquire land from peasants without providing compensation. Today this power is being used by our capitalist-friendly government, not for secular development but for handing it over to industrialists at cheap rates for either mining or for developing private townships outside the control of our tax-regime.
So my dear friend, who is truly anti-capitalist here? Not leftists or liberals, but the capitalist-friendly Indian state and the capitalists themselves who are shamelessly subverting the concept of private property and establishing their own parallel governments in the form of SEZ’s.
This is of course, not just an Indian phenomenon. Goldman Sachs has subverted the entire American free-enterprise market economy system by shamelessly engineering every major market manipulation in last hundred years.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine
If there is a moral in the Goldman Sachs story, it is that every economic system can be manipulated if the people who are running it are amoral crooks
“Capitalism, with its own pitfalls, has at least given us many innovations like the computer, motor car and the internet. These things would have never been an output of a communist world.”
My dear, inventions and innovations are a result of scientific minds, not economic systems. Russia during its peak was a technological superpower on par with US and far, far advanced than India and many other capitalist countries around the world. Capitalism while giving us thousand varieties of mobile phones also killed the electric car because electric cars would have effected the bottom-line of oil giants. (Watch the movie – Who Killed the Electric Car). I can give you list of hundreds of inventions scuttled by oil giants to protect their monopoly over energy.
“So if A hurts B and B exacts retribution by killing innocent C and D, you are asking me to sympathize with B as A is rich and B lives in abysmal poverty? Pretty soon C and D will follow the cycle, maybe A will be overturned and a new A will come to power.”
hahahaha .. guys get high and read this .it sounds so much more fun.
“The problem with people like Ray is that she will do everything to prevent the dam from being built, but will never come up with an idea as to how to bring those people living around the dam to come out of poverty.”
Well these poor tribal were living this way for more than thousand years. They are not asking YOU to develop them. These people are freaking tribal they won’t know what shit to do with our currency. I am even OK with “developed man’s burden”, which we so proudly wear and with all altruist intentions in our hearts to salvage these savage souls from their peaceful miseries. The problem is we don’t factor them in. They don’t matter. The cost of relocation/compensation to all of non-existing entities is complex, it screw up the ROI of the project, makes it non-viable.
The sad part is this is not an hypothetical scenario, its how dams gets built in India. So bear in mind the ‘democracy’ goes only as deep as our tar roads go. It’s a jungle all the way ahead.
Sorry for letting loose my previous comment without proof-checking.
“As things like job creation, enterprise etc are alien to the Leftist culture. Its all about benefits….I wont do anything….gimme this benefit and that….if you cannot…suck the rich. How does that money come from? How is the sausage made? I don’t care and don’t want to know. I just want it. OK?”
It’s so convenient to divert the issue by ranting about the leftist culture. The leftists – the CPI, CPI(M) etc are part of the crony-capitalist establishment that we live under. They were the the ones who were grabbing the land of peasants in Nandigram and Singur to hand them over to crony-capitalists like Tatas and the Indonesia-based Salim Group.
Protecting your land from encroachment by mining companies is ‘sucking the rich’? WTF! Protesting against your land being acquired by government to be handed over to capitalists for construction of SEZ’s is stealing from the rich?
In the Orwellion world that we live in, where you can get a peace prize after killing half a million people, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if retards believe that poor people are stealing from the rich. I guess you also believe cockshit like big bankers deserve to be bailed out by tax-payer’s money as they are too big to fail.
Over 2 lac farmers have ended their lives in last 10 years, not because they are idiot leftists who don’t know how sausages are made. They understand more about producing goods than arm-chair cribbers who sit on their asses all day earning their living by answering dumb queries of American customers. These peasants are killing themselves because the Indian state is doing its best to destroy agriculture, by not providing them with credit or insurance. How many industrialists would be able to survive in market economy without credit facility?
As an ex-intellectual, I demand a better functioning market economy, where land rights of everyone are protected by the law, where everyone has access to credit and insurance, instead of the existing anarchic, lawless capitalism where the big sharks are allowed to eat the small fish and brand them as terrorists if they resist and fight back.
I just want to ask one question to those who are willing to look differently to the premise setup by GB. Why is it that the “land grabbing” and “govt only looking after the corporate interests” phenomena has found armed protest to such an extent, only in eastern part of the country? Frankly if you draw a line cutting India longitudinally into 2 halves, all these problems have found popular support, will, and steam only in Eastern half (Andhra, Chattisgarh, WB, Jharkhand and Orissa). Why is that?
Land has been acquired from farmers in western half also. You have had problems with relocation of tribal population in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra due the the Narmada Dam. But the NBA(Narmada Bachao Andolan) has lost all its steam. No one cares about Medha Patkar in gujarat and hence she is spotted more in Nandigram, Singur etc. People have just shooed her away. The Dam stands at good 121 meters there.
Now I am not saying that the relocated tribals are living happily ever after in their allotted land and neither I am justifying those who lost lives in the catchment area of the Narmada in MP. But the same time I feel very happy for women in Kutchh and Northern Gujarat who now have been relieved of their misery of walking 10kms one way to fetch 1 pot of water. That has been made possible since the Narmada water has reached Kutchh through the Narmada Canal.
I can give another very interesting story about how farmers so happily and amicably parted with their land in Jamnagar during Reliance Refinery construction. It should be a case study for states like CG,WB, Jharkhand and Orissa.
Even during the peak of NBA, never did we see tribals engaging in armed struggle against the state.
So why its different in Eastern half of the country?
ex-intellectual
Please do not refer to the Tatas as crony-capitalists, they are one of the most ethical & socially responsible industrial houses in India, alongside Infosys. They have a strict policy of never bribing any government official, even though their rivals like Dhirubhai manipulated the license raj with dexterity to dominate the market. To see the proof of Tata’s contribution to society, look at the economic status of the tribals in Jharkhand. The tribal villages around Jamshedpur where the Tatas have their factories, are significantly better-off than the tribal villages around Ranchi and elsewhere in the state.
If the Tatas were really crony-capitalists, they would have paid off Mamata to call off her agitation and the Singur factory would have been built without any problem.
“But the NBA(Narmada Bachao Andolan) has lost all its steam. No one cares about Medha Patkar in gujarat and hence she is spotted more in Nandigram, Singur etc. People have just shooed her away. The Dam stands at good 121 meters there.”
That’s because the as you said the dam is built. NBA tried and did a peaceful protest for years and couldn’t make a inch of difference to the dam height. Thousand of tribal are out there to fetch for themselves. We should be proud of that. MP government should create ppt and educated their eastern partners how to achieve this feat. And yes we the “people” have shooed her away. What a loser.
“But the same time I feel very happy for women in Kutchh and Northern Gujarat who now have been relieved of their misery of walking 10kms one way to fetch 1 pot of water.”
Yes me too, I will pick a plump gujaratan over a starving tribal any day.
“I can give another very interesting story about how farmers so happily and amicably parted with their land in Jamnagar during Reliance Refinery construction. It should be a case study for states like CG,WB, Jharkhand and Orissa.”
The amount of land you need for a refinery, SEZ is nothing compare what you need for setting up a mine or what a dam submerge. The ownership in case of developed states is well defined as farmers generally have sizable ownership. The tribal just exists in the forests, they don’t own it. The GOI owns those forest, those bugg ers were having a free ride for thousands of years (Just imagine the land rent due)
“So why its different in Eastern half of the country?”
hmmm.. I wonder..
“Please do not refer to the Tatas as crony-capitalists. they are one of the most ethical & socially responsible industrial houses in India”
http://www.businessandeconomy.org/05022009/storyd.asp?sid=4010&pageno=2
“The cash starved West Bengal government has given a Rs.2 billion loan to Tata Motors at 1% interest. Yes, you heard it right the first time – 1 flimsy percent. The first instalment will be repaid in the 21st year of the project. Does a group that paid Rs.350 billion or so to acquire the British steel company Corus need a Rs.2 billion loan at 1% interest?
Effectively, the State would subsidise the Rs.1 lakh Nano to the tune of Rs.40,000. Sure, it is world class innovation all the way; but not exactly the way we understand it! That is the reality of a business house that is rated by the media as the most ethical, clean and transparent, and as a symbol of India’s growing ‘global’ clout.
Even that stature is in doubt, now that Ratan Tata has already sought special contingency funds in banks for ‘credit-worthy’ Indian companies to rescue them if the dollar and euro loans they have taken are recalled or have to be repaid in a hurry in the face of global financial meltdown. Don’t have to look far to know which companies he meant once we observe how Tata has recently sought a bailout for JLR and is finding the Corus acquisition too hard to digest!
SOME MORE ARTICLES..
Google – Titanium or Water? Tata Steel, land grab, and local governments – to Sathankulam, from Singur and Kalinganagar
The Tamil Nadu government, has weighed in to side with Tata, and is threatening to seize the land by eminent domain. “The district administration, the state machinery and all its functionaries are engaged as unofficial real estate agents for Tata, and these days you’ll see all of them trotting behind Tata officials trying to buy land,” says S. Anandraj, chairman of the local self-government in Sathankulam. Anandraj is a member of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a bitter political rival of the party ruling the state of Tamil Nadu. What aggravates the locals even more is the lack of transparency by Tata and the government. Tata has promised to act fairly, but the June 2007 memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Tata and the state, as well as the survey numbers of lands to be acquired, remain closely guarded secrets.
Google – Stolen for Steel: Tata Takes Tribal Lands in India
But those struggling for tribal rights in Kalinganagar and elsewhere remain unimpressed by the company’s size or philanthropic image. “Tatas are responsible for the slaughter of the Adivasis [indigenous people] in Kalinganagar. They knew the situation was tense and still insisted on going ahead with the construction using police force,” says Rajinder Sarangi, an activist with the indigenous people’s movement for land-rights in the Kalinganagar area.
Sarangi is quick to point out that the movement became an anti-Tata fight only after October 2004, when it became clear to local villagers that the government and industries were reneging on promises to rehabilitate displaced families. “The fight was against any take-over of land, not against any one company,” he says. “But Tata’s sought to overcome people’s will with police force.”
DO YOU NEED MORE EXAMPLES?
ex-intellectual
if you google the net, you will also come up with articles which claim that the moon-landing never happened and that 9/11 was a zionist plot by Israel.
The articles you quote may or may not be true, I do not know. Is there any article in any mainstream newspaper to substantiate the claim? I am a little suspicious about the impartiality of a website which publishes open letters by Kishanji advocating armed struggle against the state.
I visited Kashmir on a school trip organized by SPHS in 1989. Most businesses would publicly proclaim that they were all for Jihad but when they opened their back doors to let us in to shop, they would say that the Jihadis were ruining their way of life and everything good around them. These Maoists are no exception. The ordinary villager is scared $hitless and supports them out of fear. For better or worse, India has many examples of politicians that emerged from underprivileged masses to attain power through a democratic process and aid their cronies (I meant to say constituents). How do you think CPM came to power in ’72? Why do you think pols like Mayawati, Lalloo, et al., continue to get elected? Why do you think pols trip over one another in an effort to woo dalits. The government should do everything it can to help defenseless villagers. Like Punjab, Kashmir, Tripura, WB etc. the tide will turn once the ordinary person realizes what these Naxals are all about.
@deshpremi..
If you trust only Arnab Goswami, does that mean that any event that he ignores in his daily rants never ever happened?
Mainstream newspapers have for years been ignoring our rural hinterlands, ignoring the land-grabbing going on, ignoring the protests against SEZ’s, ignoring farmers suicides, ignoring violence against dalits. But my dear friend, these things do happen!
The Singur land grab has been questioned by even well-known journalists like Prem Shankar Jha.
The first article on crony capitalism was published in Business & Economy . com, not Naxal Times..
The Titanium or water article, though posted in sanhati is originally an article sourced from CorpWatch site which is an international site whose editor is Terry J. Allen whose reports have been published in Harper & New Scientist Magazine.
The writer of that article and also the second article (Stolen for Steel: Tata Takes Tribal Lands in India) is Nityanand Jayaraman, a Chennai-based writer and researcher who specialises in investigating and reporting on the environmental and human rights track record of corporations. He is also associated with the campaign for justice in Bhopal and has also worked with Greenpeace India and Corpwatch India.
You could have found this information yourself by spending few minutes doing a google search for details of the writers. But then the comment section of this post wouldn’t have stretched so far, had Arnab Goswami fans realized that shouting, screaming, interrupting people whose opinion you can’t digest and forcing your guests to answer complex questions in yes/no format may make for exciting television, but doesn’t constitute journalism.
Start your education by doing a google search on P.Sainath.
ex-intellectual
Mainstream newspapers have been publishing articles for years on farmer suicides, violence against dalits and protests against forcible grabbing of land for industries.
I ask for proof from one such newspaper that the Tatas were complicit in any nefarious activity.
Articles from ideologue websites do not constitute proof, since these websites are biased towards promoting their own agenda (do you think corpwatch would have any readership if it stated that the Tatas are a lovely bunch of lads who are working for the welfare of tribals?)
@GB,
Very timely post that touches upon many relevant points pertinent to this conflict.
@Vasabjit Banerjee
There is a peaceful solution to the aforementioned problems of the rural, trobal India… and that solution is Seva (selfless service).
As we speak, there are 12,000 tribal activists (from 22 states across India) who have gathered peacefully in New Delhi this weekend (Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2009) to create more access to education, health care, nutrition, employment and the most basic necessities of life in the most remote, far-flung villages of India.
More than 12,000 Vanvasis & Girivasis of EKAL Vidyalaya, have assembled in Swarna Jayanti Park of Rohini in North west Delhi. Right from Assam and Manipur to Gujarat, from Jammu to Kerala and Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Orissa, and West Bengal, these tribal delegates represent almost all states of the country.
Started in 1988 from Jharkhand, the Ekal Vidyalaya Movement had made its presence in 27110 villages of 22 states of the country. 7,78,965 students are presently getting their education through these schools on NO BUILDING, NO GOVT AID basis. To built a ‘Sikshit, Swasth and Samarth Bharat’ (literate, healthy and empowered India), the Ekal has also undertaken the responsibility of imparting Education for Health Care, village & community development and promoting village folk for constructive activities.
Many NRIs are also participating the conference hosted by the Bharat Lok Siksha Parishad, Delhi. All sessions would be conducted & organized by Vanvasis & Girivasis only.
Eight townships have been setup in the 24 acres of land in Swarna Jayanti Park. A common conference area, grand exhibition hall, reception, hospital & office etc would occupy another 20 acres of the park area. Each township would have its all independent facilities like office, residence, mess, toilet, primary health centre, cultural activity centre etc.
Instead of debating endlessly and getting emotional (calling for violence and justifying counter-violence), I request all readers to explore peaceful possibilities to end the economic disparity within India.
I take the liberty to invite the Delhi-based readers to attend this conference in new Delhi, and learn about the issues on the ground from the delegates.. and ponder upon the examples of our Vanavasi-Girivasi brethren who have sworn to work peacefully to achieve socio-economic parity with urban India.
For more details about this ongoing conference in New Delhi, please visit: http://www.EkalKumbh.org
@ all
After coming to power, Maoists in Cambodia hated intellectuals so much (the same intellectuals who supported the Maoists and helped carry their sound bytes), that they would kill anyone who would wear “spectacles” or read newspapers.
@ ex-intellectual.
Yeah buddy! Good that you started adding “ex” to your name already. 🙂
Why take the risk.
Ask P Sainath and his donors in AID/ASHA to do the same too.
Here’s some “light reading” over a Friday afternoon cup of tea for you guys :
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262519
LOL …
Ex-Intellectual mone hocchye genuine maal..Knowledge stock dekhe mone hocchye guru achey…ami to shala A Roy porei nijeke intellectual bhabtam…
@Deshpremi,
Yes, mainstream media has published news about farmer suicides, but more as a statistic they can’t afford to ignore, burying the news somewhere in the middle pages. The same media moved heaven and earth to ensure that aussie racists stop attacking Indian students.
Imagine if thousands of urban students started killing themselves due to poor marks/ inability to get admission or any other reason. Do you think our government wouldn’t revamp the entire education system to stop these suicides? Can you even imagine the possibility of over 2 lac urban students killing themselves?
“Articles from ideologue websites do not constitute proof, since these websites are biased towards promoting their own agenda”
And you think the Birlas and Bennetts & Coleman’s have no agenda of their own? They are running newspapers to educate and enlighten readers about land grabbing by fellow industrialists? I pity your naiveity.
CorpWatch is an ideologue website? Well, then I guess then Amnesty International, PETA, CRY, Save the Earth, Greenpeace etc are all ideologue organizations. If AI reports human right violations, we should dismiss them since AI is biased towards promoting the belief that human rights violation happen.. If PETA puts up a animal cruelty video on its website, we should treat it as computer-generated animation video since PETA is biased towards promoting its agenda that slaughter-houses kill animals cruelly. If Greenpeace issues a press statement about an oil-spill killing marine life, we should regard it as a lie because Greenpeace is biased towards promoting the belief that environmental disasters are taking place due to negligence by oil companies..
So I guess in your pretty little world, there are no environmental violations, no human right violations, no animal cruelty, because all the specialized organizations that have been set up to reports such violations are ideologically biased to promote the belief that such violations are taking place.
In case you know, the credibility of these organizations depends on the accuracy of their reporting. While some exaggerations may occur, these organizations are unlikely to cook up stories to promote their agenda.
Before dismissing CorpWatch as a biased website, do some research on the people who are running it. If they were in the business of cooking stories to show corporates in poor light, there would be cooked stories about Infosys or Wipro too..
“Yeah buddy! Good that you started adding “ex” to your name already. 🙂
Why take the risk.”
Hah! I would prefer killing myself than living in Maoland. Fortunately Mrs Roy reports that the possibility of such an eventuality is nil.
Here’s the relevant extract from her latest raving..
“An old college friend of a friend, a big noise in the corporate world, had come along for one of the meetings out of morbid curiosity about a world he knew very little about. Even though he had disguised himself in a Fabindia kurta, he couldn’t help looking (and smelling) expensive. At one point, he leaned across to me and said, “Someone should tell them not to bother. They won’t win this one. They have no idea what they’re up against. With the kind of money that’s involved here, these companies can buy ministers and media barons and policy wonks, they can run their own NGOs, their own militias, they can buy whole governments. They’ll even buy the Maoists. These good people here should save their breath and find something better to do.”
@ bengalvoice
It would be great if Shaymji invited Arundhati Roy and people similar to her, to go on a Vanavasi Kalyan Yatra and share 2 years of her life learning from our brothers living in interior areas.
Ekal should actually make a public invitation to all these people.
GB: “They are an organized army-like entity with a leadership structure whose principal goal is the destruction of the Indian state and the rule of law. They terrorize the populations they claim to protect, extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed and engage in violence against people who do not represent the state. Their arms are sophisticated, they are financed by India’s enemies and they are allied with SIMI tapping into their organization and their funding channels.”
Dear Bong, the Great! Pray enlighten me why our government is not hunting down these dangerous terrorists with sophisticated arms who extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed and instead wastes its precious time and resources arresting poor adivasi women?
Don’t believe me? Have a look at the picture at one of the dreaded maoists who was released by WB govt to secure freedom of Atindranath Dutta.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne071109coverstory.asp
Ex-intellectual
Corpwatch has been set up with the explicit purpose of highlighting how corporations are exploiting indigenous people. They depend on uncovering such “scandals”, fake or real, or else their readership and funding will dry up. A limited google search has also shown that they were criticised for misleading partisan reports in favour of the Democrats in the US.
So yes, if something is published exclusively in a media outlet with an axe to grind, but is not reported in any other mainstream news outlet (i.e. one with no political agenda of its own) then we must take that report and those facts with a pinch of salt.
So let me ask you again, is there any article in any mainstream unbiased media outlet about any illegal activity done by the Tatas?
@ Ex Intellectual
It not what a person looks like, it is how a person thinks like (and eventually acts like) that makes him/her commit socio-poltical crimes.
Whether it is inspired by Maoist propaganda or a religious book written in the 6th century in Arabia, thought process makes all the difference.
Imagine this child Maoist (of Khmer rouge) without his arsenel.
Would look equally harmless and helpless.
Bottomline, the Naxals want to create a situation where the state is forced to act and innocents are victimized (because of the covertness of Naxal tactics).
Recall my hourglass analogy of the proletariat and bourgouse, you will see what the Naxal methodology is.
I would be curious to see the Naxals and their maistream intellectual/middle class apologists make a single statement against Islamic population encroachment of Tribal land in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.
Lets see if our “revolutionaries” and “Che Guevara wannabes” have the proverbial balls instead of attacking those underpaid poor village men from Haryana employed by the CRPF, CISF AND RPF.
I challenge Outlook and Tehelka to do a piece on that.
@ Dum dumer aantel
“…ami to shala A Roy porei nijeke intellectual bhabtam…”
Aita i to bhool korteso tomra. IntelleSual hoite shudhooo oI Roy Maiyya ke na poire, ektu “fundamental material” porile Unnoti hoibe.
I am simply against wasting money on ideas which are futile: like Communism or Women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Look tribal development is a conscience soothing joke perpetrated by urban intellectuals and guilt ridden corporate chiefs. This is akin to those American students you frequently meet on college campuses who pine for the simple American Indian life from their AC and WiFi laden dorm rooms. When actually the American Indians lived in tents, defecated in the open, possibly suffered from all sorts of diseases because they had no modern medicine, etc. etc.. The idea is not to make pretty tee-pees in the jungle, but to bring the tribals into the urban areas or to make small towns where they can live a decent existence with potable water and other basic necessities, and educate them so they can have good jobs.
I do not intend to perpetrate violence on anybody. The law of the market is doing it slowly anyway. Those who protect the tribals in the manner proposed above are akin to the CPIM in West Bengal who protected the peasantry by making them slaves of the Party Committee instead of the Jotedars because after Operation Barga the Party was in-charge of recognizing the peasants usufruct rights. The CPM by protecting the rural areas have won elections, but have thwarted the industrialization of Bengal. In the 2000s, when they tried to industrialize, in the usual Stalinist way they know, they faced a backlash from the same bunch of people who they themselves had blinded and then protected.
Hmmm…enjoying the discussion for a change.
@Rishi…
Good one..but also note, if I start reading Chomsky and likes…and have a balanced and informed view on world affair…I will attribute a little credit to A Roy.
A small example. After reading one article by A Roy on Tata, I started thinking, yeah of course..just because he is Tata, he is not God. When he praises Modi, I don’t have to follow the same footsteps. Very small thing but a profound realization for uninitiated people like me.
If you trust me, I asked couple of Americans about their view on Chomsky. Oh..he is a commie was the answer. Ofcourse, those two Americans are no way representative of whole US population, but, point is, people probably don’t like uncomfortable truth. Now, don’t accuse me of comparing Roy with Chomsky, I am not. But if someone like Roy can stimulate thinking of people like me, what’s wrong in that. And, one more thing I just don’t understand. If someone is so wrong in their facts, how can she gets away writing those article in premium magazines? Just how?
Just like in school in Dumdum where I never asked any question to the class teacher, many people like me got used to not asking questions. If a person like Roy can change that a bit, why not, why not?
Ms Roy is now peddling her wares in today’s edition of Pakistani newspapers – Mr Chidambaram’s War (http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/12-mr+chidambarams+war–bi-11).
Note the complete absence of any mention of the more than 2000 lives taken by Naxal violence since 2006, or the more than 50 Naxalite attacks just this year alone, or the landmines, or the beheadings, or the bombings of police stations and railway tracks, the pretense that widows, children and devastated families of slaughtered policemen do not exist,
Of course, otherwise she wouldn’t have much to say, would she.
A sample:
“To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85 per cent of India’s people off their land and into the cities (which is what Home Minister Chidambaram says he’d like to see), India has to become a police state.
The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists. (Is there a fraternity of fundamentalists? Is that why the RSS has expressed open admiration for Mr Chidambaram?)”
@ Dum Dum er Aantel.
A good propagandist is one whose lies amd misrepresentations are laced with just enough truth that they are beleivable.
Now this applies to both sides of a given debate.
I have to say that Arundahti Roy is a bad propagandist, at the best.
I like the fact, she thinks that she brings out a subaltern perspective and doesnt hesitate to ask questions. So many people do that.
What I dont like is that she distorts, misrepresents and sometimes blatantly lies to push forward a particular ideological line.
Its fine that she is passionate too. I certainly share that characteristic with her 🙂
But then she and people like her should not cry wolf when faced with criticism and factual retorts.
Look at this article and Arundhati Roy’s position on Kashmir
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3378687.cms
Now based on Arundhati Roy’s opinion above, and using the same standard of “Maoist justice” that Ms Roy finds to be a logical retribution; wouldnt she become a perfect candidate for summary execution.
Would you question that Mr Aantel?
Its a shame that there even exist people who find anyhting glorious abt the Maoists. As things are going soon they will either become the drug-pedling “Communist” guerillas of Colombia or worse as people in the forum have pointed out the new Khmer Rouge. I urge people who view the naxals as nothing but a bunch of Robinhood type brigands to stop living in dreamland and to digest the facts about the atrocities, corruption, nexus and modus operandi of the maoists, or honestly imagine the life you will have in such a regime.
@Vasabjit Banerjee: “Finally, quoting a brilliant sociologist, Barrington Moore, “modernization is violent”. The peasants can die either through forced reallocation of labor, which is fast and superbly brutal (basically Stalinism). Or, the peasantry can die slowly through the demands of industrialization and the redundancy of labor in capital intensive agriculture (The Industrial Revolution)”
So much for lofty platitudes like..
‘Violence is not a solution’
‘Violence can never be justified’
‘Right. Sad. Very sad. And the fact that people actually justify violence?’
‘Sorry, even grinding poverty does not justify killing anyone (Vasabjit Banerjee, a few sentences before reminding us that modernization is essentially violent)
Well, Mr. Banerjee, if modernization is indeed violent (and here I was under the impression that we were getting modernized/democratized in order to evolve from the barbarism of medievalism/fascism/imperialism..lol), if peasants are doomed to die through self-killing, if modernization demands that the millions of peasants who don’t fit in with industrial culture should sacrifice themselves to the alter of modernism, then isn’t it natural that resistance to such self-sacrifice would also be violent? How can one form of violence (peasants/tribals killing themselves) be justifiable but some other form of violence (peasants/tribals resisting their planned extinction through industrial modernization) be unjustified?
Essentially, Mr. Banerjee is a fascist who doesn’t believe in democracy, because the concept of modern democracy is built on every citizen having a voice and a vote.
What Mr. Banerjee actually means is that since there is a conflict between modern industrialization (based on the Darwinian concept that those who can’t adapt to its demands should die, whether by killing themselves or getting killed by the state) and modern democracy (based on the concept that every citizen has fundamental right to live and choose the mode of living), this conflict should be resolved by ejecting the poor and the unadjusted out of the institutions of modern democracy. But since this cannot be done legally, they should be either starved to death or killed if they resist!
It is amusing to hear so many closet fascists blabber sententiously about preserving democracy..lol
So Mr ex Intellectual.
For some reason you seem to be the only one talking about killing and dying.
Others here are dealing with perfectly reasonable social models.
“Note the complete absence of any mention of the more than 2000 lives taken by Naxal violence since 2006, or the more than 50 Naxalite attacks just this year alone, or the landmines, or the beheadings, or the bombings of police stations and railway tracks, the pretense that widows, children and devastated families of slaughtered policemen do not exist,”
As an ex-intellectual, I hate this lady so much because she failed to mention the statistics of 2000 killed by Naxals, even though the statistics of Naxal killings are in public domain and well-known to everyone..
But I won’t hate Arnab Goswami and blabbermouths on idiot box like Swapan Dasgupta, for never mentioning facts like
-Indian state is so rotten, corrupt, biased against the poor and ruthlessly anarchic that cops can get away branding adivasis as maoists for carrying malaria medicines
-the 14 released maoists by WB govt were actually dirt-poor adivasi women who were arrested and branded as maoists for peacefully protesting against beating up of small boy by paramilitary forces
-Dr Binayak Sen was not a Naxalite
-Fifty million people displaced by development projects without resettlement
-Massive land-grabbing by industrialists in lure of bauxite deposits worth $ 4 trillion
Why should I hate the Arnab Goswamis and Swapan Dasputas of the world for ignoring inconvenient details of Chidambaram’s war? After all, these poor chaps stay in air-conditioned newsrooms and don’t have the time to venture out in the dangerous jungles of Chattisgarh to know how police forces in rural hinterlands commit atrocities against those who don’t have a voice.
As a retard, I would hate Tusha Mittal (author of the tehelka article) instead for outright lying, distorting facts and projecting dreaded maoists as poor adivasi women.
I request everyone to boycott Outlook and Tehelka for painting such a ugly picture of our noble police forces. All our cops, like the unfortunate Francis Induwar, are heroes who would never even dream of thrashing little kids, blinding adivasi women or beating up 7o-year old widows. Magazines like Tehalka are being funded by christian missionaries and journalists like Tusha are paid to write fictional articles maligning our noble cops.
@Vasabjit Banerjee: “The idea is not to make pretty tee-pees in the jungle, but to bring the tribals into the urban areas or to make small towns where they can live a decent existence with potable water and other basic necessities, and educate them so they can have good jobs.”
Mr.Fascist, we are still living in a democracy, which means that our tribals still have a right to decide whether they want to live in villages and forests of Bastar or in urban shanties, dependent on the state to provide them with every basic necessity of life. With housing prices being what they are, would they ever be able to live in decent houses in towns and cities?
Who the fuck are you to decide what constitutes a decent existence? If these tribals are so fed-up of their life in jungles, why do they routinely turn down offers of selling their lands to multinational mining companies? Why are they resisting industrialization and ‘development’ which you believe is a solution to all their problems.
Obviously, you believe that our tribals are mentally-challenged and incapable of deciding what is good for them and so the state should be given the power to decide in which urban shithole they should be relocated.
Now I’m wondering if a small group of urban fascists have a right to decide how/where crores of peasants/tribals should live and if a small group of urban fascists have a right to deny justice to millions of poor in the name of modernization and development, aren’t we already living in some sort of fascist/maoist state?
@Ex-intellectual
thanks for fucking up my mind on Saturday morning with this
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne071109coverstory.asp, may you spend your weekend chronically constipated 😐
GB or for that matter anyone please provide any intellectual gyan rubbishing this report, I promise I will do my best to be a believer.
@Himanshu-
“So if A hurts B and B exacts retribution by killing innocent C and D, you are asking me to sympathize with B as A is rich and B lives in abysmal poverty? Pretty soon C and D will follow the cycle, maybe A will be overturned and a new A will come to power.”
hahahaha .. guys get high and read this .it sounds so much more fun.
Haha. Actually I was a bit high when I wrote that. I laughed a lot today morning when I when I read your comment.
@Ex Intellectual- I like some of your opinions. I am very drunk now…went to a big party….I want to write cogently…but I apologizeif I sound like a bozo. Not easy to articulate when your drunkkkk. I would go on to say that you are absolutely correct about CPM and the Nandigram issue. But in your arguments, you are making some sort of assumption which bothers me. When the white Aussies robbed the lands of the Abs or the Puritans killed the Indians to capture land, it was a heinous act. So the thing about the definition of ownership of land is a bit bothersome to me. Like say your land is a rich Delhi suburb condo …you call 911 when a Naxal comes inside it…and starts drinking country liquour in front of ur wife…right? Now say if you and I go on top of that bauxite mountain that A roy and you go for a hike from time to time, and smoke some pot…. you are telling me that I am in the private property of the Maos..right? But I am not that ugly Aussie or the Puritan who invaded a new country. My country’s constitution tells me that I can go to jungles and on top of mountains. Right? So this is very crutial…does actually living there for many years gives them the right to say…hey this mountain is my goddess and this that waterfall is my God…etc. So what you are saying is that anarchy is ok. which is fine…except that our govt or democracies are not based on that…. our govt kinda defines public and private property….so say a park….an unemployed youth can say that I used to smoke bidis for many years in this place….now its a public park….hell no….its my park….I have spent many hours here for many years. So he takes a gun and shoots 2 couples (C,D, E, F in my earlier example who had nothing to do with anything). Dont get me wrong….if you like anarchy…its fine…come into my property and I will shoot you….but then you guys also like the government….which is never perfect…which will disburse benefits inequitably….which will be corrupt. A roy should understand this…yes everyone didnt get the same after independence…but u know what…thats what the govt is.
It is this very definition of land and who owns it which creates classes and viewpoints- commies say that hey this may be yours now, but you took it the wrong way…so revolution. I think that in Nandigram, the land in question was legally registered to the paesants. So even by the way the society defines private property, there is no escaping the fact that it was theirs (correct me if I am wrong on this). But in the case of that bauxite company, it may not be so clear cut. Like say, how can you say that that waterfall belongs to the Maos as they see it as a God? These are complex issues. But this is where I will support a commentator earlier who said that neither you nor A roy mentioned about the 2000 innocent killed. Thus your views and her views are a bit one sided. Both you and A roy trampled over the dead bodies of those 2000 innocent C’s and D’s while hiking to the top of that bauxite mountain. Then you smoke pot there, make love and shout out your views…in a very shrill way. That I feel is not OK. Please dont bring Iraq and Goldman Sachs here to justify that action. Otherwise, things become very confounded for an uncluttered analysis.
Dear Ex-Intellectual,
A. Barrington Moore’s thesis, introduced in “The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” is the most Marxisant of mainstream sociologists. To view a more economics oriented argument, read “The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” by D. Acemoglu and Robinson. Thus, I am not citing any fascist texts: in fact, I am citing a very left leaning book to explain the effects of market capitalism that are unavoidable.
B. Contrary to your completely empirically false insights, I am actually in Mexico currently studying the Mexican revolution through archives and comparing it to the Indian independence movement. One part of my thesis: how land reforms are central to the sustenance of newly formed regimes in agrarian countries. I can thoroughly teach you about every form of revolution and its causes and effects.
C. I can even send you a copy of my paper of Naxalite violence in India. I conducted a probit analysis with my co-author to show how inequality of wealth, not government efficiency or other factors, is the most significant explanatory factor for Naxalite violence in India. So, this assumes you know your numbers, which given your ignorance of basic economics (demand and supply of factors of production), I strongly suspect.
D. Telling people the harsh reality of modernization is difficult. We all like this Nehruvian narrative of peaceful modernization and development. When, in reality, modernization is utterly painful, dislocates thousands, and changes socio-political systems beyond recognition.
E. Yes, I am Fascist, I am Communist, a democrat, a libertarian, a Euro-leftist, and whatever other label you choose to put on me. Labels win arguments on Fox News, not in a real discussion, my friend.
VB
Ex-intellectual:
“Who the fuck are you”
A long time ago at Ganga dhaba at JNU, a political scientist from JNU told me the following. “As Gandhi told the British to leave India alone, I am telling your US to leave India alone.” Your arguments seem a bit like that to me: naïve and invalid.
Who am I? Perhaps a Google search might help you. I do not use pseudonyms, so, just use my name and it might tell you something.
I think guys like Ex-Intellectual need someone to slap them around and make them drop their pretense and false bravado and realize who they are f*cking with.
Here, sir, is the bottom line. You are advocating war against the Indian nation. You have killed our soldiers, and for that you will pay. This is what the people of the country, the VAST MAJORITY, want. We want order. We want safety. We want the rule of law. And if you and your chinese guns and paki money and your antiquated ideology stand in the way, prepare to fight or get annihilated.
And I’m glad as hell that at long last we have someone in charge who can say it like it is, and call these jokers’ bluff.
Enough said.
@Vasabjit Banerjee: When, in reality, modernization is utterly painful, dislocates thousands, and changes socio-political systems beyond recognition.
I called you a fascist, because you want to force a model of modernization on a group of people who aren’t interested in your model.
I’ve been to Bastar and many tribal areas and even lived with them for few days. Their perception of reality is radically different from the perceptions of a modern man. They are not interested in modern man’s ambitions or his desire for upward mobility. They are simple souls, who despite their poverty (or rather lack of material possessions) are far more happy than modern man. They have something that we lack – a love for independence, a strong community spirit and absence of greed that characterizes the modern man. They don’t see their land and their forests as exploitable commodities, but as extensions of their own selves.
Mr.Banerjee, you may be some hotshot working for a prestigious NGO studying Indo-US trade, but your understanding of the spirit of adivasis is pathetic. Just like Chidambaram, you want to uproot them from their natural surroundings, destroy their independent spirits and make them slaves of modernity, in your quest for a uniform, homogeneous modernized industrialized culture.
There is nothing wrong with modern, industrial culture. It has its advantages and its pitfall. But the difference between democracy and fascism is that the former model of governance gives people the freedom to chose their mode of living while in the latter, a small group of men, enlightened or otherwise, determine what model of progress is best for the entire nation.
Fascism doesn’t always come clothed in evil clothes worn by a Mussolini or a Hitler. Even noble men with best of intentions become fascist when through their education or experience, they become convinced that they know what is best for all sections of society.
The tragedy of these tribals is that their battles are being fought not by democrats, but by fascists like maoists who if they come to power will takeover their lands and forests and make them slaves to their own model of development. But when we read articles by Roy or Tusha Mittal, we know why. Democracy in India has been subverted by money power of the elites. As Roy points out, what chance does democracy has against lacs of crores in the treasuries of the Essars, Vedantas, Mittals & Jindal.
amusing how the debate transforms from “all violence is bad” to “Modernization is violence” “[..] prepare to fight or get annihilate.”
@BhuvanShome I am not sure how closely you are following this debate but a major part of it revolves around lots of tribal women protesting with “Chinese” sticks and stones bought with “paki money” and sole “antiquated ideology” of surviving.
Sir, if that’s all you got out of reading this thread,
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262519 and http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne071109coverstory.asp
then either you are retarded or have some serious reading comprehension issues.
“Here, sir, is the bottom line. You are advocating war against the Indian nation. You have killed our soldiers, and for that you will pay. This is what the people of the country, the VAST MAJORITY, want. We want order. We want safety. We want the rule of law. And if you and your chinese guns and paki money and your antiquated ideology stand in the way, prepare to fight or get annihilated”
Hahaha..calm down, my dear.
I’m not advocating anything. If you read all my comments you will see that I see maoists as fascists. China is one of the most fascist country in the world, where crores of people have been uprooted from their lands and sent to live in urban shitholes where they work in sweatshops for 5 cents an hour China’s on the brink of an environmental devastation, its rivers and lakes have been polluted, resulting in millions of people fleeing from the countryside and ending up in modern sweatshops powering China’s export industry.
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
India, though a democracy, is following the Chinese model of development which would result in similar devastation.
One more thought particularly for “ex-intellectual”, do you think the people in the name of whom the maoists are recruiting and fighting will be able to keep the things they hope to. Dont you remember ” animal farm” or the industrialization drive in China displacing people in countryside. Are you suggesting that in a communist regime sans any freedom of speech you will be able to air your grievances more effectively than you can now? Please note, I am not denying any real cause of angst only the method to solve the problem.
Sorry ” ex-intellectual” i think I got it all wrong about you. Think we are on the same side to some extent
Hi Ex. You are the man!
Vasaabjit- Why dont you acknowledge the fact that you were not good enough to go to JNU? So you escaped to Indiana where you now have that soap box and those cute girls. I see that now you have ran to Mexico. Shame. You love mexico’s traibals more than India’s. Do you think you can last even 5 minutes in a debate with a JNU intellectual on the issues that you have mentioned?
Ex-Intellectual:
A. I do not work for an NGO.
B. Extrapolating from your one experience in Bastar is a completely unscientific way to make generalizations. Bastar could be an outlier or it could represent various unique factors not available in other regions.
C. Let alone positivist methodological errors, which you are openly basing your thesis on, you are making a major anthropological research error. How do you know that the responses you got from the people were not affected by your own identity? Please, see the Kashmir response above on how people say something in public and private, depending on audience responses.
D. It is vastly patronizing to assume that “these simple and honorable” people do not want development. You should read some Colonial documents to get similar reports on the Sikhs or the Assamese, etcetera.
The left has its own form of arrogance, which you are a perfect example of. You have decided that these people inhabit some ‘moral economy’ (that’s the right term, used by Eric Wolf, the anthropologist). Poverty may be beautiful to outsiders like you: authentic, ethnic, and chic. The poor people might say they do not desire change because they do not know what change means, what it can bring for them. To argue that the poor want to remain poor and honorable because you spent some time in a hut where the hosts told you so, is a ridiculous and patronizing statement of the first order.
@New Intellectual
Just shut up.. A good discussion is going on here. Don’t pollute it with those stupid comments. Whatever Vasabjit or ex do, they earned it.
People,
After reading all these comments, I do not see any single person supporting the so-called Maoists leaders or ideologies. People are concerned about the adivasis and dalits who will be massacred because of the state sponsored efforts. I don’t understand, why some people are still accusing others of supporting Maoists.
Infact, the lady in discussion never mentioned anything to support maoist leaders.
New Intellectual:
JNU has the best humanities student body for the MA and the worst for the PhD student body. This happens because the cream of the crop leaves for better research funding, better facilities, and, simply put, better libraries and access to journals and such. As a professor from my department got the Nobel Prize for economics this year, and our former chair is famous for his scholarly debates with Chomsky, I shall refrain from making comparisons about members of faculty. It won’t be fair because JNU cannot pay six figure salaries to get faculty.
I came to the US when I was 18, on a full scholarship. I go back to India on a regular basis for my dissertation research, which with God’s blessing I shall complete some time in this century. I am comparing Mexico with India because Mexico was an agrarian country before its revolution, just as India was at the time of independence. However, the Mexican Revolution led to an authoritarian system under the PRI, for more than 70 years. Yet, India managed to become and retain a democratic system (except for 1975-1977). I am literate in Spanish, English, Hindi and Bengali. JNU does not have Spanish classes.
JNU and other humanities departments in India represent a deep problem with government funding. IITs get proper funding and focus, while humanities faculties are treated like step children. Some departments have flourished despite this neglect: such as the Subaltern studies group in Calcutta (Center for Social Research?). I cite this group because the Subaltern project is leftist in nature, but its research and insights are superbly developed. However, in general the state of advanced research humanities and social sciences in India is pathetic. As this conversation reveals, a few people, who have a variety of explicit and implicit ideological motivation, dominate the discussion of socio-political issues without the least training, research, or ability to cogently argue. Arundhuti Roy represents one of these people. As Jadgish Bhagwati said, “She wore flowers in her hair and looked exotic. Then she shot off more cliches per minute than I have ever heard”.
@Vasabjit:
I completely agree about the patronizing view we take on others’ need for development.
To take a rather frivolous example (in the context of this discussion, i.e.), among my childhood friends, most of whom are now spread far and wide geographically, a common theme of conversation is to lament on how our once quaint hometown of Shillong has lost its small-town charm and has become just another big-city wannabe, with ugly shopping centers, streets choked with cars, housing communities swallowing the hillsides where we used to go hiking among the pines. What we fail to recognize is that the days we are nostalgic for also had record local unemployment, communal tensions, acute water and civic shortages, terrible connectivity with the rest of the country, and where the biggest local business we could think about was the large clothing store in the only ‘downtown’ market that the town had.
Were people happy? Sure we were. We didn’t know any better.
Are people happy now? Some are, and some are not. But at least they know the possibilities. They have amenities, quality higher education (IIM Shillong, North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences), better roads and civic services, and improvements in general quality of life, as any current resident will vouch for.
Has it come at a price? Yes, certainly, as any ex-resident will vouch for.
Should we sit in judgement of whether development was right or wrong for the ‘simple and honorable’ people of the town? Absolutely not.
“The left has its own form of arrogance, which you are a perfect example of. You have decided that these people inhabit some ‘moral economy’ (that’s the right term, used by Eric Wolf, the anthropologist). Poverty may be beautiful to outsiders like you: authentic, ethnic, and chic. The poor people might say they do not desire change because they do not know what change means, what it can bring for them. To argue that the poor want to remain poor and honorable because you spent some time in a hut where the hosts told you so, is a ridiculous and patronizing statement of the first order.”
Bah. Very well said Basabjit. Really, what a discussion! A Roy should read this.
Vasabjit, I agree, it is patronising to think tribal people “don’t want development”, at least of the sort that they’re being offered. But the problem here may be that they can see they’re not going to benefit much from any of the so-called development, Vedanta propaganda notwithstanding. The other issue is that of law enforcement atrocities, which have aggravated the problem to boiling point. Jaswant Singh recently said “every thana is a Maoist factory” – perhaps he just wanted to unleash a crisp one-liner, but something tells me he is not altogether off the mark.
Also, when you are forcibly evicting people off their land, tribal or otherwise, without proper compensation, it is a recipe for trouble. What has gone on in Rajarhat (Kolkata suburb, for non-Kolkatans) is a prime example. There are stories of perfectly fertile fields being dumped with garbage to force people to sell their land, and that is among the milder measures undertaken. The culprits there are big real estate players, with the active connivance of all political parties.
@Vasabjit Banerjee,
Do not teach me science. I know my science and also know the psychology of adivasis. Whether in Chattisgarh or Orissa, they share similar traits – spirit of independence, defiance against ecologically-devastating mining, and a love for their land, their rivers, their jungles and their mountains. Unlike educated urban modern men, who lust for gold, who see every natural resource as an exploitable commodity and who are alienated from the natural world, these tribals treat their mountains and jungles as sacred.
Look at the pictures of industrial development in China. Don’t these horrific pictures remind you of “dark satanic mills” of William Blake or images straight out of Sauron’s Mordor? Of course, living in US, you don’t see these Dickensian hells, because US has exported them to China.
“It is vastly patronizing to assume that “these simple and honorable” people do not want development.”
No, Mr Banerjee, its vastly patronizing on your part to assume that everyone wants the development model where rivers and lakes become poisonous because of toxic waste from chemical factories and where mountains are reduced to rubbles to satisfy the limitless greed of American consumers.
I request everyone to watch this moving video of the resistance of adivasi tribes of Niyamgiri mountains of Orissa against the mining giant, Vedanta ( especially those who think that Arundhati Roy is a lying bitch who romanticizes the lives of adivasis)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/12/vedanta-versus-the-villagers
In fact, watching the resistance of these beautiful, little people reminds me again of LOTR, where the heroes of the war against the expanding dark empire of Sauran were not men who lusted for power/wealth or dwarfs who were purchasable by pieces of gold or wizards who couldn’t resist the attraction of the dark side, but pure, innocent, little hobbits.
Banerjee: “To argue that the poor want to remain poor and honorable because you spent some time in a hut where the hosts told you so, is a ridiculous and patronizing statement of the first order.”
Watch the video. These adivasis don’t share your definition of poverty. They value their freedom, their independence, their community and their mountains, not the urban shitholes where you want to send them to provide cheap labor to your construction companies.
You need a reality check, Mr Banerjee. Hear the ‘live’ voices of these tribals, instead of basing your opinions about poor people studying historical archives of Mexican revolution.
“Even if you cut our throats, even if you behead us, we are not going to allow this”
“If we lose our mountains, we will be in great trouble. We’ll lose our soul. Niyamgiri is our soul. If Niyamgiri goes, our soul will die”
“Since the arrival of the company, we’ve been unable to farm our fields, our fruits are no longer growing because of the dust. There are new diseases now. Even the cattle are dying after grazing in the fields”
“If we don’t fight we will become nomadic like birds and die like fish without water”
“We will carry on living her as peacefully as we always have. All us women will go to jail? How many people can they keep in jail? for how long?
@ Nanda Kishore
Your explanations are all accepted by me both the law enforcement and crony capitalist issues. However, none of these arguments must at any point of time justify violence against other members of society or against the state. Ex-Intellectual, behind his rather vague rhetoric about development and justice, is precisely forwarding that point of view.
Furthermore, you and I agree that development, perhaps participatory development, is a necessity. I differ at the level that social dislocations cannot be totally avoided if an economy is on the path of modernization. Karl Polanyi, in his book ‘The Great Transformation’, highlighted the central problem. The fundamental principle of the market is that a human being represents ‘one’ unit of labor, infinitely mobile, with a nice bell curve for marginal productivity, and responding with perfect information. The politics of a democracy assumes that a person is a human being, with rights and responsibility of having a family (laborers cannot just up and move at a moment’s notice), humans can fall sick and need to be taken care of, information is not always available on well paying jobs or honest contracts. The tussle and balance between these two forces shapes the political and social system.
What Ex-Intellectual would have us believe is that the ‘market’ and its representative the ‘state’ need to be violently fought and removed so that the tribal people can maintain some ideal pre-capitalist moral socio-economic system. When, in fact, these tribal people never did maintain some eternal, unchanging traditional economic system. They interacted in various ways with the colonial and post-colonial state and economic structure. However, they remained at the margins of the socio-economic system and were dealt with through coercion or exploitation. A fact that Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan and one of the best scholars on contemporary politics in India has repeatedly mentioned.
However, the scheduled castes were also dealt with brutally for a very long time. They did not enter into an armed rebellion against other poor employees of the state, they decided to enter politics en-masse, support dalit leaders, and become a lynchpin of Indian political equations. This means that the dalits had to integrate themselves into the political-economy of India. The most successful from among them left the villages and came to small or large urban areas and got jobs outside of traditional areas that they were forced to toil in. In short, they had to renegotiate or part with their ‘traditional’, colorful, and ethnic selves. City intellectuals love to go and see the ‘ethnic’ people, as authentic, and true to some idealized past. Seldom do they realize the grinding poverty and den of ignorance that the villages and rural areas impose on their inhabitants.
Ex-Intellectual,
Based upon your last response, I rest my case. You are an activist, I am a social scientist. Yet, your response, in medium and matter have proven my point.
Vasabjit
P.S. Anyone seeking an insight into A. Roy’s viewpoint, please watch the following movie produced and written by her in 1989:
@ ex intellectual
Hey! I would like to invite you to a Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram at a region of your choice. It will help to see how issues are addressed and sustainable and equitable resource management achieved.
Lets make things happen bro.
We really cannot afford losing innocent lives to Chinese made Kalashnikovs and bullets. It is unfortunate that Naxals dont allow social workers to do their job unless they subscribe to the Pol-potist’s suicidal ideology. THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE, even if it means elimination of their sick ideological talkinheads.
I watched that interview and she explicitly said there is no question of justifying violence. That the IBN sub-editor thought it fit to write such a headline is a sad reflection on our media. That you chose to repeat it on your blog…
i agree with Mohan.
GB, you are WRONG! you better keep quiet when it come to Ms. Roy – she works harder, better and she has the right points, if not always. i have attended many lectures of hers, and its not that she is media-hungry – but if her or her-likes pov are not reflected than there are high chances of india going the america way – …so better keep entertaining us with prabhuji, rakhi sawant and likes – Leave Ms. Roy – its not for you…
she at least has a side to take – most of you bloggers just have to type and hardly research and do not have the balls to go the way she has gone. Its not a publicity stunt and neither i am her agent. But at least she writes about something that one India has conveniently forgotten about…
@Vasabjit,
What exactly is your point that has been proven?
First you have misrepresented my position by saying that ‘market’ and its representative the ‘state’ need to be violently fought and removed so that the tribal people can maintain some ideal pre-capitalist moral socio-economic system.
Are you saying that its okay for Vedanta to remove tribal people from their natural habitats, that its okay for Vedanta to make them homeless nomads and let them die in urban shanties from tuberculosis so that corporate bandits like Anil Agrawal can add few more billions to their bank accounts?
In Gujarat, the market and the state acquired land in many places by paying compensation to the peasants at market rates. No one was coerced to sell their lands and NaMo’s government didn’t feel the need to use Land Acquisition Act to forcibly acquire land from peasants. The same government had of course, no compunctions in submerging the villages of tribals to built Narmada dam despite decade long, peaceful protest movement by these tribals.
I’ve no problems if market or state acquires land with full co-operation from the owners of the land. But you obviously, see tribals as nothing more than cattle who should be violently thrown out from their natural pastures if they resist the ‘development’ you want to impose on them.
Your terminology itself reflect your inherent biases – phrases like “fundamental principle of the market” and “politics of democracy”. So for people like you, market is god, some kind of basic fundamental force of universe that MUST be obeyed, while democracy is all about dirty POLITICS.
Unfortunately for you, the constitution of India doesn’t treat market as god. Under our constitution, everything flows from democracy i.e. from the will of people. In other words, markets (in whatever form they take shape) are subservient to the will of people and not vice versa. If tribals insist on seeing themselves as free and independent human beings and not as soulless ‘units’ of labor, then their will should prevail, not the will of the invisible hand that drives the markets.
The ‘state’ is representative of the will of people which includes millions of tribals, and not a representative of markets as you so incorrectly believe. I hope you are aware that the constitution of India doesn’t even talk of ‘markets’ only about people, their rights and their duties.
“However, the scheduled castes were also dealt with brutally for a very long time. They did not enter into an armed rebellion against other poor employees of the state, they decided to enter politics en-masse, support dalit leaders, and become a lynchpin of Indian political equations”
The schedule castes of India are fundamentally different from tribals. They have been subjugated by the upper castes to such an extent that they have never seen themselves as independent, self-sufficient communities. Most of schedule castes have always been part of mainstream economy serving as slaves of the higher castes. Having never learnt to function independently outside the traditional hierarchies of the mainstream markets, it was only natural that they would seek upward mobility through avenues provided to them by the state.
But if you believe that the lot of dalits and other schedule castes have improved fundamentally, then you are sadly mistaken. Yes, a tiny minority has made use of reservations and are now part of mainstream economy. But the lot of majority of dalits all over the country remains the same as it was at the time of independence.
Tribals, on the other hand have refused to integrate with the market economy, because they don’t want to become the ‘shudras’ of the market economy. Being fiercely independent, they don’t want to become ‘slaves’ of any system since their lands, forests, rivers and mountains make them self-sufficient and independent from market forces.
“Seldom do they realize the grinding poverty and den of ignorance that the villages and rural areas impose on their inhabitants.”
This may be true of traditional villages ruled by caste-hierarchies, but not of tribal areas of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand or Orissa.
Tell me, who is more poor, a migrant laborer in a town or city, working on a construction site, living in a one-room shanty OR a self-sufficient tribal who sees his entire village and the surrounding rivers, forests or mountains as his extended home? Living in filthy slums with no access to electricity or sanitation, laboring for 8-10 hours a day to built malls and 5-star hotels for the rich in exchange of pieces of paper that barely buys them their daily ration is for me ‘grinding poverty’, not the carefree life of tribals who could care less for our gadgets and shining malls.
Only someone with a fascist mindset will support their displacement from the habitats which give them their dignity and pride to facilitate their ‘development’ as slaves of modern, industrialized culture.
This debate is a neverending one. The longer it has gone on, the more it has left me confused.
But let me get this straight – The tribals used to be self sufficient, living in the jungles, farming on common land that they did not own and worshiping the mountains and the rivers.
Now who is to say that this jungle now belongs to them? What if the Jungle had huge natural resources which could be used for the betterment of not only a handful of these tribals who depend on the jungle but the entire economy, which will in turn benefit a far larger number of people. Your argument is that we shouldn’t touch their way of life or their land. But this isn’t their land. It is the property of the nation and so are the resources underneath.
Agree, that we all feel for these tribals but they cannot resort to violence to fight for something that is not theirs. Yes, the Government has to relocate them to continue their ‘simple and honorable’ life and I agree that the government might have failed them at a few places. But siding with the Naxals doesn’t at all help their cause.
The Government is corrupt – The Naxals are criminals.
Who do these tribals go to to address their issue?
Should they come into the urban scheme of things? Has all this urbanisation made everybody more happy? I’m not sure.
But we can’t just let the resources lie in the jungle coz. some tribals are living in the jungle. The Jungle or that land is not the tribal’s bungalow. The tribals can’t just say that the mountain is their soul and the jungle belongs to them.
Guidelines for surrender-cum-rehabilitation of Maoists in the naxal affected States. Please circulate in mailing groups of NGOs like AID/ASHA and individuals sympathetic to this destructive ideology.
Introduction: Surrender-cum-Rehabilitation policy is part of the overall policy to build consensus and evolve an acceptable and peaceful solution to violence perpetrated by extremist groups, to usher in peace and development, specially in the disturbed regions. Though, policies for rehabilitation of militants have been successful in J&K and North Eastern States, implementation of similar policies in naxal affected States has not been impressive for various reasons. This policy has been evolved, keeping in mind the specific geographical and social landscape to help those naxalites who want to abjure violence, surrender and join the mainstream. Surrender and rehabilitation policy is part of a multi-pronged conflict management and resolution strategy and is required to be implemented along with firm action by police against those who follow the path of violence. As the naxal problem has arisen on account of real and perceived neglect, deprivation and disaffection, mainly towards the downtrodden, the solution should aim at providing gainful employment and entrepreneurial opportunities to the surrendered naxalites so that they are encouraged to join the mainstream and do not return to the fold of naxal movement.
Objectives: The objectives of these Guidelines for surrender-cum-rehabilitation of naxalites in the naxal affected States are:
(i) to wean away the misguided youth and hardcore naxalites who have strayed into the fold of naxal movement and now find themselves trapped into that net.
(ii) to ensure that the naxalites who surrender do not find it attractive to join the naxal movement again.
Tactical surrenders by those elements who try to make use of the benefits extended by the Government to further their vested interests should not be encouraged under the Scheme.
Eligibility Criteria:
(i) These guidelines are applicable to those naxalites who surrender with or without arms.
(ii) The eligibility of such naxalites for assistance under the scheme would be scrutinized by the
Screening cum Rehabilitation Committee constituted by the concerned State Government.
(iii) The benefits of the scheme shall not be available to a surrenderee who has already surrendered and benefited under existing surrender / rehabilitation schemes in any of the naxal affected States.
4. Benefits under the Scheme:
(i) Persons eligible under the scheme may be imparted training in a trade/vocation of their liking or befitting their aptitude. They shall be paid a monthly stipend of Rs 2000/- each for a maximum period of 36 months. However, if the surrenderee secures any employment in Government or any gainful self-employment, the monthly stipend will be discontinued.
An immediate grant of Rs. 1.5 lakh shall be kept in a bank in the name of surrenderee as a fixed deposit which may be withdrawn by the surrenderee after completion of 3 years, subject to good behaviour to be certified by the authorities designated for this purpose by the concerned States. This money can also be utilized as collateral security/margin money against loans to be availed of by the surrenderee from any bank for self-employment.
In the event of a surrenderee being able to secure any Government job, this amount shall not be given to the surrenderee.
Incentives for Weapons:
The following additional incentives are included for the surrendered weapons/ammunition:
S.No.
Weapons
Incentive
1 AK 47/56/74 Rifle
Rs. 15,000 per weapon
2 UMG/GPMG/ Picca /RPG/Sniper rifle
Rs. 25,000 per weapon
3 Pistol/Revolver
Rs. 3,000 per weapon
4 Rockets
Rs. 1,000 per rocket
5 Grenade /hand Grenade/stick grenade
Rs. 500 per grenade
6 Remote Control Device
Rs. 3,000 each device
7 Ammunition of all types
Rs. 3 per round
8 IED
Rs. 1,000 each
9 Mines
Rs. 3,000
10 Explosive material
Rs.1, 000 per kg.
11 Wireless Set
(a) Short Range
(b) Long Range
0
Rs. 1,000 per each set
Rs. 5,000 per each set
12 SAM Missiles
Rs. 20,000
13 Satellite Phone
Rs. 10,000
14 VHF/HF Communication sets
Rs.5,000
15 Electronic Detonators
Rs. 50
16 Other Detonators
Rs. 10
Note: The incentive given for surrender of the aforesaid arms shall be deposited in the form of a Fixed Deposit in joint names of surrenderee and the State overnment nominee and may be given to the surrenderee at the time of completion of 3 years after surrender and subject to good behaviour by the surrenderee.
(ii) Handling of weapons: The States may develop a mechanism in respect of safe storage of weapons and ammunitions surrendered by the naxalites.
6. Procedure for screening/identification and rehabilitation of naxalites:
6.1 The following agencies will be involved in the process of identification and rehabilitation of surrendered naxalites:-
(i) ADG/IG(Special Branch/(CID) will act as the Surrender and Rehabilitation Officer (S&R Officer) under the Scheme.
(ii)Central Para Military Force.
(iii) State Police/State Administration.
6.2 Each of the Security Forces deployed will identify one officer of the rank of DIG or equivalent officer as the nodal officer for coordinating matters relating to surrender and rehabilitation of naxalites, with respect to their organisation.
6.3 A naxalite shall be free to surrender before any unit of the CPMFs, District Magistrate, District SP, Range DIG, IG(Ops), IG(Special Branch), DIG (Special Branch), SP(Special Branch), SDM, Sub- Divisional Police Officer and other notified officers. The officers for this purpose shall be notified by the State Governments. A naxalite may also surrender before any unit of the Army or the CPMFs outside the State. The officer receiving the surrenderee shall send the details as informed by the surrenderee filled up in prescribed proforma to the S&R officer and to the nodal officers of all the deployed forces. The nodal officer of each organization will verify the antecedents and activities of the naxalites from its own sources and send specific recommendations to the S&R Officer, stating as to whether the individual could be taken in as surrenderee or not.
6.4 The officer receiving the surrenderee will provide immediate security to the surrenderee and after getting necessary details for filling up the requisite proforma, send him to the transit camp to be maintained by the S&R Officer. The decision about the acceptance or otherwise, of the surrenderee should be taken within 15 days.
6.5 Screening procedure may also include the following::
The naxalite who surrenders may be a hardcore, underground naxalite cadre and a member of a Dalam and surrenders in accordance with the comprehensive surrender and rehabilitation policy being implemented by the concerned State Government. Rehabilitation of surrendered naxalite should be confined to dalam members and above, other ranks and overground supporters/sympathisers being considered only in exception cases.
The authority designated by the concerned State Government for the purpose should ensure that the surrenderee is a genuine naxalite and the naxalite should make a clear confession of all the criminal acts committed by him / her including names of planners and other participants, names of financers, harbourers, couriers, details of the naxal organizations, arms / ammunition and the property looted/distributed/disposed of by the naxalite and organization to which the naxalite belongs, which may be verified.
7. Court cases: Heinous crimes committed by the surrenderee may continue in the courts. For minor offences, plea bargaining could be allowed at the discretion of the State Authorities. States may consider providing free legal services / advocate to the surrendered naxalite as per the policy of the concerned State. Fast track courts may be constituted by the concerned States for speedy trial of cases against the surrenderees.
8. These guidelines for rehabilitation of naxalites for naxal affected States are in supersession of the Item No. 7 of the existing/extant guidelines of Ministry of Home Affairs for reimbursement of security related expenditure to naxal affected States.
9. The Surrender and Rehabilitation Policies of the naxal affected States may, inter alia, include the broad guidelines as laid down above.
10. Impact assessment of the guidelines: The Ministry of Home Affairs may review these guidelines periodically in consultation with the concerned State Governments and take appropriate corrective action if required.
@Rakesh
“Your argument is that we shouldn’t touch their way of life or their land. But this isn’t their land. It is the property of the nation and so are the resources underneath.”
Whoa! Have you read the fifth schedule of our constitution? It provides protection to people living in tribal areas. In 1997, Supreme Court made null and void, the decision of AP government to lease tribal lands to mining companies. Ever since our central government has been trying to get that judgement reversed.
Moreover, you must know that our government has power to takeover any land, even private land, for development purposes. It has power to nationalize any private industry, if it so desires. Have you forgotten how government nationalized the entire banking sector during the 60’s?
If government abuses its powers to nationalize industries of Tatas or Ambanis, there would be international outcry. Look at the hue and cry, our educated urban youth make every time government proposes increase in reservations, even though the govt by amending the constitution has power to increase reservation percentages to whatever extent it deems fit.
Technically speaking, government has the power to own everything in this country. By declaring emergency, it can confiscate anyone’s private property. But when governments abuse their power, people rise in protest. When Indira Gandhi declared Emergency, didn’t we see protests all over the country?
Ok Ex-Intellectual agreed that the law provides them some protection but is it fair that a few (or a few thousand) tribals sit on vast resources worth millions in a huge jungle for free while common urbanites like me have to shell out thousands of rupees per sq. feet to buy a small house to live in.
It would be fine if the land beneath their feet wasn’t worth millions.
There has to be a mid-way and I guess that is relocating them to some other place.
But I don’t think we can let resources worth millions just sit there wasted.
I agree that the ultimate benefit might be to some millionnaire and there would be more money in his bank but I’m sure even the government will benefit from lease money and it might be able to use it for development (or at least that is what should happen).
Rakesh: “but is it fair that a few (or a few thousand) tribals sit on vast resources worth millions in a huge jungle for free while common urbanites like me have to shell out thousands of rupees per sq. feet to buy a small house to live in.”
Life is fair?
Is it fair that I’ve to slave from 10 to 8 everyday to barely earn enough to pay for my house loan EMI while children of Mukesh Ambani inherit assets worth lacs of crores? What’s fair about a 14-year old kid destined to become India’s wealthiest man for being born into India’s wealthiest family? Whats fair about the grandkids of Anil Agrawal inheriting billions for stealing tribal land by paying off politicians and supreme court judges?
Assuming that the displaced tribals due to lack of rehabilitation migrate to Kolkotta’s slums, what would be fair about their kids being born in shanties deprived of basic necessities of life that you and me take for granted?
“But I don’t think we can let resources worth millions just sit there wasted.”
What about the resources on top of the mountain? Their market value may be less than that of bauxite deposits under the mountains, but they have provided livelihood to generations of tribal communities. If mineral deposits are found under Taj Mahal, would you support demolition of the monument too? What if bauxite deposits are discovered under New Delhi or Mumbai? Will the government of India raze down Parliament and relocate the building to another city, so that minerals worth millions are not wasted?
If the mineral deposits under the Niyamgiri mountains are worth millions, why doesn’t Vedanta make the tribals an offer they can’t refuse? If you were living in an apartment worth Rs. 1 crore, would you sell it to Anil Agrawal for Rs.50 lacs? But if he offered you 5 crores for the apartment, would you refuse to sell it?
Why do people who worry about mineral wealth being wasted never ask – If mining companies are earning billions from mineral deposits beneath the ground the tribals have lived for generations, why are they so unwilling to share even a fraction of this wealth with these tribals?
i agree with ex-intellectual on one point – he has repeatedly referred to himself as retarded in his posts. He is right.
@Saurabh: “i agree with ex-intellectual on one point – he has repeatedly referred to himself as retarded in his posts. He is right.”
LOL..yes dear, I voluntarily became a retard for some time so that I could learn to think like retards (What to do? In order to function and communicate with retards, it becomes necessary to think like one). But as you can see, I’ve memories of being an intellectual, which allows me to be intelligent whenever I’m tired of being a retard. You, my friend, don’t have such an option.
Copy/paste from my earlier comment – Insulting me will get you nowhere. Even as a retard, I know how to insult back. It’s not really rocket science, you know
I fully support the All India Movement (AIM) for Seva model which ensures that tribals and the rural population get empowered through good quality healthcare, education, nutrition etc while at the same time maintaining their culture, customs and traditions peacefully in their ancestral lands.
I encourage everyone to join this grassroots movement that promotes grassroots development and women’s empowerment in non-urban districts of India. This AIM for Seva model is a practical solution to solve most of India’s serious problems, including Naxalism.
To learn more, visit: http://www.aimforseva.org
@Rishi: Thanks, it seems you have not only moved on from the debate, but also have provided some of the government incentives. This might be helpful because I suspect Ex-Intellectual can deliver the news.
@Ex-Intellectual: You have screamed; you have shown parts of the Indian constitution based on notions that I have already argued against; you have called me names; defended violence against my country; and, yes, also revealed you are associated with these anti-state elements.
All I ask is simple: why? According to you: the blood of the soldiers do not matter, the blood of the poor government employees do not matter, the upper castes are no longer humans, the market has not uplifted millions in India from poverty since 1996. Boy, oh, boy, which English department in the US do you have a position in to write such fiction?
You get your applause from the jholawallahs at sundry universities that is amply clear. But they are what they always were: jholawallahs: their emotional screams politely heard by the GOI before they apply for their US visas to do detailed research about Indian poverty. Your citing of bizarre sources, your calling me sundry names (as if it matters in a debate), and your bleeding heart for maintaing the chic ethnic poverty, so, you can stay with these people to prove your leftist credentials at a city internet cafe, all of these prove that you are not fighting for them or any poor tribals at all. You are simply pimping poverty to get an intellectual platform or perhaps a pecuniary one in the future. In this aim, you have succeded.
Cheers,
Vasabjit
Ex-Intellectual: The below mentioned paragraph supports my contention both on your thesis and the actual motivations behind it–
“I know my science and also know the psychology of adivasis. Whether in Chattisgarh or Orissa, they share similar traits – spirit of independence, defiance against ecologically-devastating mining, and a love for their land, their rivers, their jungles and their mountains. Unlike educated urban modern men, who lust for gold, who see every natural resource as an exploitable commodity and who are alienated from the natural world, these tribals treat their mountains and jungles as sacred.”
VB
“You are simply pimping poverty to get an intellectual platform or perhaps a pecuniary one in the future. In this aim, you have succeeded.”
Ouch!!
Our man quotes the Constitution and extols the virtues of democracy, when convenient, and dismisses their basic tenets when its not. He demands a ‘deal that they cannot refuse’ for the tribals, while calling the free-market everything short of the devil’s tool. This is a person who thinks we need a revolution because rich folks’ kids have lots of money.
Ideology can be a good thing, but when it begins to affect rational thinking, its time for others to be worried, very worried.
@ Vasabjit:
I moved on because I do not believe that I can argue logically with someone (a Maoist) who believes in the burgoiuse-proletariat eternal violent struggle ideology.
I had blood relations in my previous generation who were senior Maoist ideologues in Medinipur/Jhargram belt(thankfully they got disillusioned after being imprisoned for 6 yrs) and as a young boy I observed this “bourgoise-prolitariat” bull$$it and the utterly destructive romanticism associated with it.
I realized the shallowness and danger of this whole concept (Naxalism) after sitting through “intellectual sessions” under the dim light of a flickering “hurricane” at a very early age. In fact my gravitation towards Universal Hindu revivalism, could very well have been initiated by the questions that arose from these discussions.
I see Maoist ideology as the complete anti-thesis of what the Vanavasis are trying to achieve, ie, sustanability and equitable distribution of resources and returns from them.
As part of my Hindutva efforts, I will strive to acheive them through education and awareness, and I have seen that work in thousands of remote areas in India.
Now obviously, there is much more that needs to be done….and thats for all of us to work on.
Ex-“intellectual”
I take at face value that you were an intellectual before, even if there is not much evidence.
Since I want to be an “intellectual” myself, I want to get rid of pesky doubts like, while the issues of development versus tribal land rights are genuinely thorny and hence the dilemma in the minds of lots of people, what exactly has this to do with Naxals and their violence?
If I start believing that these two are closely related, and Naxals are fighting for tribals then I can be (giddy!) “intellectual” too. Or if I just think that Naxals are opportunists who use violence and fear to exploit genuine concerns of tribals, then, alas, my “intellectual” growth will be stunted.
Please show me the path, ex-“intellectual”.
“defended violence against my country; and, yes, also revealed you are associated with these anti-state elements.”
By quoting Indian constitution and its principles, I’ve proved that your mindset isn’t democratic. You share certain traits that are similar to fascists or maoists. Like fascists, you want to impose the rules of market on a group of people who have been protected by Indian constitution. Like maoists, you dislike democracy because it gives each and every section of society, even tribals, whom you consider cattle, the same rights as you.
Now I’ll also call you a LIAR, since you are making wild allegations without any proof. Can you show a single sentence where I’ve even shown sympathy for maoists leave alone having any association with them? In fact, for last few posts, I’ve been screaming that everyone (fascists, capitalists, maoists) should respect Indian constitution. How does writing about examples of subversion of our constitution constitutes ‘association with anti-state elements’?
Only someone with a fascist mindset will read concern for displacement of tribals from their natural habitats as disregard for the blood of soldiers, government employees (my mom is a government employee) or upper castes (I’m a upper caste myself). This is because fascists don’t have the ability to look at humanity as a holistic whole. Their twisted minds divide people into two different categories, those who share their fascist ideology and those who don’t. Since I don’t share your ideology, who have branded me with maoists despite my obvious distaste for any group that subverts the noble constitution of India.
Vasabjit: “You are simply pimping poverty to get an intellectual platform or perhaps a pecuniary one in the future. In this aim, you have succeded.”
LOL..I’ve repeatedly said that those land is snatched by mining corporations should get a decent share in the wealth generated by the mining operations. How is that pimping poverty, my dear?
I’ve backed every single statement I made about tribals by showing videos about their lifestyle and values, while you haven’t shown us how throwing these tribals out of their villages, their jungles and mountains and forcing them to migrate to cities to work as laborers at construction sites will remove their poverty.
You are the one who believes that since modernization is a violent process, those are are displaced due to industrialization should die (Vasabjit: Or, the peasantry can die slowly through the demands of industrialization and the redundancy of labor in capital intensive agriculture).
While I’m screaming that poor should get a good share of the wealth generated from destroying their natural environment, you believe that poverty should be tackled by eliminating the poor..LOL
“He demands a ‘deal that they cannot refuse’ for the tribals, while calling the free-market everything short of the devil’s tool. This is a person who thinks we need a revolution because rich folks’ kids have lots of money”
Hahaha.. More lies because you can’t argue logically with me.
Read my earlier quote: I demand a better functioning market economy, where land rights of everyone are protected by the law, where everyone has access to credit and insurance, instead of the existing anarchic, lawless capitalism where the big sharks are allowed to eat the small fish and brand them as terrorists if they resist and fight back.”
But you obviously believe in a free-market where the land-sharks have the freedom to steal lands from the poor, while the poor don’t have right to demand a fair price for their lands.
The free-market isn’t a devil’s tool, but people like you who subvert free markets by supporting land-grabbers give it a bad name.
As far as my quote about rich kids is concerned, like all people who can’t argue on merit, you have taken it out of context and twisted it to mean that I support maoist revolution. (I only support resistance against land-grabbing) I made that quote as a reply to a question about unfairness to show that life isn’t really fair.
@Rishi Khujur,
You are doing good work. I wish I could join you in your efforts. But I’ve bills to pay.
@Wannabe-Intellectual
“Or if I just think that Naxals are opportunists who use violence and fear to exploit genuine concerns of tribals, ”
You are thinking correctly, my friend. Maoists are opportunists who are using violence to exploit genuine concerns of tribals. The best way to end maoism is to end the exploitation of tribals by protecting their lands from land sharks and giving them access to irrigation, electricity, education etc)
Without ready made supply of disgruntled poor people whose lands have been stolen by land-grabbers, maoistm will die a quick death. Operation Green hunt on the other hand might make things worse, looking at the way our police and paramilitary forces operate (read the tehelka link) and going by the experience of Salwa Judum, which everyone agrees did more harm than good and instead of ending naxalism gave it a big boost.
@Ex-Intellectual
phatiye diyechho boss( you rock, man)(phod diya biru!)
I am following this debate for quite some time now. And there is not a single point on which I am not in agreement with you, well, except one. Deifying Mithunda and types of Rakhi Sawant are usually done in a spirit of humour. It needn’t be spelled out like this and I wonder how you could have missed that!
As for you take on the Maoist problem, a big ditto !
One line in GB’S post caught my attention. That the naxalites ‘..extort and appropriate resources from the dispossessed’. They are known to collect money from the big businesses, but this is unheard of. Can anyone provide a news link affirming the truth of this statement?
“I only support resistance against land-grabbing”
And how do you suggest they do that? You obviously don’t believe that these people need to participate in the nation’s democratic process…as you have made amply clear in your earlier comments. You have revealed through quite a few subtle and some not-so-subtle comments that you don’t really mind them taking pot-shots at our country’s security forces. I mean, what’s a beheaded cop here and a cop-filled jeep blown to oblivion there?
So what is it that you are advocating here? Your ideology is so neatly aligned with a group of criminals who are currently at war with the Indian nation, that it is really difficult to take you at your word. If it sounds like a naxalite, smells like a naxalite, I guess…
You remind me of thugs in politics who openly threaten public law and order saying they shouldn’t be help responsible if their followers get excited and cause ‘some damage’ 🙂
Thanks for your support, Tatin
“Deifying Mithunda and types of Rakhi Sawant are usually done in a spirit of humour.”
Of course, I know that. I loved ‘Gunda’ too, and for the same reason that everyone else (its so bad that its good) loved it. I was merely making a point – that ability to make fun of Mithun or Rakhi Sawant doesn’t necessarily give you ability to understand complex issues.
And that’s why I completely agree with an earlier commentator who said that people like you should be made to realize whose whiskers they are pulling.
Arguments and counter arguments can and will continue till the cows come home. And why not, you are living in a democracy after all…though you obviously don’t mind abusing the rights that you are guaranteed.
However, your pals crossed the Rubicon when they fired the first shot at an Indian soldier. And that’s when they lost all the rights to be invited into the big tent without any retribution from the State. At least that’s the way I want it to be. But obviously, your pals are holding out for a sweet deal, and in all probability that’s what they will get, because we are not Pakistan, and the Indian Army does not bomb its own citizens.
So, arguing about rights and wrongs done to tribals with you is pointless. You are the problem. You are definitely not the solution. And no State worth its name would have YOU as the middleman to bring development to its citizens, tribal or not.
What is more interesting is what you are contributing to, with your veiled (and some not-so-veiled) references to armed conflict with the state.
That is what we should be talking about.
shubho,
where exactly has ex-intellectual supported the Maoists?
@Mohan:
No, I have a question for you and Ex-‘intellectual’. What is his formula for this ‘resistance’ that he speaks about? Is it political, as in, within the framework of the State?
He keeps on parroting this thing about how much he dislikes the naxalites/maoists. I don’t believe he has an answer to this question at all, for it was asked, multiple times, earlier in the discussion.
Methinks our friend is well versed in the art of plausible deniability…:-)
@ Shubho
In complete agreement
@Shubho…
No disrespect to you or anyone. But why do people think that those who brings up problems are also responsible to solve it?
I have noticed the thousand times when people argue about A Roy? “How does she propose to solve all the problems?” As if she has all the means to solve complex problems like this.
Others, I have never seen any single comment where Ex-Intellectual supported Maoists or killing police. Or he is very smart hiding his message only smart people can get. If that is the case, then please show me where are those.
@Vasabjit
I know it’s too much to ask to summarize your view on this complex issue in a paragraph, but it would help people like me to understand better.
@Dum-Dum-er-Aantel: Thanks, my points are as follows.
1. The tribals have been marginalized; they have been oppressed by various state and non-state actors, such as crony capitalists.
2. The solution given by Ex-Intellectual (very vaguely, but surely) is that they should take arms against the state and other individuals. This he bases on protecting the moral economy of the tribals, as against the encroaching capitalist system.
3. I argue that capitalism cannot be avoided. As anyway, the system has provided economic development since 1991 in India. And, the international system is basically a capitalist one at present.
4. I argue that accepting the oppression of the tribals, they should be given further affirmative action policies, in terms of education, participatory development, basic services (potable water, roads, etc.).
5. I further argue that in no way the present oppression or injustice rationalizes or justifies violent action against the state. If not for any higher reasons, then because these ‘actions’ only kill poor government workers who are equally under-paid and over worked.
There are other minor arguments, which, I think, and you correctly point out, may confuse the overall argument. But these are my main points.
The main difference between me and Ex-Intellectual is that: I think capitalist modernization is real and unavoidable (I have my own reservations against the process, but the process itself is unavoidable); I also think that tribals may undertake peaceful mass mobilization (dharnas, strikes or bandhs, support political parties, etc.) in order to assert their rights; and, violence under no condition is justified by the tribals or their representatives in the Maoist groups.
Finally, I refuse to believe that there is a one on one correlation between Maoist interests and Tribal interests. The tribals have justified grievances, but the Maoist leadership (the urban intellectuals and their ilk) are using the tribals to achieve other, perhaps completely contradictory objectives. The whole situation reminds me of the Zapatista movement in Morelos during the Mexican Revolution.
Cheers,
Vasabjit
Well this thread has been quite a revelation to me. Thanks guys for the enlightenment. (specially Vasabjit.) My initial thoughts were that people were confusing the tribal’s plight, law and order issues in heartland with Maoist sympathy. I thought the Tehelka report atleast (as was not by Ms. Roy) would help clear the context. But apparently my fellow savvy netizens and eminent “social scientists” understand this issue very well. It’s just that they don’t give a shit. The ‘Police’ becomes ‘poor Government servant’. The fact that marginalized find themselves under a complete anarchy with no rights, no privileges that a citizen of this country should enjoy, is just an inconvenience.
The dichotomy is clear. The tribal are ‘NOT’ part of this country, they are encroaching on what’s rightfully ‘ours’.
What really scares me that even assuming the tribal to be scums of this earth, The Green Hunt will create a valley, NE like situation at heart of India is understood as just a mere inconvenience and unavoidable action we have to go through for the sake of development. Won’t it be in interest of the country to find ways to mitigate current escalation instead of inflating it? But obviously we don’t care because we don’t live in these shit holes. We don’t care if Raipur,Ranchi went up in smokes tomorrow.
PS: Another brilliant idea for social research, maybe be the cult of ‘Political Scientists’ have already done it( pardon my ignorance please). Lets have a correlation b/w people killed and growth of GDP, we should give States targets on how much people they should kill to achieve a requisite development target. Lots of CMs would be interested in these ppts.
Good point, Dumdum_er-aantel.
Ex-Intellectual and Vasabjit are talking past each other. I think Vasabjit’s point is about how it usually plays out. I do think there is truth in what he says about a patronising view of tribals and their aspirations. If in fact they could be influenced by an offer they cannot refuse (which is perhaps THE issue), their attachment to their land and way of life is by definition not non-negotiable or at least not as inviolable as is made out to be.
Whether it is going to be beneficial to them (and all of ‘us’) in the long run is a different question. The prospect of beautiful hills in the neighbourhood where I grew up being decimated for giant mines does make me extremely uneasy (I grew up in Rayagada), but then us townsfolk hardly knew anything about tribals living kilometres away and cared even less. There will be a lot less to choose from come picnic season, now upon us.
What does bother me, with good reason, is police / paramilitary / law enforcement brutality against ordinary people. Only those who have had to deal with these agencies can comprehend (I cannot) the full scale of the brutality, but I think we all have a fairly good idea of the kind of ordeal this entails. There is no point in being in denial about this aspect.
@Nanda Kishore well said
It’d also be in order not to romanticise the political gains made by Dalits / SCs. They represent a much larger political base and Dalit leaders have been smart enough to milk them for all they are worth. The average Dalit still slaves away in menial jobs, that is the reality for most anyway. In contrast, tribals have not had a political base to speak of, even in places where this should have been a piece of cake, Orissa for example.
@DumDum_er_aantel:
“But why do people think that those who brings up problems are also responsible to solve it?”
You are right, on the face of it.
However, this case is different. Here we have a problem being discussed, which has two very clear cut paths to resolution.
1. Political process within the framework of the State.
2. Violent, armed opposition to the State.
Does it take a statesman to decide which path to follow here?
Some commentators here have not endorsed the former, and have not condemned the latter. The *nudge, nudge, wink, wink* insinuation is not too difficult to decipher, even for us ‘non-intellectuals’, ‘ex’ or not.
And when we are talking about a situation which is taking a human toll on a regular basis, when it is steadily eroding the authority of the State, which we are all part of and have a stake in, I don’t think we can sit back and just listen to incendiary rants against the State.
Because it is not an intellectual talking point any more. People are dying. And a bunch of criminals are responsible. And they find a voice through commentators like ex-intellectual.
So, my question again, is very simple. What is their solution?
Comment from Scaria Varghese, Melbourne, Australia (Roy’s Outlook article) for those interested in solutions.
“The central government should have involved in dealing with this problem with a carrot and stick approach-winning over the hearts and minds of the aggrieved and isolating the recalcitrant leaders. One can always be wiser after the fact; it is not too late for the central government to get involved and find a lasting solution.
As I said in my previous blog, Indian government must change tack-a bottom up approach of development is urgently needed. Immediate attention of the government is needed for the poor, dispossessed and deprived because they are not getting the fruits of India’s phenomenal economic growth.
Ecologically sustainable development is needed with due consideration to the sensitivities of the landholders. Present day environmental problems-global warming, unpredictable weather patterns and so on-are the results of fast-track developments giving scant regard to the environment. Here Bauxite mining on their land is an issue and it should have handled tactfully taking into consideration of the landowners’ sensitivities.
Here in Australia the original inhabitants-the Aboriginal people-have the right to decide what to do on their land. Mining companies negotiate with them to mine and Aboriginal people get royalties in return. The Aboriginal people were subjected to horrendous discrimination and systematic genocide once and their lives are better now with so many unresolved problems remain. At least they have a say in what to do on their land.
No country can claim progress without taking care of its poor and underprivileged because we are our brothers’ keeper. People who have uplifted and privileged themselves due to India’s phenomenal economic growth should have due consideration for how the other halves live.
@ ex intellectual
I have to disagree with Ms Verghese.
Aboriginal situation in Australia does not compare with India…atall.
Her ideas would have been applicable to the entire Indian population had India been still under British rule.
Ms Verghese obviously has no clue what she is talking about…just like Ms Arundhati Roy. Trying to apply pre-meditated “global scenarios” to every “context”. Hallmark of a true Marxist.
Just like Mr. Marx applied his context of “post-Industrial revolution Europe” to the whole world, and even worse his definition Judeo-Christian religion to the definition of “RELIGION” in totality.
There was never a systematic genocide of vanavasis in India like that of Australian aborigines. Not any more than the systematic genocide of Hindus in general.
Having said that, sustainibilty, education, and “sinsitivity to vernacular traditions” has always been our religious forte. Applying that in the socio-economic sphere is the need of the hour.
As I keep saying…the Naxals have the wrong targets in their cross-hairs..they always had.
@ Ex-Intellectual:
Beside our debate, which despite my opposition to you, I consider a valuable one, there is a worse aspect to it. I know the city intellectuals: most will goad the tribals, organize their revolt, and fight with them, until….
Until the police, the para-military and the army come in with the heavies. Then the city folks parents use their connections, the police rationalize that they are from ‘good families’, and political pressure comes on the enforcement wings. Then, the city intellectuals apply for graduate schools or professorships abroad, get out of the state or the country, etc.. The tribals are left to die unknown and unloved. I have seen this whole narrative play out in the North East, and it is happening again.
Under all of that high flying rhetoric, none of which would stand up in a decent social science conference, let alone a journal, you have basically supported violence by the Maoists. Some may be blinded by ideology to notice the insinuations, but there are others who see through the veil. Pray tell me what is the difference between you and someone who supports the Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli oppression, or the JeM against Indian-Hindu oppression, the LTTE against Sinhalese oppression. What ultimately then is the difference? I sincerely ask you!
Vasabjit
@RSShi-khajooor, @kasabjeet vanerjee @shoo-boo
You have converted me! I’ve misunderestimated, you guys. I bow down to your superior wisdom.
Apart from being a retard, now I’m a right-wing fascist too.
My goal in life is to become as witty and wise as Great Bush. You guys will be happy to know that I’ve begun my education by reading a book authored by him titled ‘Random Quotes of a Bushwhacked Mind’ which contains gems such as “If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists!”
It will be hard for me too to connect the issue of tribal displacement with maoist violence, but if Great Bush could succeed in his job of connecting Iraq to the war on terror, I should be able to!
But I’m a bit confused about one of his quotes – “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” I think fish should be eaten, not allowed to coexist with me peacefully. Was he fishing for Nobel Prize when he made this goofy, confusing, out-of-his-character statement?
But he redeems himself with this ‘baap’ of all great quotes. “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
Yesss! that’s the big secret. Anyone who raises issues of land-grabbing or tribal displacement should be made to shut up by repeating over and over again – You are a maoist! If you can’t find any evidence to back your claim, don’t worry, just insinuate that he is a maoist by alleging that he is insinuating maoist violence. If you keep repeating your claim again and again, the poor guy will tire of trying to prove that he is not and will ignore your post or quit arguing in disgust. Since majority of people are retards with no ability to think logically, the truth you are trying to hammer in will ultimately sink in their minds.
You guys are really doing a good job of catapulting the propaganda. Keep up the good work!
Ex-Intellectual:
Major Signs that a Debate has been lost:
1. Fabricated methods of logic, such as extrapolating to a general population based on a few cases, using personal experience as universally valid, etc.: You have done this in your characterization of the tribals.
2. Emotional speeches appealing to pathology instead of either logic or ethical reasoning (Aristotelian reasoning is based on logos, ethos, and pathos): you have increasingly used this until it culminated in your last rant.
3. Name Calling and/or crass labeling: Undertaken by you at every other person; by the way, it was also undertaken by the Bush administration and the GOP (Axis of Evil, Socialism, etc.).
You can call for revolution very easily, but you have no idea what revolution entails. I spend week after week looking at archives: death, more deaths, destruction of property, rapes, death, more deaths. Revolutions mean a long cycle of destruction and death until one forgets what all of this is for or why it begun in the first place. The end: people hankering for peace who simply want a government, any kind of government that can ensure peace and security. The result: an authoritarian government that can ensure peace, but shall strip away residual rights while doing so using the justification that it is required to maintain order. Do not look at Russia or China or France: just see what happened in the wake of the Naxal revolt in West
Bengal.
Take this from a former national level debater in the US (DSR-TKA): getting emotional is no way to either conduct a debate or make public policy. I too get emotional on certain issues, such as West Bengal politics, but I tend to correct myself. Emotions and righteous rage cannot provide solutions, they only exacerbate it. Politics is the art of the possible, not an achievement of the ideal.
Vasabjit
1. “extrapolating to a general population based on a few cases” –
Dear Son-of-Socrates, give me evidence that forcible displacement of tribals has resulted in the improvement in the life of the displaced. You have no evidence, since according to your aristotelian logic, their lot is to die. As a former intellectual, I’m well-versed with logic of Aristotle and Socrates. No logic book written by these two honorable gentlemen uses the kind of logic you subscribe to where under the contrived logic of ‘modernization is violent’, ten million tribals can be uprooted from their environment without adequate compensation to rot and die in urban shanties.
I gave you evidence of only a few cases. But the actual number of cases where tribals and farmers are struggling to prevent their land being forcibly acquired by government is very high. If I was allowed to post hundreds of links in the comment section, I would have showed to you the magnitude of land-grabbing and displacement that is happening all over the tribal belt of this country. And mind you, displacement without adequate compensation which leaves them even more poor than before..
2. “Emotional speeches appealing to pathology instead of either logic or ethical reasoning”
I’ve been million times more logical than you or the other right-wingers who have under emotion are attacking me of being a maoist supporter. I’ve used LOGIC, my dear, to show that your viewpoints are fascist in nature and subvert Indian democracy and constitution. You have of course, no answer to my careful reasoning, so you counter-attack by claiming that I’m not using logic or reasoning.
3. “Name Calling and/or crass labeling: Undertaken by you at every other person”
I’m learning from you guys! I’ve indulged in name-calling only as a non-intellectual retard or a fascist right-winger..lol.
“You can call for revolution very easily, but you have no idea what revolution entails.”
For a supposed scholar who write papers on complex topics, you don’t even understand English language. Check your dictionary. The word ‘revolution’ cannot be substituted with the word ‘Resistance’. I’ve never ever used the word, ‘revolution’, only ‘resistance’
If someone is looting you house at gun-point and you say, ‘I’ll get killed but not let you loot my house’ that’s called RESISTANCE, you moron. Now don’t like a typical right-winger say that I’m insinuating revolution when I use the word ‘resistance’.. If that’s what constitutes Aristotlean logic, then I would shit on such logic.
“Emotions and righteous rage cannot provide solutions, they only exacerbate it.”
This is the only statement you have made that makes some sense. Emotions and righteous rage doesn’t provide solutions, that’s why we need action – positive action that protects tribal population from land grabbing by land-sharks, positive action that ensures that tribals get a fair share of the wealth generated by mining operations in the form of royalties.
You guys keep complaining that I’m not providing solutions, but when I provide solutions, you dismiss them as impractical and unrealistic solutions using spurious logic that doesn’t make any sense. To anyone with half-a-brain, is should be evident that for you right-wingers, tribal welfare only means token charity in some isolated pockets, not their protection, empowerment and development using the Indian constitution as a guidebook.
This has been an extremely enlightening thread of discussion. Thanks ex-intellectual, vasabjit.
First, I am not how commentators here have deduced that ex-intellectual is a closet maoist, nor can I discern anywhere his support for the violent tactics they have resorted to. One of the fundamental points of any debate is the answer that can be delivered at 2 levels – one, just as a rejoinder to prove the fallacies in the opponents argument. Such debate can go on endlessly and it’s usually futile. While such serve and volley makes for great reading experience, it doesn’t allow any headway by way of solutions. The second way is to offer a rejoinder ONLY when it is logical (hope the trolls don’t start baying ‘who defines what is logical’?), can be implemented and is sustainable.
I think ex-intellectual and hemangshu’s point is that if the govt is justified in taking away their land for purposes of furthering capitalist impulses, these folks also have the right to defend/fight back with any means they deem fit. And I completely agree that when govt proposes changes in reservations for minorities or the fee structure of IIMs, we cry ourselves hoarse with outrage. We don’t resort to violence, because we have more organized and advanced means of protest to ensure that we are heard. The tribals and the dispossessed do not have those means. i don’t think this can be construed as support for the Maoists. It is just an impartial assessment of things as they stand.
It is when both vasabjit and ex-intellectual offer rejoinders that hint at actual solutions that we realize that there is an essential sameness to their difference. Both agree that naxals are opportunists; both evince the same way forward – offer a price that the tribals cannot refuse, compensate them suitably, integrate them in mainstream life, offer them a sustainable way of life so that they are not under the misconception that every change is for the worse. There is simply no other middle path here.
Last, I think we are grievously mistaken if we assume that tribals = Maoists. They have been incentivized/threatened by the latter to join them. Let the indian state make an honest effort to reach out and offer them solid incentives of development and see the results. Let us reform our land acquisition rules which can best be termed as draconian. There is nothing wrong with a Vedanta or Ambani who wants to mint money. Profit maximization is their objective, just like the empowerment of its people and minimizing regional disparities is the government’s task. Why do we always blame the corporates for the govt’s shortfalls? Isn’t it the govt’s responsibility to oversee the proper rehabilitation of tribals, provide adequate credit facilities in rural areas, ensure that corporate offer a fair price to the people whose land it wants?
Oookay…this discussion has officially jumped the shark.
I propose we just wait for Op Green Hunt to sort out our wannabe Che Guevara’s, which I’m sure will ultimately go a million times further to integrate India’s tribals into the mainstream than any amount of hot air from idealouges and poverty junkies.
Nice debate. I however think that ex-Intellectual should stop the name calling becuase it shows that he is losing the plot. If you are so passionate about what you write reveal your idenitity and put yourself on line like Vasabjit Banerjee has done.
Like it or not Vasabjit Banerjee has put his/her repute at stake while arguing this. While you are speaking from your hiding point.
If this is taken purely as a debate Vasabjit Banerjee is winning this one. However before you two get too vitriolic to each other I would request that you step back and read other’s viewpoint more carefully because not everything the other is saying is wrong and there is truth in both of you. Just that both of you are taking your positions to an extreme. Ex-Itellectual more so.
@driftwood,
Nice summarization of the discussion! Thanks for your attempts to bridge the gap.
@Contra
Look’s whose talking! Your identity ‘Contra’ is even more vague than mine..lol
Moreover, I never demanded Vasabjeet’s real identity. Even if he had debated as VB or Paramjeet Mukherjee, I would have continued arguing with him. Many others like Shubho, Hemanshu, Rags, Deep3rdman, Kerela ka Karela, yourfan2, Deshpremi etc have not revealed their real identities.
Jao, pehle in sabke real identities dhoondke lao!
“I however think that ex-Intellectual should stop the name calling becuase it shows that he is losing the plot”
I however think right-wing fascists are losing the plot. Hence they are projecting me a leftist, jholewala, revolutionary, maoist sympathizer, someone who enjoys watching cops being beheaded etc
Jao, pehle in sab ke name-calling, insuniations, jhoothe aarop aur bebuniyaad ilzaamat ko stop karao!
“If this is taken purely as a debate Vasabjit Banerjee is winning this one.”
Who made you the judge? LOL..I think I’m winning, but Shubho will never accept that I’ve won even if you judge me as winner. So who decides? 🙂
I don’t think this discussion is about winning or losing. I’m happy that at the end of nearly 200 comments, we have all got a better grasp of the complexity of the problem, more knowledge of the ground realities generally ignored by urban-centric, jingoistic mainstream media and a deeper understanding on alternate, more workable methods to bring an end to this violent conflict of classes.
Vasabjit’s and his kinds most recent comments are less focused on debating the topic but more of a desperate attempt to put in a haha-I-won comment. I can completely understand, as he said himself, he is braving to debate with his true identity, he alone stands the risk of failing in public. And oh boy how can he, he is a ‘political/social scientist’. And that’s the problem what started mattering more is who the speaker is rather than the logic/weight of his/her argument.
Who win the argument? Vasabjit obviously. It’s a democracy you see and lets face it tribal are not coming to vote here for Ex.
The whole premise that Naxals appeared and are fighting because the Govt. has taken away the land of the tribals is not true. Naxals were there in 70s, 80s, 90s and now 2000s. There were no SEZs or IT companies 20 years back but Naxals were active looting banks, killing police and others, burning trains/buses and spreading chaos. Their ideology is always there and wanted to take over India and convert it into a Maoist state. With SEZs/mining and Govt. taking over those lands or private mafia taking over the lands, they found a context to explain their violence. Ms. Roy and other traitors who always detest India use SEZs as an excuse to explain the violence.
I attended a CGPI (cgpi.org) meeting in mid/late 90s. They are Maoist front whose primary goal is to destroy the current system and replace it with a totalitarian system through armed struggle. They explained very carefully why any intellectual who does not agree with them has to be terminated even if it is their brother/sister/parent/spouse. They also went through their strategies to spread confusion/chaos in the society as a means to achieve their goal of establishing a Maoist state.
What Ms. Roy and her ditto heads in the press (along with Communists) have done in the past 10+ years is to bad mouth BJP/RSS and build up Congress blaming everything on Hindu right wing. They could have invested the effort in strengthening our democracy through administrative, police, judicial and political reforms. The jokers now have given up on democracy and support armed struggle.
@Ex-Intellectual:
Your points and concerns are well taken brother but I feel somewhere in my gut that your’s is a lesser devil than Vasabjit’s(I think Vasabjit will forgive me for dragging him up into this. I took your name just name 2 sides).
Your enemy is the state and VB’s is the whole maoist establishment. At any given point of time, would you agree or not that Maoists are falsely claiming to be the champions of Tribal’s causes? They(Maosists) are using the shoulder of the tribals to fire from, to further their own causes. If Yes, then isn’t it justified for the state security forces to engage into armed battle with them? They(Maosists) are using the plank to further their own cause. Would you agree to this?
And even if there is total one to one correspondence between maoists actions and tribal’s causes, their methoda are such that no democratically elected government of a sovereign country will allow it to succeed. Armed resistance will and should be curbed irrespective of the cause championed by the protestors. And there lies the problem(and the solution too).
The state has to come up with a policy for acquiring land properly and a constitutional relocation policy. On the other hand Maoists have to give up the armed struggle.They’re just testing the patience of the home ministry. The day it launches a massive operation, Maoists will be wiped out. They will not be able to fight the Indian state. And when this happens, the cause of the tribals will be lost and buried for ever.
A more democratic method will only result in some fruits reaching the tribals. This will cause only destruction.
Correction: Your enemy is a lesser devil than Vasabjit’s
I guess Driftwood has appropriately summarised the discussions. Thank you Vasabjit and Ex-Intellectual, this has been a brilliantly debated issue that has brought forward a lot of points that a lot of us never thought about. But now I guess, there isn’t any more learning happening in this discussion except how to call names and insult people intellectually or how to win debates.
GB, please let us have a new post – anything would do so that at least people are no longer interested in an old post.
In general, we are taught that the method of research and enquiry are equally important as one’s thesis. This at a minimum maintains a scientific rigor and allows us some stable insights into the ever changing social world. Those who cannot abide by basic rules, agreed upon by psephologists, economists, and physical scientists, clearly reveal (even if by default) that their theses cannot be supported by clear lines of logic and empirical substantiation. Sorry, then, one is not positing a counter argument, but an opinion. In the style of Bill O’Rielly and A Roy types, they think that screaming and name calling suffice as logic structures.
Finally, I agree with previous author: Reveal Your Name and Location. Come on, let us see how much your bleeding heart actually stands up for your cause. I want to know where such humanists leave, what their names are. You could possibly be a troll for all we know.
VB
A belated comment.
Some of you have written to me why I have not commented on the post.
Well first of all, I am trying to finish my book and so blogging will take a back seat and commenting a seat thats even “backer”.
Secondly and perhaps most importantly, I will try not to get into firefights with self-important intellectuals (ex or current) who think that I am good for commenting on Rakhi Sawant and Mithunda (i.e. meet that standard of intellect) while they have enough grey matter to type in endless tracts of “Oh God I have heard this so many times before” apologist drivel (“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” being a sentence that has made its appearance as “justification”, a sentence that coming from a “Hindu” man would be fascism/commnualism/Modism but coming from the “leftist” man would be intellectualism and Newtonism of the highest order).
The reason I will not is because I have gone down this road of “debate” for many years and have nothing but sore typing fingers to show for it.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps the reason I am silent is because I am blinded by the scintillating power of LOGIC (in caps mind you) and choose to hide in my corner weeping silently and saying “I am not WORTHY (in caps again)”.
Whichever it may be, I shall let this storm pass. Perhaps later when I have more time, assignments have been graded, books have been finished and Raju Srivastav eliminated from Big Boss I shall again engage everyone again. Just not now. Apologies.
@Rakesh, I agree. Will try to post something. I also agree that the debate has been fascinating. As to the tone of the debate, not so sure.
Bravo ex-intellectual & others
I have followed this blog for sometime and marvelled at how unidimensional the political and social commentry in it is. Also at the consistently sycophantic responses it gets but it’s great to see that someone has taken the time now to say what they honestly feel.
GB – maybe you haven’t run to a corner to cry but hopefully you have taken the time to reflect. I admire your passion for the particular views that you espouse but for all your erudition and wit, I find you remarkably lacking in empathy. I sometimes read your work and wonder what you would have thought and written if you had been a Kashmiri Moslem woman.
@PG
You are mistaken if you think I consider maoists as lesser devils than the state. Any organization, whether a political party, the state machinery or even a separatist group is made up different people, some good, some bad, some indifferent, some idealists, some opportunists, some power-hungry, some sadists etc. Scientifically speaking, its impossible to judge or categorize any large group of people as good or bad, but from an emotional point of view we judge something as lesser or more evil depending upon our own perception, our status in relation to the group and our experiences or interactions with the group.
The very purpose of developing your intellect is to rise above own personal, emotional perceptions and observe things dispassionately from a distance without letting your emotions cloud your judgement. At a personal level, the state is good for me. It allows me freedom to express my views, it allows me protection from lawlessness and anarchy and also provides me with infrastructure and services at subsidized rates. Being a urban, educated upper middle-class guy, I’m reasonably sure that unless I fuck up badly, it is unlikely that I would become a victim of police brutality. So there is no question of me considering the state a bigger devil than maoists who could turn out to be devil-incarnates if they ever come to power.
But a victim of police brutality will have a perception of state, dramatically opposite to my perception and even will start identifying with maoists, if they offer him means to retaliate against the state, without understanding their history of brutality.
“If Yes, then isn’t it justified for the state security forces to engage into armed battle with them? They(Maosists) are using the plank to further their own cause. Would you agree to this?”
Yes, if you have the means to isolate them and kill them.
No, if you don’t.
Contrary to the the propaganda of rightists, even police and paramilitary organizations are organizations like every other organization, which means they have combination of good, bad, ugly, apathetic, power-hungry, sadists, opportunists etc in their ranks. Why do we see the phenomenon of cops becoming mute witnesses during communal rioting? Why do we hear thousands of cases of police brutality from every corner of the world?
Do paramilitary forces have lists of all maoists? Assuming that there are 5000 hard-core maoists spread around the entire ‘red corridor’, how will cops or military men identify them? If either out of fear or sympathy, if these maoists hide in villages in plain clothes, how will our men in uniform flush them out?
Here are likely scenarios:
Paramilitary forces, unable to discover the hideouts of maoists, but under pressure from Chidambaram to show results, quickly realize that remote corners of tribal lands have little or no administration machinery. This allows them the freedom to operate without fear of being caught on the wrong foot. So as we read in the tehelka link, they raid tribal villages and randomly start beating up adivasis asking them whereabouts of maoists. If they succeed in their efforts, well and good. If they don’t they might just start branding innocent tribals as maoists and kill them.
By the end of Operation Green Hunt, these forces will show the home minister 5000 bodybags even if barely a quarter of them are of actual militants. Job done! The rest of the militants who successfully managed to evade the army will now regroup with extra strength – tens of thousands of tribals who have lost their relatives, will join the maoists to avenge the brutal killings of their brethren. Hostile neighbors like China and Pakistan (and of course maoist Nepal) will gleefully arm maoists seeing this as a golden opportunity to create a civil war in India.
Scenario 2
Armed forces crush maoists with kind of ruthlessness, Sri Lankan government crushed LTTE. This will result in a genocide of tribals on a scale matched only by genocides of white settlers of native Indians in Americas.
A victory won but at a huge cost. (Of course, fascists wouldn’t mind the cost. They would rather see the tribals dead than become richer than them due to royalties from mining companies.)
Scenario 3 (Most unlikeliest)
Our armed forces delicately flush out only maoists taking care to ensure innocent tribals are not killed in the process.
None of these 3 scenarios will benefit tribals. In Scenario 1 & 2, they will be decimated while in scenario 3, they will continue to face displacement until they become nomad migrants like millions of poor peasants contributing to cheap labor force in urban areas.
A more humane solution is to make tribals prosperous by not depriving them of their due share of wealth. As the saying goes, happy and prosperous people don’t participate in revolutions.
@ ex intellectual
“This will result in a genocide of tribals on a scale matched only by genocides of white settlers of native Indians in Americas”.
Sorry mate!
You have no clue about either one or both, ie, The anti-Naxal drive and/or the history of Native Americans.
The problem that I see in your entire narrative (and unfortunately the narrative of the Naxals and their sympathisers), is that you see the Vanavasis as a distinct entity to the extent of being a separate nation.
The average population, in your convoluted narrative is projected as a invading entity (a la Khyber pass crossers almost)
Using your narrative, you will be just a step away from justifying massive military action by one party over the other.
Unfortunately, thats coming dangerously close to being a Maoist. Its a lose lose situation for all.
@Ex-intellectual, Hemanshu, Dumdumer Aantel, Nanda Kishore and a few more
Here is the Naxal “People’s War” Mnaifesto (almost a copy of the Maoist/Polpot doctrine). Note # 15, and where you all and Arundhati Roy fit in in their modus operandii
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maoist/documents/papers/PGA-Constitution.htm
Compare that with
Manifesto of these seva/sustainable development orgs of equal if not more reach
http://www.sevabharathi.org/education_e.htm
http://www.sevabharathi.org/rural_e.htm
ekalindia.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=6
Using the parapemeters of your talking points, please decide which side you will be cheerleading and waving your pom-poms for?
Rest of the readers too, take a look.
Rishi: “The problem that I see in your entire narrative (and unfortunately the narrative of the Naxals and their sympathisers), is that you see the Vanavasis as a distinct entity to the extent of being a separate nation.”
Only someone with head buried deep under sand would deny that India is deeply divided on caste and class lines. Except for Sanghis, I doubt there is any section of our society that is in such deep denial of the existence of caste divisions in India.
Rishi: “Here is the Naxal “People’s War” Mnaifesto (almost a copy of the Maoist/Polpot doctrine). Note # 15, and where you all and Arundhati Roy fit in in their modus operandii”
Let me stretch your argument to its logical course. Since you are a Sanghi, and since many Sanghis have participated in communal rioting and despite video-taped confessions of their crimes, they have been protected by Sanghis in power (NaMo, who is not just an ordinary Sanghi, but considered good enough to lead the country), you and all Sanghis fit in the modus operandi of Babu Bajrangi or Narendra Modi.
Take a deep breadth and think about this – Unless you give up association with all Sanghi organizations, you are more connected to mass-murderers like Babu Bajrangi than any of us are are connected to maoists. LOL (I do not even fit in the profile of a regular leftist, leave alone a maoist)
PS: Except for one loony comment, I never mentioned your Sangh connections, but you keep making insinuations that I believe in maoism despite no evidence of any such connection. Time for you to do some introspection, my dear friend.
(”Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” being a sentence that has made its appearance as “justification”, a sentence that coming from a “Hindu” man would be fascism/commnualism/Modism but coming from the “leftist” man would be intellectualism and Newtonism of the highest order).
Hahaha..Great comeback, but based on simplistic assumptions. Branding everyone who doesn’t agree with the idea of a brutal war which may end of killing thousands of tribals who have absolutely no connections with armed maoists as a leftist is convenient way to sidestep the issue.
By your own admission, thousands of intellectuals, thinkers, human right activists which include high-court judges, ex-bureaucrats, theatre personalities, directors etc don’t support government offensive. All of them are leftists? All of them support maoist violence and see it merely as reaction to action?
Of course not, but labeling them as leftists allows you to indirectly connect them with maoists.
Thinker/intellectual/civil right activist/environmentalist/anti-war pacifist = leftist = maoist = anti-national traitor/deshdrohi.
What if Tagore, Satyajit Ray or Gandhi were alive? If they had to take a stand on the issue, in which camp do you think they would have pitched their tent? I can’t imagine Tagore or Gandhi ever agreeing on Operation Green Hunt. I can’t imagine them not protesting against the systematic exploitation of tribals. I can’t imagine Tagore, who wrote beautiful, soul-stirring prose on the religion of forest, who found even gunny-bag factories offensive to his soul, who despised the blind movement of western civilization and ranted against the spirit of the machine even agreeing to mining operations in tribal lands.
But in today’s polarized climate, even a poet like Tagore would have been branded as an anti-national maoist sympathizer for protesting against mining operations in tribal lands.
I believe they would not be waving Pom-Poms.
Kalashnikovs would be a better choice considering the Maoists Pol Pot -ish ideals.
At the risk of repeating myself, let me reiterate that it is absolutely pointless to argue with idealouges.
This brand of talking head has been around since time immemorial. And the world has moved ahead in spite of their anti-progressive ideas.
Again, I just hope Chidambaram is given the free hand that he deserves to clean out the scum that our friend here so idolizes. The tribals of our country will soon realize the ride they have been taken on by these hypocrytes and their ideological brothers who seem to have an unnatural amount of time on their hands to troll sundry blogs to give vent to their angst.
And yes, ex-intellectual, this thing about the maoists melting among the population, I believe a less charitable way to describe it would be to say that the tribals would be used as human shields. Should fit in comfortably within your scheme of things.
Rest assured, the security forces have seen that movie before. And the Jihadis and the Khalistanis who used that tactic also had their own fourth column waiting in the wings to open another front through the press and other tools of civil society.
You have it even easier…since all you need to do is to spout righteous indignation sitting in your pyajamas while the suckers your ideology has put in harms way get slaughtered in an armed conflict they cannot possibly win.
Correction: ‘fifth’ columnists not ‘fourth’. Pardon my math…
@ Ex-intellectual
There are some truth in what you as there is truth in what Vasabjit says. But you make it seem that anybody disagreeing with you is totally wrong and neither do you seem able to conced that you might be wrong on any point.
Same goes for some people who are arguing against you also!!
The absence of self doubt is very dangerous and it is that leads to all kind of fundamentalism be it relegious or some ideology.
But I guess the nature of internet is that only extreme views gets noticed.
Amazing levels of Brain Washing has been achieved by the proponents of Violent Leftist activities.
All the hot air aside(state, mining corporations, Kissinger, blah blah)….I still haven’t discovered what prevents the Maoists to participate in the Democratic process, win seats in the tribal areas & take charge of the administrative machinery there. If they are so concerned about the tribal s that is one way how bloodshed can be avoided(from both sides).
Or is the above mentioned concept way too non-revolutionary & non-romantic?
“I still haven’t discovered what prevents the Maoists to participate in the Democratic process, win seats in the tribal areas & take charge of the administrative machinery there.”
Because the maoists don’t believe in democracy, dammit! How many times do I’ve to say that maoists are cynically exploiting the grievances of the tribals for their own ends? They are not concerned with tribals, but derive their strength from people who have been displaced due to land-grabbing, people who have lost everything and have nothing left to lose.
Of course, tribals can come together on their own platform, and fight elections on their own strength without support from maoists. But it is easier said than done. I mean, 60 years down the road, we still don’t have a decent political party which can represent us, urban middle-class youth.
Despite many attempts, all new parties that have been launched by honest, able people from public life have met with failure. Where are people like Khairnar, TN Seshan etc who fought the system on anti-corruption platform? If educated, qualified people in cities like Kolkotta, Chennai, Bangalore or Mumbai have failed to create political party that can represent their interests, is it fair to expect that millions of poor, illiterate tribals spread over thousands of hectres of land across several states would be able to create an effective, united political front?
@ ALL
Why is to so hard to understand that Ex-Intellectual is anti-maoist despite him screaming hoarse on this. If you have any valid reason to believe otherwise please state and let him refute him.
@Contra:
Because, as per our Intellectual-past-his-expiry-date:
1. State = bad
2. State cannot, does not, will not work for tribal upliftment (because they represent the bourgeoisie and are slaves of giant evil blood-sucking corporations, of course)
3. Tribals participating in the country’s democratic processes is out of the question, since he knows that all honest-to-goodness political entities are doomed to fail. Hence theirs will too. This is the gospel truth upon which he bases the rest of his thesis.
4. And now our man hates the maoists too (though it does find it incredibly hard to feel bad for Induvar).
5. But our man says ‘resistance’ is legitimate, and necessary.
6. Unless there is a tribal version of Superman flying around dispensing justice on their behalf, do you see any other way this ‘resistance’ is playing out?
Let’s stop playing these semantic games. I mentioned plausible deniability earlier. Even that begins to sound ridiculous when stretched beyond a limit.
As many many commentators have pointed out earlier, violence is not a solution. You end it. Then talk about grievances.
However, logic of this kind obviously does not appeal to hyper emotional shrill talking heads.
Till violence stops, any attempts to provide legitimacy, to justify it, by rationalizing the killing with emotional rants and diatribes, is just aiding and abetting the perpetrators of that violence. In this case the maoists.
Clear enough for you?
@ EX INTELLECTUAL
Neither Sangh nor Narendra Modi are banned military outfits.
As of yesterday, Narendra Modi was a demcratically elected leader.
Read the Sangh manifesto. I am sure you will become a proud Sanghi too.
Now you see why I am saying that you start with wronmg narratives.
@ ex intellectual
Here this will help.
http://rssonnet.org/index.php
@Rishi,
Who will ban NaMo? Congress whose own hands are soaked in blood of thousands of Sikhs? Didn’t Indian government under Congress rule provide arms to LTTE before Rajiv’s assassination?
When India’s top two political parties have blood on their hands, who will ban them?
I’ve just one question for you – Since you abhor violence so much, why don’t you send Babu Bajrangi to gallows? Are you proud of his crimes too?
The law of the land takes its course when it comes to individuals like Babu.
I am sure Teesta Setalvad would take care of that. If not her then Arundhati sure would 🙂
@ Ex intellectual
As you may not have noted in your narrative (and I must say I am repeating myself here), Narendra Modi’s wasnt really blowing up people with landmines and grenades. Nor was he calling for creating armies of AK47 carrying 16 year olds shooting innocents and living in government quarters.
At the most my friend, Modi could be blamed for being inefficient in riot control by his worst (but honest) critics, something common to the entire Indian system (you and me included).
Moreover, I havnt seen Babu Bajrangi making any Manifesto openly proclaiming how “intellectuals and artists” (exes included) can be utilized as part of a violent war possibly resulting in death of millions, if I go by Cambodian case study.
@Rishi
“At the most my friend, Modi could be blamed for being inefficient in riot control by his worst (but honest) critics, something common to the entire Indian system (you and me included).”
Sorry?? Modi could be blamed for being inefficient in riot control? Not for engineering the *genocide* in 21st century India??
Very much off-track from the original topic…[and hence edited]
Now that is utter non-sense and this time I am not sorry for being rude.
@ Duduner aantel
Do you even know the meaning of the word “genocide”.
1000+ innocents die. 10% of a Islamic population causes 30% of Hindu casualty. How is that a genocide?
Just because Arundhati loves to use that word, you use it.
You want to see genocide.. go to Rwanda..go to Cambodia, go to Sudan…go to Nazi Germany.. go to Bangladesh.
Just do a research of these places. Tell me how many people were killed and how they were killed.
More than 3 million people were killed in Bangladesh (90% of them being Hindus) and the world still doesnt call it a genocide.
Show me where RSS has declared war againnst Muslims and asked for people to arm themselves with Ak47s and landmines to achieve that.
I gave you the website too.. show me.
What I understand, “Genocide” is violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group.
In my opinion, Modi sponsored killing satisfies this criteria. And no, I am not using it because A Roy uses it.
No, I haven’t been to Rwanda, Sudan, or Combodia. But, I don’t believe that since Hindus are killed in Bangladesh and hence the killing of Muslims in India are justified (be it just a fraction of the whole number).
There are some speeches by Togadia in youtube(I believe he is a Sanghi). If that is not preaching violence then I don;t know what violence is.
Anyways, let’s not drag this any more and just have respect to each other’s opinion.
If “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” then please don’t cry if the Indian army increases its “reaction” to match these thugs.
@ Dum dum er Aantel
Really?
When was the last time Dr Praveen Togadia spoke of raising a full fledged army to eliminate any Indian community, or for that matter, the state of India?
Dr Praveen Togadia has always maintained that if anyone has an issue with choosing their loyalty to any India-phobic country (or India-hating ideology) over India, then they can leave India.
Why do you not know about nearly 3 million Hindus who were killed in Bangladesh in 1971? It happened within a 150 kilometer radius of where you live and within your generation. Doesn’t that speak a lot about what your biases are? Not to say how suicidal that is for you.
I don’t see Rishi Khujur justifying anything with regards to the killing of Hindus in Bangladesh.
@ BengalVoice
Thanks. We are off topic here. Lets conclude.
I just have to find out who this guy is. I have had my fair share of pervs and voyeurs in my time on earth so far. From with the guy who fell thru the glass window with his pants around his ankles while I was in the school bathroom to the guy whom I recently found in my closet when I came out of the shower. There have been hundreds in between. All of them said that they had a strange kind of compulsion to behave the way they did. I feel a similar kind of compulsion to know the identity of Ex-Intellectual.
Sorry Vasabjit. You do not make me feel that way!:)
I always use to wonder how a debate of this intensity b/w adamantly divided factions ends. Now I have the answers. My congrats to Contra, Shubho, Bengal Voice. what Ex and Vasabjit couldn’t achieve with their arguments you guys did with your sheer stupidity. Thanks for killing this thread for good.
If that was not enough than here …we finally have the feminine perspective on the issue. As “The Adhikary Gal” irrefutably proves Ex to be a perv. It’s time for rest of us to leave GB in peace, he surely have better things to do then moderating this thread.
PS: ” From with the guy who fell thru the glass window with his pants around his ankles while I was in the school bathroom to the guy whom I recently found in my closet when I came out of the shower. There have been hundreds in between.”
Seriously?
Another project that aims to promote sustainable and vernacular economic development throughout the country.
http://www.gougram.org/
Hemanshu, I think she’s actually confessing to having a perverted fascination for me!..lol. Perhaps she’s feminine side of nosey Vasabjit.
@ Hemanshu
Where did I write anything to kill the debate. Please point it out and quote me on that.
Also think before you call someone stupid, its very easy to insult on internet and it wont be hard for me to retort in the same manner. But I guess i wont stoop to that kind of cowardice.
@Contra:
Don’t feed the trolls.
@Contra oops.. Friendly Fire 🙂 .. my bad
“Where did I write anything to kill the debate. Please point it out and quote me on that.
Also think before you call someone stupid, its very easy to insult on internet and it wont be hard for me to retort in the same manner. But I guess i wont stoop to that kind of cowardice.”
@Ex now you are amusing yourself 😛
hey hemanshu…..
You must be referring to your own “sheer stupidity”, to say the least. Bengal Voice responded factually to some clueless dingbat who brought up Hindu-bashing needlessly at the drop of a hat.
On this forum, we treat each other with respect, even when we disagree with their views. You want any respect, then you better treat others with the same respect. Remember the Golden Rule?
So, restrict your abuse to your S&M partner. As such, I have nothing but the deepest pity for pathetic, potty-mouthed pipsqueaks like you trying to butt in with no facts or reasoning.
[edited by GB}
@Kalyan…
You are so mature…
[edited]
@Kalyan,
” On this forum, we treat each other with respect, even when we disagree with their views. You want any respect, then you better treat others with the same respect. Remember the Golden Rule?”
hahahahahaha
The point is once you let these fanatic,fascist loose on any place, all the voice of reason and logic gets lost in shrill cry for kill.
” So, restrict your abuse to your S&M partner. As such, I have nothing but the deepest pity for pathetic, potty-mouthed pipsqueaks like you trying to butt in with no facts or reasoning. Try name-calling your fellow retards who deviate from the Naxal topic and abuse nationalists for no rhyme-or-reason.”
Yes that’s the Golden Rule you were talking about.
Your comment just more than proves my point, How you ‘stupid’ fascists have succeeded in converting a genuine debate on naxal situation into yet another fascist shitting pig hole.
It’s not my blog you are shitting on so please relive yourself of all your fascist diarrhea, it’s GB to bear and clean.
@Ex @Vasabjeet and everyone apart from these jerks, thanks for the interesting discussion.
So Long.
@ dumdumer antel
And you’re so fine, babe. 🙂
@ hemanshu
I see that you got the point I was trying to make – It may be fun for you to disparage other readers, but when someone throws one back at you, it hurts real bad, huh? Too bad for you…Ab aaya oont pahad ke neeche?
Now that you understand that the Golden Rule cuts both ways, it appears that you are planning to run away from a debate and leave the floor open to the fascist pigs. Tsk..tsk…How brave of your ilk. I could see how brave your Maoist comrades were when they come across defenseless people.
Tell your comrades to be merciful to the Francis Induwars in the future. Beheading innocent hostages only makes your comrades no different from the Taliban. The only element your comrades’ beheading spree lacks is a good videographer which you can expertly fill. Apparently, that is the only thing that must excite you other than running around screaming “fascists, fanatics”. 🙂
@ Ex-intellectual – “Hemanshu, I think she’s actually confessing to having a perverted fascination for me!..lol. Perhaps she’s feminine side of nosey Vasabjit.”
For all you know, she could be hemanshu’s S&M partner, who’s keeping tabs on him on this blog and is out to give him a spanking every time he misbehaves. 🙂
Rishi, thanks for sharing insights, but if you think I am a ‘Maoist sympathiser’ you couldn’t be more wrong. In that context, your comment (regarding their ideology etc.) comes across as slightly patronising. I don’t claim to know a great deal about the subject, just that there is a lot of dissonance in the rhetoric in the mainstream and a zeal to tar everyone with the same brush. IMHO, most ideologies are proverbial roads to hell and I am not into any.
@ Nanda Kishore
Most ideologies, not all.
I am not painting you as a Maoist sympathiser. All I am saying is that the Maoists are well equipped and ready (ideologically, with enough historical precedents in other countries), to exploit the honest anti-establishment feelings of entire populations and lead them off the cliff without them realizing it.
As for the solution to this problem, the government should stop playing politics (as Mamata and CPM is doing now, and Congress and Janata Party did in the 70s and 90S), and start eliminating the Maoist leaders as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Yes I am talking about killing Maoist talking heads and ideologues.
Unlike Islamic terror (which is self motivating as long as a person beleives in a certain book), this movement depends on a regular supply of propaganda literature and intellectual brainwashing.
You have completely misrepresented Arundhati Roy’s views and then attacked them(For instance, she nowhere says “all corporations are evil”). An easy thing to do.I suggest you read her essays “Walking with the Comrades”(all the 33 pages) instead of fishing for misinformation from TimesNow.