Booker Prize wining author and activist Arundhati Roy in an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN (to be aired at 8.30 pm tonight, IST) suggests that the “gravest threat to internal security” is a bogey.
The reason the Manmohan Singh government has zeroed in on Maoists is big business.
“…because of this economic interest, the government and establishment actually needs a war. It needs to militarise. For that it needs an enemy. And so, in a way what the Muslims were to BJP, the Maoists are to Congress.”
Also read: ‘All terror can be traced to injustice, inequality’
Arundhati Roy: ‘India is not a democracy’
‘Middle and upper classes are in their own country’
churumuri 
Have to admit, the one-liner that you have highlighted is a bit bizarre and the analogy is a bit of a stretch.
AND To be fair, she also says –
“So you can’t extract morality from the heinous act of violence that each commits against the other.”
Point that I have to make is –
1> Media is confusing Arundhati with the issue at hand.
2> She is not the problem. (Do not shoot the messenger)
3> Even after so much of farting, belching and burping on the Naxal issue in the studios..broadcasters in India have NOT sent out reporters to the conflict zones. Is this because they are scared that the reports will shatter their own constructed reality?
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Wrong headline! Any way, A. Roy at her best is delusional. She is a raging anarchist of the Left variety.
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“broadcasters in India have NOT sent out reporters to the conflict zones.”
Gee… where do they get those fancy videos of Naxals training and all?
Do they collect it from PRO of CPIML?
From where? Ms Roy’s home or Mr Ram’s?
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Haven’t we already learnt that this vacuous woman has nothing to add to any debate apart from a shrill, contemptuous voice of false superiority hiding a gaping moral and intellectual bankruptcy at the core?
As John McEnroe was fond of saying:
“You cannot be SERIOUS!”
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hmmm…interesting analogy. Under the assumption that we choose to play along with this analogy, and we consider how the media was saying during elections that the BJP lost power bcos of their anti muslim agenda, then Congress and the UPA should loose power the next elections due to their anti naxal agenda.
But on another note altogether, the present government’s policies seem so dangerously alike to American (read the USA) policies, wonder if it is a good thing at all…
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do not shoot the messenger? methinks there are suddenly too many messengers who are crying not to be shot.
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Everyone loves a bogey man!! The scarier the better. Maoist rebels, china provocative at the border…oh the deep scars of Mao in “62.
Well played.
But sometime you have wonder, are our Chanukyas little too clever for their own good!
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http://ibnlive.in.com/news/indian-democracy-in-a-state-of-emergency/103928-3.html?from=tv
Cool excerpt
Arundhati Roy: Would it be enough for you Karan, if someone killed your parents and raped your wife and the Prime Minister apologises?
Karan Thapar: The Chinese haven’t apologised for the Tiananmen Square.
Even Karan needed China to cover up!!! :)
Cool quotes
“The poor today are being called terrorists.”
“What I have said is that democracy has become fused with free-market capitalism”
“but certainly socialism has a language of justice that capitalism does not have.”
” I condemn it(Induwar’s killing). I do not approve of it. I don’t think anyone in their right senses would.
“Then I would say that you should come out with all the MoUs that you have signed for all the mineral wealth which is really the key issue. I mean just the bauxite in Orissa is worth 4 trillion that’s with 12 zeros.”
I would really appreciate and join if she has any plans of extending this erudite communism in Karnataka.
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saar raaja, have the good naxals apologised for killing many parents and children and raping wives or are those acts “erudite communism”?
the scummy roy condemns the murder of induwar and thinks she can cleverly justify what killed him and thousands like him??
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@curious
No doubt communism is erudite.
Naxals and communist in India don’t know what’s communism . Arundhati knows it and she is never justifying; neither you are justifiable when writing here about some adivasi who are 3 generations before you.
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Khan,
I have more wonder at the value proposition represented by modern day Meer Sadiq’s!!
Chanakyas learn quickly any way…
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Dadda is as Dadda does.
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The fact is govt want to silence tribals and adivasis to usurp their land for exploitation of Mineral wealth. For this they need all the naxal, Maowadi bogey. The little bow and axe of theirs(tribals) will not let Govt unleash the Terror they want to achive the aim- complete displacement of the people from their land and handing over the same to Mittals and ambanis.
They require bigger bogey than that, so China bogey is dusted up. Why all of a sudden airforce chief issue statement regarding high-tech aircraft, army leaking(rumour) ITBF jawans killed? Have you ever heard of the same from Chinese side??
All this will help when cleaning up the forest land of Jharkhand and chattisgarh from these wrethed souls, which am sure will help HDI index of the Nation, less poor.
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The bigger bogey needs to seat/undo Defence to see a bloodless coup.
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khan avre, was it not you who attached one link from some chinaman who said china shud dismember my country?
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Bogeykhan!
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Watched A. Roy on some US TV program. While she seemed to have valid points about how large sections of our population are treated by others who are luckier, she mostly used insinuations and rants which she backed up with some anecdotes to paint the picture that India is some kind of military/dictatorship state hell-bent on persecuting its people.
And she didnt seem to have any solutions to anything – if we followed whatever she was hinting at, we would most probably end up in anarchy like some african nations. Arundathy’s ‘solution’ seems to be to give up all progress and just regress to some weakened state of chaos.
Making her an enemy of the state and dealing with her accordingly would not be a bad way to go at all…
khan,
It is a fight alright – whether it is the repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the taliban and other nutcases who have taken over Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan (all of whom love to hate/subjugate and kill non-muslims), the communists in china who hate Indians or anyone else. In India, we are as divisive as anyone else, maybe more so due to our historical divisions due to language and caste.
In this fight the enterprising people on every side will take advantage of fear of ignorant people. Nothing new in all this an nothing surprising. As you like to say – everybody is naked in the hamaam.
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its almost as if Karan Thapar makes an effort to misinterpret and misconvey what his guests are saying.
But anyways, the valid question that A roy in the link provided above remains, why are we not looking at the problem?
We support the the govt. against the Maoists. We support their economic reforms to a certain extent,ok. But as she describes a point, the free market practices do not share a common definition with democracy. i.e. Democracy is not enforced free market economic policies and vice versa.
One cannot keep condemning Communism/Socialism on the whole and say democracy is the best without looking at the problems.If any system is to be good and efficient, the problems present in the system need to be addressed.
Right now, the problem is that the govt. in this situation does not acknowledge that the problem also lies within itself.
To draw a parallel without going to adivasis and the poor with whom i cannot say i am well connected, let us consider the fact that the govt is in the process of implementing a 25% reservation for free education in govt. and pvt. schools alike. the govt. is saying that it will bear the expenses for these 25% of the seats.
On paper this is a very rosy situation. But, as far as pvt. schools are concerned, those that charge hefty fees are out of the zone. But those that charge minimal fees will have to increase price on the remaining 75 % of students because of 2 reasons:
1. firstly if and when the govt. says that it ll bear the costs, then until the govt sanctions the money the schools run under loss with no guarantee of the money ever coming their way.
2. Thanks to the administrative loopholes and corruption, the smaller pvt. institutions will be lucky if they get even 10% of the promised amount.
This is an example of the problem, of the fault that exists in our current system! This is something that we NEED to look at. Once we solve this(if and whenever we do!), then we can worry about defining terrorists as people who follow ideologies other than “democracy” and “free market policies”.
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DB
For the followers of reglion of peace it is always the other guy who is at fault.
IF it is in INdia it is the Hindu RSS and if it is outside India, it is the “Jooooooooooos” (Jews) :)
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Hilarious! You made my day! Khan can see a conspiracy in everything :) I think we need to get you on a TV show, you will make a good Indian version of Glenn Beck.
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The sad thing with Cheddi crowd is, instead of keeping at with the issue raised, they indulge in their favorite pastime of ad hominem attacks. They know they have nothing else to say, their bankruptcy of thoughts is reflected in the responses here, as well as sangh gangs views.
Just glancing at the comments is amusing to say least. How at the slightest of opportunity they invoke poor, innocent joooooos!! Maybe they see themselves as one of them. But bringing saudi et el in the discussion when none is warrented is their way of showing ……….hmmm, must be am saying little truth, that they don’t want to hear.
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prajwal avre, mr karan thapar did not make any such effort at all. all the effort was made by madam roy. there is no need to jump through hoops in order to justify your patently wrong position.
methinks you shud listen to some professional bleeding hearts here who seem to have thought straight for once.
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@Anonymous Guy
“In this fight the enterprising people on every side will take advantage of fear of ignorant people”
Ok . so there are always fears of a onti hudugis getting informed/transformed/raped by enterpreneurs. That was what Roy asserted, ‘Guy’.
“Making her an enemy of the state and dealing with her….”
I can sense how enterprising Anonymous (Indian) Guys need to be in order to compete with US ‘Guys’ for dealing ‘her’s..
“Arundathy’s ’solution’ seems to be to give up all progress and just regress to some weakened state of chaos.”
I am dead sure you are prograssive IT Guy trying anonymity. Wonder why they don’t bother for flood victims – a weakened state of chaos again. Of course why should they give up all the prograss.
@prajwal
“One cannot keep condemning Communism/Socialism on the whole and say democracy is the best without looking at the problems.”
You just missed the track a little. Communism is not opposite of democracy. It is opposite of capitalism.
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raaja avre, chennagi helidri. kamminijavu janatantrakinta representativu, alve?
in other words we could find democracy in former kamminija countries :)))
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Curious Sahebare,
Kamminijavu andare nijavenu kammi aagodilla swami.
nija nijane .
Innondu nija keli.
Implementation galna hudukikondu hodre Mumbai slum, Kolkata Veshyagriha , Delhi Adda galigenu kammi illa swami – nimma capitalism nalli. Alli bhayankara democracy iruthe. ellaru vote exercise maadthare. Deshagalu alle hutti alle sayuthve.
Idannu itkondu istondu dialogue !!
Communism bagge modalu thilidukolli. Nanna prakaara nimage communism andre gunnu, blooddu, jasti kelsa antha hinjarike antha kanuthe.
“To build communism it is necessary, simultaneous with the new material foundations, to build the new man and woman.”
— Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary
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@raaja
looking at teh strictest sense of the words, what you are saying is one hundred percent correct. but in the present context where, again, as A roy puts it, in the context where free market policies and the definition of democracy are treated as mutually inclusive, my statement in the previous comment holds.
As communism/socialism are not purely economic systems but are economic-cum-political systems. So one can look at it either as a set of economic policies, or a set of administrative ideologies. The latter is the case that I refer to.
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raaja, any ideology that seeks to build “new” men and women is inhuman and you have just altered my perception of che guevara for the worse.
lenin, stalin, mao, pol pot and assorted other killers sought to buttress their inhumanity with these very sterling words. all they ended up doing was killing a whole bunch of their own ppl.
kampuchea was lucky to remain populated by the time the mild mannered pol pot was done building “new” men and women.
i was wrong. communism is not kamminija. it is only sullu. completely so. you speak of the many vices of our society because you see them. you cannot say the same of your communist “societies” because they are hidden away.
millions have been slaughtered by communist killer “leaders” and we are still told to “try it” and to “understand it”. such subtlety of language is indeed appreciable :) even when you don’t have a leg to stand on.
illri, china dalli xinjiang alli toristaidaralla..adanna navu kuda kaltre yella solve agutte. dont worry madkobedi
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Curious,
Communism cannot speak same language at every part. Infact Marxism’s last stage is communism. So you cannot just pickup things singly the bad things and lay them on the last phase.
If I have to do it on the present 420 system pillars ,I will have to need a new blog with enormous space. For quick revision you can visit some of churumuri’s topics recently.
Nimma kone eradu line nodidre yaavudo kithogiro Indian political party pranalike thara kanuthe.
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raaja…olle matu helidri. communism is last stage of marxism ante. matte why do you speak for communism i say? why not for some first or second stage of marxism when it is supposedly still somewhat human?
i dont think you have any rational argument to provide. slogans only like true “last stage” communist cadre.
fyi…not a single party in this country commented on xinjiang except some communists saying what happens there is china’s business. i completely agree also. i just want to borrow their best practices ashte.
is it not very funny that you are so prickly when “last stage” past “capitalist entered” china is spoken about? dont worry. i like what they are doing in xinjiang. perhaps our softy softy fellows should show ur maoist heroes some videos ah?
solutions like xinjiang and tibet is what we require to adopt. banni raaja..support madri
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@raaja
aiyo bidi swamy! Discussing Communism/Socialism in India these days is becoming more and more like it is said to have been in the USA during the 60s n 70s; you know, when ppl were arrested and jailed and tortured and imprisoned etc. just upon even suggesting something that sounded similar to what might be included in communism. In other words, ppl decided ideas were communism without knowing what communism exactly was. It was a devil, but no one had an exact idea of what it really was.
Somehow, ppl don’t seem to give a damn about the ideology/set of ideas that socialism/communism itself represents per se, but go on giving examples of hitler, stalin, mao etc. but none will say we will try to implement communism from a different perspective or maybe that we will take the good aspects of communism and try to weed out the bad aspects when we implement it, thereby creating a different system altogether.
If you say communist china is making progress, they will say the chinese have no rights etc.. It is almost as if the mass of our population actually believes that the systems that we have in place (or lack there-of) is the most efficient system in existence. On a personal note I am yet to meet a single chinese who doesn’t want to go back to china, and I have met and studied and worked with quite a few of them.
There are 5 nations in the world practising communism. China, Laos, Vietnam, N. Korea, Cuba. China we know about. N. Korea which is in the news so often these days, is under major crap from every country on the planet. Somehow, when communist korea wants to make nuclear weapons, it is a threat to the world. But the USA possessing thousands of nucs is not! Somehow the fact that the N Koreans are developing technology and their economy despite sanctions in all forms is not a symbol of success of the existing non-democratic system but is a threat to the rest of the non communist world.
Alla ree, if this is the mindset we have, saying any system that does not share the same thoughts as the ones that we follow is bad, I wonder what the point of discussing and considering new/different ideas for same old problems is. What is the point of comparing different political systems when everyone is so lethargically comfortable with the existing inefficient system, when no one is willing to consider new ideas!
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Those two loose canons on a single show was good entertainment. A Roy has gone from good to bad to ugly, she has to visit some doctor for her infatuation of naxals.
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To continue the Communism vs. Capitalism debate:
Both the concepts, free-market economy and public ownership talk abou ideal states that do not exist. Countries can only work towards some semblance of the above two. And the contradiction between thought and action can be seen only too clearly; no communist country can live up to its communist image convincingly, except perhaps Cuba.
To illustrate my point, a few interesting observations:
Communist China has a shamelessly capitalist economy and growth – the communist tag gives license to monopolise ownership.
Socialist India is also shamelessly capitalistic, where the resources are in the control of a fortunate few. More on this later.
Many self-proclaimed capitalist countries have more social programmes then self-procliamed socialist. Like the NHS in UK (this is in immediate danger of being undone by the Tories). This notwithstanding their paranoia of Communism.
In India, economic movement towards a free market has been a miserable failure. Again, please remember economic success CANNOT be represented by the riches of a few. A previous comment gave the reasons perfectly- our social and cultural inequalities do not allow for equal economic opportunites that is a necessary pre-requisite for a free-market.
So what we have instead is a travesty, a kind of corporatized feudalism that has not resulted in any narrowing of the gap between the top-most and the bottom-most in the economic ladder.
This in-spite of our Constitution very reasonably demanding “equity” and not “equality” (which again is an ideal state)
“Overall equitable development” or “inclusive growth” as our PM is fond of saying is still a far cry. Well, easier said than done.
***
Speaking about the Naxals, they are fighting for power. The pursuit of power is universal and it happens in all permutations and combinations of people. To that extent the fight for power is legitimate, because if the State is not playing by the rules the it has no right to expect dissidents to play by the rules.
The State will automatically attempt to retain its unchallenged authority by rejecting the very basis of the struggle for power of and denying the existence of ANY extra-authoritarian group or parallel government(s).
Now if we ask ourselves how far should the State allow for dissent in a democracy, then we can measure our own democratic spirit or the lack of it.
Leave aside the debate of economic models for one second and look at the people involved in this debate. Policy-makers, corporate big-wigs, large politicians and a few intellectuals. A handful, hardly anything in demographic terms; and most of them not directly related to the events happening in the tribal belts. Does the government truly represent majority interest? In case of the tribals the answer would be an emphatic NO.
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