Arundhati Roy interviewed by Shoma Chaudhury

(a must read interview of writer activist Arundhati Roy on the question of state and revolutionary violence. although we disagree with her on some points regarding socialist states and her evaluation of Mao and Stalin.in these times of fascist terror and repression Arundhati brilliantly exposes the hollowness of the logic of neutralism and same attitude towards fascist state violence and the resistance.we thank TEHELKA for the interview. — Editor)

‘It’s outright war and both sides are choosing their weapons’

There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country. How do you read the signs? In what context should it be read?

You don’t have to be a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle class, reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed. Unlike industrialising Western countries, which had colonies from which to plunder resources and generate slave labour to feed this process, we have to colonise ourselves, our own nether parts. We’ve begun to eat our own limbs. The greed that is being generated (and marketed as a value interchangeable with nationalism) can only be sated by grabbing land, water and resources from the vulnerable. What we’re witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India — the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It’s a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They’re fighting for the right to merge with the world’s elite somewhere up there in the stratosphere. They’ve managed to commandeer the resources, the coal, the minerals, the bauxite, the water and electricity. Now they want the land to make more cars, more bombs, more mines — supertoys for the new supercitizens of the new superpower. So it’s outright war, and people on both sides are choosing their weapons. The government and the corporations reach for structural adjustment, the World Bank, the ADB, FDI, friendly court orders, friendly policy makers, help from the ‘friendly’ corporate media and a police force that will ram all this down people’s throats. Those who want to resist this process have, until now, reached for dharnas, hunger strikes, satyagraha, the courts and what they thought was friendly media. But now more and more are reaching for guns. Will the violence grow? If the ‘growth rate’ and the Sensex are going to be the only barometers the government uses to measure progress and the well-being of people, then of course it will. How do I read the signs? It isn’t hard to read sky-writing. What it says up there, in big letters, is this: the shit has hit the fan, folks.

You once remarked that though you may not resort to violence yourself, you think it has become immoral to condemn it, given the circumstances in the country. Can you elaborate on this view?

I’d be a liability as a guerrilla! I doubt I used the word ‘immoral’ — morality is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather. What I feel is this: non-violent movements have knocked at the door of every democratic institution in this country for decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The nba had a lot going for it — high-profile leadership, media coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went wrong? People are bound to want to rethink strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins to promote satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it’s time for us to sit up and think. For example, is mass civil disobedience possible within the structure of a democratic nation state? Is it possible in the age of disinformation and corporate-controlled mass media? Are hunger strikes umbilically linked to celebrity politics? Would anybody care if the people of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti mines went on a hunger strike? Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger strike for six years. That should be a lesson to many of us. I’ve always felt that it’s ironic that hunger strikes are used as a political weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway. We are in a different time and place now. Up against a different, more complex adversary. We’ve entered the era of NGOs — or should I say the era of paltu shers — in which mass action can be a treacherous business. We have demonstrations which are funded, we have sponsored dharnas and social forums which make militant postures but never follow up on what they preach. We have all kinds of ‘virtual’ resistance. Meetings against SEZs sponsored by the biggest promoters of SEZs. Awards and grants for environmental activism and community action given by corporations responsible for devastating whole ecosystems. Vedanta, a company mining bauxite in the forests of Orissa, wants to start a university. The Tatas have two charitable trusts that directly and indirectly fund activists and mass movements across the country. Could that be why Singur has drawn so much less flak than Nandigram? Of course the Tatas and Birlas funded Gandhi too — maybe he was our first NGO. But now we have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a lot of reports, but whom the sarkar is more than comfortable with. How do we make sense of all this? The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real political action. ‘Virtual’ resistance has become something of a liability. …………

The Beginnings of a New Democratic Nepal?

by John Mage and Bernard D’Mello

(John Mage of Monthly Review and Bernard D’Mello. deputy editor of Economic and Political Weekly (”EPW”) of Mumbai, India, visited Nepal in February, and trekked into Rolpa, the original base area of the revolutionary “people’s war.” The following account appears simultaneously on MRZine and in the current (March 17th) issue of EPW.)

Over the last year, as the world watched Nepal making a significant and qualitative break with its past, the EPW too was planning a special issue. For the two of us, having come of political age in the 1960s and 1970s, an aphorism of those times that still lingers, “no investigation, no right to speak,” may have been behind our joint decision to visit Nepal in February, to put our fingers to the pulse of things. A “people’s war” that lasted 11 years led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the CPN(M), as well as the Jan Andolan in April last year, brought about profound shifts in the balance of power in national politics. The 238-year old feudal monarchy has been marginalised, a preliminary step towards laying the foundations for a democratic republic. The Nepali Maoists, for their part, are practising another one of those 20th-century aphorisms: “to rebel is justified.” They had waged a just war by raising an army — the people’s liberation army (PLA) — ingrained with the democratic tradition of building close ties with the common people. Their strategy required the establishment of “base areas” in rural Nepal, which have now been heralded as representative of a new Nepal in the making. It was in this context that we decided to trek in Rolpa, located in mid-west Nepal, one of the first base areas in the people’s war.

As is by now well known, the CPN(M) has altered its strategy of a protracted people’s war, although the party’s goal is still the establishment of a people’s republic of Nepal. It is now concentrating on ushering in a democratic republic, with a multiparty democracy within a constitutional framework that is anti-feudal and anti-imperialist, and requiring extensive reorganisation of state power to resolve problems related to class, gender, caste, and nationality/region. Under the UN’s monitoring mission, the PLA units have stored and sealed their arms and ammunition and have confined themselves to temporary camps/cantonments in the run-up to elections to a new constituent assembly. The Nepal Army (NA), too, has been confined to the barracks and a similar quantity of its arms stored and sealed. The Maoists have even agreed to dismantle the people’s governments in their base areas; they are now represented in the interim legislature and their entry into the interim cabinet appears imminent.

We set out to understand developments in the base area of Rolpa in the Magarat region, where the Maoists have claimed, according to one of their spokespersons [Parvati 2005], to have undermined the feudal base of the state, setting up mobile, locally-based people’s courts, people’s councils at the regional (under the Magarat autonomous region), district, village and ward levels, and also a local militia to ensure public security. There have also been moves to reconstruct the economy, importantly, with a socialist orientation, and the initial foundations for progressive changes in the areas of health, education, and culture have been laid. The obvious question in our minds was that, with the end of armed conflict in sight, but with the tasks of the revolution still unfinished, what would be the fate of these progressive changes that remain in their formative stages. ……….

Youth Movement in Turkey

–New Democrat Youth- Turkey

(New Democrat Youth is an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, anti-feudal youth organization of Turkey.The goal of NDY is raising the revolutionary youth movement which is on the side of the New Democratic Revolution in Turkey and Turkey’s Kurdistanin. In this article NDY is giving the introduction of the present conditions of Turkey and the position of Youth Movement in Turkey.)

Our country is located between Europe and Asia and surrounded by Middle East, Balcans and Caucasia. So, it is an important country for imperialism, especially for the US imperialism. In our semi-feudal, semi-colonial country, there is a fascist dictatorship of comprador bourgeoisie and big landlords. In our country, where more than 70 million people are living, there are many people from oppressed nationalities like the Kurdish nationality. But any other language or culture apart from Turkish language and culture is forbidden in our country. So the right of self-determination is one of the most important duty of the new democratic revolution.

Our country is a semi-colony of different imperialist countries, especially the US imperialism. This is a reality from the foundation of the Republic. US is bombing Iraq from it�s military bases that are located in Turkey. Also these bases are big threat for the peoples of the Middle East. Country�s economy is controlled by IMF. Large masses is trying to live in poverty and starvation. Economy is in a deep crises. Any economic wind in any part of the world effects our country as a storm. With the privatisations in last years the unemployment rate increased, the effect of imperialist monopolies rised. Reactionary reforms have been applying by the pressure of imperialists of European Union.

There has been a sharp class struggle in our country since 70s. Because of the fascist system, the armed struggle has always been an essential way of struggle and today, state organizes big military operations to stop the guerrilla war that has given in mountains. More than 70 thousand revolutionary and communist died, hundred thousands imprisoned and tortured in last 35 years. Today in our country there are about 10 thousand political prisoners that are resisting against the isolation policies of the state. During the struggle against the isolation in prisons, more than 150 revolutionary and communists have martyred. The mass organizations and mass activities that are organized by the revolutionary democratic masses have been facing with the oppression of the state. So in some periods, revolutionary movement is going backward and in some periods the movement is moving forward. But the guerrilla war in the mountains and the mass activities, strikes and militant protests in cities could not be stopped. The suicide of Hrant Dink who was a democrat Armenian journalist in our country is an important example to this oppression and to the mass movement. In his funeral more than 200 thousand people gathered together to show their hatred to this fascist attack and filled the streets chanting the slogan of �All of us are Armenian� for the first time in 90 years after the Armenian Genocide. ………..

Rape and the US-sponsored Islamization of Pakistan

Received from A World To Win News Service

In the past few years the internationally notorious cases of Mukhtaran Mai, Shazia Khalid and Sonia Naz have revealed a great deal about the problem of rape in Pakistan. There are no reliable statistics, since 80 percent are believed to go unreported.
The Islamic laws (the Hudood ordinances) introduced three decades ago have played a big role in the dramatic deterioration in the status of women. The US and other Western imperialists have also had a major hand in this. While in recent years the US has declared war on Islamic fundamentalists, especially in this region, the recent history of Pakistan shows how the US can also get along very well with fundamentalists and even strengthen them when they are allied with America, never mind that they oppress women and promote other backward traditions and relations. An examination of the situation of women in Pakistan reveals not only the hardships they endure, but also the hypocrisy of the US, the real values behind what it calls “promoting democracy” and the role it plays in oppressing the people, particularly women, in imperialist-dominated countries.
Mukhtaran Mai, from the village of Meerwala in Pakistani Punjab, was 28 years old in 2002 when she was gang-raped in front of her whole village by decision of the Jirga (assembly of the village elders) for the alleged wrong-doing of her 12 year old brother. Mukhtaran’s case is painful enough, but what’s even more devastating is that such incidents are not isolated but so common they are rarely considered news. In Mukhtaran’s blog for BBC on 15 June 2006, she tells the story of Shamshad Bibi, a very poor woman (even by the standards of a poor village). She “was reportedly gang-raped during a visit to the famous shrine town of Uch Shareef. After being raped she was thrown into a well. The police declared that it was a case of consensual sex while human rights organizations kept insisting that it was rape… Shamshad is bed-ridden now. Her backbone broke when she was thrown into the well. It is estimated that every 8 hours a women becomes the victim of gang rape.” …………….

New Links

I have added links of some very good blogs in the link page.

Bhumkal Bastar : a blog centered on tribal of Bastar, exposes disastrous anti tribal policies of center and state governments.
Reibiliun : covers a wide variety of news and reports of peoples movements and resistance from the globe.
Indian Agrarian Crisis : rural india is witnessing a great destruction of peasants unprecedented in history.
Singur : Singur is a symbol of Draconian policies of our ruling class in general and traitorous CPM, CPI in particular.

photos from Greece

please click them to enlarge.

Report of struggle from Greece

Our Friend Chrissi Perperidou had sent this short note and some photos through mail from Greece.as we requested him to send information and news about the student movement in Greece.we are giving the links to photos in the  new post as we are unable to give them directly due to the problems of browser.we thank comrade Chrissi Perperidou and comrade Christos Mais. and we express our full solidarity to the great struggle of the students of the Greece. — Editor

 

Students’ struggle brought the first victory and goes on for the final ruin of the government’s projects

 

The reform of the Constitution, attempted the recent period in the Greek parliament by the government of New Democracy (centre-rightist) with the collaboration of PASOK (social-democrat), is part of the attack by the capital’s forces against the workers, the youth, the interests of people’s toiling majority and the democrat and social gains.

The constitutional reform concerns certain subjects of decisive significance since they were the result of our people’s struggle and gains for decades.

It concerns:

1. Article 16. It concerns the FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION which is the state’s commitment for all education stages. The abolition-reform of this article opens the way for the abolition of the right to education of the people, the working class and the youth. It is also connected with the abolition to professional and democratic rights of the youth and the people. It opens the way for the complete privatization of Education and the establishment of private Universities.

2. Article 24. It concerns the declassification of forest land which becomes prey to the constructive capital, land-grabbers and temporizers of every kind. Practically it aims at turning large forest land to building ground bearing great danger for the environment.

3. Article 103. It concerns the abolishment of permanence of public service employees (they cannot be fired). It is the overthrow of the labor relations and being a hostage of the workers and the working class in the capital’s hands.

The required process is the follow:

At first we should clarify that a referendum is not required for the reform of the constitution articles.

It requires the majority of Parliament Members, 3/5 of the current parliament – that is 180 PM – in order to reform the articles by the simple majority of the next parliament (government) – only 151 PM. If in this parliament the number of PM who will vote for the reform of the article 16 is less than 180 then in the new parliament that will try to reform the constitution the number of PM that is required should be more than 180. ………