Fwd: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] Important new articles by Arundhati Roy and Gautam Naviakha from the forests

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frank <rsgfrank@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 12:35 AM
Subject: [** MAOIST_REVOLUTION **] Important new articles by Arundhati Roy and Gautam Naviakha from the forests
To: MAOIST_REVOLUTION@yahoogroups.com

 

Two comprehensive reports based on visits to the areas of Maoist control in eastern and central India by leading indian rights activists Arundhati Roy and Gautam Naviakha have been posted at the new website, Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle. www.revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com.

From the introduction to Gautam's article:

DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE HEARTLAND OF REBELLION

First published at http://sanhati.com on April 2, 2010

"Imagine an area where corrupt and oppressive forest department was driven away, struggle for decent wages was fought, land reforms were brought about, where the Party continues to anchor itself among the poor and the most deprived especially the women, and struggles with them to ensure that people's dignity and honour is not compromised, their culture prospers, where they stand by the most oppressed….it is then one realizes why Maoists are looked upon as their own by most Adivasis.

"I also find little reason to dismiss the need to offer armed resistance, when the state first proscribes a political party, declaring their ideology as criminal disallows them from working to mobilize people and propagate their politics, and instead deploys a huge force to militarily suppress them. … I wonder if it is properly acknowledged that it is the presence of Maoists which provides reformers and many a dissident with leverage to pitch their demand for change/modification in government policies."

In January 2010, leading democratic rights activist Gautam Navlakha accompanied Swedish writer Jan Myrdal to the jungles of Central India, and engaged in conversations with the leadership of CPI(Maoist). In the following essay, being published exclusively at Sanhati, he explores further the various facets of Maoist politics and the socioeconomic and cultural life in the Dandakaranya region–Sanhati.

Some of these topics are: The 30 year history of Maoist work in the Dandakaranya forests; cooperative agriculture; the recent formation of Revolutionary People's Committees as the basic form of governance; education and publishing in Gondi; a forthcoming new policy on mining and industrialization; the correction of mistakes in political and military work; and the challenge of developing work in the plains areas–Ka Frank.

From the introduction to Arundhati's article: WALKING WITH THE COMRADES

Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India's Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic "encounter" with armed guerrillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk. This essay was published on March 21, 2010 in Delhi's Outlook magazine. Arundhati Roy made the pictures in this 20,000 word essay available exclusively to Dawn. The following was first posted on Dawn.com.

by Arundhati Roy

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India's Gravest Internal Security Threat. I'd been waiting for months to hear from them.

I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: "Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji."

Namashkar Guruji. I wondered whether the Meeter and Greeter would be expecting a man. And whether I should get myself a moustache.

There are many ways to describe Dantewara. It's an oxymoron. It's a border town smack in the heart of India. It's the epicenter of a war. It's an upside down, inside out town.

In Dantewara the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail-superintendant is in jail. The prisoners are free (three hundred of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago). Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar.

Across the Indravati river, in the area controlled by the Maoists, is the place the police call `Pakistan'. There the villages are empty, but the forest is full of people. Children who ought to be in school, run wild. In the lovely forest villages, the concrete school buildings have either been blown up and lie in a heap, or they're full of policemen. The deadly war that's unfolding in the jungle, is a war that the Government of India is both proud and shy of.

Operation Green Hunt has been proclaimed as well as denied. P. Chidambaram, India's Home Minister (and CEO of the war) says it does not exist, that it's a media creation. And yet substantial funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilized for it. Though the theatre of war is in the jungles of Central India, it will have serious consequences for us all.

__._,_.___

--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/