Imagine buying a book, bringing it home and, after reading a few pages, discovering that its nothing but an essay published in a magazine (Outlook) last year now available in book form. I had the same experience with Arundhati Roy’s Walking with Comrades. Comrades is an essay on the day-to-day lives and struggle of tribals living in Maoism-affected areas and Maoists, who as per Roy, are their benefactors. Roy has detailed the typical life in a jungle under the fear of security forces and with the constant trepidation of receiving death news of fellow comrades shot by security forces.
In her usual caustic way, Roy launches scathing attack on courts, governments and corporations, holding them and their nexus responsible for the misery of tribals and shows Maoists as fighting a just fight on their behalf.
Though Roy’s propensity to justify violence by Maoists calling it revenge and the last resort against an uncaring State is sometimes off-putting, her effective documenting of their lives and voice will leave you with a heavy heart, thinking how a part of the country’s population is being denied normal lives. Through simple occurrences, like a group joke or humor, Roy conveys their sense of isolation and anger. On one occasion, while watching Mother India ( a famous Hindi film) on video with a group of Maoists, Roy asks a female Maoist if she likes films and she replies, “No, only ambush videos (Maoist attacks on Indian security forces)“.
There are sardonic moments as well. While Roy is on her way to meet Maoists to live with them and document their lives, a police constable tells her there is no apparent solution to this tribal problem except if you put a TV set in each of their homes, suggesting how TV, largely an urban middle class thing, has blinded the middle class to the larger world making ‘zombies’ out of them, one among many allegations Roy has leveled at the middle class in her various writings.
There is very little doubt that Roy’s views are lopsided but if you are familiar with her activist writing you hardly look for balance; what you look for is to hear the voice of a people who, if not for the likes of Roy, would probably go completely unheard.
3 comments:
Nice post. I'm glad you like her writing. I rarely meet people who think highly of her. Most of the urban middle class who are "progressing" in their lives have a hard time acknowledging that the lives of a sizable population of our country are continuously regressing.
Also, I don't think her views are lopsided. She operates from a simple premise that in a democracy or in any sane society each and every person is *equally* entitled to a basic set of rights. The reason why people find her views extreme is actually that they do not quite agree with her premise.....
Indra, good point you make. I agree with your point that atleast she has opened a window that people like us can look / see the lives of the oppressed. Indian democracy needs voices on either end of the spectrum...as they help complete the picture. Most of middle class people have no idea of the struggling people in rural areas go through and Roy's writing helps bridge that gap, though it can stretch the point a bit....
Hi Anonymous,
There is no doubt that Roy's views are extreme and not because she speaks for the marginalized but because she completely ignores the views of the other side and by doing so makes sure that she is dismissed as a crank, which she is not. Some of her views about her pet hates are truely unreasonable and if anything only undermine her cause.
Hi Kram,
Nice to have you back after so long. Where you had been? I was just wondering what happened to you. Yes, the middle class has lost the idea that a part of the population is not doing well. Thanks for visiting.
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