Arundhati Roy
I posted an article about the book by Arundhati Roy, Walking With The Comrades” just by way of further introduction to this splendid book you might like to read a few excerpts.
The book concerns Roy going to meet Indian Maoists on their home ground in parts of India and then walking over quite a distance through their land to various places. It was at times an obviously hard, difficult and dangerous affair but Roy shows her ability to write about experiences among these truly heroic people. True it is that there are doubts about some methods used by these people but these are viewed against the background of Indian atrocities directed toward these people over many years.
At one point Roy is going to a form of protest/social/political festival and she notes that…
” The sun was sharp but still civilized. This is a terrible thing to have to say, but it’s true–you could smell the protest from a fair distance:it was the accumulated odour of a thousand human bodies that had been dehumanized, denied the basic necessities for (or even animal) health and hygiene for years, if not a whole lifetime. Bodies that had been marinated in the refuse of our big cities, bodies that had had no shelter from the harsh weather , no access to clean water, clean air, sanitation or medical care. No part of this great country, none of the supposedly progressive schemes, no single urban instituion has been designed to accommodate them.”
Then a little further on she continues that,” The people at the protest..”are shadow people, who live in the cracks that run between schemes and institutions. They sleep on the streets, make love on the streets, give birth on the streets, are raped on the streets, cut their vegetables,wash their clothes, raise their children, live and die on the streets.”
One thing you realise quickly is that in a country of a billion people it is not difficult to find government to person brutality of the highest order. The elites and rulers spare no effort whatsoever to keep a lid firmly on dissent and individual though of any kind. Where these elites see violence as necessary, which is just about all the time, then that is resorted to instantly and without regard for cost or consequence in true psychopathic fashion.
As Anatole France put it so well when looking at the role of the law of the rulers,” The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Of course the rich would never beg in the street, sleep under bridges or to steal bread. The laws are there to protect privilege and possessions nothing else really matters to the elites. Roy includes a quote from PAblo Neruda as follows at the beginning of the book it says..”
Your blood asks, how were the wealthy
And the law interwoven? With What
sulfurous iron fabric? How did the
poor keep falling into the tribunals?
Related articles
- BOOK REVIEW: The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (readinginwinter.wordpress.com)
- Walking With the Comrades (ikners.com)
- Book Review: Walking With The Comrades by Arundhati Roy (blogcritics.org)
- Arundhati Roy: To Love. To be Loved. (faktensucher.wordpress.com)
- Kashmir: The Case for Freedom By Arundhati Roy PricePak: Rs. 1,350.00 (bookcentreorg.wordpress.com)
- Arundhati Roy : We (leftygazette.wordpress.com)
- Book Review: Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy (blogcritics.org)
- Arundhati Roy: “The People Who Created the Crisis Will Not Be the Ones That Come Up With a Solution” | The [Occupy] 2012 Scenario (2012indyinfo.com)
- Arundhati Roy: “The People Who Created the Crisis Will Not Be the Ones That Come Up With a Solution” (stevebeckow.com)
- Such Things….. (shakesphere101.wordpress.com)
- ‘The God of Small Things’, Arundhati Roy – Guest Post by Meg Hayes Fisher (littlewordsreview.wordpress.com)
- A Language of Dissent (writingthepolitical.wordpress.com)
- In the land of facades, mark the first signs of an Indian spring A John Pilger article (ikners.com)
- Adams Oshiomhole: a Dictator’s Deceptive Song (osehobo.wordpress.com)
- A Year in Reading: Parul Sehgal (themillions.com)
- Jai Bhim Comrade – Anant Patwardhan’s documentary film screening in New Delhi (icrindia.wordpress.com)
- Julia Gillard’s rise marks the triumph of machine politics over feminism A Pilger article (ikners.com)
