This is with reference to the which says 바카라Arundhati Roy바카라s portrayal of Maoists as Gandhians with Guns comes under heavy fire바카라.
I바카라m used to taking heavy fire for what I write. But when people begin to fire at a target they have fashioned for themselves out of an Outlook copywriter바카라s blurb (later mirrored in the Guardian magazine), I suppose I must rouse myself to make a clarification. At no point in my essay (Mar 29) have I called the Maoists 바카라Gandhians with Guns바카라. Here is what I said:
바카라I cannot believe this army. As far as consumption goes, it바카라s more Gandhian than any Gandhian, and has a lighter carbon footprint than any climate change evangelist. But for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotage; before a police vehicle is burnt for example, it is stripped down and every part is cannibalised. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar barrel, the rexine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery for solar charging. (The new instructions from the high command are that captured vehicles should be buried and not cremated. So they can be resurrected when needed.) Should I write a play I wonder바카라Gandhi Get Your Gun? Or will I be lynched?바카라
Whoever infers from this that I have called the Maoists Gandhians with Guns is either a little slow or has no sense of irony or both. Do I really have to spell out what I was alluding to바카라of Maoist guerrillas who combine Gandhi바카라s principles of spartan consumption with their own very un-Gandhian belief in sabotage and armed revolution? Perhaps the confusion arises because the Indian elite would love to prescribe the opposite: conspicuous consumption for the rich and non-violent satyagraha for the poor.
The only other reference to Gandhi in the essay is in two paragraphs reproduced below, parts of which are quoted selectively by people who say that I have been uncritical of the Maoists and have valorised Charu Mazumdar as a 바카라visionary바카라 while criticising Gandhi. Here it is:
바카라Chairman Mao. He바카라s here too. A little lonely, perhaps, but present. There바카라s a photograph of him, up on a red cloth screen. Marx too. And Charu Mazumdar, the founder and chief theoretician of the Naxalite movement. His abrasive rhetoric fetishises violence, blood and martyrdom, and often employs a language so coarse as to be almost genocidal. Standing here, on Bhumkal day, I can바카라t help thinking that his analysis, so vital to the structure of this revolution, is so removed from its emotion and texture. When he said that only 바카라an annihilation campaign바카라 could produce 바카라the new man who will defy death and be free from all thought of self-interest바카라바카라could he have imagined that this ancient people, dancing into the night, would be the ones on whose shoulders his dreams would come to rest?바카라It바카라s a great disservice to everything that is happening here that the only thing that seems to make it to the outside world is the stiff, unbending rhetoric of the ideologues of a party that has evolved from a problematic past. When Charu Mazumdar famously said, 바카라China바카라s Chairman is our Chairman and China바카라s Path is Our Path바카라, he was prepared to extend it to the point where the Naxalites remained silent while General Yahya Khan committed genocide in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), because at the time, China was an ally of Pakistan. There was silence too, over the Khmer Rouge and its killing fields in Cambodia. There was silence over the egregious excesses of the Chinese and Russian revolutions. Silence over Tibet. Within the Naxalite movement too, there have been violent excesses and it바카라s impossible to defend much of what they바카라ve done. But can anything they have done compare with the sordid achievements of the Congress and the bjp in Punjab, Kashmir, Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat.... And yet, despite these terrifying contradictions, Charu Mazumdar was a visionary in much of what he wrote and said. The party he founded (and its many splinter groups) has kept the dream of revolution real and present in India. Imagine a society without that dream. For that alone we cannot judge him too harshly. Especially not while we swaddle ourselves with Gandhi바카라s pious humbug about the superiority of 바카라the non-violent way바카라 and his notion of Trusteeship: 바카라The rich man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he reasonably requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for the good of society.바카라바카라
Does this sound as though I바카라m calling Maoists 바카라Gandhians with Guns바카라? Honestly, I바카라m almost embarrassed to have to write this letter.
