Roy backs Maoists, dares authorities to arrest her

Indian writer Arundhati Roy in a lecture in New Delhi on Wednesday justified the armed resistance by Maoists and dared authorities to arrest her for supporting their cause.

While claiming that she does not support violence, the 48-year-old author-activist said that the Naxal movement could be nothing but an armed struggle as the Gandhian way would not have been successful in the present context, said an Indian Express report.

“The Naxal movement could be nothing but an armed struggle. I am not supporting violence. But I am also completely against contemptuous atrocities-based political analysis,” she said delivering a lecture on ‘The War on People’ organised by the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights late in New Delhi on Wednesday.

“It ought to be an armed movement. The Gandhian way of opposition needs an audience, which is absent here. People have debated long before choosing this form of struggle,” said Roy, who had saluted the “people of Dantewada” after 76 CRPF and police personnel were killed by Maoists in the deadliest attack targeting security forces.

“I am on this side of line. I do not care...pick me up, put me in jail,” Indian Express quoted her as saying.

While terming the naxalite violence as a corollary to the battle between the tribals and corporate houses to gain control over natural resources like minerals, water and forests, she said, “While 99 per cent of Maoists are tribals, 99 per cent of tribals are not Maoists.”

“What the government calls Maoists corridor, is in fact MoU-ist corridor. You have an MoU on every mountain, river...MoUs signed by the largest corporations in the world that are waiting to gain hold of the resources,” Roy said.

“Here we have the poorest, most malnourished waging a war against the corporates supported by all institutions of the world’s biggest democracy. To a large extent, they have won in stopping the mighty corporates in their tracks,” she said adding “If we join them, we can make them win this war.”

They have a history of resistance which predates Mao. They were always armed...they are just using those bows and arrows against sophisticated weapons of security forces deployed by the government to crush their movement, she said.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2010.