Customer Reviews

Walking with the Comrades

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As a westerner, my main interest in India has been her spiritual heritage - mainly yoga and Hinduism. Ahimsa - non-violence - is one of the main principles of these spiritual systems. And since I have considered spirituality to be "universal truth," I have held ahimsa to be universally applicable, assuming that all people, in all situations, should practice non-violence. I thought the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly demonstrated how non-violence really can win in any situation. I remember driving - as a spiritual tourist - through certain parts of India where the hammer-and-sickle communist symbol was a regular sight, and thinking to myself, in my naive, simplistic morality, "How sad that even here - in pure and holy India - they have all this nasty political bickering and fighting!" I had no idea what was actually going on underneath the surface of my "pure and holy India."

Now, after reading Arundhati Roy's Walking With The Comrades, I at least have an inkling about what is going on underneath the surface - and it is very, very ugly. Huge corporations that control (i.e., own) the politicians, the media, and the police/military want the mineral and resource-rich land where India's tribal people are still attempting to live their lives. Those corporations will stop at nothing to get it. Their only view of the world is that it should be exploited to the maximum degree possible - for profit. As a result, all over India, they have wreaked environmental disaster and have displaced untold numbers of people, sending them to live in shantytowns on the outskirts of cities (I have seen them, and they are shockingly squalid) or hiring them as cheap semi-slaves who have no real rights or security and no real access to education or medical care. They have rigged the entire political-economic-military system in their favor in order to be able to do this. In the eastern part of the country, one group has arisen that has had some success defending tribal peoples against the encroachments of the corporations: the communist, Maoist Naxalites. And they do it by fighting - and killing - with guns.

At great risk, Roy embedded herself with a group of forest-dwelling Naxalites and describes their day-to-day lives, their organization, their history, and the ways they have been deceptively misportrayed in the corporate-owned media. Along the way, she humanizes people who have only ever been portrayed as bloodthirsty terrorists, showing them to be real, often lovely, and very dignified, deeply community-minded people fighting for real, human values; people who simply want to be allowed to live their lives. Roy also makes a larger point that concerns us all: wherever tribal peoples are killed off, we lose the people "who still know the secrets of sustainable living."

Roy's book has confronted me - more squarely than ever before - with the stark reality of people living right at this moment, in the so-called "democratic world," who have no choice but to fight and kill or else be wiped out. Can any of us in the west imagine having to face this choice? In this reality, which I have never wanted to look at or even be aware of, there is a clear and obvious difference between the ridiculously wealthy corporations - who kill in order to make themselves even more ridiculously wealthy - and the Naxalites and tribal peoples - who kill only to stop others from either running them off their land (which amounts to killing them) or outright killing them. These are two totally different - almost opposite - forms of violence.

So, would my cherished, universal, spiritual non-violence work for these tribal peoples? I cannot say for sure, but Roy suggests not, and I think I believe her. Ahimsa may be an inviolable spiritual principle; but it may not apply in the perverse reality created by corporatism-gone-mad (which is the only form of it there seems to be).

I'll end with the reflection that, here in America, the exact same forces are at play, only in a slightly different key. Here, large corporations, who also own the politicians, the media, and the pepper-spray-happy police/military, are a bit more polished and restrained. They do not dislocate and kill us in as obvious and blatant a way as they do in India and other parts of the world. This gives us the illusion of having more of a choice in how to respond to them - or even to not respond at all. Maybe non-violent, political resistance makes sense here, at least for now (where at least we have some corporate-free news shows like DemocracyNow! - where I learned about this book - to give fair coverage to such non-violent resistance). But as corporate power continues to grow over here, maybe we should keep the Naxalites in mind - and even view them as, dare I say it, our comrades.

Maybe I'm still being naïve - but probably less so than before I read this powerful book.

5 Stars to Walking with the Comrades, by Arundati Roy. Once again, the author bridges a difficult subject concisely and with the proper amount of literary courage and heart. The subject of the indigenous struggle against corporatism and government complicity is a non starter for most news media today, whose editorials are either controlled or owned by corporatist or state. Bravo Arundati!

There's something stirring in India. A specter, if you will, of a dark time arisen and a dark time to come. Whether we call it capitalism, corporatism, or new (neo) Imperialism, the fact remains that those most affected by the shifting dynamics of contemporary industrialization will be the disenfranchised and the disinherited.

Arundhati Roy's (The God of Small Things, etc.) Walking with the Comrades waltzes straight into this new Indian world with passion and focus, chronicling her journey into the forests of India where Maoists and the few remaining indigenous people have dug in their heels. Each new day brings her closer to the heart of the movement that has set India's government on fire, spawning new counter-revolutionary police forces and new regulations and laws to strip people of their land for corporate profit. In the process, she crafts a disturbing narrative of the new Indian state, one
which will seem suspiciously familiar to Americans who know a little about the United States' history with the Native Americans.

Walking with the Comrades is a quick read, though by no means an easy one. Roy spends considerable time setting the stage for her walk with the Maoist "revolutionaries" in the forests of India. She provides cogent analyses of the Indian government's old and new programs for stifling dissent, the language they use, and the results of their activities. Likewise, she explores the history of communism in India, leading us through suppression, violent acts, revolts, and the mindset of the people on the ground -- the very comrades with which she walks. Walking with the Comrades, as such, is part of the grand tradition of travel narratives, but it is also an expansion of Roy's long and distinguished career as a novelist and cultural critic.

And it's the travel narrative aspect which is most compelling. True, Walking with the Comrades is about the political and economic situation in contemporary India, but it also an attempt to put a face on the great "security threat" of India. It's a clever tactic, because understanding that there are humans behind the mask of terror forces us to think about who we are fighting against, and why they are resisting. In the case of India, the Maoists are fighting a government that wants communism in all its forms destroyed, and the indigenous people protected by Maoists -- even if only for political gain -- moved off and adapted for industrial society -- at the expense of their traditions, native lands, etc. To realize who the Maoists are is to make blind faith to India's new cultural projects impossible, if not because we care about the Maoists and their goals -- most of us in the U.S. likely do not because we have a tendency to be ruthlessly anti-communist here -- then at least because we understand why they are doing what they do. Perhaps it's the optimist in me thinks that maybe reasonable compromise can be found in this cesspool of violence and hatred if only we can see the humanity in everything.

Still, some might be willing to dismiss Roy's work simply because she often provides polemics and doesn't seem altogether genuine when she concedes points to the opposition; in the case of Walking with the Comrades, Roy occasionally tries to suggest that the Indian government might have a solid rationale for some of their actions, yet the overwhelming majority of the book rips India to shreds, thereby weakening the conciliatory gesture. But to dismiss the book for this reason would be to discount what is clearly a problem that transcends borders and exposes the divisions and strategies utilized by a government bent not on compromises with indigenous people, but the destruction of their way of life. Even if you shrug Roy off as a wacky liberal, the facts point to a disturbing history which does not paint a pretty image for the Indian state. And even if you look at the other side, it's hard to ignore the words spoken by the people in charge, the projects set in place, the militarization of the police, and the general sense that things are not as they should be.

It's perhaps for that reason that I come out of Roy's book feeling unable to challenge the anger and disbelief she channels throughout her book, despite wearing my critical thinking cap during the reading process. Roy doesn't pull many punches when she attacks India's government and the corporations attached to it, but I found myself wondering why she bothered pulling the ones she did. If her facts are in order -- they are -- then what the Indian government is doing doesn't deserve conciliatory gestures, friendly discussion, or calm reasoning. Rather, it seems to me that to fight an extremist state, one must attack it with an extreme position. Roy certainly heads in that direction, and the result is an enormously educational reading experience. When I finished reading, I wondered where we are supposed to go from here. Maybe Roy will cover that in her next book...

Walking with the Comrades is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I have read this year, and certainly one worth remembering for years to come. If you're interested in contemporary Indian history or global capitalism, this is a book to add to your collection.

Read With:
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper

Walking with the Comrades Ms. Roy describes the desperate fight in the forests of India by very large groups of people trying to save their way of life and their environment. The exploitative forces of international capitalism have come to India where, as we see in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe, profit and greed rule. While people in the U.S. may think the fight of the so-called Maoists in India has nothing to do with them, they need to think again. The battleground between international corporations and the people is everywhere. It's also a fight to save our planet from moving into runaway climate change that will change life as we know it today. Ms. Roy describes the hardships and suffering of ordinary people pushed to the edge of existence by powerful corporate/government forces attempting to exploit every last resource of the forest and land in India. What we see today in the U.S. with massive exploitation of our environment in coal mining, fracking operations, tar sands mining in Alberta, may create an environment here where ordinary people will need to fight back as they are currently in central India. The ominous message of Ms. Roy's book, "Walking with the Comrades" is that a low level war against the corporate/government forces may be in our future here in North America. A must read book, beautifully written, for those who care about justice.

The topic of this book is one of the most important issues facing independent India. It is about the biggest national impediment to achieve economic growth and human development for a huge section of the population. Despite the rapid economic growth rates achieved in the last decade, the Maoist movement, instead of fizzling out, has only gained momentum in the recent years. Something is clearly wrong somewhere, and the "trickle down" theory on economic growth has failed to deliver results where it is needed most - the grass roots, the poorest of the poor tribal population of the world's largest democracy. Thousands of innocent lives have since been lost in the battle between security forces and Maoists; citizens of the same nation.

I bought the book online, based on the great reputation of the author, expecting some deep impartial insights on the issues involved and a candid assessment of reality on the ground. Any recommendation based on such deep understanding can influence public opinion to find realistic solutions.

The book falls short on these expectations. Firstly it is a very small book on a huge topic, and at best a primer. Secondly, I found the views too narrow and one sided. There is no mention of the hardship, courage and supreme sacrifice of the police forces, who are mostly portrayed as villains. Same is the case of industrialization. Economic Progress is not about stopping Industrialization, but finding a means of inclusive growth. While the terrible suffering faced by the tribals displaced by industrialization, dams and mining is very well narrated, there is no attempt to find a workable solution.

The problem is real and large. The solution needs to be realistic and large hearted.

I recommend "The Absent State" by Neelesh Misra and Rahul Pandita on the same topic, for a broader perspective.