Walking With The Comrades by Arundhati Roy - A Book Review

           It is five stars even before I have touched it. I hold the small book like a sacred text. There is an element of fear - what if the writing is not as soul stirring as 'The God Of Small Things'? I worship Arundhati Roy's writing, her madness. But this is non-fiction I remind myself. So Comrade Rahel and Comrade Estha will not drench me in their torrential emotions, the extremely irritable and idiosyncratic Chacko will be missing, Sophie Mol will still be sleeping peacefully and wild Ammu and her lover, Ammachi, Papachi, the Jam factory.....

Hey but there are comrades in this one too - real ones. Comrades of the forest. The Maoist and Naxalite rebellions are one of the oldest in India. This book is the journal of Roy's visit to the dense jungles of the dreaded DandaKaranya forests in Chattisgarh, in central India, home and hub to the Maoist movement where the comrades greet her with ‘Lal Salaams’. It is a presentation, a glimpse into the lives of the revolutionaries, these oppressed, oppressive people, a first hand experience of what they think of the Government, the Police hunting them like dogs and the other part of society; the other part that have a freedom to live – to live freely.

Lord Ganesha agreed to write the Mahabharata only if Ved Vyasa, without a pause would narrate the entire epic lest he influenced his own thoughts in the narrative. It is a crime for a translator to involve her thoughts, to be biased but Roy does extend a small hand of empathy and pulls the rope towards the Maoists. But then she is the very few who makes an attempt, who tries to tell the other side of the story.

Who ARE these Maoists, these tribals? Why are they Maoists, why did they become them? Were they created, do they love to kill, why the revolution in ones own country by these poor villagers? These inquiries are far from getting easy answers but when the government and the papers feign to clarify, the faint line between fact and fiction is ostentatiously blurred. Roy attempts to tell their tale, their version. Isn't it funny when the tribal villagers ask the Naxals to come and save them, but they are the projected atrocious lot, aren't they? Is it only natural to pick up a gun and defend and kill when you are evicted or lured and threatened into eviction by the Government to please the Corporate and earn from their meaty industrial plans? Or does it need the repeated burning down of not only houses but entire villages, rationing food and medicines, raping at will. Would they not have been happy tilling their lands? This is their land, isn't it, their forest, who is the intruder? The hunter has become the hunted. The Government calls this movement ‘Salva Judum’ – the purification hunt! Ha!

It is important to know why they have chosen this homeless life else who would like to walk days on end in the dangers of the wild, man being a bigger threat than the animals. Living in temporary makeshift huts and always being in hiding is not exactly an idea of a great life, is it? Fear isn't good but they are the fearless.

Arundhati Roy, in her lucid and sarcastic statements evidences that Maoists like us, are men and women of flesh and blood, they bleed, they get angry, they laugh, they cry; sing, like to enjoy just like us. They do what they do and have chosen this difficult path for a reason. The bare and basic reason for survival, for existence!

Some excerpts from her beautiful observations and writing:

“It’s an upside-down town, inside-out town. In Dantewada the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail superintendent is in jail. The prisoners are free (three hundred of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago. Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar.”

"The drive from Raipur to Dantewada takes about ten hours through areas known to be 'Maoist-infested'. These are not careless words. 'Infest/infestation' implies disease/pests. Diseases must be cured. Pests must be exterminates. Maoists must be wiped out. In these creeping. innocuous ways the language of genocide has entered our vocabulary."

Of a village, house where she stopped – “There is a spare beauty about the place. Everything is clean and necessary.”

“We will meet a Didi (Sister Comrade) who knows what the next step of the journey will be. There is an economy of information too. Nobody is supposed to know everything.”

“I remember my visit to the opencast iron-ore mines in Keonjar, Orissa. There was forest there once. And children like these. Now the land is like a raw, red wound.”

“We are approaching the ‘Border’. ‘Do you know what to do if we come under fire?” Sukhdev asks casually, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Immediately declare an indefinite hunger-strike;”

Arundhati Roy