On laws like AFSPA, Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act, sedition, democracy, terrorism and more
Panini Anand Interviews
Arundhati Roy
No
one individual critic has taken on the Indian State like Arundhati Roy
has. In a fight that began with Pokhran, moved to Narmada, and over the years
extended to other insurgencies, people’s struggles and the Maoist underground,
she has used her pensmanship to challenge India’s government, its elite,
corporate giants, and most recently, the entire structure of global finance and
capitalism. She was jailed for a day in 2002 for contempt of court, and slapped
with sedition charges in November 2010 for an alleged anti-India speech she
delivered, along with others, at a seminar in New Delhi on Kashmir, titled
‘Azadi—the only way’. Excerpts from an interview to Panini Anand:
How do you look at laws like sedition and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or those like AFSPA, in what is touted as the largest democracy?
I’m
glad you used the word touted. It’s a good word to use in connection with India’s
democracy. It certainly is a democracy for the middle class. In places like
Kashmir or Manipur or Chhattisgarh, democracy is not available. Not even in the
black market. Laws like the UAPA, which is just the UPA government’s version of
POTA, and the AFSPA are ridiculously authoritarian—they allow the State to
detain and even kill people with complete impunity. They simply ought to have
no place in a democracy. But as long as they don’t affect the mainstream middle
class, as long as they are used against people in Manipur, Nagaland or Kashmir,
or against the poor or against Muslim ‘terrorists’ in the ‘mainland’, nobody
seems to mind very much.
Are
the people waging war against the State or is the State waging war against its
people? How do you look at the Emergency of the ’70s, or the minorities who
feel targeted, earlier the Sikhs and now the Muslims?
Some
people are waging war against the State. The State is waging a war against a
majority of its citizens. The Emergency in the ’70s became a problem because
Indira Gandhi’s government was foolish enough to target the middle class,
foolish enough to lump them with the lower classes and the disenfranchised.
Vast parts of the country today are in a much more severe Emergency-like
situation. But this contemporary Emergency has gone into the workshop for
denting-painting. It’s come out smarter, more streamlined. I’ve said this
before: look at the wars the Indian government has waged since India became a
sovereign nation; look at the instances when the army has been called out
against its ‘own’ people—Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Kashmir, Telangana,
Goa, Bengal, Punjab and (soon to come) Chhattisgarh—it is a State that is
constantly at war. And always against minorities—tribal people, Christians,
Muslims, Sikhs, never against the middle class, upper-caste Hindus.]
How
does one curb the cycle of violence if the State takes no action against
ultra-left ‘terrorist groups’? Wouldn’t it jeopardise internal security?
I
don’t think anybody is advocating that no action should be taken against
terrorist groups, not even the ‘terrorists’ themselves. They are not asking for
anti-terror laws to be done away with. They are doing what they do, knowing
full well what the consequences will be, legally or otherwise. They are
expressing fury and fighting for a change in a system that manufactures
injustice and inequality. They don’t see themselves as ‘terrorists’. When you
say ‘terrorists’ if you are referring to the CPI (Maoist), though I do not
subscribe to Maoist ideology, I certainly do not see them as terrorists. Yes
they are militant, they are outlaws. But then anybody who resists the
corporate-state juggernaut is now labelled a Maoist—whether or not they belong
to or even agree with the Maoist ideology. People like Seema Azad are being
sentenced to life imprisonment for possessing banned literature. So what is the
definition of ‘terrorist’ now, in 2012? It is actually the economic policies
that are causing this massive inequality, this hunger, this displacement that
is jeopardising internal security—not the people who are protesting against
them. Do we want to address the symptoms or the disease? The disease is not
terrorism. It’s egregious injustice. Sure, even if we were a reasonably just
society, Maoists would still exist. So would other extremist groups who believe
in armed resistance or in terrorist attacks. But they would not have the
support they have today. As a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves for
tolerating this squalor, this misery and the overt as well as covert ethnic and
religious bigotry we see all around us. (Narendra Modi for Prime Minister!! Who
in their right mind can even imagine that?) We have stopped even pretending
that we have a sense of justice. All we’re doing is genuflecting to major
corporations and to that sinking ocean-liner known as the United States of
America.
Is
the State acting like the Orwellian Big Brother, with its tapping of phones,
attacks on social networks?
The
government has become so brazen about admitting that it is spying on all of us
all the time. If it does not see any protest on the horizon, why shouldn’t it?
Controlling people is in the nature of all ruling establishments, is it not?
While the whole country becomes more and more religious and obscurantist,
visiting shrines and temples and masjids and churches in their millions,
praying to one god or another to be delivered from their unhappy lives, we are
entering the age of robots, where computer-programmed machines will decide
everything, will control us entirely—they’ll decide what is ethical and what is
not, what collateral damage is acceptable and what is not. Forget religious
texts. Computers will decide what’s right and wrong. There are surveillance
devices the size of a sandfly that can record our every move. Not in India yet,
but coming soon, I’m sure. The UID is another elaborate form of control and
surveillance, but people are falling over themselves to get one. The challenge
is how to function, how to continue to resist despite this level of mind-games
and surveillance.
Why
do you feel there’s no mass reaction in the polity to the plight of undertrials
in jails, people booked under sedition or towards encounter killings? Are these
a non-issue manufactured by few rights groups?
Of
course, they are not non-issues. This is a huge issue. Thousands of people are
in jail, charged with sedition or under the UAPA, broadly they are either
accused of being Maoists or Muslim ‘terrorists’. Shockingly, there are no
official figures. All we have to go on is a sense you get from visiting places,
from individual rights activists collating information in their separate areas.
Torture has become completely acceptable to the government and police
establishment. The nhrc came up with a report that mentioned 3,000 custodial
deaths last year alone. You ask why there is no mass reaction? Well, because
everybody who reacts is jailed! Or threatened or terrorised. Also, between the
coopting and divisiveness of ngos and the reality of State repression and
surveillance, I don’t know whether mass movements have a future. Yes, we keep
looking to the Arab ‘spring’, but look a little harder and you see how even
there, people are being manipulated and ‘played’. I think subversion will take
precedence over mass resistance in the years to come. And unfortunately, terrorism
is an extreme form of subversion.
Without
the State invoking laws, an active police, intelligence, even armed forces,
won’t we have anarchy?
We
will end up in a state of—not anarchy, but war—if we do not address the causes
of people’s rising fury. When you make laws that serve the rich, that helps
them hold onto their wealth, to amass more and more, then dissent and unlawful
activity becomes honourable, does it not? Eventually I’m not at all sure that
you can continue to impoverish millions of people, steal their land, their
livelihoods, push them into cities, then demolish the slums they live in and
push them out again and expect that you can simply stub out their anger with
the help of the army and the police and prison terms. But perhaps I’m wrong.
Maybe you can. Starve them, jail them, kill them. And call it Globalisation
with a Human Face.
Source : http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281389#.T-V3CwzWCFo.twitter |
