Arundhati Roy - an unlikely love letter

I am constantly beset by women. They won't leave me alone - my life is a perpetual series of Hard Day's Nights with me chased hither and yon by hordes of screaming chicks. Sure enough I always say no (politely, since I'm a polite chap) because truth be known, I'm saving myself. There's only one gal for me and that's the mighty Arundhati Roy.


Just lately a friend of mine pointed me at the following long article which the fabulous Roy wrote for the English language Outlook of New Delhi. It details the time she spent with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in Central India. Anyone who wants to find out what's going on there, read this, it's a cracker. It's a discussion of Indian, um... what do you call 'politics' when you're at the pointy end of the stick?

They described a police raid: they come at night, 300, 400, sometimes 1,000 of them. They lay a cordon around a village and lie in wait. At dawn they catch the first people who go out to the fields and use them as human shields to enter the village... Once the police enter a village, they loot and steal and burn houses. They come with dogs. The dogs catch those who try and run. They chase chickens and pigs and the police kill them and take them away in sacks. SPOs [Special Police Officer = informer] come along with the police. They’re the ones who know where people hide their money and jewellery. They catch people and take them away. And extract money before they release them. They always carry some extra Naxal ‘dresses’ with them in case they find someone to kill. They get money for killing Naxals, so they manufacture some. Villagers are too frightened to stay at home.

Welcome to the world beyond your living room. With this as your daily lot is anyone surprised that people don't seize whatever option is available? Marxism, Maoism, as if anyone can tell the difference? Certainly not the villagers who can only count to twenty. No doubt the pointy end of this Naxalite pyramid will know what's what, but will the base be privy to such knowledge? Not bloody likely. Knowledge equals nobility (seriously, check out your dictionary) and a knowledge shared is a nobility shared, which is no nobility at all. Not if you groove on servants, that is.

But never mind, the genius of the nobility-obsessed Jews in contriving their Marxist-Leninist alternative to a Brando-esque what-have-you-got was in the packaging. Marxism is to other political possibilities what McDonalds is to 'a healthy alternative'.
Mum - "I'm too tired to cook, let's eat out. What do you kids want?"
Kids - "Yay! We want a healthy alternative!"
Yeah right. Crowds follow banners and the truth can go to hell - a tuppence for sugar, salt, cholesterol, hormones, and preservatives, and likewise for the vicious truth of Marxism with its leaders as their own messiah.


But you never know. In amongst the truth of Lenin and the Cheka, and Mao and the Great Leap Forward (which never mind Billy Brag was the greatest mass starvation in history), there's also the possibility of Che and Castro. You could do a lot worse. Only a motherfucker would wish the Cubans' erstwhile whoredom upon anyone and there's a case to be made that the villagers of Central India have got that beat. Besides which, with every major government and opposition beholden to the death cult, the Indian government not least amongst them, and with a demonstrably false al Qaeda as a death cult conjured bogeyman, what are we to make of the Naxalites?

It's curious how the media seems to spend no time on them at all. And then there's the fact that they seem completely penniless, ie. unbankrolled. Think about that. This may come as something of a shock to the hard-bitten habitués of this blog, but what if I said the Naxalites were for real? What if they were what they said they were - truly concerned with the downtrodden and oppressed and with no hidden agenda? The more I turn the Naxalites around in my head, the more likely that seems.

Okay - Three cheers for the Naxalite revolution!

But waitaminute... Where's Gandhi in amongst all this? Roy, sure enough, could hardly not mention him but sadly it's in the standard less-than-useful context of non-violence as a thing existing in isolation. As I wrote in this piece, Bloody Sunday, any discussion of non-violence that doesn't give equal time to its media depiction isn't worth much. Go watch Attenborough's Gandhi again and keep an eye out for the role played by the media, ie. Martin Sheen. Then ask yourself: How successful would Gandhi have been if a bloc-media had treated him like they treated Scott Ritter? Between Scott Ritter and Iraq's WMD's only one of them was true and it wasn't Scott Ritter. A click of the fingers. A piece of piss. The easiest thing in the world. With the bloc-media singing from their thoughtfully provided Rothschild songbook, Gandhi could starve to death and we'd all be nodding and mumbling along - ♫Something, Something, Terrorists, Martyrs, and Good Riddance♫.


Did somebody say media? Speaking of which, in amongst her piece the winsome Roy has fallen upon a true philosophical genius, the Superintendent of Police in Dandakaranya -

He was a candid man, the SP: “See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy, there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out."

Actually, let's replace the word 'philosophical' with 'evil' given that what the SP is proposing here is precisely what was done to the Bhutanese by that vicious ratfuck Rupert Murdoch. The SP, Murdoch, his Rothschild masters, they all get it. They know that nothing can compete with the television. There is no argument it cannot win. Paraphrasing Frank Zappa - If it's you against the TV, bet on the TV.

And anyone looking for the proof of that particular pudding needs only to look to the hundreds of comments following the splendid Roy's article. A handful of dissenting voices aside, it's an ugly torrent of TV scripted soundbites from an aghast middle class. Clearly the government that's attempting to exterminate the 'tribals' has done alright by them and who the hell is this slut Roy to break in upon their Ikea dreams? Fuck her and the little motorcycle she rode in on! Doesn't she know that it was built from the minerals that these tribal scum are squatting on? Shit happens and if that shit involves thousands being shat on, raped, and killed, well... they're TERRORISTS! Everyone knows that the only good terrorist is a shat on, raped, and killed one.

Yay. God speed you, you clueless army of media drones.


Arundhati Roy, my wordsmith Minerva: may I as humble petitioner make a suggestion? Your candid SP has leapt right to the heart of the matter. Seize upon his dictum and turn it on its head - get the Naxalites to blow up the TV stations. Without that being done they'll forever be battling against their own inverted depiction. Have them imagine a Tet offensive with nowt but TV towers the target. Cue the screams of the fear-filled middle classes - I WANT MY MTV! Ha! It'd be worth it for that alone.

As for me, ardent admirer, I'll just have to go on fending off the dreary pursuing hordes with nothing more than a cherished image of the angelic Arundhati to sustain me.

Oh Arundhati... a sigh, a smile, a look to the heavens...