It is important to win the war in the so-called Maoist areas of the country because a success there will mean the capitalist machine has been stopped. “That gives hope, but, if we lose this, we surrender everything,” Arundathi Roy, Booker Prize winner and activist, said here on Friday.
Beginning her over 40-minute speech by declaring herself “an independent, non-aligned writer on the side of the resistance,” Ms. Roy went on to lay the problems at the door of capitalism.
“Capitalism is actually the most totalitarian ideology ever. It cannot tolerate the co-existence of a non-capitalist society and the only non-capitalist society is tribal,” she said at a meeting organised by the Federation Against Internal Repression.
The assault of the corporates is to control the natural resources of the areas; the bauxite in Orissa alone is said to be worth $4 trillion. They must not be allowed to monetise the natural resources of the region, she said. For years, the people of the region had held off the most powerful multinational corporations, who are targeting the natural wealth of the region.
“The spirit of the people has not been broken and we have to stand with them. We cannot stand back and do nothing,” Ms. Roy told a huge public gathering. “Here we are pretending that we are a democracy. The democracy is trying to colonise itself, trying to eat its limbs. Only, the limbs are refusing to be eaten.” The good tribal, according to the State, is one who has been displaced, is starving, malnourished and whose dignity has been confiscated. “Are we going to allow the government to get away with it,” she asked
‘Operation Green Hunt,' which she described as war against the most poor, deprived people in the world, has, however, done what most activists were trying to do for decades — rip the masks off the MNCs. Even the children in the tribal villages now know the role of the MNCs and whom the security forces protect.
S.A.R. Geelani of the Committee for Release of Political Prisoners, said the war was about the plunder of natural resources. Facts were constantly being distorted to force people to think the way the government wants them to; to create the impression of a situation of civil war in order to justify the use of force.
