One of two scathing criticism of arundhati's visit with maoists.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264902
I find the above criticism by Sudhanva Deshpande trite, circular, and mean-spirited for the following reasons.
1. That her writing is superb - she picks up in ironies - and seduces you to side with her.
Yes, Arundhati surprises us with her irony, and makes us wonder why we hadn't thought of it. Every writer has a style (or a trick if you may). Yet, you make it seem as if it were some dirty secret of hers you have exposed, implying she is a charlatan and an impostor with an agenda. This sets the tone for the rest of the article.
2. That Arundhati did not vomit in shock that a rebel was watching an Ambush video -- but was shocked at the videos of violence made by Hindutva goons in Gujarat.
You seem disinterested in the obvious distinctions between the videos (and this shows your fascist vision of some delusionary neutrality.) One is live violence perpretrated by a state sponsored, powerful, criminal gang intent on committing a pogrom against a politically disempowered ethnic minority. The other is someone watching (not filming nor killing in) a video in order to fight a state apparatus that has routinely used violence against a small, rural, tribal peoples to uproot them, eliminate them, subject them to collective punishment, take over their land, and fill it with business enterprises. She does not have to vomit. She is not a saint. She is entitled to her ideological underpinning. Not all violence is equal. Some is sicker.
3. That she is an embedded journalist -- something she despises.
Would she report the same way if she were "embedded" with the Hezbollah or the Hamas? Would she not have a feminist critique of them? I bet she would. If she were embedded with american soldiers in the war on Iraq, would she lose sight that the war was based on a false premise, and is likely illegal? Is she that fickle about her life's safety that she takes on ideologies of any transient benefactors? As if ideology were a print tattoo. We believe her because she speaks for those underrepresented by mainstream media, or even institutionalized leftists, and almost always speaks factually (even if she flourishes with pretty rhetoric). Saying that she humanizes is cheapening it. For some this rhetoric speaks to the multiple complexities of struggle. She is, if anything, unembedded..
4. That she romanticizes, and falls prey to a fantasy of walking with rebels under moonlit skies.
By that logic, anyone who removes themselves from the daily existence of walks between the water cooler and the keyboard, classroom and the cafeteria, and visits slums, and idyllic towns, communities that have been stricken with famine, war, or poverty - is liable of romanticising the other. And is tortious as charged. Yet reporting must be done. Under moonlit skies with rebels called Venu or not. At least she is doing it -and not asking that she be applauded for her venture.
5. That she makes light of indefinite hunger strikes.
You have such high standards for her. She is not allowed to laugh at herself. How does her joke mock her own past peaceful protests against big dams? How is she in anyway denouncing peaceful forms of resistance. If anything, she is acknowledging the obviously vast rift between her past activism, and that of the young Maoists. She is not necessarily endorsing it. Perhaps, she is articulating the weak alliance leftists have with one other, and how we must continually review the work done - we may differ in tactics, but we understand the problems.
6.That Charu Mazumdar fetisizes violence, but AR says look at the beautiful dancing tribals.
If anything, AR dreaded the dance performance - but then observes how much of a break it was for the people. And regarding Charu - she distances his ideology from the lived experiences of Maoists. Almost each act of violence is in response to an act of repression. Now the Maoists could be trained to brainwash journalists, but how many journalists visit them? And if she is watching the dancing tribals - she is watching the dancing tribals as a sympathizer to their cause, and not the repugnant image of an Orientalist Englishman watching native rituals. One can not de-link her politics from her viewership. Must her entire visit be steeped in stern and constipated admonition of their means?
7. That all the criticisms of the Maoists that appeared in EPW are water off her back.
Look, someone got to tell the other side of the left. Details and criticisms can be finessed later in an arbitration of sorts for each one of the incidents listed in her article and media- but at least allow space for this form of observation and expression. Nobody has a lifetime warranty on truly left position.
And guess what, its okay to be smitten by the smitten.
1 comment:
via facebook - Sanjeev Mahajan
Thanks, Abira. Here is my critique of one of the disingenuous critiques (http://www.pragoti.org/node/3864) of Roy's essay.
People like Deshpande like to score points by cheap shots, not by sustained critiques. 'Embedded journalism'? This silly analogy to the US media in Iraq would be apt, if Maoists were not a marginal political force much maligned in the mainstream media. It would pass muster if, rather than being constantly misrepresented and compared to cockroaches, theirs was the only viewpoint propagated in our ever servile and ever corporate media.
Deshpande's lack of sincerity in seriously engaging with Roy's essay is patently obvious.
Whether we agree with Roy or not we read her because she surprises us. There is always some statistic, some quotation, some ironic observation, that makes one say, Hey, I hadnt thought of that before. This time though, I found myself being disappointed* *by her. It is almost a clich of such reportage (of a writers encounter with an underground group) to begin with the rendezvous and end on a note of wistful longing. Roy does both. Come on Arundhati, I wanted to say, surprise us for cliches I can read Surendra Mohan Pathak.
So Deshpande wishes to be entertained and surprised, rather than understand. Roy may be a tad hyperbolic in her prose, and may get carried away with the verbal magic she weaves at times, but at least hers was a sincere endeavor to understand who the Maoists are, and to hear their story from their own perspective. This does not mean that she romanticizes them or that she glorifies violence or that she is oblivious to ironies that only Deshpande is refined enough to see, although I must say that his comparison of gun-toting tribals, who have been at the receiving end of the most brutal state violence, to upper caste Hindutva fascists, who are mollycoddled by the state and who operate with complete impunity, is quite telling.
Not satisfied with spewing venom at Arundhati Roy, the person, rather than address her arguments, Deshpande also has the chutzpah to misrepresent her, and to create and happily demolish strawmen. Roy never once alludes to Trinamul Congress in her essay, so whence this gratuitous insistence that she sees nothing wrong with "Maoists becoming the handmaiden of the Trinamul Congress". Roy never says that Maoists and tribals are one entity. She simply counters the oft-repeated cliche that Maoists are an outside force, who have manipulated the 'naive tribals' to do their bidding, or that 'hapless' tribals are unfortunate victims of a protracted war between the state and the Maoists. This 'sandwich theory' is what Roy challenges, and challenges effectively in her article. But this does not mean that she thinks all Maoists are tribals, and all tribals are Maoists. Deshpande needs either a lesson in elementary logic or a modicum of integrity. Is putting words in people's mouths, whom one is jealous of, currently in vogue among certain sections of the left?
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