Narendra Bisht interview Terrorism Isnt The Disease; Egregious Injustice Is On laws like AFSPA, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, sedition, democracy, terrorism and more Panini Anand Interviews Arundhati Roy
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? Im glad you used the word touted. Its a good word to use in connection with Indias 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 governments version of POTA, and the AFSPA are ridiculously authoritarianthey 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 dont 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.
How does one curb the cycle of violence if the State takes no action against ultra-left terrorist groups? Wouldnt it jeopardise internal security? I dont 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 dont 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 Maoistwhether 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 securitynot the people who are protesting against them. Do we want to address the symptoms or the disease? The disease is not terrorism. Its 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 were 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 shouldnt 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 entirelytheyll decide what is ethical and what is not, what collateral damage is acceptable and what is not. Forget religious texts. Computers will decide whats 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, Im 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.
Without the State invoking laws, an active police, intelligence, even armed forces, wont we have anarchy? We will end up in a state ofnot anarchy, but warif we do not address the causes of peoples 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 Im 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 Im wrong. Maybe you can. Starve them, jail them, kill them. And call it Globalisation with a Human Face. http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281389 |