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Walking With Comrades (2011)

by Arundhati Roy(Favorite Author)

3.99 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Hamish Hamilton

review 1: "There is nothing small about what's going on. We are watching a democracy turning on itself, trying to eat its own limbs. We're watching incredulously as those limbs refuse to be eaten."Gone is the poetry of her fiction--replaced with clear, dispassionate prose. She is angry, she is horrified, and she is determined to give a voice to the people who are being silenced. Despite her calm, her anger is clear, and her voice is powerful, as is her message."The day capitalism is forced to tolerate non-capitalist societies in its midst and to acknowledge limits in its quest for domination, the day it is forced to recognize that its supply of raw material will not be endless, is the day when change will come. If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-c... morehange conference room or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains, and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination--an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as Communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars."
review 2: This is journalism. Not your hyped-up, corporate-pandering, jingoistic prostitution that rules the airwaves and "civilized" discourse. This article reminds you of what journalism used to be ; lifting the rock of complacency to peer at the dirt underneath.Pseudo-liberal, upper-middle-class fools who guard their ivory towers by painting Ms.Roy with the same brush, and thus accuse her of being a hypocrite, have no such excuse this time. The author traveled to the jungles where the Naxals are waging their war against the Indian state from, and lived with them for 3 weeks. Her obvious sympathies for the cause are made apparent, but she is not wholly uncritical. This is a must-read. Kudos to Arundhati Roy for having the balls to expose the giant elephant in the room. less

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