In yesterday's paper (TOI) veteran journalist Dhananjay Mahapatra made his dissatisfaction with Roy manifest; he precisely dwelt on the 'fact' that Roy has been generally inconsistent. Roy has stood by the cause of the Maoists. She has also proclaimed her position as an anti-violence one. How can then she reconcile these two? And she has also said that she is unafraid to invest her support with the Maoist, and that the state, if it wants to, may suffice to put her behind bars. Mahapatra says with a masculine sting that Roy had said as much even when Supreme Court gave its verdict on the Narmada Bachao mega-event, that is, she had dared to make her dissatisfaction with the verdict too explicit (unbecoming of the true citizen-subject!).
So our assumption (and unwavering belief) is that the Supreme Court is bound to remain beyond all doubts, questions. That it can never make a mistake, it cannot go wrong, it cannot be bribed and it cannot have vested interests! Well, we do address the judge as "My Lord", but have we really begun to take that this literally!
And few have ventured to know the truth behind the NBA and now, behind this Green-Hunt. Roy remains one of the few actually concerned beings - more concerned than the sate, the democratic state that promises to treat all citizens as equals and give them safety, education, health and sanitation to begin with. An almost-obscure report of a talk Roy delivered at Mumbai a few days back was published in TOI itself: Roy is unambiguous in saying "Maoists do not have a revolutionary vision ... their mining policy is not very different from that of the state. They too would mine the bauxite instead of leaving it in the hills, which is what the people they are fighting for, want." Well, it is actually too clear that Roy is for the tribals - the people who have been existentially and physically mauled and raped ever since we waved the midnight tricolour and since earlier. When these squashed people are taking up the gun, she 'understands' their cause, feels the intense pain that led to this extreme - however, the moment the once-marginalised are tasting the momentary freedom and authority the gun begets. are often taking to wear the same shoes of domination, atrocity and violence (and thereby in a way talking the language of the state), Roy knows better than to play blind when the turnabout happens. She says: "We need an idea that's neither Right nor Left." She realizes that the range of available 'solutions' is a sham - ministers don't bother to even visit the ravaged families but are continuing to sell the tribal land to further more industries.
Roy understands the magic and menace of money slightly too closely; had she been really in dire need of name and fame (as most media persons explain her 'dramatic' stand offs as a means to fulfill this 'need) she might well have continued her cosy life in plush apartments and globe-trotting days and vying for the next Booker or Pulitzer. Not many Booker Awardees give up the life of glitz and sit by the river for days on end and fight for the rights of the nun-human species called tribals. But if they do ever manage to get back their land, we sceptics might want to see if Roy actually had been eyeing that all along, and if she would now start paddy cultivation on a plot?
However, as I said, she understands the magic and menace of money slightly too closely; she knows that there exists a gap between the tribal and the Naxal, despite their overlapping moments of origin and deprivation. Perhaps it's all the magic of the gun ... perhaps the wait for a politics that will be political will continue for a long time to come...
[One might venture to read the following article by two of my teachers: http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/131/1/]
Election has an ‘alchemy’ … it singularizes each citizen, responsible for his vote (his choice), at the same time as it unifies the ‘moral’ body of the citizens: Balibar; Citizen-Subject
I had gone over for some work to the neighbour’s place. When I was sipping a cup of mandatory tea and saying every five minutes that I needed to leave, and politely dodged curious questions, their domestic help Sabita walked in. Mrs Madam suddenly turned furious – apparently Sabita, a woman in her late 30s had not come in the earlier day and that too without prior notice. Sabita nonchalantly replied that she had gone to cast her vote and after she returned she had a bad enough headache and so could neither inform nor come. I stood half-apologetic myself, expecting Mrs Madam to lambast Mrs Subaltern as to why she still did not at least go to the nearest booth and make a call etc. But what madam said was this: “Eeeshh! Uni gecchen vote dite! Aami-e jayi na, ar toder vote na dite parle hochhe na, na?” [Rough translation = Oh! She grandly goes to cast her vote! I do not go myself and you people can’t afford to stay back from voting?]. While a paper can be written on this one line, I shall afford to hold myself back and speak only a few words.
Too many currents are playing themselves out here; what immediately struck me was this – while I generally echo many others that in as much as the nation-state claims itself to be a democracy, one that runs on regular representative elections, it is this very democratic principle that one might deploy to abstain from casting the vote. I myself have not cast a vote ever – primarily because I have never been at the place where my identity card was issued from at a time when elections were taking place. Of course the experience of the polling booth and the determining button that all leaders asked to be pressed on their behalf is something I have badly missed, but then, whenever I tried to think who I would cast the vote for, I almost never came up with an answer. Unlike Dhorai I have never stood inside the booth wondering at the long term magic my vote would create – that’s what we have been taught to believe. That’s the belief that helps the democratic machinery run smoothly. That somewhere someone will be informed by my vote. S/he will never see me, know me, touch me, feel me, love me or go for a coffee, but I can make a difference…and that little difference in turn will make my life better. Another difference. Thus, betting all hopes on this chain of differences we go to case the vote. Unknown to each other. “The vote is the great anonymous performance of citizenship” (Partha Chatterjee)
However democracy by definition allows for choice, for freedom. And thus anonymous or not, we remain free to not cast the vote, to not dream about differences and changes. Though we keep on hearing occasionally that voting will be made mandatory, since percentage of willing voters are dropping like population rate in Japan. But then, the interesting point that struck me is this: while intellectuals, academicians, even some politically inclined people and social scientists claim they will not cast that vote, that they did not go to the booth this time, we are either proud or awe-struck at their strength – strength to speak the truth that no party is worth voting for, that this democracy is a sham, and that democracy should thus be rethought, redefined. They do not say these in as many words though. We understand, we assume. When the same one-liner is said by some obscure housewife, we pity her, we realize she is so “pre-modern”. Are we being inconsistent here? Or are we being guided by some pre-given set of notions – under what circumstances should one be allowed to abstain from voting. The circumstances include an intimate awareness of the political and social scenario around us, a sincere political investment, a somewhere transcendental idealism and love for the nation-state beyond democratic dramas…?
That’s one question I was left with that day. Moving to the next problematization, we know, we have read that it is the civil society that is organized, is partaking of state benefits and often operates within the bound serialities made possible government functionings like census and the vote. All these and so on, as opposed to the political society that accesses entitlements not rights, that is unorganized and slipping away before being serially contained. And the implicit assumption is that the civil society-political society divide will more or less map onto an urban-rural divide, an elite-subaltern divide. And this made my calculations messed up: the decked up, eyebrow-plucked and speaking-english-at-home-with-children Mrs Madam, the symbol of the urban elite and thus a member of the civil society, was not only showing off the fact that she did not go to cast her vote, but also inquiring why her domestic help – the rural, barely literate, subaltern member of the political society – did. I felt this was an abject understanding of social activities/responsibilities/what-you-will, only and only in terms of what the elite/urban/capital-wielding-agents do and think right to be done; that it was reading, validating and justifying the world from their privileged standpoint. If I did not go, I being the knowledgeable, affluent, with more social power being, how dare you, the illiterate, ignorant, poor and powerless, go to cast the vote? I was also bemused at the interesting subversion (or mere reversal maybe?) of my own trained expectations! I was intrigued, such that I did not say anything. I silently admired Sabita as she casually turned to say “Aha, tumi jaoni bole ki aamio jabona?” [Since you did not go, I too should stay back?], and vanished into the kitchen to attend to the pile of unwashed utensils.
