Walking with Comrades

by Arundhati Roy

The Constitution ratified colonial policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalized a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity.

When the government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it’s time to worry.

The drive from Raipur to Dantewada takes about ten hours through areas known to be ‘Maoist-infested’. These are not careless words. ‘Infest/infestation’ implies disease/pests. Diseases must be cured. Pests must be exterminated. Maoists must be wiped out. In these creeping, innocuous ways the language of genocide has entered our vocabulary.

The police force is gradually being turned into an army. (In Kashmir it’s the other way around. The army is being turned into a corrupt, administrative police force.)

The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out.’

because nobody can become a Brahmin. If they could, we’d be a nation of Brahmins by now.)

‘the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender’.

Happiness is taken very seriously here, in the Dandakaranya forest. People will walk for miles, for days together to feast and sing, to put feathers in their turbans and flowers in their hair, to put their arms around each other and drink mahua and dance through the night. No one sings or dances alone. This, more than anything else, signals their defiance towards a civilization that seeks to annihilate them.