[Marxism] Arundhati Roy on "lesser evilism"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

ISR: I THINK a lot of people here have on their minds the November 2 
election and what to do, who to vote for. Tariq Ali, who is very 
critical of Kerry, recently said, "If the American population were to 
vote Bush out of office, it would have a tremendous impact on world 
opinion. Our option at the moment is limited. Do we defeat a warmonger 
government or not?" What do you think of Ali’s perspective?

ARUNDHATI ROY: LOOK, IT’S a very complicated and difficult debate, in 
which I think there are two things you can do: you can act expediently, 
if you like, but you must speak on principle. I cannot sit here with any 
kind of honesty and say to you that I support Kerry. I cannot do that. 
I’ll tell you a small example. In India, you may or may not be aware of 
the levels of violence and jingoism and fascism that we’ve faced over 
the last five years. In Gujarat, rampaging mobs murdered, raped, 
gang-raped, burnt alive 2,000 Muslims on the streets, drove 150,000 out 
of their homes. And you have this kind of plague of Hindu fascism 
spreading. And you had a central government that was supported by the 
BJP. A lot of the people who I work with and know work in the state of 
Madhya Pradesh, in central India, where there was a Congress state 
government for ten years. This government had overseen the building of 
many dams in the Narmada valley. It had overseen the privatization of 
electricity, of water, the driving out from their homes and lands of 
hundreds of thousands of people, the disconnection of single-point 
electricity connections because they signed these huge contracts for 
privatization with the Asian Development Bank.

The activists in these areas knew that a lot of the reason that Congress 
was also so boldly doing these things was they were saying, "What option 
do you have? Do you want to get the BJP? Are you going to campaign for 
the BJP? Are you going to open yourself up not just to being physically 
beaten but maybe even killed?" But I want to tell you that they didn’t 
campaign for the Congress. They didn’t. They just said, "We do not 
believe in this, and we are going to continue to do our work outside." 
It was just a horrendous situation, because the BJP was pretending to be 
anti-"reform," saying, "We’ll stop this, we’ll change that." They did 
come to power, the BJP, and within ten days they were on the dam site 
saying, "We are going to build the dam." So people are waiting for their 
houses to get submerged. This was the dilemma.

The point is, then, you have to say, "Look, can you actually campaign 
for a man who is saying that I’m going to send more troops to Iraq?" 
How? So I think it’s very important for us to remain principled. Let me 
tell you that during the Indian elections, people used to keep asking 
me, "Aren’t you campaigning for the Congress?" Because, of course, I had 
spent the last five years denouncing the BJP. I said, "How can I 
campaign for the Congress that also oversaw the carnage of Sikhs in 
Delhi in 1984, that opened the markets to neoliberalism in the early 
1990s?" And every time, you’re put under this pressure. I said, "I feel 
sometimes when I’m asked this question like I imagine that a gay person 
must feel when they’re watching straight sex: I’m sort of interested but 
not involved." I think it’s very important for us to understand that we 
are people of principle and we are soldiers who are fighting a different 
battle, and we cannot be co-opted into this.

So you’ve got to refuse the terms of this debate; otherwise you’re 
co-opted. I’m not going to say who you should vote for. I’m not going to 
sit here and tell you to vote for this one or vote for that one, because 
all of us here are people of influence and power, and we can’t allow our 
power to be co-opted by those people. We cannot.

full: http://www.isreview.org/issues/38/Arundhati_roy.shtml

--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism