State forced Maoists’ hand: Arundhati Roy

Author and activist Arundhati Roy on Wednesday slammed the central government for forcing the tribals to take up arms and called for a re-look at the government’s policy of development.

Roy, along with journalist Gautam Navlakha, was talking on the subject ‘War on People’ at a press gathering organised by Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR).

The two panned the government and said that it was forcing war on people. “The government is trying to create and fashion an enemy so that it can justify war,” said Roy.

Terming PM Manmohan Singh government’s signing of agreements as a cause for the “MoUists corridoor”, Roy questioned the need for displacing the tribals for development. “If the government says it cannot provide land for land, why give some for SEZ,” she said, adding, “The economic totalitarianism is the cause for the state to become armed and meet its ends.” She also questioned the logic of displacing the tribals and putting them into the cities as slum dwellers.

“The problem exists because land reforms have not taken place. People believe that without resisting they will reach nowhere,” said Navlakha.

The activists demanded that the government first have a clear no war policy against its own people and that there was no question of Maoists giving up the resistance as that would mean surrender, which is not the right way.