Arundhati Roy: Indian Maoists are “Patriot of a Kind”

Arundhati Roy

From The Times of India

Writer-activist Arundhati Roy on Sunday described Maoists as “patriot of a kind” and accused the prime minister and home minister of “violating the Constitution and Panchayat (Extension of Scheduled Areas) Act by allowing corporates to use tribal land”.

“Patriot of a kind, they (Maoists) are. But here patriotism is very complicated. So at the moment what people are fighting for is to keep this country from falling apart,” Roy said after addressing a meet on Cultural Resistance to War on People in Corporate Interest, organised by a magazine.

She said she did not think there could be only Maoist revolution for solving problems.

“There will be a new kind of alliance of all kinds of people.”

She said it was the poor of India who had effectively checked India’s biggest corporate companies.

“The whole world has been intently watching the poor tribal people of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Lalgarh (West Bengal). Nowhere in the world have movements (against corporate invasion) so big, beautiful and successful been carried,” she said.