ARUNDHATI ROY AND THE ‘AVTAR’IZATION OF RESISTANCE

To this day, I remain an ardent admirer of Arundhati Roy. Of late it could be regarded as a good development that she has started involving herself in analyzing the Maoist movement in India with a strong sympathetic perspective. The understanding of social development as such, which underlies her current engagement with the Maoist movement is not very different from the understanding that she had when she was actively engaged with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and associated movements. She seems to have moved away from the strongly anti-Communist position that she had when she published the “God of small things”. But her worldview still remains one which tries to transcend the systemic formalities of Capitalism or Socialism or Communism. And all along she has remained a steadfast opponent of Fascism in its economic and cultural variants.
A recent line in an article in Outlook magazine by Arundhati Roy caught my attention. She advocates a kind of a system which transcends Capitalism and Communism and for that she draws inspiration from the Tribal system both in an economic, ecological and cultural sense. This is not a very novel idea because in development theory, the New Social Movements especially the ecological/green movements talk about a certain kind of a development trajectory which incorporates a localized system for production, distribution and exchange and with minimum interference with the ecological base.
Before we think of a rational alternative to the current system, we need to have a historical understanding of the evolution of society. Whether we believe in the Marxist worldview or we believe in any other worldviews, any scientific understanding of societal evolution cannot but have a linear connotation. This linear conceptualization can be embedded with a variety of non-linearities but over the course of thousands of years of historical evolution, a pattern can be deciphered which can be fitted into a linear framework.
In the beginning of recorded history, we have societies which depended on a tribal mode of production with its associated cultural and social systems. Then we have the emergence of settled agriculture. The associated surplus that this mode of production generated resulted in the first river valley civilizations. This era could be covered under the broad term of “Feudalism” though there are enormous pluralities within this system. Then we have the development of trade and commerce and the development of Capitalism and the emergence of the nation-states. This phase was, in a latter part characterized by the industrial revolution. There are different pockets of the world which may be operating within pre-capitalist relations of production as well as pre-capitalist cultural relations. But if, at circa 2010 AD, the world as a whole is located within the broad historical trajectory that has been discussed above, then we find that we are very much within a broad capitalistic framework in both an economic and a cultural sense.
Now coming back to the question of Maoist movements in India, no one with a semblance of humanism left within him/her (whether the humanism is of a bourgeoisie/socialist variety) can deny that the social issues that gave rise to the Maoist movement remain enormously valid. The only question that remains is whether the resistance offered by the Maoist movement to the exploitation that is very much happening in the areas under Maoist influence is justified from a moral and an ideological standpoint.
Most analyses of the Maoist movement are caught within a Violence-Non-violence kind of a moralizing dialectic. Within an exploitative, imperfect system that all of humanity is currently living, almost every where, there is a definite structural violence that is a part of the social fabric. Any kind of social change will necessarily involve an engagement with this structural violence and the extent of that violence is something that has to be decided within the realities of that context and the concrete possibilities of social change that exist within that context. This article does not propose to examine whether, within the geographical context in which Maoist influence is present, the violence of their resistance is justified or not. It does not also propose to examine the ideological underpinning of the Maoist movement. What it proposes to do is to examine a certain kind of a development alternative that seems to inform a considerable chunk of the current sympathizers of the Maoist movement, a foremost example of whom is Arundhati Roy.
Now, it is in order to recapitulate the brief story of that Hollywood blockbuster ‘Avtar’. The resistance to the human invaders by the tribal-like inhabitants of the planet “Pandorra” is definitely justified. But in the movie, there was a certain kind of a romanticization of the life of the inhabitants of the planet “Pandorra” wherein they were supposed to be in an idyllic state in harmony with god and nature which was getting disturbed by human invasion. The historical state of Pandorra is not linked with that in Earth and to that extent we can consider the planet Pandorra to be situated in an ahistorical context. So, a fictional planet situated in an ahistorical context provided the setting for resistance against a human -greed inspired invasion. And in this process, the hero switches sides for reasons to do with his own call of conscience and to do with an emotional attachment with an alien girl. While this story has enormous value in terms of freeing the spaces for our imagination and ensuring that our humane values remain intact, adapting it to a human context very much within planet earth will be to stretch the limits of science and logic.
There was a very much Avtar-inspired resistance to the acquisition of Vedanta of Niyamgiri hills in Orissa. This also could be included within the framework of the brand of resistance offered by Arundhati Roy. First let us examine this brand of resistance from a spatial-cultural point of view. If we think that “We” should not encroach on “Their” tribal land for the purpose of some industrialization or infrastructure project, then we preclude the possibility of viewing tribal and non-tribal people within an integrated development framework. We inadvertently end up imbuing the tribal people with a sense of “Other”ness which is counter to the common human thread running between tribals and the so-called “Mainstream” people. This kind of thinking is shockingly similar to the kind of fascist thinking of groups like the Shiv Sena which talk of “Our” Mumbai getting encroached by the “Alien” “others” from outside. It might sound unpalatable but both these strands of thinking rest on a “Us” vs “Them” kind of a worldview which is unacceptable because what we need is integration of people within the same kind of an inclusivistic framework and not further reinforcement of the existing cultural and other differences.
The second objection to this brand of resistance is from the viewpoint of history. When human societal development is situated within a historical context, the tribal mode of production and its associated cultural systems were suitable for an earlier era and not for the 21st century. No tribal child is going to remain within that system given a choice between that system and modernity. Off course the transition from the tribal to a modern way of life will be painful but any change, even if it’s a progressive change will be painful because change per se involves a certain element of pain. The only thing which has to be ensured is that this change has to be under the control of the people undergoing the change so that they don’t feel like having become the sudden victims of alien forces beyond their control.
Coming back to the brand of resistance offered by Arundhati Roy, it seems to contain within itself, an element of romanticization of the existing social relations, a kind of ‘Avtar’ization of the entire process of Resistance in the areas where struggle against change and industrialization is happening. Off course as a Post-Modernist might argue, a Tribal system has a lot to offer in terms of rectifying the anomalies of Capitalism. That is perfectly true and for that matter even a Feudal system might have something to offer in terms of countering the kind of amoral value systems fostered by market-driven capitalism. But it is one thing to talk about incorporating some progressive elements of an earlier era within the current system and another thing to talk about throwing the current development baby with the bathwater in favour of an anachronistic system.
Off course in the current trajectory of capitalist development, most of the so-called “Development” happens in an inhuman way in which the subaltern sections are forced to subsidize for the elites. So, there is no question of not resisting this kind of an anti-people development process. But resisting this development trajectory with a fictional systemic alterative may not be the right thing to do. The incisive analytical prowess of Arundhati Roy and her honest striving for humane solutions for our development problems will have a hugely better meaning if she informs her discourses with a scientific understanding of social change and a correct understanding of what could be a possible progressive culture.