[Reader-list] Arundhati Roy on Non violence and fasting

[Anjali Sagar]

A dam in Bhopal has displaced adivasis who have not been given an
alternative place to go. The issue must be decided before the area
fills up. Meanwhile, lives may be lost due to the hunger strike that
some of them are on. An appeal and an article by Arundhati Roy, sent
by friend Shai Heredia in Bombay. beena

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Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 04:55:08 +0530
Mailing-List: list bombaynet at yahoogroups.com; contact bombaynet-
owner at yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 20:59:56 +0530
Subject: [bnet] Fw: SOS MAN DAM PLUS ARUNDHATI'S ARTICLE
Reply-To: bombaynet at yahoogroups.com

2 people on fast are critical. pl. do not delay the pressure.
love, pervin 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pervin Jehangir"
To: 
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 5:10 PM
Subject: SOS MAN DAM PLUS ARUNDHATI'S ARTICLE

Dear folks, 
On the 23rd day of fasting for the people affected by the Man Dam,
the people sitting on fast have gone into hiding as police came to
take them away witout any actual solution to the rehabilitation
problem was arrived at.To-day , as a Press Conference was being
addressed by Alok, I am told that 100 plus police to arrest all. So
at the moment - all supporters are in jail and the people on fast are
underground. Ramkuvar is now only 30 Kgs.The Ketone levels of the
others too are high.

PLEASE VERY URGENTLY PHONE DIGVIJAY SINGH, CHIEF MINISTER OF
M.P. AND QUESTION HIM AS TO HOW PUTTING PEOPLE IN PRISON IS GOING TO
SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF SUBMERGENCE WITHOUT REHABILITATION THIS MONSOON.
REMEMBER THAT THE LAND HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED BUT THE GOVT SAYS IT HAS
NO MONEY!!! THEY ARE AFRAID THAT THIS WILL SET A PRECEDENCE FOR THE
OTHER DAMS THEY ARE INVOLVED IN AND ARE THEREFORE NOT MOVING IN THIS
MATTER. 
GET AS MANY EMINENT PEOPLE AS POSS. TO ALSO CALL. I AM TOLD HE TAKES
THESE CALLS PERSONALLY, FAX: 0755 -551781 / 540501
PH: 0755- 540361 /661502 /3/ 4
COUNTING ON U FOLKS. MAKE UR PRESENCE FELT.
LOVE, PERVIN 

AHIMSA 
by Arundhati Roy 
Hindustan Times - June 12, 2002

While the rest of us are mesmerised by talk of war and terrorism and
wars against terror, (can you go to war against a feeling?) in Madhya
Pradesh a little life-raft has set sail into the wind. On a pavement
in Bhopal, in an area called 'Tin Shed', a small group of people has
embarked on a journey of faith and hope. There's nothing new in what
they're doing. What's new is the climate they're doing it in.

Today is the 23rd day of the indefinite hunger strike by four
activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. They have fasted two days
longer than Gandhi did on any of his fasts during the freedom
struggle. Their demands are more modest than his ever were. They are
protesting against the Madhya Pradesh government's forcible eviction
of more than a thousand adivasi families to make way for the Maan
Dam. All they're asking is that the government of MP implement its
own policy of providing land for land to those being displaced by the
Maan Dam. There's no controversy here.

The dam has been built. The displaced people must be resettled before
the reservoir fills up in the monsoon and submerges their villages.

The four activists on fast are: Vinod Patwa who was one of the
114,000 people displaced in 1990 by the Bargi Dam (which now, twelve
years later, irrigates less land than it submerged). Mangat Verma who
will be displaced by the Maheshwar Dam if it is ever completed.
Chittaroopa Palit, who's been with the NBA for almost 15 years. And
22-year-old Ram Kunwar, the youngest and frailest of the activists.
Hers is the first village that will be submerged when the waters rise
in the Maan reservoir. In the weeks since she began her fast, Ram
Kunwar has lost 9 kilos - almost a fourth of her original body
weight. 

Unlike the other large dams like the Sardar Sarovar, Maheshwar and
Indira Sagar, where the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of
displaced people is simply not possible (except on paper, in court
documents etc), in the case of Maan the total number of displaced
people is about 6,000. People have even identified land that is
available and could be bought and allotted to them by the government.
And yet the government refuses.

Instead it's busy distributing paltry cash compensation which is
illegal and violates its own policy. It says quite openly that if it
were to give in to the demands of the Maan 'oustees' (ie: if it
implemented its own policy) it would set a precedent for the hundreds
of thousands of people (most of them Dalits and adivasis) who are
slated to be submerged (without rehabilitation) by the 29 other big
dams planned in the Narmada Valley. And the state government's
commitment to these projects remains absolute, regardless of the
social and environmental costs.

As Vinod, Mangat, Chittaroopa and Ram Kunwar gradually weaken, as
their systems close down and the risk of irreversible organ failure
and sudden death sets in, no government official has bothered to even
pay them a visit. 

Let me tell you a secret - it's not all unwavering resolve and steely
determination on the burning pavement under the pitiless sun at Tin
Shed. The jokes about slimming and weight loss are becoming a little
poignant now. There are tears of anger and frustration. There is
trepidation and real fear. But underneath all that there's pure grit.
What will happen to them? Will they just go down in the ledgers
as 'the price of progress'? That phrase cleverly posits the whole
argument as one between those who are pro-development versus those
who are anti-development - and suggests the inevitability of the
choice you have to make: pro-development, what else? It slyly
suggests that movements like the NBA are antiquated and absurdly anti-
electricity or anti-irrigation. This of course is nonsense. The NBA
believes that Big Dams are obsolete. It believes there are more
democratic, more local, more economically viable and environmentally
sustainable ways of generating electricity and managing water
systems. It is demanding more modernity, not less. It is demanding
more democracy, not less. And look at what's happening instead.

Even at the height of the war rhetoric, even as India and Pakistan
threatened each other with nuclear annihilation, the question of
reneging on the Indus Water Treaty between the two countries did not
arise. Yet in Madhya Pradesh (the state whose chief minister boasts
of being the messiah of Dalits and adivasis), the police and
administration entered adivasi villages with dozers. They sealed
handpumps, demolished school buildings and clearfelled trees in order
to force people from their homes. They sealed handpumps. And so, the
indefinite hunger-strike.

Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it
shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely
argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the
opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being
crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default
we privilege those who turn to violent means. Across the world when
governments and the media lavish all their time, attention, funds,
research, space, sophistication and seriousness on war talk and
terrorism, then the message that goes out is disturbing and
dangerous: If you seek to air and redress a public grievance,
violence is more effective than non-violence. Unfortunately, if
peaceful change is not given a chance, then violent change becomes
inevitable. That violence will be (and already is) random, ugly and
unpredictable. What's happening in Kashmir, the North-eastern states,
Andhra Pradesh is all part of this process.

Right now the Narmada Bachao Andolan is not just fighting Big Dams.
It's fighting for the survival of India's greatest gift to the world:
non-violent resistance. You could call it the Ahimsa Bachao Andolan.

Over the years our government has shown nothing but contempt for the
people of the Narmada valley. Contempt for their argument. Contempt
for their movement. In the 21st century the connection between
religious fascism, nuclear nationalism and the pauperisation of whole
populations because of corporate globalisation is becoming impossible
to ignore. While the Madhya Pradesh government has categorically said
it has no land for the rehabilitation of displaced people, reports
say that it is preparing the ground (pardon the pun) to make huge
tracts of land available for corporate agriculture. Which in turn
will set off another cycle of uprootment and impoverishment.

Can we prevail on Mr Digvijay Singh - the secular, 'green' chief
minister, the very public advocate of 'good governance', the right to
information and decentralised water management systems - to
substitute some of his PR with a real change in policy? If he did, he
would go down in history as a man of vision and true political
courage. 

If the Congress party wishes to be taken seriously as an alternative
to the destructive Right-wing religious fundamentalists who have
brought us to the threshold of ruin, it will have to do more than
condemn communalism and participate in empty nationalist rhetoric. It
will have to do more than lock up MLAs in five star resorts (a zoo
would be cheaper, surely?) to prevent them from selling themselves to
rival parties. It will have to do some real work and some real
listening to the people it claims to represent.

As for the rest of us, concerned citizens, peace activists, et al -
it's not enough to sing songs about giving peace a chance. Doing
everything we can to support movements like the Narmada Bachao
Andolan is how we give peace a chance. This is the real war against
terror. 

Go to Bhopal. Just ask for Tin Shed.