Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Walking with the Comrades
    Unavailable
    Walking with the Comrades
    Unavailable
    Walking with the Comrades
    Ebook193 pages2 hours

    Walking with the Comrades

    By Arundhati Roy

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the award-winning author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and The God of Small Things comes a searing frontline exposé of brutal repression in India

    In this fiercely reported work of nonfiction, internationally renowned author Arundhati Roy draws on her unprecedented access to a little-known rebel movement in India to pen a work full of earth-shattering revelations. Deep in the forests, under the pretense of battling Maoist guerillas, the Indian government is waging a vicious total war against its own citizens-a war undocumented by a weak domestic press and fostered by corporations eager to exploit the rare minerals buried in tribal lands. Roy takes readers to the unseen front lines of this ongoing battle, chronicling her months spent living with the rebel guerillas in the forests. In documenting their local struggles, Roy addresses the much larger question of whether global capitalism will tolerate any societies existing outside of its colossal control.

    "A riveting account . . . a necessary book by one of India’s most distinctive voices." -Washington Post
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Group
    Release dateOct 25, 2011
    ISBN9781101558683
    Unavailable
    Walking with the Comrades
    Author

    Arundhati Roy

    Arundhati Roy is an award-winning film-maker and a trained architect. She is the author of ‘The God of Small Things’ which won the 1997 Booker prize.

    Read more from Arundhati Roy

    Related to Walking with the Comrades

    Related ebooks

    Politics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Intimations Of An Ending

      Jan 9, 2020

      Intimations Of An Ending
      35 min read

    • Article

      Identity Theft

      Jun 20, 2022

      Identity Theft
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Toxin of Hate

      Apr 23, 2022

      The author is a Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and chairman, All-India Professionals Congress When the Editor asks, ‘Is the Divide Deepening?’, I do not find myself thi

      4 min read

    • Article

      Newton’s Last Discovery

      Jan 22, 2018

      Newton’s Last Discovery
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ishan Tankha

      Jun 8, 2021

      Ishan Tankha
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Graveyard Talks Back

      Mar 9, 2020

      The Graveyard Talks Back
      37 min read

    • Article

      Written In Stone

      Nov 1, 2018

      Written In Stone
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Warrior Queen

      Jul 5, 2022

      The Warrior Queen
      33 min read

    • Article

      How to Tell a Shattered Story

      Dec 21, 2017

      How to Tell a Shattered Story
      5 min read

    • Article

      Library Of Hope

      Apr 23, 2021

      Library Of Hope
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Enemy Within

      Nov 8, 2019

      Tragedy and absurdity are today the sun and the moon on our mediascape. On Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, India's largest-selling English daily carried a full front-page ad for Bard of Blood, a gory revenge war film streaming on Netflix. It surpri

      5 min read

    • Article

      Shifting Sands

      Dec 16, 2021

      Shifting Sands
      6 min read

    • Article

      The People’s Struggle

      Dec 10, 2022

      The People’s Struggle
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Elephant in the Comedy Club

      Aug 1, 2017

      KIGALI, RWANDA—The comedians trickle into a rehearsal space in Kimihurura, a quiet, upper-class neighborhood, brimming with restless energy. Known as the Comedy Knights, the young performers slouch on wooden school chairs and warm up for their Valent

      4 min read

    • Article

      As Indian Tourists Help Revive Thai Tourism, Will Attitudes Towards Them Change?

      Sep 10, 2022

      Even the Thai gardeners know the intricacies of Indian wedding rituals at the Royal Cliff Beach Hotel in Pattaya, says Nilesh Kosti, who sells the costly dream of nuptials on private stretches of sand under the Gulf of Thailand's pink-blushed sunsets

      6 min read

    • Article

      Stall Economy

      Aug 29, 2023

      Stall Economy
      14 min read

    • Article

      From the Editor-in-Chief

      Sep 27, 2019

      Introducing Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the recent diaspora event in Houston, Texas, where Vaishnava Jana To was sung in a medley with Amazing Grace, a US Congressman quoted Mahatma Gandhi and his definition of democracy-'something that gives the

      2 min read

    • Article

      Point of View | The Folk Mela Is Dead

      Feb 22, 2019

      Driving over a road made of metal strips placed edge to edge on the banks of the receding river, the car's headlights illuminate an alarming image-a ten-armed Ganesh sits astride his faithful mouse-but the vaahan itself has been transformed into a va

      2 min read

    • Article

      Big Shots In The ’burbs

      Aug 27, 2023

      The election hoardings are up, the game is on, promises are being made. The main parties are roadbuilding. Winston Peters has a cunning plan: as the nation’s handbrake and culture warrior, his new hill to die on will be the ladies’ loo. In mangrovian

      2 min read

    • Article

      From The Editor-in-chief

      Mar 25, 2023

      We knew we were on to something good from our first outing. It was originally conceived as a one-off to culminate the magazine’s silver jubilee celebrations in October 2001, but just before that, there came the world-changing event of 9/11. This was

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Bookshelf

      Oct 26, 2022

      Jerry Pinto’s newest novel, set in Bombay in the 1980s, revolves around the character Yuri Fonseca from Mahim. It explores themes including friendship, adolescence, love, politics and loss. speaking tiger, S599, 408 pages An anthology that brings tog

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Gandhi effect

      Apr 22, 2019

      The Gandhi effect
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Truck Stops Here

      Dec 27, 2019

      If there is one group in India that is united in its loathing for the policeperhaps even more than student protestersit would have to be truck drivers. Towards the end of Truck De India, we meet driver Akhilesh Singh, who recounts with glee how he on

      2 min read

    • Article

      Blood and Ink

      Dec 16, 2021

      Blood and Ink
      14 min read

    • Article

      Unchecked Complacency and Privilege: On Prayaag Akbar’s ‘Leila’

      Feb 16, 2018

      The first day of this year marked an important event for the Dalit community in India. Historically marginalized by the caste system, where a Brahmin is ascribed the status of priest and scholar of religious texts, and the Dalits (formerly called

      7 min read

    Reviews for Walking with the Comrades

    4.5/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      In the north of India there is a war going on. A war that not many people outside India know about. A war that puts in antagonism the survival of many different tribes and the interest for exploitation of natural resources of a handful of powerful companies backed by the Indian state. A war that has been going on for decades and has caused thousands of deaths, displacement of entire populations, severe poverty and hunger, and the militarization of a considerable part of the Indian territory.

      As part of this war, and on the side of the tribes and peoples living in the forest, the Naxalites have emerged as an armed-resistance group that has been fighting back the Indian state, its militarized police, its army, and the far-right paramilitary groups they have employed to take control of the areas of interest. While the armed hand of the state has been responsible for the burning of entire villages, the murder and rape of tribes that are nothing but a hindrance to the state and corporate India, the Naxalites, originally part of a Maoist Communist Party that has long been illegalized, has been classified as a "terrorist organization" and the "biggest threat to national security" for their organized resistance and defense of the most dispossessed people in the nation.

      In 2010, Arundhati Roy managed to get access to the Naxalites and spend several weeks with them in the deep of the forest, living with them, walking hours a day to keep hiding, sharing their meals, and listening to their stories. In the aftermath of her time with them, she wrote a series of articles that details the history of the conflict, the context that brings about the need for armed resistance in India, and her first-hand experience with the group. These articles, published first in the Outlook magazine, were later compiled into this book.

      The Naxalite uprising is probably the most important armed struggle currently going and one that cannot be ignored. Its existence and extent comes to show that it's the most dispossessed, those who have nothing to lose, who are the most likely to stand in arms against the oppressing capitalist powers.
    • 4/5
      One can never stop gushing about the wonderful Arundhati Roy. Thorn in the side of the Indian government-corporate nexus, a humane voice amidst the apathetic media and so called 'intellectuals' , she write firmly from the side of the powerless.

      This piece of writing is an example of journalism that has not sold it's soul to the devil. A clear and extremely informative account of the lives of a group of Maoists of Central India, people regarded as infestations by the State and surely by majority of the citizens because we have been swallowing the lies, forming opinions based on them and not bothering to educate ourselves because it's all to easy to dismiss people who are fighting any kind of injustice as 'senselessly violent' in the comfort of our homes, and leave it at that.

      Roy's book shakes us out of of our apathy and presents a lucid account about who the Maoists actually are, what motivate them and why have they taken the path of violent resistance.

      I didn't know much about Roy or the Maoists but I recall quite an uproar about her being a Naxal lover, a traitor, a threat to the nation etc a few years back. There was quite a lot of hate speech about her. Now, after being aware of her politics it's easy to say why she's hated so much by certain sections. Their hatred reveals more about them than about her.

      This book can be seen as a kind of an exposé, a chance for all of us to understand a section of society that few have tried to explain while maintaining a clear head.

      I found the Maoists a distinctly more honourable group of people than those who want to exterminate them. Its time the Indian government figured out that it can never expect to wipe off the Maoists with its brute force. They have developed a thick shell and are willing to fight and fight dirty( though not as dirty as the government, the Maoists have a code of conduct while the same cannot be said about the State). I cannot say that it's bad news that someone is giving this unjust establishment a really really hard time and it's even better that it is by those it has been oppressing for ages.
    • 5/5
      There's something stirring in India. A specter, if you will, of a dark time arisen and a dark time to come. Whether we call it capitalism, corporatism, or new (neo) Imperialism, the fact remains that those most affected by the shifting dynamics of contemporary industrialization will be the disenfranchised and the disinherited.Arundhati Roy's (The God of Small Things, etc.) Walking with the Comrades waltzes straight into this new Indian world with passion and focus, chronicling her journey into the forests of India where Maoists and the few remaining indigenous people have dug in their heels. Each new day brings her closer to the heart of the movement that has set India's government on fire, spawning new counter-revolutionary police forces and new regulations and laws to strip people of their land for corporate profit. In the process, she crafts a disturbing narrative of the new Indian state, one which will seem suspiciously familiar to Americans who know a little about the United States' history with the Native Americans.Walking with the Comrades is a quick read, though by no means an easy one. Roy spends considerable time setting the stage for her walk with the Maoist "revolutionaries" in the forests of India. She provides cogent analyses of the Indian government's old and new programs for stifling dissent, the language they use, and the results of their activities. Likewise, she explores the history of communism in India, leading us through suppression, violent acts, revolts, and the mindset of the people on the ground -- the very comrades with which she walks. Walking with the Comrades, as such, is part of the grand tradition of travel narratives, but it is also an expansion of Roy's long and distinguished career as a novelist and cultural critic.And it's the travel narrative aspect which is most compelling. True, Walking with the Comrades is about the political and economic situation in contemporary India, but it also an attempt to put a face on the great "security threat" of India. It's a clever tactic, because understanding that there are humans behind the mask of terror forces us to think about who we are fighting against, and why they are resisting. In the case of India, the Maoists are fighting a government that wants communism in all its forms destroyed, and the indigenous people protected by Maoists -- even if only for political gain -- moved off and adapted for industrial society -- at the expense of their traditions, native lands, etc. To realize who the Maoists are is to make blind faith to India's new cultural projects impossible, if not because we care about the Maoists and their goals -- most of us in the U.S. likely do not because we have a tendency to be ruthlessly anti-communist here -- then at least because we understand why they are doing what they do. Perhaps it's the optimist in me thinks that maybe reasonable compromise can be found in this cesspool of violence and hatred if only we can see the humanity in everything.Still, some might be willing to dismiss Roy's work simply because she often provides polemics and doesn't seem altogether genuine when she concedes points to the opposition; in the case of Walking with the Comrades, Roy occasionally tries to suggest that the Indian government might have a solid rationale for some of their actions, yet the overwhelming majority of the book rips India to shreds, thereby weakening the conciliatory gesture. But to dismiss the book for this reason would be to discount what is clearly a problem that transcends borders and exposes the divisions and strategies utilized by a government bent not on compromises with indigenous people, but the destruction of their way of life. Even if you shrug Roy off as a wacky liberal, the facts point to a disturbing history which does not paint a pretty image for the Indian state. And even if you look at the other side, it's hard to ignore the words spoken by the people in charge, the projects set in place, the militarization of the police, and the general sense that things are not as they should be.It's perhaps for that reason that I come out of Roy's book feeling unable to challenge the anger and disbelief she channels throughout her book, despite wearing my critical thinking cap during the reading process. Roy doesn't pull many punches when she attacks India's government and the corporations attached to it, but I found myself wondering why she bothered pulling the ones she did. If her facts are in order -- they are -- then what the Indian government is doing doesn't deserve conciliatory gestures, friendly discussion, or calm reasoning. Rather, it seems to me that to fight an extremist state, one must attack it with an extreme position. Roy certainly heads in that direction, and the result is an enormously educational reading experience. When I finished reading, I wondered where we are supposed to go from here. Maybe Roy will cover that in her next book...Walking with the Comrades is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I have read this year, and certainly one worth remembering for years to come. If you're interested in contemporary Indian history or global capitalism, this is a book to add to your collection.Read With: Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper