In Intellectual Engagement: Arundhati Roy
I start with an old question: When Tehelka was being cornered you had said there should be a Noam Chomsky in India. Later you had once told me that 'I am not an activist'. What is this idea of Noam Chomsky in a context like India?
I think essentially that whether it is an issue like Tehelka being hounded or all the other issues that plague us, much of the critical response is an analysis of symptoms; it’s not radical. Most of the time it does not really question how democracy dovetails into majoritarianism which edges towards fascism, or what the connections are between this kind of 'new democracy' and corporate globalisation, repression, militancy and war. What is the connection between corruption and power?
At one point when the Tehelka expose happened, I thought, thank God the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone’s taken money, imagine if they had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more frightening.
In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism - it's a deadly cocktail. We see it unfolding before our eyes. Sometimes it looks as though the result of all this will be a twisted implementation of the rural employment guarantee act. Half the population will become Naxalites and the other half will join the security forces and what Bush said will come true. Everyone will have to choose whether they're with "us" or with the "terrorists". We will live in an elaborately administered tyranny.
