Status Updates From Walking With The Comrades

People who once dreamed of justice and equality, and dared to demand land to the tiller, have been reduced to asking for an apology from the police for being beaten and maimed. Is this progress?

'Whenever they take someone away,' Sukdai says, 'you have to go immediately and snatch them back. Before they write any report. Once they write in their book, it becomes very difficult.'

'What's the most ridiculous charge you've had to deny?'
He thinks back. 'In 2007, we had to issue a statement saying "Nahi bhai, humney gai ko hathode say nahij mara" [No, brother, we did not kill cows with hammers].

An article on the Internet says that Israel's Mossad is training thirty high-ranking Indian police officers in the techniques of targeted assasinations, to render the Maoist organization 'headless'. There's talk in the presss about the new hardware that has been bought from Israel: laser range finders, thermal imaging equipment and unmanned drones so popular with the US army. Perfect weapons to use against the poor.

Everybody had graduated long ago from equating the structural violence of the state with the violence of the armed resistance