Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, winner of the 1997 Man Booker prize for "The God of Small Things," is undoubtedly India's iconoclast no.1. During the launch of her two latest books—"Broken Republic" and "Walking With the Comrades" —on Friday evening, she came to the defence of the military tactics of India's Maoists in her polemical best:
- Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images
- Arundhati Roy: India’s iconoclast No.1
"When you have 800 CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force, a paramilitary force deployed to fight country's internal insurgencies] marching three days into the forest; surrounding a forest village and burning it and raping women, what are the poor supposed to do? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Can people who have no money boycott goods? What sort of civil disobedience we are asking them to adhere to?"
She backpedaled a little saying: "But at the same time what goes on in the forest in terms of resistance cannot go on outside the forest."
In "Walking With the Comrades," Ms. Roy recounts time she spent last year in the forest with the banned Maoist insurgents, who are active in large swathes of central and eastern India. In "Broken Republic," she writes about the character of Indian democracy. Both books are published by Penguin India.
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