New Delhi: Terming the government`s decision
to launch an offensive to "wipe out" Maoists as "genocidal",
writer Arundhati Roy on Friday said such action will kill lakhs,
if not millions of people.
"I don`t know how government decides who is a Maoist. If
you want to wipe out the Maoists, which is a kind of genocidal
language that is being used, you are talking about killing
lakhs, if not millions of people," Roy told reporters here.
She said since the Naxalbari days, the government has
followed "the policy of extermination" while dealing with
Maoists.
Raising doubts that Maoists could be wiped out, she said,
"The movement has always comeback stronger, better equipped
and more politically orgainsed because it`s an imagination
fighting a different kind of imagination and you cannot wipe
it out in military ways."
Reacting to Roy`s view, Home Secretary G K Pillai said
the government is ready to talk if Maoist abjure violence.
"We are willing to discuss everything. We can stop all
the operation if they just abjure violence," Pillai said at a
seminar on "Left Wing Extremism Situation in India".
He said since they (Maoists) do not believe in
Parliamentary democracy, "so where is the scope of discussion?
"Let Arundhati Roy get a commitment from the Maoists that they
are willing to give up arms."
Sympathising with the poor people for taking up arms, Roy
said, "What are they to do, if a platoon of 300 to 1,000
policemen arrive, march through the night and surround the
village, raping and burning and killing (people)? Can they
have a Satyagrah? Who is listening to them?"
She said "it was not up to us" to decide and press our
morality on them on what kind of resistance somebody over
there should adopt or not adopt.
"Normally, it does happen in situation where people are
being armed and they go uncontrolled as it happened in Kashmir
and it happened everywhere."
She said she would be on the side of the person who is
trying to bring to the forefront issues of justice than to
push injustice through the barrel of the gun down the throats
of the poor in the country.
PTI
