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Centre of Gravity Precepts Course participants were assigned the work of responding to Arundhati Roy's essay "Walking With The Comrades" from the perspective of non-harming or ahimsa. Below is my response . . .

Gandhians with a Gun: An Exploration of Ahimsa & the Work of Arundhati Roy

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. (Roy, Come September)

Arundhati Roy, writer-activist, has been criticized as an apologist for the Maoists, a group declared by the Indian Prime Minister as “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by [their] country” (“India's Naxalite Rebellion”). First known for her Booker-Prize winning novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy moved from fiction to explore the realm of power and powerlessness, citizen and state. She has spoken out against the US invasion of Afghanistan, against Hindu nationalism, mega dam projects, and has advocated non-violent resistance for over ten years (“Maoists Being Forced Into Violence”). In her essay Walking With The Comrades, Arundhati Roy writes about her travels through the jungle to experience firsthand the struggle between the tribal communities and the Indian government. With the poetics and delicate narrative of a novelist, Roy conveys the personalities, the people, and the atrocities inflicted on these forest villages. In a country where satyagraha – ahimsa or non-violent resistance – have been popularized by the teachings and actions of Mahatma Gandhi, Roy takes the unpopular stance of applauding the tribal resistance as a type of 'counter violence'. She asks, in the seclusion of the jungle, malnourished and in poverty, against paramilitary troupes and the threat of annihilation, what actions should these tribal people take? Under these specific conditions, how does one resist without the use of violence?

Ahimsa, most often translated as non-harming, is included in the five restraints (yama) outlined in Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra. These restraints make up the moral foundation in which yoga practice is grounded, taking practice off of the cushion or mat and integrating it into every thought, word and action. In it's most literal sense, the teaching of ahimsa instructs not to kill, not to intentionally inflict harm. In the Buddhist tradition, this teaching shows up as the first precept, and teaches one not only to abstain from killing but to encourage life. Gandhi integrated the teaching of ahimsa into a political approach which blended “truth, love, service, nonhurting by deed or word, tender tolerance of differences, and . . . moderation in the pursuit of material things” (Fischer, 132). There is great value in a commitment to not harm or kill another human being – and it is definitely a good place to begin one's exploration of ethics and practice – yet it is incomplete. It creates a separateness between humanity and the rest of the world, leaving out animals, plants, minerals, ecology. To look deeply at our actions is to see that harm and killing is caused every moment, in each step, in each breath. The very make-up of our bodies – our immune systems – involve white blood cells killing off foreign matter and infection for our own health and wellbeing. When ahimsa is explored amongst the other teachings of yoga and Buddhism, it shifts from a rule – do not harm; do not kill – to a question: “What is needed in this moment to encourage life?”

Arundhati Roy begins her essay by describing Dantewada, the setting in which this story unfolds, as a place that is upside down and inside out, where “the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms,” where women who have been raped are in police custody, and the rapists are giving speeches in the bazaar (2). To believe the mainstream media and government of India is to see the Maoists as a faceless group of left-wing extremists. Arundhati Roy reveals to readers the faces behind the resistance, describing saris and army fatigues, crude weapons fashioned out of pipes, songs and smiles. She shares meals, hugs, and stories of grief and oppression with people who have been forced to take arms as a means to stand against the government's operation to “cleanse” the jungle. Their stories of lovers, family, heartache, and sadness point to our own experiences of loss and grief. In this context, one cannot simply apply ahimsa as a rule “do not kill” and walk away. Compassion calls us to ask: What would it feel like to have your home wrenched from you? To see your son shot? Or have his dead body left by the side of the road while his killers have tea? What must it feel like to then have to pick up those same weapons and stand to fight? In understanding interdependence, compassion arises spontaneously and ahimsa becomes the responsibility to act against oppression and violence. Not only those singular and seemingly senseless acts of violence, but also the violence which is embedded in our economic system, our language, our belief systems, our very social fabric.

Oftentimes, a simple answer is most craved. We look to religions or spiritual traditions to give us a rule, to take the burden of deciding and acting from our shoulders. Along with the literal and compassionate approaches to ahimsa comes the koan. The koan is the paradox, the riddle, the teaching as question instead of answer. If each action we take causes harm, how does one apply ahimsa? If ahimsa concerns all animate and inanimate beings, how does one live, eat, breathe? In the case of the Maoists and tribal people, do they stand down and allow their government to commit genocide? Or do they take up arms? In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna stands face-to-face with a battlefield and becomes too overwhelmed with the impending violence to fight. In response to Arjuna's grief, Krishna says:

If you think that this Self can kill or think that it can be killed,

you do not well understand reality's subtle ways.

It never was born; coming to be, it will never not be.

Birthless, primordial, it does not die when the body dies.

Knowing that it is eternal, unborn, beyond destruction, how could you ever kill?

And whom could you kill, Arjuna? (Mitchell, 49)

Yoga and Buddhism, each in their own way, teach that there is no one to kill or be killed. Yet to take this approach alone would be to ignore the cries of the world. Holding this understanding in heart and mind, one must act in a world that has actors, and make choices in a world that has consequences.

Generalizing the teaching of ahimsa and applying it without discernment can be ineffective and even dangerous. To condemn the tribal resistance as terrorists is to see only one side of the situation, to submit to the status quo and turn a blind eye to the actions sanctioned by the Indian state. Nonetheless, the executions and violent acts of the Maoists described by Arundhati Roy do not sit comfortably as examples of ahimsa-in-action. For ahimsa to be a living and breathing teaching, it must continuously be adapted and explored in each moment, in each circumstance. Sometimes being applied literally, other times as a compassionate stance towards life and Nature, and occasionally simply remaining a question. There is perhaps no right or wrong answer; to have a singular answer applicable in all situations would require permanence. As Gandhi once said, the aim “ . . . is not to be consistent with my previous statement on a given question, but to be consistent with the truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth . . .” (Fischer, 57)

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Works Cited

Fischer, Louis. Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World. New York: Penguin Group, 1954. Print.

"India's Naxalite Rebellion: The red heart of India." The Economist November 5, 2009. Online.

“Maoists Being Forced Into Violence: Arundhati Roy.” CNN-IBN April 16, 2010. Video.

Mitchell, Stephen. Bhagavad Gita. New York: Random House, 2000. Print.

Roy, Arundhati. Come September September, 18, 2002. Video.

Roy, Arundhati. “Walking With The Comrades.” Outlookindia.com March 29, 2010. Online.