These movements are our only hope. While communist resistance movements including guerillas war may have something to teach us about resistance, I do not believe they have the vision or the imagination to show us a way of sustainable living.

Women in the movement

Almost every resistance movement in India has women in front. This is among the most wonderful things about this place. Even the cadres of the PLGA (Peoples Liberation guerilla Army) are about 45% women. Though the Maoists cannot yet be called totally egalitarian, they appear to be more so on this question than other political parties.

Future of the movement

To begin with, I think, serious escalation. The Indian Government has made promises to the Corporations and here ‘creating a good investment climate’ means nothing but a war against the poor. But India is in a peculiar position. Unlike Western countries which were developing democracy at home while committing genocide in their colonies in order to extract raw materials to feed their industry, India today, which markets itself as the worlds’ largest democracy is having to colonize it’s own nether regions, to eat its own limbs. But the limbs are refusing to be eaten. The situation is this: For five years the poorest people in the world have managed to more or less hold off the richest corporations. It could be that the people of this country, with all their wisdom and resilience will win. If they do, they will make history. Maybe they will show the world a new way of doing things.

If they lose, it will be a defeat of the kind that the poor the world over have experience century after century. The fight is on. International solidarity helps, but increasingly, the fight has to be on the ground. Local, militant and impossible to co-opt.