Depends where you are in the food-chain of capitalism.
> worst abuses of the system, but where I think people like Roy go off the
> tracks is in their elevation of "resistance" into the highest form of
> political activity.
She's an artist, not a politician.
> But chucking out all previous attempts to alleviate the human
> condition wholesale;
Where on earth does she ever say that? She's a polemicist and an author, not some deep political thinker with a program to transform India. She's upset at the weakness and betrayals of the established Left, and I think she has a point. And her book focuses on three hot potatoes that the Left has had real trouble dealing with: (1) caste, (2) gender and the role of the domestic sphere in political activism, and (3) the crisis of a certain kind of one-party Leftism.
> The fictional
> "Comrade Pillai" is not only a coward, but gives his seal of approval to
> the betrayal of a *comrade* -- not just anyone, but a well-respected party
> militant and comrade -- to the police because he is a dalit.
It's more ambiguous than that. The structure of the final tragedy is very, very complicated -- there are layers and layers to it. Pillai is only a small player in all this.
Great artists don't solve problems; they *pose* them.
-- DRR