Arundhati Roy : Imagining a World Beyond Capitalism and Communism

"The dilemma for the writer, I think, is how to spend your life honing your individual voice and then, at times like this, to declare it from the heart of a crowd. That tension, that balance, is something I think about quite often"
Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is one of India's most articulate and high profile radical intellectuals and political dissidents.

She is a profound thinker, a writer of immense power and a political activist with great courage.

She challenges not just the Indian state’s political, economic and military policy, but also religious and right wing groups, mining and financial corporations and the other  barons of corporate capitalism and big business.

In her recent writings  Arundhati Roy reminds us of India's long, complicated and strong legacy of political and intellectual left-wing activity and the need for spaces, places and communities free from capitalist exploitation and destruction.

"The day capitalism is forced to tolerate non-capitalist societies in its midst and to acknowledge limits in its quest for domination, the day it is forced to recognize that its supply of raw material will not be endless, is the day when change will come.

If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them

The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.

To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars"