An interview conducted by the Union of Green Libertarians of Greece with comrade
Aranya from the collective The Scarlet Underground ---- Union of GreenLibertarians > Okay, let's start with the most basic things, like the projectitself. What is it? ---- The Scarlet Underground < Okay, well, The ScarletUnderground has three parts to the project - the first part, of course, is theimmediate mutual aid that we need to use as direct action for the rural communityin which we are located. So what we're doing is 1. raising awareness, somethingthe state should have done a long time ago,[its lack]being the reason most peopledon't understand why they need masks etc.; 2. produce and distribute free masksand 3. deliver products such as rice, daal (lentils), soy and antiseptics, etc.to the poorest villages here, which are Lodhas and Santhals, indigenous peoplesof India. After the isolation ends, by December, we are planning to build acommunity center that will act as a permaculture school, as well as a health andlegal aid clinic, which will be built on land that the collective will buytogether and we are planning everything so that we can discover the contours anddepressive excavations to retain rainwater and basically the practice ofpermaculture on site, and the idea is that once the Local residents see thedifference between permaculture and monoculture will change the way they planttoo. The other plan is to build a shallow well during the month of December (ormaybe even later, but before the summer) because if the rains don't come, thefarmers will lose all their rice fields and the wells would help to have a riceharvest in the year. whole. once local residents see the difference betweenpermaculture and monoculture, they will change the way they plant too. The otherplan is to build a shallow well during the month of December (or maybe evenlater, but before the summer) because if the rains don't come, the farmers willlose all their rice fields and the wells would help to have a rice harvest in theyear. whole. once local residents see the difference between permaculture andmonoculture, they will change the way they plant too. The other plan is to builda shallow well during the month of December (or maybe even later, but before thesummer) because if the rains don't come, the farmers will lose all their ricefields and the wells would help to have a rice harvest in the year. whole.Okay, the last thing is to build another community center in Calcutta, which isabout 3 km from here, a part-bookstore and part-hostel-and-kitchen type, withfree installation and soup, for the unemployed and the homeless. roof. It wouldalso give us space to bring volunteers and more people to know about ourpermaculture project in Jhargram, among other information that would be morepolitical. Like, there's a steel sponge factory here and we're going to need tostart organizing the people here to fight it. Last time, the protest leader wasfound hanging from a tree in the jungle. So yeah, it's pretty creepy.Now the point is that we need people to contribute as a show of solidarity, notcharity - which a lot of people obviously don't understand, so internationalgroups like Germany's FAU[anarcho-syndicalist organization]are helping us, and sothere are comrades here who helped us too, but they can't help much (up to 10,000rupees is too much for us). I haven't added plans for Calcutta yet because weplan to do so when Flo and other comrades from abroad arrive in December. Most ofthe TSU at the moment are just farmers, local workers, students and anarchists:in all, I would say around 10 people, of which 3 are in Calcutta now. Sinceeverything is being done by the 7 of us at the moment, with the support of acommunist farmer who wants to join us, we'll be talking to them about all of thissoon. Next week we hope to have enough funds to go to Aulgeria, which is anAdivasi village, and begin our work with them.UGL > So basically you're building a commune from scratch, and it's a greatstart. My second question is, how did you think about this project? Did you haveland from the start or did you have to buy it?TSU >My family was liberal landowners until my grandfather turned communist, sowe have land here that we bought from Anglo-Indians who were leaving the countryduring the partition of India and, since my entire family is on the left, we keepthat praxis alive, which is why my mom wants to be a part of it too and doesn'tmind us working here-in fact, she's full of ideas.The land we want to transform into the commune is literally a forest - it isadjacent to a forest reserve and is full of sakhuas, among other fruit trees etc.so there will be a lot of work to be done when we start. But the main andimmediate work is now mutual assistance by Covid-19, for which we are raisingfunds. Yesterday, police beat and humiliated local villagers for not wearingmasks, for example.So now it's imperative that we distribute masks to as many families as possibleand raise awareness about Covid - one of our comrades has already made postersabout it so that's what we'll do this week, print the posters and flyers anddistribute them with the masks.For the next week, if we have the resources, we will go to Aulgeria, where webasically buy the local rice crop and distribute it to the people, and also givethe rest of the products, soap, antiseptic etc. We'll document everything too, soyou can see the relief work when it gets started.UGL > What is the name of the city in which your project is being developed?TSU <Actually it's a village, but it's close to Jhargram, it's inside theJhargram district. The place is called Niribili, you can find it on Google, myparents used to run it as a family stay (my dad passed away from Covid lastNovember). The village is called Garh Salboni.Anyway, until we get enough money to buy our own acres of land, we will have touse that land as our base, which is the idea of both farmers and "owners" becauseof similar ideologies.UGL > That's pretty cool. What do local residents think of what you are doing?Have you already recruited any members?TSU <Well, of the 7 of us working here, 3 are from the region and there's anotherone coming in. Local people are happy with our project - it's the politicalparties within the villages that usually try to say that the mutual aid work wasdone by them etc., but this kind of direct action always seems to have a positiveimpact, in my experience . There's also another man named Kabir who will possiblyjoin us-I'm looking forward to meeting him when his work is done in a few days.So yes, we are really trying to make this project as local as possible, as thisis the best way to promote solidarity and the idea of autonomy.UGL > Looks like your project is a spark of hope in a world of darkness. Do youcooperate with other collectives? I mean both nationally and internationally.TSU <We cooperated with the German FAU, which helped us a lot. The British IWWdidn't really help, but when did the British ever help the Indians? Manyanarchists, at the individual level, cooperate with us, but for the most part itwas the FAU who helped us with a lot of resources and, at the national level,there are individuals who contribute both works and funds, but not many.We are trying to keep closer to Bangladesh-based Araj and BASF, but this is stillin the embryonic period, but we have not yet had the opportunity to cooperatewith anarchist collectives in Greece or Spain or Latin America.UGL > Good to know the FAU is helping, are they planning a visit? As for theBangla comrades, please tell me more. I know nothing about autonomy and anarchismin Bangladesh.TSU <To be honest I don't know much, but there are a lot more anarchist groups inBangladesh; BASF is a union[anarcho-syndicalist], Araj is an anarchistcooperative, if I'm not mistaken. Araj basically means "stateless" in Bangla.UGL > We should confederate and help each other. With this interview, I plan forGreek comrades to learn about you. However, geography has its role and it is agood thing that you have come into contact with comrades from Bangla. And Pakistan?TSU <All of us here would love to confederate with your group! We would love toknow more about it too, and maybe we could visit and learn from each other in thefuture. Well, I'm not very versed in Pakistani anarchist groups - thedemonization of the people there is enough to shield what's really going onthere. I'm sure there are groups, but I think they have to be very careful onaccount of the state and religious fundamentalism as well. A Pakistani anarchistonce wanted to meet me, he came to India, but he was forced to the police stationevery day and was basically so harassed that he literally cried for a long timeand went back to Pakistan.I've been in touch with Food Not Bombs from the Philippines, they're really,really cool and really found their own way to reach people through punk shows forexample.UGL > How will you proceed after completing the Kolkata project? Are you planningto create a network of solidarity-based communes for India?TSU < Yes, this is basically our plan. In the same way that we try to influencedifferent people in cities byagitprop, seminars and volunteer work on whatanarchism and mutual aid really mean, and then helping them organize their ownco-operative communes, which I think is important because the first few times youdo this you will surely fail, but still, you will learn so many things and,little by little, you can improve. If all goes well then I hope that by 2040(when climate change will most likely become extremely destructive, something wecannot predict as a species) we will have these communes grouped together as afederation where we are always cooperating and solving problems autonomously,instead to expect the prime minister to realize that his entire village isstarving and out of rice paddies. But yes, this is just a dream until we can goahead with the plans and build the commune.I think once we get the community center started, both in Salboni and Kolkata,things will start to flow. We are still trying to figure out where we can raisemoney (as a co-op, to support ourselves), or whether our production will suffice.Let's see what happens. Until December none of this will happen, we will only beworking in villages in Jhargram district with food and supplies, free masks andawareness campaigns etc.UGL > I see a lot of similarity between your project and ours, especially nowthat you mention climate change. Earlier, you mentioned cooperative farms andpermaculture, and as far as I know Indian plains are well suited for planting. Doyou think about starting new farms?TSU <We love permaculture. That's what we're trying to do in the forest here! Iobviously haven't learned about it anywhere, but I've been trying to learn aboutit, read about it, and practiced with my pet plants and some other tactics, it'samazing how different permaculture can make your forest. Flo just told me thatyou guys are green anarchists, so I figured you guys practice permaculture, soyeah, I was really excited. I would love to know more about what you do and aboutyour cultivation and your experiences.UGL > Well I'm not an anarchist, I'm an autonomist who was influenced by today'santi-civ and green anarchists. The rest of the staff are mostly green anarchistcomrades. We started working on the farms in early November and have progressed alot since then. At the moment, we are waiting for the harvest to be ready and aportion of it will be distributed among poor proletarians. Permaculture has saveda lot of money and we are also working on food forests and log cabins wherepeople can be housed. We also practice herding animals, what about you?TSU <I am an anarchist, I was very influenced by Kropotkin, Camus and Goldman,and Bhagat Singh, who was an Indian revolutionary. I've always been torn betweengreen and red anarchism because, for me, climate change has always been thebiggest cause of radical change and those responsible for it are the capitalists.So I worked with MLs, Maoists, and we had our own zine and collective calledEyezine, after which came the Kaloberal Collective, which failed again, and thenin 2020 we started the People's Solidarity Collective, which is a mutual aidcollective, which basically became The Scarlet Underground. So this project is amix of black and green and black and red, you might say.We had some cows in the past, now we have many chickens and dogs. And elephants,there's a lot of them here now to eat the mangoes and jackfruits.UGL > That's pretty cool. So you have some past that you can use your reputationto grow the project in number and quality. Eggs, milk and cheese can be a goodsource of nutritious food for the poorest people (sic). I see that theiractivities are much like ours, which are rural-based. However, since you plan toexpand to urban centers, how are you going to proceed? We thought of creatingvertical gardens in occupations, but nothing more. And you?TSU <Unfortunately, here in urban areas it costs a fortune to get a house withland to use. In the best case, I think it will be through a community gardeninside the house, where we can practice permaculture, but in large plastic orceramic vats. That way, whoever enters the community center leaves with some ideaand perhaps some curiosity about permaculture.UGL > What about occupations?TSU <Occupations are difficult in Calcutta, they are usually done by thehomeless; we can, however, cooperate with them and provide food. The problem isthat it's much harder to do your daily work because here you get beaten by thepolice.UGL > Got it. Are those occupations in Calcutta located on the outskirts? Isthere a lot of policing in the region?TSU <Many of them yes. There are many activists in the region too, yes, but theybuild their own housing on the outskirts and the State fucks up everything forthem and for any NGO there.UGL < We hope your project goes well. We will proceed with the confederation andhope that more collectives will join us in creating a global network ofsolidarity. Greetings to you comrades!TSU >Save!TSU's Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/thescarletundergroundTSU website:http://thescarletunderground.com/Source:https://prasinoieleutheriakoi.wordpress.com/2021/05/06/anarchism-in-india-theory-and-praxis/Translation > SkyRelated Content:https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2021/09/27/mpt-acharya-o-esquecido-anarquista-indiano-que-lutou-pela-verdadeira-liberdade/https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2020/05/27/alemanha-india-solidariedade-com-a-populacao-rural-de-bengala-ocidental/https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2020/04/06/declaracao-e-exigencias-sobre-o-impacto-do-covid-19-na-india/anarchist news agency-ana_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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