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This is a guestpost from Sanhati (www.sanhati.com), a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples’ movements in India by providing information and analysis, took the initiative to bring together voices from around the world against the Government of India’s planned military offensive in Central India.

The Pakistan Army’s recent military incursion against the Taliban in the Malakand region has internally displaced about 1.8 million Pakistanis. The IDPs have fled to make-shift camps, some as far as Karachi, and are suffering from hunger-related health problems and mental trauma.

It is now winter and the mist of the morning cloaks cop and robber alike. There is a distance between man and mortality at this point. There is nothing left of the previous night, but between the daylight and the dying light of the moon, there exists the dark and the people who dwell in it; cop and robber alike. Perhaps I should be more specific. Cop and insurgent. Robbers are welcome here. They are the lesser criminals. The self-interested idiots who think only of small gain, not concerning themselves with matters of state and government, regime change and gun-running.

I saw “Slumdog Millionaire” months ago, before the Oscars but after its appeal had risen to fever-pitch in the more multi-cultish corners of the US, like my very own Bay Area. I arrived early with my friend and the theater was packed with well-heeled, wide open-minded Berkeleyans, and this was well before the previews. And the next two hours were very enjoyable – the plot, if a bit saccharine, was also snappy and well-executed, the supersaturated colours were beautiful and it was not Bollywood length: all positives. By the time the credits came around and there was all that dancing at VT, I realized that that was the first and last dance number, also a major appeal. I liked it. I felt like Danny Boyle had given me a good time: it was Bollywood-ish enough not to feel completely fake, not Bollywood enough to require Excedrin before the intermission. But with enjoyment came some unease.