We must revive the bonds of love and amity

“Age-old beliefs cannot vanish in a second. A lot of work has to be done for this. And when the beliefs go, the resultant vacuum should be filled in by education and health care for all. The social attitude to the status of women needs to be changed and an overall scientific outlook has to be developed. We must revive the bonds of love and amity, long lost, which we have replaced with hatred, greed and political violence.”

[Quote from Mahasweta Devi’s Witch-Hunting in West Bengal, published in Bortika June 1987, translated from the original Bengali by Nabarun Bhattacharya, reproduced in Dust on the Road, The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi, edited by Maitreya Ghatak.]