The Company of Violent Men review: An unfiltered account of reporting from conflict zones

In the clamour of 24x7 news cycle, some stories are often reduced to simplistic binaries, with mainstream media flattening the people caught in the crosshairs of conflict and extremism into easily digestible tropes and portraying them reductively, perpetuating stereotypes. In The Company of Violent Men: Stories from the Bloody Fault Lines of the Subcontinent (Penguin Random House), investigative journalist Siddharthya Roy draws on his experiences as a reporter in conflict zones for the past decade and a half and his reported notes that didn’t make it to the ‘final edits’ of the articles he wrote between 2016 and 2023.

Through a series of vignettes and personal reflections on events spread out across India, Bangladesh and Germany, Roy introduces readers to a diverse cast of characters: militants, refugees, clandestine agents, and ordinary people in the throes of extraordinary circumstances. By diving into their stories, he aims to demonstrate the shared humanity that underlies even the most extreme behaviours. While not excusing their actions, Roy seeks to complicate our understanding of their motivations and the conditions that shaped them.

“What news consumers consume are headlines and sound bites. Daily news serves nothing more. It’s all just a never-ending series of big breaking stories about new wars, bombs and acts of political violence. And even then, the stories are woven along predetermined partisan lines catered to fit ever-shrinking attention spans,” he writes early in the book, adding that people connected to violent newsworthy events in the recent past have either been depicted either as victims or perpetrators. “But most are people between these extremes. And their stories had no place in the reports I was writing. That’s why this book,” he adds.

On the blood trail in Bangladesh

Giving us a sneak peek into Bangladesh’s local politics, Roy, while investigating the Holey Artisan Bakery attack which killed more than 20 people back in 2016 ends up living in an obscure location in Dhaka trying to seek access in a local unfinished mosque as he was able to trace several incendiary social media posts to this location.

His investigation leads him to a couple of men who support the Islamist faction and believes that the Awami League is biased towards the minorities, eerily similar to what we hear back in India from the majoritarian far right. Later, on his trip to Bagmara where his acquaintance Sharmee Hossain, a trained linguist, has been trying to establish a proper cricket league in order to dissuade the younger generation away from religious fundamentalism. That’s how we come to know of another violent man, Jamat-ul Mujahideen’s Siddique-ul Islam or Bangla Bhai (Bengal’s Big Brother) as he would like to call himself. Even though the author’s visit was after nine years of his death, the mayhem that he left behind was for him to still witness.

Information is fuel for a journalist, whosoever has it will be considered valuable but there are people out there who like to pretend that they know something exclusive and then it is the job of the journo to deduce what exactly might be the truth. Roy’s meeting with the all-knowing Zakir Kibira in Bangladesh is one such prime example. He claimed to be someone with deep connections all over his country but when he was asked about the fine details regarding the Holey attack, his tall claims dissipated right before the writer’s eyes.

Another similar source who was considered a ‘veteran’ reporter turned out to be a dud as his reputation preceded him amongst the intelligence community. In one such incident where he was asked by Roy to substantiate his claim of an exclusive story about the Indian intelligence nabbing a sleeper cell enraged him so much that he even went on to the extent of threatening him of dire consequences; nothing happened obviously.

The truth of Myanmar‘s Rohingyas  

Things are not always what they seem like and the job of a journalist is to dissociate fact from the popular fiction. Roy, in his journeys across the subcontinent reporting on various conflicts, shows us the life a journalist lives away from the air-conditioned studios of Noida. His intriguing discussion with a senior Rohingya leader at his hotel room in Cox Bazar, shows us the skill that is required for a journalist to extract information while making the interviewee comfortable.

As the discussion around what transpired with Rohingyas in Myanmar ensued, Roy tried to dig deeper into the allegations of Rohingyas being violent, secessionist and a terrorist group which the concerned person answered seamlessly, but as the noose started to tighten, his demeanour seemed to change a bit. The final blow came as the writer depicted a link of the handloom business in Bangladesh being a front for money laundering from the West which is then used to fuel the resistance forces. 

Roy’s experience as a journalist helps him to see beyond the bland narrative of terrorism and counter-terrorism to what it really is, a lucrative business helping the military industrial complex to flourish while people of those areas keep on suffering because of lack of resources and stability. He also raises a pertinent point about how these groups of insurgents and counter-insurgents become a safe haven for all kinds of louts who are safeguarded in the name of ideology and concocted morality.

Chasing Maoists in Chhattisgarh 

On the field, journalists might also come across another special kind of source who are experienced in ditching them at the exact moment. Kamal Shukla, a Hindi language journalist from Chhattisgarh, was that source for our writer. Earlier, he was given an impression that Kamal is that kind of a person who knew Maoist rebels in his state quite

well and could arrange for meeting but on a trip to the Maoist-controlled areas of Chhattisgarh in Abujhmarh, everything became a bit more clear. Upon reaching the decided place, the writer found that no preparations were made whatsoever and the Maoist leaders were not even contacted. But this isn’t a one-off case. In 2023 again, as our writer planned to investigate the infamous drone bombing news from Bastar, he had to face a similar fate with Kamal vanishing into thin air, only to respond a week later, drunk, and stating how he couldn’t help him.

In the life of a serious journalist, coming across violent men is a norm, which this book reinforces. Though violence can be of several kinds and not just physical. The writer laces the book with wit and humour. His statement that ‘alcohol is the next best thing to revolution’ weirdly reminded me of a famous writer Asghar Wajahat, who once said that a city becomes more civilized if there are shops selling alcohol in it. Going through the writer’s varied life experiences gives a certain perspective to the consumers of news about what actually happens behind the curtains and how unglamorous it all can be. It is not all James Bondish as we would like to imagine it to be, but is filled with unreliable fixers, exaggerating sources and, of course, violent men.