Arundhati Roy in Outlook:
“Ironically, the era of the free market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in India—the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own, somewhere up in the stratosphere where they merge with the rest of the world’s elite. This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself, hermetically sealed from the rest of India.
“It has its own newspapers, films, television programmes, morality plays, transport systems, malls and intellectuals. And in case you are beginning to think it’s all joy-joy, you’re wrong.
“It also has its own tragedies, its own environmental issues (parking problems, urban air pollution); its own class struggles. An organisation called Youth for Equality, for example, has taken up the issue of Reservations, because it feels upper castes are discriminated against by India’s pulverised lower castes.
“It has its own people’s movements and candle-light vigils (Justice for Jessica, the model who was shot in a bar) and even its own People’s Car (the Wagon for the Volks launched by the Tata Group recently). It even has its own dreams that take the form of TV advertisements in which Indian CEOs (smeared with Fair & Lovely Face Cream, Men’s) buy over international corporations, including an imaginary East India Company.
“They are ushered into their plush new offices by fawning white women (who look as though they’re longing to be laid, the final prize of conquest) and applauding white men, ready to make way for the new kings. Meanwhile, the crowd in the stadium roars to its feet (with credit cards in its pockets) chanting ‘India! India!'”
Read the full article here: Listening to grasshoppers
Whoever are not in that country should try to enter ASAP.
How?
Education is the key. Somehow get you kids to complete their bachelors.
So Ms Roy should look at the big picture and push of education.
The only good part is, she is talking about ‘class’, not ‘caste’ for a change.
However, she should limit herself to fiction writing- DONOT pretend to be upholder of morality. She has none.
HER FAMILY SURPASSED LAND ENMARKED FOR TRIBAL POPULATION, THUS SHE BROKE THE LAW.
I remember Charlie Rose once asked her in Charlie Rose show: what is your problem with USA (She was in NY to accept some award by some US think tank). She started going ballistic against “US policies” etc etc.
Charlie told her: Do you know the think tank which is giving you award is funded by some big US multinationals?
SEND THIS LADY (along with other Mombatti-walas) TO IRAN TO SEE THE SITUATION OF WOMEN for example.
Ms Roy is a Crib Mistress. And pray where does Ms Roy live. Does she live in a mumbai slum or Dalit Basti. Please spare us from your hypocrisy Ms Roy. Her books are read by the people of this elite group. Look at the disparaging way she speaks about the CEOs who are buying foreign companies – with the fairness creams and those white women waiting to be laid. Churumuri why do you publish such trash written by hypocrites like Roy who do everything possible to be in the politically correct left wing groups clamouring for their booker and hooker prizes.
Apparently writing unreadable Indian exotica for white-skinned readers gives you the entitlement to write about middle-class India’s craze for “white approval”……
I have always been ambiguous about Arundhati Roy. There is some truth to what she says and some hysterical hyperbole too. But, this seems to be an interesting essay.
She is right in that the quest for resources will displace people. It will no be no surprise that the people sitting on these resources will become targets of nefarious bureaucrats and businessmen. But, an armed struggle is not going to help anyone. What is needed is a transparent mechanism where resource owners can be compensated at market prices. Progress does not have to mean killing the weak. In fact with an efficient system, all the players involved can reap benefits. Then again , knowing the way India operates, that will probably remain a pipe dream.
Communism folks. Communism is the way forward. Let everyone be poor is the right strategy according to Roy.
All hail Communism.
AR: you will do far better writing articles out of direct experience than by watching Television
She has always been a leftist, no surprises there. Supposedly championing the cause of poor, which is their constituency, and they must retain it.
For sure Arundathi suffers from ADHD. Haven’t heard in a while…May be she went on a pilgrimage to Venezuela to serve her master!!!
The article could not be more biased. She speaks volumes about Gujarat and virtually nothing about the Anti-Sikh riots or the issue in Nandigram. She virtually holds everyone responsible for encouraging riots – from Ratan Tata to the newspapers and TV channels. When Ratan Tata or Mukesh Ambani calls Gujarat an investment-friendly state, they are implicated as having blood on their hands.
She speaks about genocides being the norm rather than an aberration but somehow misses the persecution of Hindus in medieval times. The US , Israel and India in particular, are accused of being occupiers.
“They have at least this one thing in common—all three are engaged in overt, neo-colonial military occupations: India in Kashmir, Israel in Palestine, the US in Iraq.”
So India is a militant occupier in its own country – Pakistan is not. China is not.Nowhere does she mention Saddam Hussein sending all those Kurds to gas chambers. Or that Hindus are being persecuted in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
RSS and its sister organizations are particularly vilified. She speaks about the grand design of the RSS to spread the Hindu ideology and thereby encourage genocides by opening schools, working with women, helping lepers and so on.
“But the RSS’s real power lies in the fact that it has put in decades of hard work and has created a network of organisations at every level of society, something that no other organisation can claim.
The BJP is its political front. It has a trade union wing (Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh), a women’s wing (Rashtriya Sevika Samiti), a student wing (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) and an economic wing (Swadeshi Jagaran Manch).
Its front organisation Vidya Bharati is the largest educational organisation in the non-governmental sector. It has 13,000 educational institutes including the Saraswati Vidya Mandir schools with 70,000 teachers and over 1.7 million students. It has organisations working with tribals (Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram), literature (Akhil Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad), intellectuals (Pragya Bharati, Deendayal Research Institute), historians (Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalan Yojanalaya), language (Sanskrit Bharti), slum-dwellers (Seva Bharati, Hindu Seva Pratishthan), health (Swami Vivekanand Medical Mission, National Medicos Organisation), leprosy patients (Bharatiya Kushtha Nivaran Sangh), cooperatives (Sahkar Bharati), publication of newspapers and other propaganda material (Bharat Prakashan, Suruchi Prakashan, Lokhit Prakashan, Gyanganga Prakashan, Archana Prakashan, Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, Sadhana Pustak and Akashvani Sadhana), caste integration (Samajik Samrasta Manch), religion and proselytisation (Vivekananda Kendra, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Jagaran Manch, Bajrang Dal). The list goes on and on…”
Even the Supreme Court is not spared – calling them pillars of corporate power. The Naxals in different states are given saintly status in her article. Every naxal with a gun is a great man.
Read the following:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030507/asp/frontpage/story_1945565.asp
Ms.Booker-Prize lands in trouble for owning and staying in a forest bungalow in a restricted area.
If the land was notified as forest land, why did Tahsildar transfer the land to Arundati’s name at first place. Arundati may have been a victim here. Rather than prosecuting the Tahsildar, Arundati’s family is being tried.
This speaks volumes about what is wrong with India.
A goverment that trys to be a tyrant, even when the fault is clearly governments!!
Arundati’s problem is that she is high on rhetoric and low on logic. Rhetoric alone does not convince people. Particularly rhetoric like that of Arundati turns off all the intellectual discussion becuase it becomes a shouting match. I am convinced on the cause of Arundati, because I have faced the very situations and learnt my lessons. I agree with her that Fascism is a real danger for India.. But the roots of Fascism lay at the footsteps of Nehru family. They systemically subverted the democracy to peddle psuedo lefts and the outcome now is psuedo rights. ( I mean rights at present are not really fascists.. but may go fascist way ).
The culprit for all this is 42 amendment of constitution that made Indian constitution largest roll of toilet paper in the world.
Go back to original preamble ( thanks churumuri ) and guarantee each and everyone their freedom. That should be on Arundati’s agenda before tackling symptoms of Nehru-Gandhi misrule
“Middle class in their own country”
Reversing the logic – so called ‘intellectuals’ are living in their own world. Being a middle class Indian, I often feel the occusations made against us should be held against intellectuals themselves. It is they who have a disconnect from reality and not middle class. Look at people like Arundati Roy and Ananthamurthy, is it that because they are so creative and poetic, they can not live in reality? These people have stopped living long time ago and they expect others also to do the same. What’s wrong if people are becoming materialistc? What’s wrong if people want to get rich? And what’s wrong if middle class identifies more with Jessica than a slum dweller and feels more for her death?
The bad part about prose like this piece is that, it killed the little message it had. There are positives, though far and few amid the shrill hyperboles as Melange points out. But when the actor becomes bigger than the role, the narrative suffers. I re-read the entire article twice and the only thing that sticks out like a sore thumb with gangrene is her rash generalizations and irresponsible comments about who is looking to get laid.
Crass, uncalled for and baseless insults about people who are putting India on the world map. But then again, she is opposed to much of development in some form or the other ..
Back to you Ms. Roy:
“She was voted one of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” by People Magazine. That was in 1998; she’s officially “in her late thirties” now, her age blurring like her prose; but it will always be her very young self which stares out from the book jackets of her one and only novel. Her face is turned toward the camera with a sleepy, pouting expression straight out of Playboy, her winsome curls as damp as her big brown eyes, her reassuringly Aryan features conveniently enclosed by demonstrably non-white skin.”
The whole article?
The goddess of big lies
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6487&IBLOCK_ID=35
Guys,
I think the comments here are pretty one sided ( Big Surprise!!). Arundhati Roy is talking about those that have been completely betrayed by the Indian republic and whose future might get grimmer. I don’t think one can fault her for that.
Gujarat was a disgrace. One cannot go about killing innocent folks just because they are guilty by association with a certain religion( How much so ever one despises that religion). I don’t think any reasonable person would disagree with it.
Arundhati Roy is wrong in espousing violence as a possible solution. Her counter revolutionary spirit might seem eloquent to read on paper, but in reality things don’t pan out that well. She always talks about how “another world is possible”. This is the time for her to come out with possible solutions. This is her chance to create that other world. She articulates the problems beautifully, But, she proposes no solutions. The solution will be incredibly complex. The solution will require a level of pragmatism that will render all ideologies obsolete. It remains to be seen if Arundhati Roy can back her talk. The evidence so far suggests otherwise.
Melange,
I would like to refer to the Gujarat Incident as the Reality! Sure, Gujarat Godhra incident and the subsequent ‘blind’ counterattack could have been avoided on hindsight. Since then I think it has made many Indian lives safer because the ‘handlers’ who perpetrated the original Godhra tragedy realized that their game plan was completely exposed. Therefore, any more ‘Gujarat Godhra Models’ would be a waste of time. We can all go ad nauseum about the whys and why nots, slogans like “Rent a Minority Cause” or “Give the Minority Fish and Throw Away the Rod” kind of benefits.
Coming to AR, what you say about her is also true about what you just said about Gujarat. I think as you think, “But, she proposes no solutions. The solution will be incredibly complex. The solution will require a level of pragmatism that will render all ideologies obsolete….”
Sure Melange,
One cant find fault with what she has written. We were reacting to the part cut/pasted in churumuri (btw isn’t thats Fair and Handsome for men?).
and the part:
‘no famous writers will be around when the bullets fly.’
She is there, no?
she puts india in kashmir and the US in iraq at the same level.
Whoops. Was posted before. Let me post an excerpt then.
“She is also a saint, the latest great Aryan hope from the land which gave us Gandhi, Nehru and the Baghwan Shree Rajneesh — virtually all of the most tedious saints of the last century. She is said to have left home at 16 to live in a squatter’s colony in Delhi, earning a living collecting beer bottles. Our Lady of Recycling, who even in starvation made a career of high-profile virtue. She is supposed to be the pure product of the fertile soil of Kerala, site of her one and only novel. Like all Indian saints, her dream is to scold the rich and successful countries for their lack of…their lack of…something or other. Virtue, poverty, skin diseases, flies around the eyes…something. She put her nobel-prizewinning life on the line to oppose a dam which would displace thousands of villagers.
And she is a fraud. A literary careerist who has parlayed an overwritten melodrama into unearned fame; a child of privilege whose early experiments in poverty were no more than a smart career move; a Yuppie whose real job was aerobics instructor, not slum bottle-recycler; a world-travelled, overeducated dilettante posing as a regional writer; and a fake saint who fucked her way to fame and survives, in spite of her complete lack of talent, because her crude scolding warms the heart of old British lefties who love it when their tame Indian slaves get up on their hind legs to denounce the bloody Americans, who oppress the world so much less skillfully than they used to.
Her most public, most embarrassing slip came in her noble struggle against the dam. She was given a three month jail sentence for obstructing the builders. Gandhi-like, she went to jail…then slunk out after 24 hours, opting to pay a 75-rupee ($1.50) fine rather than show solidarity with the humble prisoners. It seems she found an Indian prison much less spiritual than she had imagined. Rather dirty, in fact. 24 hours was just time enough to be photographed behind bars, looking fierce and defiant; after that there was no point in staying in such an unsanitary place.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Arundhati Roy, moral crusader. ”
**
John Dolan’s critique nails Arundhati Roy pretty well.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6487&IBLOCK_ID=35
what a pious fraud. not one word about the Kashmir Pandits. the doofus she is she doesn’t realise that no one in India least of all the poor and hungry want to wallow in their poverty and hunger. everyone wants to break out of the shackles of socialism and enforced sanctimony and live well. and for india’s sake all of us must help that happen. if arundati doesn’t want to break free and continue enjoying her made-up fraudulent austere lifestyle (a la Agnes Boiaxhu) it’s her choice.
Wow! That was a great article if you ignore the hyperbole. Thanks to Churumuri for linking to it.
Though I don’t agree with her idea of a progressive State, I can see the havoc crony capitalism is causing in India. When secessionist violence erupts in so many parts of India, you need to re-examine India’s social contract. I wouldn’t trade human rights and freedom for “progress”.
You also begin to wonder what’s gone so wrong with our representative politics that people have to resort to armed struggle.
Sriram,
Thank you for the forward. It is brilliant!
Re. the John Dolan article quoted above, which I’ve just finished reading.
Hyperbole to squash hyperbole.
Is there, at the heart of John’s article, a desire to understand or inform the world? To make patterns out of seemingly unconnected events?
If there is, perhaps I’ve missed it.
Loaded with hyperbole AR might be (note ‘might’). Misinformed and full of fake piety, even. But at least her writing has inspired, shocked and galvanized some of her readers into trying to understand the world in a deeper way. Trying to see where they fit into the status quo.
I see none of that in JD article. Or, indeed, in anything he writes. It’s just backlash. Knee-jerk reactions. Blind.
Oh – ps: puh-leassse. A simple rule for rebuttals- Use credible sources.
http://www.exile.ru barely qualifies.