> How does Roy's political writing play in India?
http://www.google.com/search?q=Arundhati+Roy+Indian+Left http://www.angelfire.com/in/SASG/aroy.html
>..Meanwhile here in India intellectuals associated with the CPI(M) have kept up a steady if ineffectual chorus of disapproval, with commentaries ranging from E.K.Nayanar and EMS Namboodiripad's strident attacks on Roy's 'morality' to Aijaz Ahmed's somewhat ponderous 'political reading'(Frontline, August 8 1997) all categorically labelling Roy 'anti- Communist' and 'anti-Left' on the basis of her portrayal of the CPI(M) in Kerala in the 1960s and since. But is this the only possible 'political reading' of The God of Small Things? Do either of these categorisations of the author - reigning deity of 'Indian writing in English' or member of the 'anti-Communist radical cosmopolitan intelligentsia' give us a real insight into the book?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11575 The Fictional World of Arundhati Roy
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_1998/january/books.htm Arundhati Roy and the Left: For reclaiming ‘small things’
http://www.hindu.com/2000/11/26/stories/13260411.htm
> ...Arundhati Roy's essay on the Sardar Sarovar dam was published by
> Outlook and Frontline magazines in May 1999. At the time, I had decidedly
> mixed feelings about it. As a work of analysis, it was unoriginal:
> Kothari and company had been there before her. As a piece of literary
> craftsmanship it was self-indulgent and hyperbolic. Still, to criticise
> the essay would be to let down the side. Might not her name and her fame
> attract to the "cause" the undecided upper class, men and women who would
> read Ms. Roy in Outlook but who had never heard of Nirmal Sengupta or the
> Economic and Political Weekly?
To suppress my reservations was not easy, for I had been intensely irritated by Ms. Roy's previous venture into public interest journalism: her polemic against the nuclear tests in 1998. There too, I was on her side, "objectively" speaking. Yet her vanity was unreal. Ms. Roy quoted, without irony, the judgment of her friend that after having written one successful novel she had seen it all, that a barren stretch of life lay before her until the final meeting with her Maker. She spoke of how she had disregarded the advice of those who insisted that the tax man would come chasing her were she to write against the bomb. A month before Ms. Roy sat down to write her piece, 4,00,000 adults had marched through the streets of Calcutta in protest against the Pokharan blasts. Were their homes all raided by the Income Tax Department?
The anti-dam essay had its signs of self-absorption too. Its opening scene, of Ms. Roy laughing on the top of a hill, seemed a straight lift from the first lines of that monument to egotism, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. The essay was marked throughout by a conspicuous lack of proportion. To compare dams to nuclear weapons was absurd. To demonise technology was irresponsible. The scientists, K. J. Roy and Suhas Parajpye, had worked out an innovative compromise, a reduction in the projected height of the Sardar Sarovar dam which would reduce submergence while allowing the construction of "overflow" canals to the water-scarce areas of Kutch and Saurashtra. This scheme would minimise human suffering while creatively redeeming the thousands of crores already spent on the project. Ms. Roy wanted, however, for the dam to be made a museum for failed technologies. Altogether, this was an essay written with passion but without care. In her stream-of- consciousness style, the arguments were served up in a jumble of images and exclamations with the odd number thrown in. The most serious objections to the dam, on grounds of social justice, ecological prudence and economic efficiency, were lost in the presentation. What struck one most forcibly was her atavistic hatred of science and a romantic celebration of adivasi lifestyles.
It is tempting to see Arundhati Roy as the Arun Shourie of the left. The super-patriot and the anti-patriot use much the same methods. Both think exclusively in black and white. Both choose to use a 100 words when 10 will do. Both arrogate to themselves the right to hand out moral certificates. Those who criticise Shourie are characterised as anti-national, those who dare take on Roy are made out to be agents of the State. In either case, an excess of emotion and indignation drowns out the facts.
One must grant that Arundhati Roy is a courageous woman. Other novelists like to shut themselves away from the world, but she has sought engagement with it. She followed her printed blasts with long, tiring journeys in inhospitable terrain, to show her solidarity with the anti-nuclear and anti-dam protesters. Most writers have been individualists and careerists. An all-too-small minority has shown an awareness of public issues...
> ...I am told that Arundhati Roy has written a very good novel. Perhaps
> she should begin another. Her retreat from activism would - to use a term
> from economics - be a "Paretto optimum": good for literature, and good
> for the Indian environmental movement.
Postscript: As this article was going to press, the latest Outlook arrived, with Ms. Roy's latest venture into social science. It is like the others: self-regarding and self-indulgent. The essay is also self-contradictory, a jeremiad against the market and globalisation by one who is placed in the heart of the global market for celebrity-hood.
Among the targets singled out for attack this time is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is a curious choice, for so far as one can make sense of her arguement, Ms. Roy seems to share the RSS's understanding of politics.
After reading Ms. Roy's most recent essay, I see no reason to revise my judgment: that we would all be better off were she to revert to fiction.
E-mail the writer at ramguha at vsnl.com
-- Michael Pugliese