In Defense of Arundhati Roy

She is the classical example of our society’s tendency and our constant efforts to straitjacket people into comfortable identities, identities that is usually built up as a result of unspoken consensus between the media and the general people and this identity generation is usually without the consent of the ‘celebrity’….our efforts to commodify anything and everything from tangible to the intangible….

Of course very few ‘celebrities’ are individualistic enough to assert their independence of thoughts and most just go along with the ‘image’ that is built up, because that is the path of least resistance and usually a lucrative one too. Lucrative because once we have neatly classified people according to our own tastes, the consumerist driven industry then proceeds to milk the image for their and the ‘celebrity’s’ profit.....

I am not going into the positives and negatives of that but I want to point to the occasion when that ‘celebrity’ asserts herself/himself and tries to break the shackles of the image that we have thrust upon them…..the examples of film actors speaking out on some sensitive political-economic issue (read Aamir Khan) and sportstars going against corporate logic (Pullela Gopichand) are some examples that immediately come to mind…..

But Arundhati Roy is a person who for so long has been associated with anti-establishment movements (physical and of the mind) and whose books speak out lyrically and boldly against neo-colonization and neo-imperialism and whose every interview is filled with protest postures and who, in the mind of the layman is nothing but an activist (though an internationally known and fiery advocate of her cause at that), who intrudes on the national consciousness from time to time……we tend to forget that a decade earlier she was the great white hope of the middle class, as it were…..

As far as middle class was concerned, she had impeccable credentials….an unpretentious, good looking woman (I have always found her to be one of the most beautiful women, but that’s me :)) who had won an internationally acclaimed literary award for what was her first serious work in literature. Her obvious elevation to stardom was inevitable….she was the symbol of the middle class woman’s empowerment (mainly because she won an award for writing in English), no matter that of the so many who hailed her, few actually read, let alone understood her book, which was a biting satire on society and our mores…..

The media’s power was for all to see…..literally overnight, she became the cynosure of the nation, she was acclaimed as a literary sensation and the newest addition to the elite group of Indians who wrote in English (and more importantly, who were internationally known), she was another step towards our self-empowerment and self reliance against our ‘white superiors’ (of course the irony of that is that it was the white superiors who recognized her), a further proof of our growing status in an increasingly globalized world (read Anglicized)….as we say in India, Baccha Baccha uska naam jaan gaya:)

We expected her to keep writing ‘good’ books and settle comfortably in her own elite niche of our consumerist society, give reading sessions of her books and become rich and perhaps a few years down the line, gushing parents would tell of their children that they want to be writers like Arundhati Roy…..perhaps we expected her to become someone like Salman Rushdie….

Alas, then the blow fell and the happy images we had spun around her disappeared away in the instant that the shell-shocked nation saw their ‘middle class hope’ being hauled in a police van after courting arrest in an NBA demonstration and soon after falling foul of the Supreme Court (contempt of court)…..we were still shaking our heads and wishing it was all a bad dream and hoping it would be back to ‘normal’ if we just looked away (the way we usually do to all things), when she started giving statements that would have made a Malcolm X or a Stokely Carmichael proud, denouncing the government and the supreme court as instruments in a fascist state…..

Almost overnight (yeah again overnight), she was dropped like a hot potato by the ‘popular’ media and as the middle class looked on in stunned amazement, she transformed into a rebel hero for many people in the country and abroad…..she was suddenly appearing everywhere, giving lectures and appearing on debates on US campuses and within a couple of years had become a member of the international pantheon of anti-establishment figures, a regular at WSF and anti-WTO rallies

She wrote books too but not the ones that we expected…..the words that poured out of her in her next book (more like a collection of essays) “Algebra of Infinite Justice” (the name coming from the grandiose name given by USA for its war on terror) were biting and lyrical, in straight direct language about issues that we tend to deliberately forget (all subconscious self-wiring of course), the Dam issue, women issues, nuclear issue and of course the war on terror issue……seldom has a ‘popular’ Indian writer spoken out so forcefully against the establishment (considering entrenched society as the establishment as well)….it was an uncomfortable book for those who are not used to such literature…..and the book won her as many admirers as enemies and critics…..her following books flowed the same line….

Now the same media that was responsible for elevating her to a Sania Mirzaesque celebrity hit back as one would hit back at someone who is considered a back-stabber (which to the media she was)…..the first reactions were typical….a writer is not an activist and she should not try to blur the line, then came the charge that she does not understand the issue and is trying to garner cheap attention (ironical isn’t it?...people in glass houses….).

That didn’t work either, because she obviously knew what she was talking about (and it showed in her interviews and in her books)….

So the next attacks started becoming ridiculous if not downright shameful….her accent (Hindi one ie) and the way she talked was made fun of…..Poonam Saxena of HT is an example of who made some quite infantile remarks in her column…..we could almost see the depths to which journalism and ethics had fallen to…..

Of course there were attacks that were more literary in nature but here again, she was patronized by people who wrote that she was being ridiculous and being paranoid and that she should just shut up (yes those exact words!!!)…..the fact that she wrote vividly (instead of dry analysis that some prefer) was another sore point, no matter that the matter and conclusions are the same…..she was declared a misfit who ‘just writes anything’ and not to be taken seriously….any chance for a meaningful dialogue and exchange of ideas was thus precluded….

Now as far as I consider it, she is just an individual who wants to have her voice heard and it is obvious that she feels strongly about issues (which incidentally lots of people do worldwide) and she has the courage to speak out and pulls no punches in putting her concerns in words that have a quality of starkness in them…..most people, when they speak about the same issues usually couch them in diplomatic or academic language, which does not hit people so hard, because few people understand the purport…..she however, doesn't have the habit of moving on two boats at the same time....and this forthrightness and frankness and in a way rebellious fearlessnesses is something that the Indian middle class (which is catered to by the media of course) is not comfortable with…..hence the vicious attacks….

She may not be as pioneering as Noam Chomsky in thought and analysis and she may not be as keen a student of history as Eric Hobswam or Isaac Deutchner but she makes it up with raw emotions, heart and frankness which is refreshing….she is sometimes polemical, sometimes utopian and for this she might seem simplistic and shallow to those who are used to hard nosed analysis but she is a dissenter and for me dissent is a sign of a free individual, a prerogative of a democratic society that we are still struggling to achieve…..and frankly, how many of us really are aware of issues that surround us and how many of us can get through a dry social analysis without thinking of how soft our pillow is…..

Today, if I read “Algebra of Infinite Justice” I would not find anything new, neither the facts nor the arguments….but when I did read it (when it came out), it had struck me hard and it was one of the book that shaped my outlook then….today, even though I may have moved on to those “hard nosed analysis”, I believe that if I read her book again, I would be struck with the raw energy of her words, her passionate cry which rings true in every line and every lament, a clenched fist in every paragraph (that’s how I remember it)…..and it is those emotions that makes her so powerful….she strikes up some nerve deep seated within and she carries you away with her words….its a gift few possess and fewer use to assert their independence….

There would be many like me and many in the making, who have been moved by her words (if not her conclusions and path ahead) and who have been inspired by her courage to furrow her own path in a world that turned hostile to her overnight, by her courage in seeing that being excluded from the society, the inclusion in which is considered success, is of no consequence, in her seeing the futility of awards and recognition as long as one follows ones own heart and mind and values…..her efforts at decommodifying herself (though ironically she has been made a commodity – an anti-establishment one, but then it must be commodification that she prefers than the ‘goody goody’ image that was thrust upon her before)

It’s a valuable lesson, something the journalists and mandarins of mass media find so difficult to understand….or maybe they understand, implicitly, that’s why the viciousness of the attacks….