Arundhati Roy: The God of Controversial Things
Arundhati Roy is a person many Indians love to hate. She is a woman who is not afraid to take on the system. She is idealistic and has no problems expressing her opinions publicly even on some explosive subjects. Most of her views are socialistic and left leaning (the fact that her mother is a Malayalee and her father is a Bengali may have something to do with it!!). She began as an actress and a writer but is now known for her social activism.
The India of the sixties, seventies and the eighties would not have any problem with a person like Arundhati Roy. Her views pretty much mirror the views of the socialistic India and its foreign policy of those days. But India today is different. It is younger and more capitalistic. Indians are enjoying some of the benefits of having an open relationship with the West. Today the views of people like Roy tends to stick out like a sore thumb.
In the past decade Roy has put the Indian government in very difficult situations. She has strongly criticized Indian government policy in Kashmir and has even suggested that Kashmir should be independent. She wrote an article in The Guardian after the September 11 attacks suggesting that the bombing of Afghanistan is another act of terror against the people of the world. Just before the highly anticipated visit of President George Bush to India she called the president a “war criminal”.
In the eyes of many Indians Arundhati Roy often places her personal beliefs and philosophies above the national interests of India. There is no reason for an Indian citizen to be critical of American policy in Afghanistan in 2001. The September 11 attacks although tragic dramatically changed American attitude towards India. This change improved India’s external security environment. In addition millions of Indians joined the middle class because of American investment in India.
In recent years her views have started to become more extreme. In an article published in Outlook India magazine Arundhati Roy, who in general is very sympathetic to the Maoists has compared certain things that the Maoists do to what Gandhi did and believed in. She was accused by some in the media for calling the Maoists as “Gandhians with guns”. To be fair she never used the exact term in the article. But as you can see from the excerpt below she comes very close.
“I cannot believe this army. As far as consumption goes, it’s more Gandhian than any Gandhian, and has a lighter carbon footprint than any climate change evangelist. But for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotage; before a police vehicle is burnt for example, it is stripped down and every part is cannibalized. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar barrel, the rexine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery for solar charging. (The new instructions from the high command are that captured vehicles should be buried and not cremated. So they can be resurrected when needed.) Should I write a play I wonder—Gandhi Get Your Gun? Or will I be lynched?”
In my opinion Arundhati Roy is on the verge of being irrelevant. There is nothing Gandhian about what the Maoists and the Naxals are doing. Some of their grievances are valid but that does not negate the fact that most of them are cold blooded killers. There is nothing Gandhian about them and it is an insult to any person who believes in non-violence to mention the word Gandhi and Naxals in the same sentence.
A person must be really out of writing material or ideas to compare what the Naxals are doing in terms of consumption and carbon footprint to what the Gandhians are doing. What is so Gandhian about the Naxals using every last bit of a burnt out police vehicle? She fails to mention the policemen who were traveling in the vehicle were probably burnt too. Did the Naxals remove the uniforms of the police officers they killed and use them too? This would probably make them more Gandhian in her view.
Related posts:
- Arundhati Roy’s Delusional Comments
- Binayak Sen: Civil Rights Activist to Convicted Criminal
- Who is a Terrorist?
- Shared Legacy: George Bush and Manmohan Singh
- Will India be Thrilled if GOP Wins the Midterms?
Category: News & Government
The irony is that at this point of time Arundhati Roy is finding it very hard to speak up for Maoists after the cold blooded killings of hundreds of innocent citizens of this country.
There is something else which we need to consider and that is that when Mamata Bannerjee comes to power in WB she’ll not allow any anti maoist operations in the state. Therefore the central govt needs to start operations in WB right now and eliminate them before the elections in the state.
You are right Sush. There are millions of Indians like the Maoists who live under extremely difficult conditions. But they are not fighting an armed conflict against the government or derailing trains and killing innocent people. There is clearly a criminal element within the Maoists today and the government has to put a stop to it.
I wonder if the maoist are given weaponry and financial support by chinese.why do they have a name like Mao . China can destabilize india by providing support for the so called maoist.As for Roy , she is a loose cannon.
Welcome Mira.
The Maoists in Nepal have supported the Indian Maoists (the communists in Nepal and China have close connections). Indian embassy in Nepal has sent a letter to the Nepalese government only last week regarding this issue.
I do not think that Arundhati Roy’s comments on most issues these days is relevant. She represents the fringe.