Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy speaking at the 2007 World Tribunal on Iraq. Arundhati Roy speaking at the 2007 World Tribunal on Iraq.
Occupation	Novelist, essayist
Nationality	Indian
Period	1997-present

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian writer (in English) and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. She is also a writer of two screenplays and a number of collections of essays. Roy is a well-known activist for social and economic justice.

Early life and background

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother, the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali father, a tea planter by profession.

She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard da Cunha.

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and played a village girl in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made financially stable by the success of her novel The God of Small Things, she worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at New Delhi five-star hotels. Roy is a cousin of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy, the head of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV, and lives in New Delhi.

Career

Works

Early in her career, Roy worked for television and movies. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her experiences as a student of architecture, directed by her current husband, and Electric Moon (1992); in both she also appeared as a performer. Roy attracted attention in 1994, when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi. In her film review titled, 'The Great Indian Rape Trick', she questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her permission," and charged Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.

Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Ayemenem or Aymanam.

The book received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction and was listed as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997. It reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. From the beginning, the book was also a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance, published in May, the book had been sold to eighteen countries by the end of June.

The God of Small Things received good reviews, for instance in The New York Times.

After the success of her novel, Roy has been working as a screenplay writer again, writing a television serial, The Banyan Tree, and the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy (2002).

In early 2007, Roy announced that she would begin work on a second novel.

Arundhati Roy was one of the contributors for writing the book, We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009. The book explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying both its diversity and the threats it faces. Among other contributors, we can find several western writers, such as Laurens van der Post, Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss; and also indigenous peoples, such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Roy Sesana. The royalties from the sale of this book go to the indigenous rights organization, Survival International.

Advocacy and controversy

Since The God of Small Things Roy has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes. She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She also criticizes India's nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron's activities in India.

Support for Kashmiri separatism

In an interview with Times of India published in August 2008, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India after massive demonstrations in favor of independence took place—some 500,000 separatists rallied in Srinagar in the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India for independence on 18 August 2008, according to Time magazine. She took the rallies as a clear sign that Kashmiris desire independence from India, and not union with India. She was criticized by Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for her remarks, but along with Roy some mainstream Indian journalists, such as Vir Sanghvi (executive editor of the Hindustan Times), Jug Suraiya (editor of the The Times of India), and Swaminathan Aiyar (also at The Times of India), have argued similarly.

Sardar Sarovar Project

Roy has campaigned along with activist Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam project, saying that the dam will displace half a million people, with little or no compensation, and will not provide the projected irrigation, drinking water and other benefits. Roy donated her Booker prize money as well as royalties from her books on the project to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Roy also appears in Franny Armstrong's Drowned Out, a 2002 documentary about the project. Roy's opposition to the Narmada Dam project was criticised as "maligning Gujarat" by Congress and BJP leaders in Gujarat.

In 2002, Roy responded to a contempt notice issued against her by the Indian Supreme Court with an affidavit saying the court's decision to initiate the contempt proceedings based on an unsubstantiated and flawed petition, while refusing to inquire into allegations of corruption in military contracting deals pleading an overload of cases, indicated a "disquieting inclination" by the court to silence criticism and dissent using the power of contempt. The court found Roy's statement, which she refused to disavow or apologize for, constituted criminal contempt and sentenced her to a "symbolic" one day's imprisonment and fined Roy Rs. 2500. Roy served the jail sentence for a single day and opted to pay the fine rather than serve an additional three months' imprisonment for default.

Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha has been critical of Roy's Narmada dam activism. While acknowledging her "courage and commitment" to the cause, Guha writes that her advocacy is hyperbolic and self-indulgent, "Ms. Roy's tendency to exaggerate and simplify, her Manichean view of the world, and her shrill hectoring tone, have given a bad name to environmental analysis". He faults Roy's criticism of Supreme Court judges who were hearing a petition brought by the Narmada Bachao Andolan as careless and irresponsible.

Roy counters that her writing is intentional in its passionate, hysterical tone: "I am hysterical. I'm screaming from the bloody rooftops. And he and his smug little club are going 'Shhhh... you'll wake the neighbours!' I want to wake the neighbours, that's my whole point. I want everybody to open their eyes".

Gail Omvedt and Roy have had a fierce discussions, in open letters, on Roy's strategy for the Narmada Dam movement. Though the activists disagree on whether to demand stopping the dam building all together (Roy) or searching for intermediate alternatives (Omvedt), the exchange has mostly been, though critical, constructive.

United States foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan

In a 2001 opinion piece in the British newspaper The Guardian, Arundhati Roy responded to the US military invasion of Afghanistan, finding fault with the argument that this war would be a retaliation for the September 11 attacks: "The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world." According to her, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were guilty of a Big Brother-kind of doublethink: "When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: 'We're a peaceful nation.' America's favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: 'We're a peaceful people.' So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace."

She disputes U.S. claims of being a peaceful and freedom-loving nation, listing China and nineteen 3rd World "countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war", as well as previous U.S. support for the Taliban movement and support for the Northern Alliance (whose "track record is not very different from the Taliban's"). She does not spare the Taliban: "Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them."

In the final analysis, Roy sees American-style capitalism as the culprit: "In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines." She puts the attacks on the World Trade Center and on Afghanistan on the same moral level, that of terrorism, and mourns the impossibility of imagining beauty after 2001: "Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear - without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?"

In May 2003 she delivered a speech entitled "Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy" at the Riverside Church in New York City. In it she described the United States as a global empire that reserves the right to bomb any of its subjects at any time, deriving its legitimacy directly from God. The speech was an indictment of the U.S. actions relating to the Iraq War. In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In March 2006, Roy criticized US President George W. Bush's visit to India, calling him a "war criminal."

India's nuclear weaponisation

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living (1999), in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Criticism of Israel

In August 2006, Roy, along with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others, signed a letter in The Guardian called the 2006 Lebanon War a "war crime" and accused Israel of "state terror." In 2007, Roy was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."

2001 Indian Parliament attack

Roy has raised questions about the investigation into the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the trial of the accused. She has called for the death sentence of Mohammad Afzal to be stayed while a parliamentary enquiry into these questions are conducted and denounced press coverage of the trial. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has criticized Roy for what it alleges is defence of a terrorist going against the national interest.

The Muthanga incident

In 2003, the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, a social movement for adivasi land rights in Kerala, organized a major land occupation of a piece of land of a former Eucalyptus plantation in the Muthanga Wildlife Reserve, on the border of Kerala and Karnataka. After 48 days, a police force was sent into the area to evict the occupants—one participant of the movement and a policeman were killed, and the leaders of the movement were arrested. Arundhati Roy travelled to the area, visited the movement's leaders in jail, and wrote an open letter to the then Chief Minister of Kerala, A.K. Antony now India's Defence Minister, saying "You have blood on your hands."

Comments on 2008 Mumbai attacks

In an opinion piece on the website of British newspaper The Guardian (13 December 2008), Roy argued that the November 2008 Mumbai attacks can not be seen in isolation, but must be understood in the context of wider issues in the region's history and society such as widespread poverty, the Partition of India (which Roy calls "Britain's final, parting kick to us"), the atrocities committed during the 2002 Gujarat violence, and the ongoing conflict in Kashmir. Despite this call for context, Roy states clearly in the article that she believes "nothing can justify terrorism" and calls terrorism "a heartless ideology". Roy warns against war with Pakistan, arguing that it is hard to "pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state", and that war could lead to the "descent of the whole region into chaos". Her remarks were strongly criticized by author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie slammed her for linking Bombay attacks with Kashmir and economic injustice against Muslims in India. He also said that Arundhati's arguments about Hotel Taj not being an icon of India, were unintelligent and unfair.. Indian writer Tavleen Singh has termed Roy's "need for contest" as a "hysterical diatribe"

War in Srilanka against Tamil rebels, 2009

In an opinion piece, once again in The Guardian, (April 1, 2009), Roy made a plea for international attention to what she perceived, based on reports, to be a possible government-sponsored genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. She cited reports of camps into which Tamils were being herded as part of what she described as "a brazen, openly racist war.". Ruvani Freeman, a Sri Lankan writer called Roy's remarks "ill-informed and hypocritical" and criticized her for whitewashing the atrocities of the LTTE

Violation of forest law

In 2003, Arundhati and her husband, were informed by Panchmarhi district administration that a hilltop bungalow her husband owns near Panchmarhi stands on notified forest land and has to be pulled down, on grounds of violation of forest law. Also named in the case was the sister of Indian novelist Vikram Seth and two forest officials. Section 18 of the law bars buying and selling of notified forest land. Arundhati’s husband bought the 4,346 sq ft plot in 1994..

Awards

Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things. The award carried a prize of about US $30,000 and a citation that noted, 'The book keeps all the promises that it makes.' Prior to this, she won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989, for the semi-autobiographical screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award for her work "about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations," in order "to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity."

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence.

In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India's Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it "in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by 'violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation.'"

Bibliography

Books

• The God of Small Things. Flamingo, 1997. ISBN 0-00-655068-1.
• The End of Imagination. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 1998. ISBN 8171308678.
• The Cost of Living. Flamingo, 1999. ISBN 0375756140. Contains the essays "The Greater Common Good" and "The End of Imagination."
• The Greater Common Good. Bombay: India Book Distributor, 1999. ISBN 8173101213.
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Flamingo, 2002. ISBN 0-00-714949-2. Collection of essays: "The End of Imagination," "The Greater Common Good," "Power Politics", "The Ladies Have Feelings, So...," "The Algebra of Infinite Justice," "War is Peace," "Democracy," "War Talk", and "Come September."
• Power Politics. Cambridge: South End Press, 2002. ISBN 0-89608-668-2.
• War Talk. Cambridge: South End Press, 2003. ISBN 0-89608-724-7.
• Foreword to Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State. 2003. ISBN 1-56584-794-6.
• An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire. Consortium, 2004. ISBN 0-89608-727-1.
• Public Power in the Age of Empire Seven Stories Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58322-682-6.
• The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. Interviews by David Barsamian. Cambridge: South End Press, 2004. ISBN 0-89608-710-7.
• Introduction to 13 December, a Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament. New Delhi, New York: Penguin, 2006. ISBN 014310182X.
• The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. New Delhi: Penguin, Viking, 2008. ISBN 9780670082070.
• Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy. New Delhi: Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, 2009. ISBN 9780670083794.

Books and articles about Roy

• Anūp, Si. (1997). Arundhatiyuṭ̣e atbhutalōkaṃ. Trivandrum: New Indian Books. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Balvannanadhan, Aïda (2007). Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Prestige Books. ISBN 8175511931. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bhatt, Indira (1999). Explorations: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Creative Books. ISBN 8186318569. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• "The Politics of Design," in Ch'ien, Evelyn Nien-Ming (2005). Weird English. Harvard UP. pp. 154–99. ISBN 9780674018198. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Dhawan, R.K. (1999). Arundhati Roy, the novelist extraordinary. New Delhi: Prestige Books. ISBN 8175510609. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Dodiya, Jaydipsinh (1999). The Critical studies of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Atlantic. ISBN 8171568505. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Durix, Carole (2002). Reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon. ISBN 2905965800. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Ghosh, Ranjan (2009). Globalizing dissent: Essays on Arundhati Roy. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415995597. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Jōsaphmātyu, Ēt̲t̲umānūr (1997). Arundhati R̲ōyiyuṭe Da gōḍ ōph smōḷ tiṅgs: kathayuṃ kāryavuṃ: sāhitya paṭhanam. Kottayam: Toms Literary Editions. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Mullaney, Julie (2002). Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: A reader’s guide. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0826453279. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Navarro-Tejero, Antonia (2005). Gender and caste in the Anglophone-Indian novels of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan: feminist issues in cross-cultural perspectives. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen. ISBN 0773459952. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Pathak, R.S. (2001). The fictional world of Arundhati Roy. New Delhi: Creative Books. ISBN 8186318844. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Prasad, Murari (2006). Arundhati Roy, critical perspectives. Delhi: Pencraft International. ISBN 8185753768. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Roy, Amitabh (2005). The God of Small Things: A Novel of Social Commitment. Atlantic. pp. 37–38. ISBN 9788126904099. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Sharma, A.P. (2000). The mind and the art of Arundhati Roy: a critical appraisal of her novel, The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Minerva. ISBN 817662120X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Shashi, R.S. (1998). Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: Critique and commentary. New Delhi: Creative Books. ISBN 8186318542. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Tickell, Alex (2007). Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415358422. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Tōmas, Jōmi (1997). Arundhati R̲ōy, kr̥tiyuṃ kāl̲cappāṭum. Kozhikode: Kar̲ant̲ Buks. ISBN 812400515X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

See also

• Anti-globalization movement
• Narmada Bachao Andolan
• Indian English literature
• American Empire
• Criticism of United States foreign policy

External links

Works, speeches

• We 'We,' documentary featuring the works of Arundhati Roy
• Come September Transcript of speech on 18 September 2002 and conversation with Howard Zinn
• Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent—interview on Democracy Now!
• 'We have to become the global resistance' (Abridged version of speech at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004)
• Tide? or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire (16 August 2004 speech in San Francisco)
• ABC Radio National transcript of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture (with audio) or download the speech here
• 'The Most Cowardly War in History'; opening statement at the Iraq tribunal (Article dated 24 June 2005)
• Podcast of Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra discussing "India in the World" at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
• Arundhati Roy on the Human Costs of India’s Economic Growth, the View of Obama in New Delhi, and Escalating US Attacks in Af-Pak
• Audio: Arundhati Roy in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum

Other

• We, a political documentary about Roy's words. Available online.
• Arundhati Roy denounces Indian democracy by Atul Cowshish
• Carreira, Shirley de S. G.A representação da mulher em Shame, de Salman Rushdie, e O deus das pequenas coisas, de Arundathi Roy. In: MONTEIRO, Conceição & LIMA, Tereza M. de O. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Caetés, 2005
• "In the Valley of the Tigers"; Interview with Ascent magazine on the Narmada Valley
• Ch'ien, Evelyn Nien-Ming, "The Politics of Design" (Weird English. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004; 154-99). Essay on Roy's language. Available online.

Biographical material

• Literary Encyclopedia (in-progress)
• SAWNET biography
• Bibliography

References

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