Arundhati Roy and Her India...!

Since I finished reading Arundhati Roy’s booker price winning novel “God of Small Things,” her image as a writer had been stuck in my mind for years now. I have not seen that novel as a traditional novel in the first place, it is more than that. In it, I believe she tried to send so many societal issues, for that, she simply used the characters there on to carry. Anyway, I can not deny that novel had left me with an inspiration up to the point of sharing with so many others.

The then I forgot about her almost for a couple years as to what was going on with her, except the awareness of her being an activist in India. Beside that one more way I used to keep track of her thought arena is by visiting http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/, where she writes mostly about the international politics and the related issues.

The reason today I wanted to write about her in my page was, recently I happened to read her speech in New York on the occasion of one of her book reading functions.

There she went on proclaiming her concern over India like this, “ She said she was confused, as India was passing through a terrible time. Amidst frequent clapping, she blasted the Indian government and the Bush administration. There is no real democracy in India. Several states in India are on the verge of civil war.’’

There upon a good number of readers have also expressed their opinion of her, mostly, they said, for Arundhati Roy India is not democratic enough, so, we should send her away where democracy is thriving in countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran etc., Where she can express her views as freely as though she is doing it in India.

All said and heard from the both end. Now, I want to place what I think of her and how I felt as I was going through her current speech and the other issues that she is standing to defend.

As a disclaimer I do want to say one more thing here, just because I like her writing and concerns, it does not mean that I should necessarily buy into whatever she says. For instance, I blatantly disagree with her standing on the Kashmir and some other issues. So here I am on my own mind expressing my own view as to how I feel about her concerns.

First thing, why she bashes about Bush’s visit to India, she thinks, India is, without mind of its own just blindly following and taking the dictations of some money man’s opportunistic mentality . And in due course India is deliberately dragged into the world politics without its own knowledge. I think that is very true and a valid concern of a thinker.

Secondly, India is not democratic enough country so she says, I think why she should have placed such an anger evoking statement knowing that we are working hard to achieve it. We all know nothing is politically so correct ever, we do have a long way to go and achieve it. However, when she pointed out that, “Several states in India are on the verge of civil war,” that makes me to think perhaps she asks us to take a closer look at what is happening between Karnataka, Kerala versus Tamil Nadu with the water issue. What we have been witnessing there, the issue is taken at the individual level and handled even at the street side by fist fighting at times.

Let us assume in the worse case scenario, what happens if the neighboring state has empowered with money and the stuff, while the central government is powerless and no saying anything in whatever the state body’s decision? What happens if that state government with its own agenda, whatever it is, when it sees, it does not get to materialize and want to go separate as a nation by itself from India?

Well, at the individual level if we have that much hatred against its own people in sharing the natural resources, when the right time brew in, how sure are we that something like that would not happen?

On top of it, we everyday witnessing the occurrences of communal violence within its own population. Therefore, if the tension is boiling between states as if we are living in our own “separate state country” how a normal democracy machine can run smoothly with its partition mentality? What is wrong with pointing out those in a “positive antagonistic” way? So that, we all will have a chance to take a deep look at it.

In stead of looking at the bitter full truth that we face, we miss the point, yet, researching on to the source who pointed it out our own faults, and trying to exile the person from the country she loves. The same trend is common in America too, in the name of being patriotic. The unwritten policy is there, if you are patriotic enough, you are not supposed to find fault in your own country and say it out aloud. If that is the case here too, then we should really re-consider what kind of "collective opinion" we have on that notion of being patriotic and not finding faults.

I do not know how many of us read here the popular New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman’s latest book “The Flat World.” There he portrays the fabulous side of India, but leaving the other part by making in the process of capitalistic mammoth corporate world to get in there. Arundhati Roy and like minded people are lashing about his work too. For that, again she is branded with working against her own country.

Why is that always in the history when some one is siding with the impoverished people is branded with some undesirable names?