On Origins of Arundhati Roy
In view of the current physical and psychological assault on Arundhati Roy accusing her of indulging in polemics and anti-nationalism, I would wish to counter-argue that Ms. Roy instead is the perfect sacrificial doll for the sensation-starved print & electronic media of India. In the following passages I try to trace the origins of this fiercely independent and radical writer-activist of India, the first steps into her transformation into a phantom that continue to haunt, bruise and traumatize the political establishment and the fatuous mass-media (print and visual). In the current times, many of their sympathizer and well wishers would wonder if Ms Roy happen to be so unfortunate that she won the booker prize before she started her politics/opinion came to be noticed? Was it her fault or the media's which jumped at the opportunity of publishing a booker winner! One might find this profile of Ms Roy interesting. It was written well before she won the Booker! And that time, the media came after her because the manuscript of her novel sold like no other unpublished Indian ever (even NRI's like Rushdie's or Seth's). Instead of She was guarding her privacy jealously before the media got the whiff of it! I think that was the time when love-to-hate Ms Roy saga began taking roots! This is the link to that article published in Outlook (Sep 25, 1996). (Read the article here)
If one happens to read the first non-fiction publication of Ms Roy (read the article here) one might be able to trace the origins of the Arundhati Roy as we happen to know her today! A few important distinct Arundhati Roy characteristics that emerges clearly in that early essay are:
* Length: She might have pioneered the long-essay in popular weeklies of India. But given her obscurity during the pre-booker era (this was published in 1994), the essay was published in two parts.
* Politics: A clear politics of socialism seems to be present throughout the essay, which eventually became more pronounced and evident in her later works. She talks at length about individual struggles, resistance, social justice, inequities and inadequacies of human society, rape, injustice, caste & geneder based exploitation, socio-economic dominance of high caste, power struggles, violence.....
*Endorsing the unlikely: In 1994, which mainstream/obscure/
*Blunt activism: Now people accuse her of gaining mileage out of her celebrity status. I would say that she is perhaps the only celebrity in India who has stood her grounds, her morality, her ideology, her politics and her imagination throughout her adult life, her social-economic-celebrity status notwithstanding. Perhaps her writing, apart from anything else bears testimony to it. When she wrote this essay in 1994, neither she was an acclaimed author, (read financially stable) nor was she popular. On the contrary she was almost broke (financially) and this essay cost her contract with channel 4 of UK (one of the financiers of Bandit Queen)! In one of her interviews she
claimed that she can't write/imagine with a benefit (read money, fame and all the imagined vices that today she is claimed to starve for) in mind! I never doubted the fact that she meant every word of it!
*Fiercely ethical: No personal attacks, no potshots and no hits below the belt!
*Lucid prose: I lack words to describe it!
*Well researched and mostly stating/relying on facts: No wonder she is invited by Harvard, MIT, Oxford, and Cambridge so often!
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