Arundhati Roy's Hope

A lot has been said in India, about a particular writer called Arundhati Roy. This piece is not just about her, but also about some of those who speak about her. Yet, without making her into a metaphor.

In 1997, Arundhati Roy gave us a novel called The God of Small Things. A story about love laws and broken childhoods, it got her a big Western prize and made her very famous. Since then, she has written pieces on different issues, most of which can be found online. 

Her non-fiction writing has been found by many to be radical, anti-national, communist, anti-science, and other such adjectives people often use to banish arguments which describe the failings of human institutions. She addresses specific issues, and often leaps from there, to a nexus of vested interests systematically destroying genuine human diversity. She presents a lot of compelling evidence, and also engages in polemics. Yet, what enrages most educated people in India is not her reasoning or even her political stance, which it would be impossible to summarize. What enrages them is the way she says it. 

The most reasonable of reviewers have called her strident. Ramachandra Guha described her voice as a 'shrill hectoring tone'. Even many who accept the shortcomings she points out cringe at her assaults. They feel she could be a little more diplomatic, and refrain from saying nasty things about enlightened institutions like the Supreme Court of India, which sent her to jail for a day because it felt she showed contempt towards it.

Yet, it is Arundhati Roy's 'stridency' that is her gift. Educated Indians envy her passion. In that, they are no different from many societies which suspect passionate outbursts to be outside normal, and empathy a form of witchcraft. The cult of rational and dispassionate academia perhaps struggle to come to terms with emotion of this sort. But it is irrational and unscientific to condemn it. There is nothing to say that a dispassionate analysis will necessarily be stronger than a deeply emotional one. Yet, it isn't Roy's analysis that is filled with pain. It is her tone. Perhaps we envy her ability to feel and love. But most of all, we envy her for risking it. For saying and doing what she feels to be true. 

Ramachandra Guha, a man who has, as Pankaj Mishra has said, written about important people, has written a lot about Roy. Describing his love for understated prose, he claims Roy sacrifices principles for personality. Guha doesn't realize that understated, elegant prose is a deliberate display of personality too. By focusing on prose style, and ignoring her persuasive arguments, does he not himself raise personality over principles?

Elsewhere, he has said he prefers to 'speak to' the dispossessed, like the adivasis, instead of 'speaking for' them. Roy is a partisan, which Guha believes he is not. He believes throughout, that he will arrive at a more reasoned analysis this way. He never asks - When he speaks to the victims of development, where does he speak from? 

In a letter, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a well known political scientist, expresses his unease at Roy's criticism of the Judiciary and other important institutions which support democracy. He believes we shouldn't disrespect these pillars of the democratic framework, instead, aide them, by showing faith in some kind of 'proceduralism'. It is true that democracy and an independent nation state are the products of hard won battles. But Mehta doesn't realize that that is the very reason they should be consistently criticized. The more important something is, the greater scrutiny it must undergo. When nationhood becomes an article of faith, it demands immediate criticism. Disrespect is essential. 

The Indian state fails every day. It fails in resettling the dispossessed. It fails in protecting its weak. It fails in maintaining ecological stability. It fails to even keep count of where all it fails. On the contrary, organs of the state abuse those who have given them the privilege to govern them. And no amount of respect or nationalist fervor can lighten that. A writer's style reflects these injustices. If the way she speaks enrages us, then that should drive us to reconsider our shallow ideas of ourselves.

Roy says her style is her politics. Her politics is an ancient, animist one. Progressives embrace her as a co-traveler who will help shape a new world. Yet, she invokes prehistoric values, still resilient because they echo unchanging truths. She asks us to 'divorce hope from reason'. It is her way of trying to keep alive a sense of our humanity. If one is unable to hope, it is all the more important to read her.

Roy often attributes to Empire and the State a homogeneous intent it may not possess. The State isn't one wicked person. It is hundreds of conflicting interests, each helping the other fail. In places, it shows an unlikely coordination, borne more of shared prejudice than ideological clarity. Maybe, it makes it easier for Roy to think of the Sate in a simpler way, or maybe, as an honest partisan, she chooses not to mention these inconsequential nuances.

But India is not, and has never been, a cohesive, clear unit. India is a makeshift approach. A young, ramshackle construct, home to terrible injustice. It is for some a dream, in many ways still a dream, and for some an abusive guardian. It is an umbrella. With holes.  

In recent times, Roy has been speaking about forms and strategies of resistance. Groups like the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (who have prevented, for now, the iron and steel giant POSCO from destroying their homes and forests) have been remarkably successful. There are, surely, ways in which these non-violent, asymmetric wars can be replicated in different parts of the subcontinent. But the strategies will differ, based on geography, local histories, and the nature of the threats. As she accepts in an interview, it no more about being heard. So what if the world read of your grief. Very few would want to or be able to do anything. But it is possible, to yourself resist, in ways both honorable and ignoble, these violations. Guerrilla wars have been known to be successful in some cases. But if it is organization and strategy that is important, non-violent resistances can also make a mark.

A writer's style reflects this hope too. 

Experience teaches us to be skeptical. To be forever alert to the ancient contradictions of human nature. Yet, it also shows us the meaning of hope. Not the hope derived out of distortions of the past or expectations of the future. But one forged here and now. 

Maybe, if Arundhati Roy were to be faced with a world without any hope, she would sit down to write a poem on hope. Thereby creating it.

As Ammu tells Velutha, at the end of her novel - Tomorrow.