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Arundhati Roy
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Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian writer 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.
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.
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Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian writer 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.
Biography
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 niece of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy, the head of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV, and lives in New Delhi.
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 when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi, charging 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, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.
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.
Activism and advocacy
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 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 2001 film Drowned Out.
Roy's opposition to the Narmada Dam project has been criticised as "anti-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
Roy has strongly criticised the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan in reaction to the September 11 attacks, decrying its undermining of international law and institutions. She disputes U.S. claims of being a peaceful and freedom-loving nation, listing the numerous armed conflicts the U.S. has been involved in since the Second World War as well as its previous support for the Taliban movement and its support for the Northern Alliance (whose "track record is not very different from the Taliban's"). Noting the interests of arms and oil industries in formulating foreign policy, Roy doubts the U.S.'s stated goals of restoring democracy in Afghanistan and argues that its humanitarian efforts there are a cynical public relations exercise. While condemning the 9/11 attacks, she writes that the American response has legitimised violence as a political instrument and aided governments around the world in suppressing freedom and civil rights.
Her views were criticized by Ian Buruma, who wrote: "The snobbery of her tone alone betrays the lingering, if perhaps unconscious, influence in India of British lefties from the end of the Raj. It is the language of the Bloomsbury drawing room. You could well imagine Bertrand Russell taking this line."
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.
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 signed a letter written by Professor Steve Trevillion calling Israel's attacks on Lebanon 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 BJP has criticized Roy for what it alleges is defence of a terrorist going against the national interest.
Article critical of US military activity
In an opinion piece in British newspaper The Guardian, Arundhati Roy wrote, "Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war:"
Updated to 2008, it reads China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Vietnam (1961-73), the Belgian Congo (1964), Laos (1964-73), Peru (1965), Cambodia (1969-70), Nicaragua (the 1980s), El Salvador (the 1980s), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99, 2003-08), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), and Afghanistan (2001-08).
From this, by simply counting, the years 1947-49, 1955-57, 1974-79, 1990 and 2000 were the only peaceful ones. 73% of the years, from World War II's end until 1989, the U.S. was militarily intervening somewhere. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 (not counting conflicts like Colombia where governing elites request help against rebellious subpopulations) the U.S. was actively militarily intervening in a foreign country at least 89% of the years into 2008, an increase of 22%.
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.
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.'
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.
Essays, speeches and articles
- Insult and Injury in Afghanistan (MSNBC, 20 October 2001)
- Instant Democracy (May 13, 2003)
- "Come September" (September, 2002)
See also
External links
Biographical material
Works, speeches
- 'We,' documentary featuring the works of Arundhati Roy
- Transcript of speech on 18 September 2002 and conversation with Howard Zinn
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- (Abridged version of speech at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004)
- (16 August 2004 speech in San Francisco)
- ABC Radio National (with audio)
- (Article dated 24 June 2005)
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Other
- We, a political documentary about Roy's words.
- 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
- ; 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.
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