January 12, 2003

“As Indian citizens we subsist on a regular diet of caste massacres and nuclear tests, mosque breakings and fashion shows, church burnings and expanding cell phone networks, bonded labour and the digital revolution, female infanticide and the Nasdaq crash, husbands who continue to burn their wives for dowry and our delectable stockpile of Miss Worlds.” So begins Arundhati Roy in her first essay, “The ladies have feelings, so... should we leave it to the experts?” from her book Power politics.

Roy needs no introduction; certainly not after her visit to Pakistan in August 2002. The Booker prize winning author and writer-activist is uncomfortable with her status as a celebrity, and alludes as much when she writes on the role of a writer. At one point she even refers to herself as the “hooker with the Booker”.

Nonetheless, she deals with her role in the collection of essays, which also includes “The algebra of infinite justice” and “War is peace”. Roy is one of the few writers who excels in both fiction and non-fiction as she devotes an equal amount of passion to whatever medium. Commenting on her essays, Mithu C. Banerji wrote in the Observer (London) wrote, “Roy’s writing reflects her fiction and meanders between polemic and sentiment.”

In her first essay, “The ladies have feelings...”, Roy defends her position as a writer, first defining the role as she sees it and the responsibilities that come with it. “I have a point of view. What’s worse, I make it clear that I think it’s right and moral to take that position, and what’s even worse, I use everything in my power to flagrantly solicit support for that position.” She believes that such thinking is considered “uncool” as it harbours dangerously close to positions occupied by political party ideologues, but that notwithstanding, it is something that she believes she has to do - take sides.

“We’ll be forced to ask ourselves some very uncomfortable questions, about our values and traditions, our vision for the future, about our responsibilities for citizens...”

Roy makes a passionate case against globalization, again asking uncomfortable questions: who is globalization for? “What will it do for a country like India, in which social inequality has been institutionalized in the caste system for centuries?” Although Roy focuses her thesis on India, those uncomfortable questions are easily applicable to any developing country where a corporatization and globalization of industries is happening (is corporate farming the next big thing for us in Pakistan?).

If Roy is known for her advocacy against big dams in India, it is, as she eloquently portrays, not without reason. Lest anyone be confused, Roy’s ‘anti-dam’ stance isn’t limited to the problems that people will face if a dam is constructed; it is the issue of dams itself that causes so much distress. For example, she finds it odd that there is no estimate for “what the contribution of big dams has been to overall food production in India”. Or that no one has ever done an honest audit to discover exactly what a big dam has achieved, or not. Again, she puts forth one of her many uncomfortable questions: “what are the experts up to?”

In her essay “The reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin” she describes the character as a “piece of deviant, insidious, white logic that will eventually self annihilate. He’s decimated the competition, killed all the other kings, the other kinds of kings. He’s persuaded us that he’s all we have left. Our only salvation.” Sounds abstract? It all falls into place when she goes on to narrate the story of Bill Clinton (“H.E., the most exalted plenipotentiary of Rumpeldom”) visiting India in March 2000.

From then on, Roy does what she does best: she presents yet another case against the corporatization of industries, and to some extent, society at large by exposing intentions. “To snatch these [peoples access to natural resources] away and sell them as stock to private companies is a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has no parallel in history.”

Roy also writes about her own much-publicized contempt of court case in February 2001 in the essay “On citizens right to express dissent”. Defending her decision to support the Narmada Bachao Andalan, Roy passionately puts forth a case that would convince even the staunchest of “pro-development” reader.

The Guardian did its readers a great service by publishing Roy’s essays “The algebra of infinite justice” and “War is peace”, which are both included in this book. They represent some of the finest writings against America’s war on terror and have firmly established Roy as a great proponent of peace and truth. It is there that she finds her power and one hopes that she continues to turn her back on power.

Power politics
By Arundhati Roy
South End Press, Cambridge (MA)
Website: www.southendpress.org
ISBN 0-89608-668-2. 182pp. $12

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