Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian writer who writes in English and an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.
Arundhati 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 worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-star hotels in New Delhi before she got a pile of cash for her God of Small Things.
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.
Arundhati Roy, who you may think of as India’s Noam Chomsky, although he never claims to be or is billed as an activist, wrote An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire, 2004. She wrote a series of books and articles on various issues – ranging from the portrayal of the rape of Phulan Devi in Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen to her latest Ghandi but with Guns - essay about the naxalites. While she has received support from various quarters for her views, Roy's description of the Maoists as "Gandhians" raised a controversy. Writers with the South Asia Analysis Group have alleged that Roy does not hold sympathy for the victims of Maoist "terrorism"
Strangely, in today’s Andhra Jyothy, (www.andhrajyothy.com), a Telugu daily broadsheet in Hyderabad, she talks about non-violence, against green hunt and all that middle of the path leftist stunt. Then how about the violence unleashed on the CRPF and innocents by the maoists? She is a maoist without guts to say that she is one. Or she is shallow, just perching on the green twig for the time being and waiting for another cause celebre to hop on to. She wants to be a mediator if the government wants her to be; and warns journalists (in the wake of Hemchand Pande’s unfortunate death) to be cautious. Arundhati begins to talk the language of the middle of the way lefties. She is now willing to be a mediator between the government and the naxals. Another cause, another essay…
Medha Patkar has been with the Narmada Bachao Andolan for the past two or three decades – while she does speak up against injustice elsewhere, she is devoted to the cause of those dislocated by the the Narmada dam project. She gave her life to it. What did dear Arundhati give?
A 2000-word essay in the Outlook with cover-page billing. Arundhati Roy donated her Booker prize money as well as royalties from her books on the project to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. We don’t know if she got any royalty on the book: it is available on pavements all over India for Rs 50/- Well, she makes for good copy, and works wonderfully as a poster girl (or pin-up girl) for sundry ‘democratic’ activities, but she doesn’t stick to one thing for life. We don’t know if she is still married to Pradeep Kishen.
She has a ‘broad sweep’, that is why she hops from one perch to another, you might say. But how serious are you about a cause when you land up to a celebrity reception, talk to a few people and then get banner headlines the next day, and move on to another cause. I for one am glad that she put the Narmada Bachao Andolan on ‘her back burner’ so that serious people can go ahead and take the lead. At one time it appered that Medha Patkar was a functionary of the movement which was being sphereheaded by Arundhati Roy. This is the name she should have been known as, as per her Keralite ancestry.
Be that as it may, he tries very hard to pass off as a Hindu, although she criticises the Bharatiya Janata Party generously. She in fact wrote another celebrated essay (what a true essayist she is: one essay, and off with the cause, and effects!) giving 13 or so reasons for not hanging Afzan Guru, an accused in the parliament attack of 2001. If she was a lawyer, which she unfortunately isn’t, we are sure she would have bailed out Afzan Guru. I am not a supporter of the BJP (not any more anyway), and I was moved by her argument, so should any Justice or Jury… Alas, she is not a lawyer.
In the “end of imagination”, she talks about India’s nuclear program; she argued against the building of nuclear weapons in India: that did not stop the Pakis from building the nuke! Nor did the U S stop stockpiling nuclear ‘options’. If our neighbours lack imagination, it will be foolhardy on our part to be imaginative, build bridges, commission bus and train routes, and get a godawful war on our heads.
A lot of the stuff here is ‘sourced’ from the Wikipedia, which devotes dozens of pages to Mary Arundhati. And this is what it has to say of Medha Patkar: (born December 1, 1954) is an Indian social activist. She is known for her role in Narmada Bachao Andolan. Arundhati was with the cause for 3-4 months. She has other fish to fry, being a half Malayali and half Bengali…
Bottomline: When asked if The God of Small Things was inspired by the movie Children of a Lesser God, Arundhati was petrified. People took pictures of her pose.
Postscript: A friend wrote in to say that using the mother's name as a surname is not a practice across all social groups in Kerala. I stand corrected: sorry Abilash, and thanks for correcting me.
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