Arundhati Roy encyclopedia topics

Biography

Early life

Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya 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 Ayemenem or Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard DaCunha.

Works

Roy first 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. The book reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. She 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, including one from John Updike in The New Yorker. However, Carmen Callil, chair of the Booker judges panel in 1996, called The God of Small Things "an execrable book" and said it should never have reached the shortlist.

Roy wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1992) in which she also appeared as a performer, and a television serial The Banyan Tree. She also wrote the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy (2002).

In early 2007, Roy announced she would begin work on a second novel.

Activism and advocacy

The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. She has since devoted herself solely 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.

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.

Arundhati 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 its 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 (SWANABAQ) 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 criticised Roy for what it alleges is defence of a terrorist that does not lie in the national interest.

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 massive police force was sent into the area to smash the huts that had been built up and brutally evict the people--one participant of the movement and a policeman were killed. The leaders of the movement moreover were badly beaten and arrested. Arundhati Roy immediately travelled to the area, visited the movement's leaders in jail and wrote an open letter to the Chief Minister saying "You have blood on your hands."

Awards

Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her fiction 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" and "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 for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it.

Criticisms and controversies

Economist and prominent free trade advocate Jagdish Bhagwati, on being asked if he'd like his book being reviewed by Roy, said "her conclusions are far more obvious than her arguments and that makes it impossible to function. You don’t know where to begin or where to end."

BJP Member of Parliament Balbir Punj criticised Roy's article, titled Democracy: Who's she when she's at home?, on the 2002 Gujarat Violence, pointing out a factual error in it and calling the article "dishonest" and a "hate charter against India and the Sangh parivar". Roy acknowledged the factual error and apologised to the family referred to in the erroneous statement but said that such errors do not alter the substance of her own as well as others' accounts of the violence.

In 2003, Arundhati Roy and her husband were found building their house in a protected tribal forest area, in violation of forest law, which bars buying and selling of notified forest land.

Bibliography

Books

Roy, Arundhati; (1997). The God of Small Things. Flamingo. ISBN 0-00-655068-1.
Roy, Arundhati; (1999). The Cost of Living. Flamingo. ISBN 0375756140.. It contains the essays The Greater Common Good and The End of Imagination, which are now included in the book The Algebra of Infinite Justice
Roy, Arundhati; (2002). The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Flamingo. ISBN 0-00-714949-2. (a collection of essays: The End of Imagination, The Greater Common Good, Power Politics [also a book], The Ladies Have Feelings, So..., The Algebra of Infinite Justice, War is Peace, Democracy, War Talk [also a book] and Come September.)
Foreword to For Reasons of State (2003) ISBN 1-56584-794-6 by Noam Chomsky
Roy, Arundhati; (2002). Power Politics. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-668-2.
Roy, Arundhati; (2003). War Talk. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-724-7.
Roy, Arundhati; (2004). An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire, Consortium Book Sales and Dist, September 15, 2004, hardcover, ISBN 0-89608-728-X; trade paperback, Consortium, September 15, 2004, ISBN 0-89608-727-1
Roy, Arundhati; (2004). Public Power in the Age of Empire. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-58322-682-6.
Roy, Arundhati; (2004). The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-710-7.

Essays, Speeches and Articles

Insult and Injury in Afghanistan (MSNBC, 20 October 2001)
War is Peace (Outlook, 29 October 2001)
Stop bombing Afghanistan
Instant Democracy (May 13, 2003)

Personal life

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and became involved in film-making under his influence. She played a village girl in the award-winning movie Massey Sahib.

Roy is a niece of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy(Arundhathi Roy's father and Prannoy are brothers) and lives in New Delhi.

References

External links

Biographical material

Ch'ien, Evelyn Nien-Ming. "The Politics of Design." In Weird English. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard UP, 2004.

Works, speeches

'We' The Unauthorised Arundhati Roy Musical Documentary (watch & download free or order DVD by donation)

Come September Transcript of speech on 18 September 2002 and conversation with Howard Zinn
Archive of Arundhati Roy on Democracy Now!
`We have to become the global resistance' (Abriged version of speech given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16. January 2004)
Tide? or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire (August 16, 2004 speech in San Francisco)
ABC Radio National transcript of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture (with audio) or download the speech here
The Most Cowardly War in History (Article dated 24 June 2005)
Complete Collection of Her Essays and Speeches (in-progress)
Podcast of Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra discussing “India in the World ” at the Shanghai International Literary Festival

Other

We, a political documentary about Roy's words
The Algebra of Arundhati’s Injudiciousness by Farzana Versey
Arundhati Roy denounces Indian democracy 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
"In the Valley of the Tigers" an interview with ascent magazine.