The Algebra of Arundhati’s Injudiciousness
Farzana Versey January 23, 2006
#54 Posted by iron_mask on January 24, 2006 5:33:14 am
http://www.hindu.com/2000/11/26/stories/13260411.htm
(After reading Ms. Roy`s most recent essay, I see no reason to revise my judgment: that we would all be better off were she to revert to fiction. )
The Arun Shourie of the left
Celebrity endorsement of social movements is fraught with hazards. In the beginning, apart from inviting media attention, it may also draw to the cause previously silent bystanders ... Much depends on the kind of celebrity, says noted historian RAMACHANDRA GUHA.
THE Narmada Bachao Andolan is only the last in a series of social movements against large dams. True, the spectacular schemes of the 1950s and 1960s - Bhakra, Hirakud, Tungabhadra and the like - came up with scarcely a sigh of protest. Villages in the way of the reservoir were made to depart in the name of ``national interest``. It took fully two decades for this national interest to be revealed as the specific interests of the urban-industrial elite. Thus the 1970s witnessed a series of popular struggles on behalf of the to-be dispossessed. There were movements against the Koel-Karo project in Bihar, the Subarnarekha project in Orissa and the Vishnuprayag and Tehri projects in Garhwal. These varied movements and the questions they raised inspired the editors of the Second Citizens` Report on the Indian Environment, published in 1985, to dedicate their labours to the ``dam- displaced people of India``.
These movements were accompanied by intellectual critiques of the big dam idea. In 1981, the Gandhi Peace Foundation published a seminal document called Major Dams: A Second Look, based on a seminar held in Sirsi, in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. Then, in 1984, two college students, Ashish Kothari and Rajiv Bhartari, published a wide ranging critique of the Narmada Valley projects in the Economic and Political Weekly. After reading this essay, Medha Patkar was encouraged to move from social work in Mumbai to mobilising adivasis in Madhya Pradesh. The following year, the Annual Number of the Economic and Political Weekly printed an essay by Nirmal Sengupta entitled ``Irrigation: Traditional versus Modern``, an empirically rich and thoughtful analysis that made a strong case for the continuing relevance of indigenous methods of water harvesting. Sengupta`s work in English was complemented by the superb field studies of water conservation published in Hindi by Anupam Mishra. Meanwhile, Pune economist Vijay Paranjype was conducting case studies of individual dams, which showed that the actual costs incurred in their construction generally exceeded their putative benefits.
These precocious works raised the basic issues so spiritedly taken up by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA): social justice, environmental sustainability, economic efficiency and cultural survival. The movement brought to these old, and always relevant, issues, the vigour of a mass popular movement and the appeal of a charismatic leader. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Andolan organised a series of strikes, fasts, processions, padayatras and rasta rokos, these held in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and that continuing centre of imperial power, New Delhi. Inspired by an exemplary leader and a devoted cadre of workers, it drew into its fold adivasis and peasants as well as students and professionals from the cities.
This widening of the support base was necessary because of the growing pro-dam movement that confronted it. The Andolan`s principal target, the Sardar Sarovar project, is a curious scheme whose benefits will flow almost wholly to one State, Gujarat, whereas its costs will be borne by upstream villages in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The Gujaratis, regardless of ideology or political affiliation, stand as one behind the dam. The unanimity is complete, and sinister. When the respected Ahmedabad dancer, Mrinalini Sarabhai, asked about the rights of the displaced, she was told to shut up or leave the State.
Then, in the summer of 1999, the NBA secured the support of the novelist, Arundhati Roy. Ms. Roy`s involvement came at a time when the movement was at a particularly low ebb. Its offices in Gujarat had been attacked. Years of selfless activism were being answered with a barrage of criticism from the pro-liberalisation press. Medha Patkar, in particular, had become a hate figure for free-market columnists. The Andolan and its leader were accused for holding up the dams that would power the factories that would make India Singapore writ large.
Arundhati Roy`s essay on the Sardar Sarovar dam was published by Outlook and Frontline magazines in May 1999. At the time, I had decidedly mixed feelings about it. As a work of analysis, it was unoriginal: Kothari and company had been there before her. As a piece of literary craftsmanship it was self-indulgent and hyperbolic. Still, to criticise the essay would be to let down the side. Might not her name and her fame attract to the ``cause`` the undecided upper class, men and women who would read Ms. Roy in Outlook but who had never heard of Nirmal Sengupta or the Economic and Political Weekly?
To suppress my reservations was not easy, for I had been intensely irritated by Ms. Roy`s previous venture into public interest journalism: her polemic against the nuclear tests in 1998. There too, I was on her side, ``objectively`` speaking. Yet her vanity was unreal. Ms. Roy quoted, without irony, the judgment of her friend that after having written one successful novel she had seen it all, that a barren stretch of life lay before her until the final meeting with her Maker. She spoke of how she had disregarded the advice of those who insisted that the tax man would come chasing her were she to write against the bomb. A month before Ms. Roy sat down to write her piece, 4,00,000 adults had marched through the streets of Calcutta in protest against the Pokharan blasts. Were their homes all raided by the Income Tax Department?
The anti-dam essay had its signs of self-absorption too. Its opening scene, of Ms. Roy laughing on the top of a hill, seemed a straight lift from the first lines of that monument to egotism, Ayn Rand`s The Fountainhead. The essay was marked throughout by a conspicuous lack of proportion. To compare dams to nuclear weapons was absurd. To demonise technology was irresponsible. The scientists, K. J. Roy and Suhas Parajpye, had worked out an innovative compromise, a reduction in the projected height of the Sardar Sarovar dam which would reduce submergence while allowing the construction of ``overflow`` canals to the water-scarce areas of Kutch and Saurashtra. This scheme would minimise human suffering while creatively redeeming the thousands of crores already spent on the project. Ms. Roy wanted, however, for the dam to be made a museum for failed technologies. Altogether, this was an essay written with passion but without care. In her stream-of-consciousness style, the arguments were served up in a jumble of images and exclamations with the odd number thrown in. The most serious objections to the dam, on grounds of social justice, ecological prudence and economic efficiency, were lost in the presentation. What struck one most forcibly was her atavistic hatred of science and a romantic celebration of adivasi lifestyles.
It is tempting to see Arundhati Roy as the Arun Shourie of the left. The super-patriot and the anti-patriot use much the same methods. Both think exclusively in black and white. Both choose to use a 100 words when 10 will do. Both arrogate to themselves the right to hand out moral certificates. Those who criticise Shourie are characterised as anti-national, those who dare take on Roy are made out to be agents of the State. In either case, an excess of emotion and indignation drowns out the facts.
One must grant that Arundhati Roy is a courageous woman. Other novelists like to shut themselves away from the world, but she has sought engagement with it. She followed her printed blasts with long, tiring journeys in inhospitable terrain, to show her solidarity with the anti-nuclear and anti-dam protesters. Most writers have been individualists and careerists. An all-too-small minority has shown an awareness of public issues. Where do we place Ms. Roy in this line of honourable dissenters?
Perhaps the greatest of activist-novelists was George Orwell. Out of Eton and the Indian Police Service, he chose to work as a dishwasher in Paris and to live with miners in the north of England. Later, he fought with the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. His engagements with poverty and fascism inspired his novels Animal Farm and 1984 and a series of imperishable essays on political subjects. In the great battles of the modern world, he took the brave, but intellectually unfashionable, stand of being for democracy but for socialism as well.
Orwell I know only through his books, but I had the honour of knowing, in flesh-and-blood, the finest novelist-activist of modern India, Kota Shivram Karanth. In a long life, Karanth helped revive Yakshagana, promote widow remarriage, transform the Kannada novel and pioneer the environmental movement in Karnataka. He translated and published the first Citizens` Reports on the Indian Environment. He led movements against the pollution of the Tungabhadra and against the Kaiga nuclear plant. These were all in the 1980s, when he was himself in his nineties. A decade previously he had inspired the successful campaign against the Bedthi power project in the district of Uttara Kannada.
Arundhati Roy might very well equal Orwell and Karanth in her bravery. But she lacks their intellectual probity and judgment. Those men wrote with a proper sense of gravitas, in a prose that was lucid but understated, each word weighed before it was uttered. Perhaps they were lucky to work in a pre-television and pre-colour supplement era, when the principle would take precedence over the personality.
Perhaps we should blame the time we live in for Arundhati Roy`s carelessness. That she is careless is beyond dispute. She made disparaging remarks about the judges of the Supreme Court while that Court was hearing a case filed by the organisation she sought to support. Late in 1999, the National Law School in Bangalore convened a meeting on the Narmada issue. One of the NBA`s leaders was present, as was its lawyer. At this meeting, the eminent legal scholar Upendra Baxi, a man who has written books on the functioning of the Supreme Court, gently suggested that it would be wise for the Andolan to disassociate itself from Arundhati Roy.
Now, in the light of the recent judgment sanctioning the elevation of the dam, five metres at a time, Ms. Roy has erupted again. The judges and judgment, she says, show that we are living in a ``banana republic``. She has suggested that the judges are ignorant and insensitive. Speaking to a foreign journalist, she has compared the judgment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation`s (NATO) bombing of Yugoslavia. These opinions were offered as the Andolan prepares to file a review petition in the Supreme Court.
Celebrity endorsement of social movements is always fraught with hazard. In the beginning, it may attract media attention, and draw to the cause previously silent bystanders. However, the media will soon abandon the cause for the star, and the converts will soon return to their humdrum lives. Much depends on the kind of celebrity. A film star will wave and flash a smile: do little good but no harm either. But celebrity writers will write and speak. And the natural bent of this particular celebrity is towards hyperbole and hysteria. ``When NATO bombed Yugoslavia,`` says Ms. Roy, ``a tiger in the Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs.`` (quoted in the Asian Age, October 30).
I am told that Arundhati Roy has written a very good novel. Perhaps she should begin another. Her retreat from activism would - to use a term from economics - be a ``Paretto optimum``: good for literature, and good for the Indian environmental movement.
Postscript: As this article was going to press, the latest Outlook arrived, with Ms. Roy`s latest venture into social science. It is like the others: self-regarding and self- indulgent. The essay is also self-contradictory, a jeremiad against the market and globalisation by one who is placed in the heart of the global market for celebrity-hood.
Among the targets singled out for attack this time is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is a curious choice, for so far as one can make sense of her arguement, Ms. Roy seems to share the RSS`s understanding of politics.
After reading Ms. Roy`s most recent essay, I see no reason to revise my judgment: that we would all be better off were she to revert to fiction.
(After reading Ms. Roy`s most recent essay, I see no reason to revise my judgment: that we would all be better off were she to revert to fiction. )
The Arun Shourie of the left
Celebrity endorsement of social movements is fraught with hazards. In the beginning, apart from inviting media attention, it may also draw to the cause previously silent bystanders ... Much depends on the kind of celebrity, says noted historian RAMACHANDRA GUHA.
THE Narmada Bachao Andolan is only the last in a series of social movements against large dams. True, the spectacular schemes of the 1950s and 1960s - Bhakra, Hirakud, Tungabhadra and the like - came up with scarcely a sigh of protest. Villages in the way of the reservoir were made to depart in the name of ``national interest``. It took fully two decades for this national interest to be revealed as the specific interests of the urban-industrial elite. Thus the 1970s witnessed a series of popular struggles on behalf of the to-be dispossessed. There were movements against the Koel-Karo project in Bihar, the Subarnarekha project in Orissa and the Vishnuprayag and Tehri projects in Garhwal. These varied movements and the questions they raised inspired the editors of the Second Citizens` Report on the Indian Environment, published in 1985, to dedicate their labours to the ``dam- displaced people of India``.
These movements were accompanied by intellectual critiques of the big dam idea. In 1981, the Gandhi Peace Foundation published a seminal document called Major Dams: A Second Look, based on a seminar held in Sirsi, in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. Then, in 1984, two college students, Ashish Kothari and Rajiv Bhartari, published a wide ranging critique of the Narmada Valley projects in the Economic and Political Weekly. After reading this essay, Medha Patkar was encouraged to move from social work in Mumbai to mobilising adivasis in Madhya Pradesh. The following year, the Annual Number of the Economic and Political Weekly printed an essay by Nirmal Sengupta entitled ``Irrigation: Traditional versus Modern``, an empirically rich and thoughtful analysis that made a strong case for the continuing relevance of indigenous methods of water harvesting. Sengupta`s work in English was complemented by the superb field studies of water conservation published in Hindi by Anupam Mishra. Meanwhile, Pune economist Vijay Paranjype was conducting case studies of individual dams, which showed that the actual costs incurred in their construction generally exceeded their putative benefits.
These precocious works raised the basic issues so spiritedly taken up by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA): social justice, environmental sustainability, economic efficiency and cultural survival. The movement brought to these old, and always relevant, issues, the vigour of a mass popular movement and the appeal of a charismatic leader. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Andolan organised a series of strikes, fasts, processions, padayatras and rasta rokos, these held in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and that continuing centre of imperial power, New Delhi. Inspired by an exemplary leader and a devoted cadre of workers, it drew into its fold adivasis and peasants as well as students and professionals from the cities.
This widening of the support base was necessary because of the growing pro-dam movement that confronted it. The Andolan`s principal target, the Sardar Sarovar project, is a curious scheme whose benefits will flow almost wholly to one State, Gujarat, whereas its costs will be borne by upstream villages in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The Gujaratis, regardless of ideology or political affiliation, stand as one behind the dam. The unanimity is complete, and sinister. When the respected Ahmedabad dancer, Mrinalini Sarabhai, asked about the rights of the displaced, she was told to shut up or leave the State.
Then, in the summer of 1999, the NBA secured the support of the novelist, Arundhati Roy. Ms. Roy`s involvement came at a time when the movement was at a particularly low ebb. Its offices in Gujarat had been attacked. Years of selfless activism were being answered with a barrage of criticism from the pro-liberalisation press. Medha Patkar, in particular, had become a hate figure for free-market columnists. The Andolan and its leader were accused for holding up the dams that would power the factories that would make India Singapore writ large.
Arundhati Roy`s essay on the Sardar Sarovar dam was published by Outlook and Frontline magazines in May 1999. At the time, I had decidedly mixed feelings about it. As a work of analysis, it was unoriginal: Kothari and company had been there before her. As a piece of literary craftsmanship it was self-indulgent and hyperbolic. Still, to criticise the essay would be to let down the side. Might not her name and her fame attract to the ``cause`` the undecided upper class, men and women who would read Ms. Roy in Outlook but who had never heard of Nirmal Sengupta or the Economic and Political Weekly?
To suppress my reservations was not easy, for I had been intensely irritated by Ms. Roy`s previous venture into public interest journalism: her polemic against the nuclear tests in 1998. There too, I was on her side, ``objectively`` speaking. Yet her vanity was unreal. Ms. Roy quoted, without irony, the judgment of her friend that after having written one successful novel she had seen it all, that a barren stretch of life lay before her until the final meeting with her Maker. She spoke of how she had disregarded the advice of those who insisted that the tax man would come chasing her were she to write against the bomb. A month before Ms. Roy sat down to write her piece, 4,00,000 adults had marched through the streets of Calcutta in protest against the Pokharan blasts. Were their homes all raided by the Income Tax Department?
The anti-dam essay had its signs of self-absorption too. Its opening scene, of Ms. Roy laughing on the top of a hill, seemed a straight lift from the first lines of that monument to egotism, Ayn Rand`s The Fountainhead. The essay was marked throughout by a conspicuous lack of proportion. To compare dams to nuclear weapons was absurd. To demonise technology was irresponsible. The scientists, K. J. Roy and Suhas Parajpye, had worked out an innovative compromise, a reduction in the projected height of the Sardar Sarovar dam which would reduce submergence while allowing the construction of ``overflow`` canals to the water-scarce areas of Kutch and Saurashtra. This scheme would minimise human suffering while creatively redeeming the thousands of crores already spent on the project. Ms. Roy wanted, however, for the dam to be made a museum for failed technologies. Altogether, this was an essay written with passion but without care. In her stream-of-consciousness style, the arguments were served up in a jumble of images and exclamations with the odd number thrown in. The most serious objections to the dam, on grounds of social justice, ecological prudence and economic efficiency, were lost in the presentation. What struck one most forcibly was her atavistic hatred of science and a romantic celebration of adivasi lifestyles.
It is tempting to see Arundhati Roy as the Arun Shourie of the left. The super-patriot and the anti-patriot use much the same methods. Both think exclusively in black and white. Both choose to use a 100 words when 10 will do. Both arrogate to themselves the right to hand out moral certificates. Those who criticise Shourie are characterised as anti-national, those who dare take on Roy are made out to be agents of the State. In either case, an excess of emotion and indignation drowns out the facts.
One must grant that Arundhati Roy is a courageous woman. Other novelists like to shut themselves away from the world, but she has sought engagement with it. She followed her printed blasts with long, tiring journeys in inhospitable terrain, to show her solidarity with the anti-nuclear and anti-dam protesters. Most writers have been individualists and careerists. An all-too-small minority has shown an awareness of public issues. Where do we place Ms. Roy in this line of honourable dissenters?
Perhaps the greatest of activist-novelists was George Orwell. Out of Eton and the Indian Police Service, he chose to work as a dishwasher in Paris and to live with miners in the north of England. Later, he fought with the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. His engagements with poverty and fascism inspired his novels Animal Farm and 1984 and a series of imperishable essays on political subjects. In the great battles of the modern world, he took the brave, but intellectually unfashionable, stand of being for democracy but for socialism as well.
Orwell I know only through his books, but I had the honour of knowing, in flesh-and-blood, the finest novelist-activist of modern India, Kota Shivram Karanth. In a long life, Karanth helped revive Yakshagana, promote widow remarriage, transform the Kannada novel and pioneer the environmental movement in Karnataka. He translated and published the first Citizens` Reports on the Indian Environment. He led movements against the pollution of the Tungabhadra and against the Kaiga nuclear plant. These were all in the 1980s, when he was himself in his nineties. A decade previously he had inspired the successful campaign against the Bedthi power project in the district of Uttara Kannada.
Arundhati Roy might very well equal Orwell and Karanth in her bravery. But she lacks their intellectual probity and judgment. Those men wrote with a proper sense of gravitas, in a prose that was lucid but understated, each word weighed before it was uttered. Perhaps they were lucky to work in a pre-television and pre-colour supplement era, when the principle would take precedence over the personality.
Perhaps we should blame the time we live in for Arundhati Roy`s carelessness. That she is careless is beyond dispute. She made disparaging remarks about the judges of the Supreme Court while that Court was hearing a case filed by the organisation she sought to support. Late in 1999, the National Law School in Bangalore convened a meeting on the Narmada issue. One of the NBA`s leaders was present, as was its lawyer. At this meeting, the eminent legal scholar Upendra Baxi, a man who has written books on the functioning of the Supreme Court, gently suggested that it would be wise for the Andolan to disassociate itself from Arundhati Roy.
Now, in the light of the recent judgment sanctioning the elevation of the dam, five metres at a time, Ms. Roy has erupted again. The judges and judgment, she says, show that we are living in a ``banana republic``. She has suggested that the judges are ignorant and insensitive. Speaking to a foreign journalist, she has compared the judgment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation`s (NATO) bombing of Yugoslavia. These opinions were offered as the Andolan prepares to file a review petition in the Supreme Court.
Celebrity endorsement of social movements is always fraught with hazard. In the beginning, it may attract media attention, and draw to the cause previously silent bystanders. However, the media will soon abandon the cause for the star, and the converts will soon return to their humdrum lives. Much depends on the kind of celebrity. A film star will wave and flash a smile: do little good but no harm either. But celebrity writers will write and speak. And the natural bent of this particular celebrity is towards hyperbole and hysteria. ``When NATO bombed Yugoslavia,`` says Ms. Roy, ``a tiger in the Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs.`` (quoted in the Asian Age, October 30).
I am told that Arundhati Roy has written a very good novel. Perhaps she should begin another. Her retreat from activism would - to use a term from economics - be a ``Paretto optimum``: good for literature, and good for the Indian environmental movement.
Postscript: As this article was going to press, the latest Outlook arrived, with Ms. Roy`s latest venture into social science. It is like the others: self-regarding and self- indulgent. The essay is also self-contradictory, a jeremiad against the market and globalisation by one who is placed in the heart of the global market for celebrity-hood.
Among the targets singled out for attack this time is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is a curious choice, for so far as one can make sense of her arguement, Ms. Roy seems to share the RSS`s understanding of politics.
After reading Ms. Roy`s most recent essay, I see no reason to revise my judgment: that we would all be better off were she to revert to fiction.
reply to this interact
write a new interact
add to favorites
flag objectionable content
#53 Posted by iron_mask on January 24, 2006 5:31:37 am
#52 Posted by iron_mask on January 24, 2006 5:18:46 am
#48
the Sahitya Academy award is not a govt award for a start.
It is the highest literary award.
One can reject it. No one is question her rights at rejection. My guess is that FV is questioning her, AR`s, approach to the rejection.
Let me bang this into your little head and please repeat after me
sahitya Academi`s award is not a GOVT AWARD
If AR got the Padma series of awards then it is a GOVT AWARD
One needs grace at rejecting and accepting the award
Sahitya Academi`s Award is the equivalent of the Nobel in India. And much more competive then the PEN Award (given the number of languages in India and the number of authors, poets etc) (you are surely so american centric that you cannot see beyond your nose)
God. Woman. Your petty jealousies are making you blind. If you are not careful, you will surely follow in Manto`s footsteps beating the drum to one and only one rythm
the Sahitya Academy award is not a govt award for a start.
It is the highest literary award.
One can reject it. No one is question her rights at rejection. My guess is that FV is questioning her, AR`s, approach to the rejection.
Let me bang this into your little head and please repeat after me
sahitya Academi`s award is not a GOVT AWARD
If AR got the Padma series of awards then it is a GOVT AWARD
One needs grace at rejecting and accepting the award
Sahitya Academi`s Award is the equivalent of the Nobel in India. And much more competive then the PEN Award (given the number of languages in India and the number of authors, poets etc) (you are surely so american centric that you cannot see beyond your nose)
God. Woman. Your petty jealousies are making you blind. If you are not careful, you will surely follow in Manto`s footsteps beating the drum to one and only one rythm
#51 Posted by Saminasha on January 24, 2006 5:04:56 am
And HP,
``I know Angelina Jolie, another leftist eccentric, ended up having three children from Asian fathers/men to make the children`s fund happy. Now she is going to have white kids.``
Apparently you know very little about Jolie. She has ADOPTED two children, one of Cambodian and one of African descent.
``I know Angelina Jolie, another leftist eccentric, ended up having three children from Asian fathers/men to make the children`s fund happy. Now she is going to have white kids.``
Apparently you know very little about Jolie. She has ADOPTED two children, one of Cambodian and one of African descent.
#50 Posted by Saminasha on January 24, 2006 4:52:50 am
HP,
Please. It would behoove you to admit that Roy is a great writer and polemicist. Comments about women and eccentricity only make you appear to be a male chauvinist.
Please. It would behoove you to admit that Roy is a great writer and polemicist. Comments about women and eccentricity only make you appear to be a male chauvinist.
#49 Posted by Saminasha on January 24, 2006 4:42:54 am
Manny,
Kindly direct your offensive being and comments elsewhere. I have no wish to interact with you.
Kindly direct your offensive being and comments elsewhere. I have no wish to interact with you.
#48 Posted by Saminasha on January 24, 2006 4:41:38 am
Manto,
Again, lets look at this logically.
Why would are we expecting writers and artists to be models of perfection? Can someone explain this disingenuous notion to me?
In other words, if person A refuses a govt. award saying that she does not want:
1. to be the recipient of an award given by an institution that is part of a larger institution that enacts and performs policy that is objectionable to her, what is it to you or anyone else?
2. Why should anyone else be offended by it? Did Roy say, If anyone accepts this award, they are a sell out? Can you or Aisha provide proof to corroborate Roy`s implying such?
3. Why do her critics get offended by her refusing the award? Is she supposed to bow and scrape to any govt if they throw bones at her?
4. Why is no one pointing out the VAST difference b/n receiving a Nobel or PEN award and this Sahitya award? Can anyone here explicate the difference?
5. Why are you writers are all up in a dither for her taking a personal stand. Roy`s actions are barely surprising to me, but a bunch of writer-journalist types here seem to take her refusal personally, which says a lot more than anything else....
Again, lets look at this logically.
Why would are we expecting writers and artists to be models of perfection? Can someone explain this disingenuous notion to me?
In other words, if person A refuses a govt. award saying that she does not want:
1. to be the recipient of an award given by an institution that is part of a larger institution that enacts and performs policy that is objectionable to her, what is it to you or anyone else?
2. Why should anyone else be offended by it? Did Roy say, If anyone accepts this award, they are a sell out? Can you or Aisha provide proof to corroborate Roy`s implying such?
3. Why do her critics get offended by her refusing the award? Is she supposed to bow and scrape to any govt if they throw bones at her?
4. Why is no one pointing out the VAST difference b/n receiving a Nobel or PEN award and this Sahitya award? Can anyone here explicate the difference?
5. Why are you writers are all up in a dither for her taking a personal stand. Roy`s actions are barely surprising to me, but a bunch of writer-journalist types here seem to take her refusal personally, which says a lot more than anything else....
#47 Posted by mannyd on January 24, 2006 3:52:16 am
Manto #45 : ` I realised that she was not the person we thought she was... `
Do You mean she did not pull Gandhi`s Dhoti off in her speech?
Everyone can not be a sophist like you Manto.
Do You mean she did not pull Gandhi`s Dhoti off in her speech?
Everyone can not be a sophist like you Manto.
#46 Posted by mannyd on January 24, 2006 3:47:54 am
Aisha Ben #44 : `...David Barsamian sent me her tapes with a special note saying I would love her when I ordered Eqbal Ahmed`s`
Boy, you have really arrived. Who is David Barsamian and can I get a special note from him too? Who is Eqbal Ahmed?
`...and put down the Pakistani nationalist cause, while inserting her ``humanist sort of morality`` on us, which is neither bite sized nor practical.`
That is quite a shame. What is the Pakistani nationalist cause these days? If it is to kill AR`s husband and nuke sparrows in her backyard, you have my full support. Just give us some notice so we can warn relatives and friends.
`Since you mentioned prizes and asked how important a dead person`s award it to him/her and the people who nominate, I am reminded of a huge feature on the Nobel prize website that explains why Gandhi didn`t get the Nobel peace prize.`
Hey who cares, as long as Jinnah got the Nobel peace prize? Honestly Ayesha Ben, I think you are reminded of Gandhi at very odd times and performing all types of acts. If Farzana Bibi had mentioned an Okra recipe, you would have told us how Jinnah liked Okra but Gandhi did not.
Boy, you have really arrived. Who is David Barsamian and can I get a special note from him too? Who is Eqbal Ahmed?
`...and put down the Pakistani nationalist cause, while inserting her ``humanist sort of morality`` on us, which is neither bite sized nor practical.`
That is quite a shame. What is the Pakistani nationalist cause these days? If it is to kill AR`s husband and nuke sparrows in her backyard, you have my full support. Just give us some notice so we can warn relatives and friends.
`Since you mentioned prizes and asked how important a dead person`s award it to him/her and the people who nominate, I am reminded of a huge feature on the Nobel prize website that explains why Gandhi didn`t get the Nobel peace prize.`
Hey who cares, as long as Jinnah got the Nobel peace prize? Honestly Ayesha Ben, I think you are reminded of Gandhi at very odd times and performing all types of acts. If Farzana Bibi had mentioned an Okra recipe, you would have told us how Jinnah liked Okra but Gandhi did not.
#45 Posted by MantoLives on January 23, 2006 11:47:56 pm
I heard her speak in Lahore on 15th August 2002 ... Was impressed- temporarily.
Then I understood that beyond the emotionalism, goody-goody-ness and the fact that she was bashing India for all the wrong reasons ... I don`t wish to elaborate there... I realised that she was not the person we thought she was...
Only an old man with some integrity stood up on that day and asked her some poignant questions in bad English... we all made fun of him and dismissed him most self righteously as ``old school``...
Then I understood that beyond the emotionalism, goody-goody-ness and the fact that she was bashing India for all the wrong reasons ... I don`t wish to elaborate there... I realised that she was not the person we thought she was...
Only an old man with some integrity stood up on that day and asked her some poignant questions in bad English... we all made fun of him and dismissed him most self righteously as ``old school``...
#44 Posted by Aisha_Sarwari on January 23, 2006 11:37:26 pm
Dear Farzana,
Great article. I was a huge fan of Roy for God of Small Things, until she broke into politics with force and made flowery remarks about things I found important. For example her poetic expression of flags being gift wrappers, of nationalism being evil and myopic, her candid love for name-dropping `Gandhi`s India` when it didn`t quiet fit. Then her piece on the standoff between India and Pakistan where she visualized a nuclear war and counted the living things that would die: the sparrows in her backyard in Dehli, her husband etc - unnecessary and narcissist I thought for a writer of her standard...David Barsamian sent me her tapes with a special note saying I would love her when I ordered Eqbal Ahmed`s, and her lecture was in retrospect not very insightful, though beautiful and moving it was. It was all in all a disappointment to see her speak at the Friday times event 4 years ago and put down the Pakistani nationalist cause, while inserting her ``humanist sort of morality`` on us, which is neither bite sized nor practical.
It is really childish for her to reject this award. And you raise a valid point when you say she is willing to accept the booker prize from the ``imperialist America`` who she exposes for Enron scandals and underhanded deals with the BJP but would rather use to get her publishing needs furthered. Doesn`t make sense, and is very inconsistent. She needs to get off her moral high horse.
Since you mentioned prizes and asked how important a dead person`s award it to him/her and the people who nominate, I am reminded of a huge feature on the Nobel prize website that explains why Gandhi didn`t get the Nobel peace prize. What is interesting about this is a) Nominations create the nobility brand, and even a suggestion is enough b) Despite the hype, even at that time, a year after his death he didn`t get it, NOT because a Nobel isn`t given posthumously, but because the world wasn`t ready to crown a person who was racist. His politics in South Africa was the reason that they rejected his other peace initiatives, because Gandhi was selective and exclusive.
A key feature of a moral principle is that it should be able to fit universally without being unjust to one group. Clearly, Roy`s principled stand this time casts an unfair brand on people who have already accepted the prize.
Best,
Aisha Sarwari
Great article. I was a huge fan of Roy for God of Small Things, until she broke into politics with force and made flowery remarks about things I found important. For example her poetic expression of flags being gift wrappers, of nationalism being evil and myopic, her candid love for name-dropping `Gandhi`s India` when it didn`t quiet fit. Then her piece on the standoff between India and Pakistan where she visualized a nuclear war and counted the living things that would die: the sparrows in her backyard in Dehli, her husband etc - unnecessary and narcissist I thought for a writer of her standard...David Barsamian sent me her tapes with a special note saying I would love her when I ordered Eqbal Ahmed`s, and her lecture was in retrospect not very insightful, though beautiful and moving it was. It was all in all a disappointment to see her speak at the Friday times event 4 years ago and put down the Pakistani nationalist cause, while inserting her ``humanist sort of morality`` on us, which is neither bite sized nor practical.
It is really childish for her to reject this award. And you raise a valid point when you say she is willing to accept the booker prize from the ``imperialist America`` who she exposes for Enron scandals and underhanded deals with the BJP but would rather use to get her publishing needs furthered. Doesn`t make sense, and is very inconsistent. She needs to get off her moral high horse.
Since you mentioned prizes and asked how important a dead person`s award it to him/her and the people who nominate, I am reminded of a huge feature on the Nobel prize website that explains why Gandhi didn`t get the Nobel peace prize. What is interesting about this is a) Nominations create the nobility brand, and even a suggestion is enough b) Despite the hype, even at that time, a year after his death he didn`t get it, NOT because a Nobel isn`t given posthumously, but because the world wasn`t ready to crown a person who was racist. His politics in South Africa was the reason that they rejected his other peace initiatives, because Gandhi was selective and exclusive.
A key feature of a moral principle is that it should be able to fit universally without being unjust to one group. Clearly, Roy`s principled stand this time casts an unfair brand on people who have already accepted the prize.
Best,
Aisha Sarwari
#43 Posted by sadna on January 23, 2006 11:12:16 pm
I agree with author but am not sure where this statement is coming from.
``Cynics might well conjecture that the whole tribute business is about the conceit of people who believe they are intelligent enough to recognise somebody`s contribution. ``
Let us see who have chosen Arundhati Roy for the award.
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=268057&ssid=43&sid=ENT
``The book of political essays written between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2003, was the ‘’unanimous’’ choice of a jury comprising members Prof Bhalchandra Nemade, Samik Bandhyopadhyay and Ms Vrinda Nabar. Akademi president Gopi Chand Narang approved the recommendation today.
Roy will receive the award at a special function here on February 21, Akademi Secretary K Satchidanandan said.``
Who are all these people? I googled for them.
Prof Bhalchandra Nemade
He is a prominent Marathi novelist whose first novel was published in 1963, when Ms Arundhati Roy was a toddler.
http://www.seasonsindia.com/art_culture/lit_marathi_sea.htm#bala
Samik Bandhyopadhyay
He is a theatre and film critic who has written, translated and edited several books on theatre and film.
http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/AuthorSelect.asp?Author=Samik+Bandyopadhyay
Ms Vrinda Nabar
Vrinda Nabar is a former head of the English department of Mumbai University and has also written books. `Caste as woman` is the name of one of them.
The Sahitya Akademi secretary is K. Satchidanandan one of Kerala`s prominent poets.
http://india.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/23263
``A prolific poet, he has published nineteen collections of poetry since his first book, Anchu Sooryan in 1970. He has four collections of poetry in English translation and has translated over sixty Indian poets, as well as several European, Latin American, African and Asian poets into Malayalam. A sensitive and astute critic and editor, he has received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award four times (for poetry, drama, travel writing and criticism), among numerous honours and fellowships.``
Gopi Chand Narang President of the Sahitya Akademi
http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/16-31Mar04-Print-Edition/1603200422.htm
``...Gopi Chand Narang, Sahitya Akademi president, bestowed with the Padam Bhushan this year, happens to be the most noted Urdu litterateur globally.
The community of the pen wielding, know that Narang has always raised his voice against parochialism, religious fanaticism and social injustice of any kind. In fact his opponents, during his election, were disturbed as for the first time, a writer belonging to a ``minority`` language, happened to be a strong candidate for the post of the president of the Akademi.
Communalists be they from the Hindi lobby or the Urdu one, have always tried to deter him from the path of constructive work. He refused to be dragged into unnecessary political controversy and instead reposed his trust in the discretion of his voters who all are celebrated writers drawn from 22 languages of India. In fact his tremendous work paid off.
On the issue of secularism Narang asserted that again it was a charge that did not stick, since a writer should be judged not by euphemistic labels, but by the values reflected in his writing. He maintains that his record of work, dedication to subaltern and minorities causes, and 56 books of solid scholarship, literary and cultural criticism, and linguistic studies were more than enough to establish that he was a secularist and socialist to the core. He points out that there is a basic difference between a writer and a political worker.
According to Narang, one may be an activist, but in a democracy one does not need to be a card carrying member of a party to enter the field of letters. A writer’s basic commitment is to the sanctity of shabda, concern for humanitarianism and sense of nationalism. ..``
Arundhati Roy is free to do what she pleases. But I think (and I don`t mean FV here), anyone belittling the Akademi`s award needs to show some humility if nothing else.
#42 Posted by mannyd on January 23, 2006 10:33:57 pm
Saminasha # 33: ``As for Gul Sahib, I could really give a fig. I dont know what it is with you morality virgins who go around prescribing whom artists may meet with and not. Its really partronizing and hypocritical. Put down your Hustlers and then preach to the rest of us.``
Samina Ji, No one but no one is going to confuse YOU with AR, Farzana, Kaka or even Salim ever. So stop this nonsense of using `we`, `us` and first person plural.
What in the world do you mean by `` As for Gul SAHIB, I could really give a fig`` ? Are you a fig distributor? Are you just sympathetic to all Islamist terrorists? Are you a morality whore, who can not be bothered by murder of innocent civilians, as long as they are not Muslims? Would morality whoredom approve if AR faces a firing squad for playing the latter day Mata Hari or would it undergo Hymen-something operation all of a sudden?
By the way if you must pontificate, at least learn a bit more about spelling `Sathiya` Academy and what they have done in the past. Mr. DullaBhatti is a good start.
Meanwhile do not miss `Munich`.
Zeenaben, what is the difference in your #35 and # 37? DO you just like to stand up again and again? Please sit down.
Samina Ji, No one but no one is going to confuse YOU with AR, Farzana, Kaka or even Salim ever. So stop this nonsense of using `we`, `us` and first person plural.
What in the world do you mean by `` As for Gul SAHIB, I could really give a fig`` ? Are you a fig distributor? Are you just sympathetic to all Islamist terrorists? Are you a morality whore, who can not be bothered by murder of innocent civilians, as long as they are not Muslims? Would morality whoredom approve if AR faces a firing squad for playing the latter day Mata Hari or would it undergo Hymen-something operation all of a sudden?
By the way if you must pontificate, at least learn a bit more about spelling `Sathiya` Academy and what they have done in the past. Mr. DullaBhatti is a good start.
Meanwhile do not miss `Munich`.
Zeenaben, what is the difference in your #35 and # 37? DO you just like to stand up again and again? Please sit down.
#41 Posted by Zeena on January 23, 2006 9:43:12 pm
on side note:-
nasah dearie
This is not only summary, but, also my analysis of this article. So, obviously , it makes it longer, if, it is serving double jobs. Thanks
nasah dearie
This is not only summary, but, also my analysis of this article. So, obviously , it makes it longer, if, it is serving double jobs. Thanks
#40 Posted by Zeena on January 23, 2006 9:39:28 pm
#40
my dear nasah--sometimes, summaries have to be longer for some subjective benefits, if, requested by someone based solely upon objectivity....................................haaaaaaaa
my dear nasah--sometimes, summaries have to be longer for some subjective benefits, if, requested by someone based solely upon objectivity....................................haaaaaaaa
#39 Posted by nasah on January 23, 2006 9:35:33 pm
my dear Zeena -- your summary is longer than the artile -- why.....:)
Interact Index
Latest Interacts
- nkg: Arjun... Off the topic...After the... US Commando Strike in
- nkg: Re: # 82 ahemd... Can you... US Commando Strike in
- nkg: Re: # 134 Arjun... Marx was... US Commando Strike in
- _arjun19: #139 Posted by masadi... US Commando Strike in
- CreateAlpha: Hamid, jokes aside....the next... US Commando Strike in
- harimau: Ref dost_mittar #25 [The Maruti... Save Me From Charismatic
- crazyghan: "The verses which were... Honor Killings in Babakot
- hamidm2: Re: # 138 alpha mian, ....... US Commando Strike in
