I stopped reading the inane pieces of shit that Arundhati Roy dishes out from time to time for obvious reasons. Yet, once in a while she comes out with stuff that is more outrageous than all the crap she has written/spoken previously. Thanks, Shanti
Roy has the curious habit of badmouthing the very country where she routinely receives her “prizes.” And it is no coincidence that she does it in the secure knowledge that:

a) The said nations (read: governments) stand by free speech, and don’t censor/condemn the trash she routinely utters.
b) She’ll never do the same in the very dictatorships her pretty heart bleeds for. She knows better than that.

Every tyrant is in her eyes, oppressed by Empire. It is of little consequence to her if the tyrant has buried alive children, raped women, if his progeny have trampled (both literally and figuratively) over the citizenry, if he has invented and implemented the most barbaric forms of torture…. nay! None of these matter to the peace-loving, nuke-hating, verbal terrorist. She cares a whit if Pakistan regularly sends out its terrorists freedom fighters into Kashmir, but she colours these scums as “victims of oppression by the hostile, fascist forces” at work everywhere in India–as evidence, she points at the Gujarat carnage (notice that apart from Narmada, Gujarat, and the nuclear tests, she has nothing in her arsenal when it comes to speaking against about India) where pregnant women’s foetuses were ripped apart and minors were raped….

And when something as ghastly as what she has described in her Tale of the Ripped Foetus actually happens in Fallujah, she wants us to weep for the liberators who perpetrated the atrocity! But of course: this is the standard technique–it is the victim’s fault because he/she invited it.

At every prize reception function she attends, she has a “new message” to deliver to the world; against imperialism, empire, the Iraq war, Indian fascism, Gujarat, Narmada dam… The official Congress Party Magazine, Outlook India faithfully carries the full text of her every masterpiece. So, those who are interested can go treat themselves to 7 pages of Unadulterated Garbage. I didn’t. What’s more dangerous than her nonsensical fulminations are the plain lies that she manages to utter, as though they were self-evident truths:

You must remember that I come from an essentially feudal country…

Since when was India a “feudal country?” This term feudal, is a Marxist imposition on interpretation of Indian history. Yeah, the same history that the “communal forces” rewrote during NDA regime.

To digress, “feudal” is a word that has class connotations: the worker and the peasant as distinguished from the Earls and the Barons. The same division that Marx sought to eliminate and found a New World Order. India has I repeat, never been feudal. Class is not equal to Caste.

Ever since Bush planned to attack Iraq (albeit on the flimsy WMD-grounds) and did so, Roy and most of the Left “intellectuals” have been hyperactive. They’ve carried on a parallel war of words against the invasion, and have tried to bolster their case based on poor reasoning and unabashed lying. They’ve used the standard technique of shouting down those who oppose them–again not based on logic or facts but verbal terrorism. In it, Roy perhaps stands unparalleled next only to Chomsky. This has been her constant refrain: unjust occupation, evil USA, empire, and being the voice of the voiceless (although she presumptuously claims that she isn’t the voice of the voiceless).

Speaking for myself, I am utterly delighted to receive the Sydney Peace Prize. But I must accept it as a literary prize that honors a writer for her writing, because contrary to the many virtues that are falsely attributed to me, I’m not an activist, nor the leader of any mass movement, and I’m certainly not the “voice of the voiceless”. (We know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.)

Standard doublespeak. The prize-givers have awarded the prize for:

Roy was awarded this year’s prize for what its judges said was her advocacy in demanding justice for the poor and people displaced by dam projects, as well as her opposition to nuclear weapons.

And yet she wants to look at it as a literary prize. That’s her prerogative but her words say one thing and her behaviour, says just the opposite. Pray tell me, what is her contribution to literature recently, apart from the eminently unreadable trash she wrote five years ago? She isn’t an activist, but why did she put her feet into the Narmada dam movement to which Medha Patkar dedicated her entire life? Why did she write so eloquently when India conducted nuclear tests? And then she’s famous for locating mega conspiracies where none exist: … deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard…

In her anxiousness to secure justice for these unheard voices, she wants to redefine justice itself so it is convenient to her and her ilk. Once the redefinition (if) is achieved, she can carry on branding everybody as unjust–that is anybody who doesn’t share her definition of justice.

Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack.

Notice how clever this statement is. To a casual listener, given her command over language and rhetoric (!) this line mightily impresses. But ask her to substantiate, to prove how “the idea of justice is under attack,” she begins to chart familiar territory again: verbal terrorism. Here’s a sample.

The difference is that notions of equality, of parity have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It’s a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that.) Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times, not even that.)

Either she’s totally dumb about the basics of economics (which I doubt she is), or she hews such lies to suit her mission. Nobody can create wealth out of thin air. No sir. Wealth creation–the capitalist style–certainly has its share of ill effects, but it’s better than a Statist economy where everything considered, the negatives outweigh the achievements (and that’s putting it mildly). Some of the “victims of corporate aggression” aren’t really poor. Let’s take the case of the US, which she is so fond of foulmouthing. Hasn’t she heard of the victim who sued McDonalds for a bomb because she damaged a tooth while eating one of their burgers? Or the case of Starbucks? These “victims of corporate aggression” are now pretty rich victims. Whatever the greed that the US corporates exhibit, their system ensures that there are some decent “checks and balances” so to say.

Justice for Americans and human rights for Afghans. Yeah, sure. I have an honest suggestion: I’ll set loose a gang of thugs upon your house who’ll do every conceivable damage to it. Let me see how you define justice then.

Going by her record, I can only conclude that she is but a plain sadist.

Tags: Commentary, Terrorism & Pakistan, Weblogs