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For more of the video, please click on Video 2 and then follow the links from there
Karan Thapar interviews Arundhati Roy for CNN-IBN (in continuation of yesterday's news, now that the transcript and the video are available):
Karan Thapar: ...You have said earlier this week that a military solution to the Maoists' struggle is not an option. What then is the solution?
Arundhati Roy: I think the first thing would be to pull back the army and to stop this nonsense about air force will fire in self-defence and all that.
Karan Thapar: No military operations even if it includes just police and paramilitary?
Arundhati Roy: No military operations. I would say that that is going to provoke a situation.
Karan Thapar: What's the second thing?
Arundhati Roy: Then I would say that you should come out with all the MoUs that you have signed for all the mineral wealth which is really the key issue. I mean just the bauxite in Orissa is worth 4 trillion that's with 12 zeros.
Karan Thapar: Do you really believe that the dispossessed and poor in Orissa would be concerned about the MoUs signed by the Government of India, they are not aware of them.
Arundhati Roy: Are you joking? They know it better than you or me. This is what I would say – come clean, tell us what the MoUs are and the companies involved.
Karan Thapar: After coming clean, what's the next stage?
Arundhati Roy: For example, on October 12, there was supposed to be a public hearing in Lohandigura (Madhya Pradesh) where Tata is setting up a steel factory, in the name of operation "Green Hunt". There were barriers that prevented people from going there and expressing what they had to – their approvals or disapprovals.
Karan Thapar: So you are saying let people express themselves and voice their dissents?
Arundhati Roy: Let them voice their dissent, let them be at these public hearings, make all the MoUs public, remove your army and then let's see what happens.
Karan Thapar: If the Government were prepared to take your advice, would you in return go to the Maoists and say it now behooves you to also abjure your violence. If the Government is reaching out with one hand, you must return with the other. Will you take that step?
Arundhati Roy: If you are talking about me as an individual, I am nobody but I am sure there are people who would take that step. It has been done before. In the interest of the future of this country, all of us are concerned.
Karan Thapar: What you are saying is that the initiative should come from the Government first.
Arundhati Roy: I think so. There should be unconditional talks.
Read the full transcript on ibnlive.com
Also read, an earlier interview with Arundhati Roy on CNN-IBN: Govt at war with Naxals to aid MNCs: Arundhati:
For 30 years in places like Chhattisgarh, there have been Naxals. Why is the situation now being made to sound like there is this huge upsurge? The real fact is - and I believe this - that it is the Government that wants a war to clear out the forest areas because there is a huge backlog of MoUs in Jharkhand as well as Chhattisgarh that are not being activated.
Incidentally, on the same subject, Ashok Mitra, writing in the Telegraph on Friday had lamented that unlike the Dalits who were fortunate to be gifted a cult figure in Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Tribals and the adivasis have only had Naxals, and gone on to offer another useful reminder:
In this situation, the Maoists are laying their bet on the Union home minister. Were he to succeed in persuading his cabinet colleagues and party bosses that enough was enough and it was time to declare total war on the Maoists, the latter will be delighted beyond measure. They will love the civil war that will ensue, a war where the country’s army will battle against some of their own compatriots who happen to be mostly adivasis. It may even appear to the world as an ethnic war where the usurpers of power are trying to liquidate the remnants of the country’s original inhabitants.
The Union home minister, the Maoists presumably hope, will be the answer to their prayer.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Oct 26, 2009 AT 22:06 IST
Arundhati Roy says every institution in the country is excluding the poor:
Since I am in Bombay, it's fascinating, if you look at somebody like Amitabh Bachchan. How did he gain the place that he has in the hearts of the people? In many of his early films, he was the poor guy who grew up in the slums. He was like, mein sadak ka kutta hoon, and look at a film like Coolie -- he was a Muslim, a coolie, and a trade union leader. There's a battle against a corrupt minister where the minister holds a trishul and he has a hammer and sickle. And from there, to now, where in the movies, he only lives in villas and is getting out of helicopters, and those movies are only shown in these little cinema halls -- multiplexes. Even Bollywood has completely walked away from the poor of this country. The cinema halls have changed and the cinema has changed to accommodate the cinema halls, or the cinema halls have changed to accommodate the cinema, I don't know. But Amitabh is still adored because of the bank deposits that he made back then. And to me, there's a terrible poignant tragedy in that.
Read the full interview at the DNA
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Oct 13, 2009 AT 01:56 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 28, 2009 AT 23:55 IST
The Economist reviews Arundhati Roy's Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy:
...Whether or not he is guilty, Ms Roy does laudable work in defending Mr Guru when others—including at times India’s legal fraternity, according to Ms Roy—would not...
So entrenched is the anti-globalisation that informs her world view, she would be tough to dissuade. But what alternative strategies does she advocate for improving India? Hard to say. A rare suggestion for better governance—the formation of a shadow parliament “that keeps an underground drumbeat”—does not seem terribly serious. On economic policy, Ms Roy has even less to offer—other than to slam recent governments for aspiring to rapid economic growth. This is a “project” she considers to be “encrypted with genocidal potential”. For a more measured analysis, Ms Roy should perhaps turn to the finance ministry’s recently published Economic Survey. There she would read that, “High growth is critical to generate the revenues needed for meeting our social welfare objectives.” Ms Roy should take note.
Read the full piece
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 31, 2009 AT 04:47 IST
Tim Adams on Arundhati Roy in the Observer
Arundhati Roy has two voices. The first, dramatically personal and playful, was the one in which she wrote her extraordinary debut novel, The God of Small Things, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in rural Kerala. The second voice is flatter and angrier, more urban and distrustful of the quirks of the individual. She describes it as "writing from the heart of the crowd"
...Roy, now 47, describes the difference between the two voices as the difference between "dancing and walking". It is a long while since Roy's writing has danced. She says she pedestrianised her imagination not out of choice, not at all, but because there seemed nothing else to do.
...I have the sense, talking to her, that she distrusts intensely the idea of herself as a literary icon. "It is true," she says, "that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word. I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult. When I was very small this mad uncle of mine who is one of the main characters in my novel took me on one side and showed me this horrible bauble. He said 'Do you want this?' I was maybe three or something, and of course I did. He said, 'Well I will give it you as long as you promise to fail.' That idea has certainly stayed with me."
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 13, 2009 AT 04:34 IST
Zubeida Mustafa in the Dawn on Arundhati Roy's speech at the Women’s Action Forum meeting held last Friday to mobilise public opinion against extremism in Karachi:
Coming from New Delhi on a solidarity mission to WAF’s meeting. Roy raised four issues:
- What do we mean by the Taliban and what gave birth to them?
- Define your own space and do not surrender it.
- Don’t allow yourself to be forced into making choices of the ‘with us or against us’ type.
- Don’t be selective in your injustices.
These should provide food for thought for those struggling against oppression. Without being specific, Roy exhorted her audience to look into the structures and systems that lead to a situation of such extreme oppression, some of which is rooted in the class conflict. She believes one has to take a ‘total view’ of the matter, which she admitted she had come to Pakistan to understand.
More here: Arundhati Roy and the WAF
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON May 13, 2009 AT 20:43 IST
Arundhati Roy in the Dawn:
Is there a threat of Talibanisation engulfing the entire region?I think it has already engulfed our region. I think there’s a need for a very clear thinking (on this issue of Talibanisation). In India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic terrorism and the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must ask, what do they mean by it. In Pakistan, I’m here to understand what they mean by this term. When we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat them, what does it mean? I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban. Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought? That needs to be clarified.
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON May 10, 2009 AT 04:07 IST
Ashutosh Varshney, co-editor of Midnight’s Diaspora: Encounters with Salman Rushdie, reacts to Sudip Paul's assertion, "Any writing is a political act, and all litterateurs are political beings, existing in political contexts" and where would he place Salman Rushdie:
I’m not sure I’ll agree that all writers are political beings. Jhumpa Lahiri writes lovely stories, but there doesn’t appear to be a single political bone in her body. But there are writers like Arundhati Roy, who unfortunately make their politics eclipse their art. Rushdie stands in the middle, somewhat like Milan Kundera. That is an attractive intellectual location. In his interview to me, he says it’s virtually impossible for him to write like Jane Austen, because the personal and the political have become deeply intertwined in our times. Indeed, his own life exemplifies how the political and the personal, often, interpenetrate each other.
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON May 07, 2009 AT 04:41 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep ON May 01, 2009 AT 02:41 IST
Arundhati Roy in the Times of India
The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.
From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Mar 30, 2009 AT 22:38 IST
The night before the Oscars, in India, we were re-enacting the last few scenes of Slumdog Millionaire. The ones in which vast crowds of people – poor people – who have nothing to do with the game show, gather in the thousands in their slums and shanty towns to see if Jamal Malik will win. Oh, and he did. He did. So now everyone, including the Congress Party, is taking credit for the Oscars that the film won!
The party claims that instead of India Shining it has presided over India 'Achieving'. Achieving what? In the case of Slumdog, India's greatest contribution, certainly our political parties’ greatest contribution is providing an authentic, magnificent backdrop of epic poverty, brutality and violence for an Oscar-winning film to be shot in. So now that too has become an achievement? Something to be celebrated? Something for us all to feel good about? Honestly, it's beyond farce.
And here’s the rub: Slumdog Millionaire allows real-life villains to take credit for its cinematic achievements because it lets them off the hook. It points no fingers, it holds nobody responsible. Everyone can feel good. And that’s what I feel bad about.
More on Dawn.com
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Mar 02, 2009 AT 00:39 IST
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