Recently I went to hear Arundhati Roy at the UCLA. It is very difficult not to hear Ms. Roy these days. She is everywhere. If she is not doing radio interviews in New York, she is attending a book reading in Santa Fe or speaking at a Baptist Church in Harlem. Or as in this case, speaking at the UCLA.
Royce Hall was full; latecomers were ushered into the nosebleed sections of the balcony. The audience was mostly sympathetic, white middleclass liberal Americans waiting to hear the lone voice of liberalism that speaks from the brown world.
The show started with a film about Arundhati starring, who else, Arundhati Roy. Arundhati with a new hair style. A conscious, intellectual hairstyle. A definitive I-don’t-want-to-be-among-the-100-sexiest-people haircut. The movie connected the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the petty fights Arundhati had with the Supreme Court, the nuclear tests, the jail sentence and the personal tribulations in her life, all in a neat package, reinforcing the cleverly marketed liberal hero image of Ms. Roy. Real activists like Medha Patkar had a collective 3 minutes in the movie, while Ms. Roy coquettishly flirted with an assorted number of village people, rode in rickety boats and wore flowery skirts, a scene reminiscent of the images of Indira Gandhi in the 70s touring the country dancing her way through social problems in tribal head dresses to the tune of Dalit folk music. There were small doses of reality that slipped in the documentary though, a glimpse of her opulent residence in Delhi, a hug from someone who appeared to be her domestic help, her car(s) and drivers. If Ms. Roy’s carefully created persona of the political animal, the passionate liberal activist had not already made a lasting impression in you through her articles and the media hype, the movie appeared to have been designed to close the gap. It was her version of “Love me in the time of Cholera on the banks of Narmada”.
At the end of the movie, following a standing ovation, chairs were arranged and spot lights focused on the chairs. Ms. Roy appeared, in a flowing white dress- these little details are important, after all we are speaking about one of the 100 most beautiful people, don’t forget- and seated herself next to an erudite-looking college professor sycophant who was playing the part of the interviewer that night. The questions and answers were predictable and unfortunately repetitive, if you had read the transcripts of her previous conversations, as I had.
If you have read this far, you must think I am some kind of a conservative, fan of the rampant globalization, pro-war, pro-VHP reactionary. I am not. I am actually the opposite of all those things.
But I am also not a fan of important debates, important social debates that may determine the future shape of the world, hijacked by self-propagating, well-coiffured, media products like Ms. Roy who peddle their brand of global dissent at the brown man’s expense to the white audience. Isn’t it a wonderful coincidence that her conscience rises and falls with the schedules of a book tour?
Don’t get me wrong. Ms. Roy can write. She writes beautifully, she can conjure up lyrical and poetic imagery with little effort. She also speaks well, she can engage in wise repartee with the best of them.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make her a spokesperson for any of the causes she seem to champion. Her potion that she brews for the globalization and its perils, fundamentalism and death of democracy is as effective as the solutions the other side is selling. In an effort to appeal to the American populace, the real problems are confused with the petty follies of local politicians and mistakes in the democratic experiments in India. The American audience loves it. Because once she leaves the room, while her message against the war may have gotten jumbled in with the relentless media garbage the flows from all sides, mainly the right, her portrayal of the Government of India and its architects and its keepers remain vivid, reinforcing all the stereotypes that they have already developed.
Perhaps, next time Mr. Bush is itching for a regime change, he can look at Ms. Roy to provide him with all the reasons to Bomb India, Narmada dam and all.
Her theories are simple. Nationalism doesn’t work any more. We have to have a global dissent against the big corporations that finance the war, the ones that benefit from it. India has become a fascist country and Supreme Court of India has no accountability. Narendra Modi is as much a big criminal as King George the Second.
The sad truth is that Narendra Modi, with all his leanings toward fascism, is a storm in a teacup, an idea-man whose only idea won him one re-election. Has he committed crimes? Of course, he is a criminal who is responsible of the death of over two thousand inhabitants of his state, mostly Muslims. But to compare him with the man who is responsible for the death of millions, through direct military action, through embargoes and covert support of state-sponsored terrorism of other nations, and through orchestrated famines and poverty, is to trivialize the global scale of misery the current regime has perpetrated on the people of the world.
Has India become a fascist country? Those of us who can filter out rhetoric from the truth in India, and I hope this includes Ms. Roy; know that electoral speeches never materialize into policy. This does not mean they don’t do any damage. The current political climate in India is far more vituperated that it was in the past. There is a clear emergence of a fashionable visible right wing especially facing the prospect of an ideologically-pauper left that is not able to counter this with anything more viable. Hey counter the threat of further slide to the right with the likes of an Italian with poor communication skills and an even poorer understanding of policy, a practical illiterate caste-Mafioso who rules a state with his wife as the puppet chief minister and a 25-year old waiting in the wings to take over after her mother gets bored.
It is a sad state of affairs. In such a world, where the legislature refuses to do its duty, the Supreme Court has to step in and do its job. This is indeed a dangerous trend. However, the solution does not lie in reforming the court. It lies with reforming the legislature. Perhaps we want Ms. Roy to run for the elections?
But that will not allow her to profit from going around America getting applause from gullible spectators by comparing India to Hitler’s Germany.
And I think that is the easy route.
Arundhati Roy does take the road less-traveled, but only in a chauffer-driven car.
