I read a quote by the British historian, Arnold Tonybee who said “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”. Truer words have not been spoken for India. We have survived the Mughals and the British. However, it seems that surviving the onslaught of the leftist ideology maybe too much for an ancient civilization like India since it will be death from within.With that in mind, I would like to focus on Arundhati Roy in this piece. In some ways she impresses me. She essentially is a one-book wonder. Such people are supposed to get lost in the crowd after a while. Not her! She has managed to reinvent herself as a speaker / op-ed columnist / self-appointed ambassador who goes to bat for the underdog. She writes well, looks good and is articulate. So what is my problem with her? Well, she epitomizes the extremely selfish, English speaking educated Indian. These people think that they can empathize with the aam aadmi. The truth is that their empathy for the poor is borne out a need for fame. Two years after winning the Booker, she essentially hijacked the Narmada Bachao Andolan from Medha Patkar (who will become a topic for another post someday). She wrote an essay on the Sardar Sarovar dam which was published by Outlook and Frontline. In words of Mr. Ramchandra Guha:“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 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.”
You can see how everything and everyone is just a tool towards sating her enormous ego. The chutzpah of this woman is astounding. She has this fetish for the adivasi lifestyle. She contributed to book called We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples. The proceeds for the book go to an international Tribal rights organization. She has become a spokesperson for Maoist terror which has become quite a leftist cause cé·lè·bre. She has called them Gandhians with guns. Chief Maoist terrorist Kishenji has said that he wants her to be an intermediary in their talks with the UPA government. Yet in her own life, she has built a house on tribal land in MP belonging to Vijay Singh Desh in Hoshangabad's Pipariya district, 200 km from Bhopal. In word’s of Smt. Singh, "First, they constructed their houses on my land and then the road. When we pointed out that the place they were using for constructing their house and road was ours, they didn't pay any attention because we are poor people,".
To point out her hypocrisy at this point would be superfluous.
She has written a lot on the J&K issue. One of her many offensive statement is as follows: “The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.”
In fact her rants became even too much for Congress whose spokesperson Manoj Tiwari said that Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy who had issued a statement advocating freedom for Kashmir was a 'loose cannon' who had "abused the liberal traditions of India", "It is a great tribute to the tolerance of India's ethos that a person who openly calls for Balkanisation of country is not being locked up and the keys are not being thrown away,".
She has adopted an anti-nuclear weapon stance. Noble indeed. No one can argue against peace. NO ONE. I agree with all her words on the perils of nuclear war. Yes humanity would be the loser. Shiny bombs in the larder sure do mock the empty stomachs. But to blindly accept all that would be to deny the reality like an ostrich. We live in a very bad neighborhood and she wants us to surrender our Rottweiler and the shotgun? Yes, the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons were to disappear completely. However, to give them up unilaterally would be to become a chew toy for the Pakistani and Chinese wolves. Moreover, her words against nuclear weapon ring hollow in face of her visit to and actions in Pakistan. She socialized with Hamid Gul who essentially is an enemy of everything civilized. She talked about siding with Pakistanis when Indians start the nuclear war. She constantly portrayed the Pakistanis as victims and Indians aggressors. With such thinly veiled anti Indian agenda, her credibility is greatly suspect.
Of course the piece de resistance was her stand on the Mumbai attacks. I do agree with her that the Mumbai attacks became a much bigger deal because the victims were the rich and the prominent. If similar attacks had happened in shanty hotel in Lucknow, it would be as quickly forgotten as all the attacks by Islamic terrorists in India. That was the only thing that had any credibility. The rest of her stand betrayed her contempt for India. She joined the prominent Mumbai Congressman Abdul Rehman Antulay in blaming India and Indians for that attack. Antulay said it was the Hindu Zionists. She said that the jihadis who want to destroy India have good reason to do so. Ms. Tavleen Singh said : “The novelist (Ms. Singh did not want to use Roy;’s name lest it defiles the piece!!) is not alone in her hatred of all things Indian. Nearly every Indian writer who has written in the Western media since the attack on Mumbai has found reasons why the jihad against India is justified. Look at our ‘atrocities’ in Kashmir and look at what happened in Gujarat and what about the Babri Masjid. One British newspaper went so far as to say that India used 9/11 to treat its Muslims even worse than we did before. A Pakistani journalist to explain what happened in Mumbai used this editorial.
This is what Arundhati Roy is all about. Her ego is writing checks that the nation cannot afford to cash. She of course, is probably not as harmful as Teesta Setalvad because all we have to do is tune Roy out of our lives as I said in one of our earlier pieces. Yes, we should boycott TV stations and magazines which patronize this maniac.
http://thenethindu.blogspot.com/2010/06/dealing-with-arundhati-roy-and-her-ilk.html
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