On 1st August, 2024, at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, acclaimed author and political activist Arundhati Roy, spoke at a panel condemning India’s supply of arms to Israel. Speaking of our country’s obligation under international law to stop Israeli aid, Roy said, “India used to be a country that supported the people of Palestine in their struggle for freedom…But we are not standing up… and that is such a shame.” Her speech emphasised the need for Indian citizens to take a stand against our government, and educate ourselves about the long history of deconstruction of colonial influence by both India and Palestine to gain political independence.
At a time when most of us are at a loss for what to do in the face of genocide in Gaza, Roy’s voice serves as a guiding force. Throughout her essays, books and speeches , Roy has made it a point to advocate for the disadvantaged, inviting the scrutiny and wrath of higher powers time and time again, especially that of the Indian government.
Most recently, Roy was charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Her “offence,” however, was committed fourteen years ago. During a conference – ‘Azadi-The Only Way’ – at the LGT auditorium on 21st October, 2010, Roy is reported to have said that Kashmir had never been “an integral part of India,”. A First Information Report (FIR) was filed by the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in New Delhi on 27th November, 2010 following a complaint by social activist Sushil Pandit. More than a decade later, the reigning government decided to move forward with the prosecution, taking the public by surprise.
Born in 1961 in Shillong, Meghalaya to Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian women’s rights activist, and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Brahmo Samaj tea plantation manager. Roy’s education started at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. Afterwards, for her higher education, she studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. The Booker Prize winner’s early life, therefore, was one of a privileged education, much like many of us at Ashoka.
While Roy’s words are being policed by the Indian Government, elsewhere they are being celebrated. Roy has been chosen for the 2024 PEN Pinter Literary Prize, honouring her courageous writing and the Vaclav Havel Center’s ‘Disturbing the Peace’ award. Through both fiction and non-fiction, Roy has used her narrative voice to bring forth her political views, using her writings as a medium of dissent. The God of Small Things (1997) explores the intermingling of the caste system and family life. The essay The End of Imagination (1998) critiques India’s nuclear weapons policy. Listening to Grasshoppers (2009) – a collection of essays examines the state of democracy in India. The Doctor and the Saint (2017) – a criticism of Mahatma Gandhi’s views in contrast to B.R. Ambedkar’s. And, most recently, Azadi. Liberté - Fascisme - Fiction – a series of essays published in 2021 in which she grapples with the concept of freedom.
There is no doubt, therefore, that Roy has been instrumental in bringing forth social critique and dissent through her work. And, in light of this work, it is a known fact that Roy has faced a series of repercussions. Thus, when talking of Roy’s privilege as an activist, it is vital to clarify what exactly ‘privilege’ is. Roy, unlike many other celebrated Indian activists such as Tamil Dalit writer Perumal Murugan, primarily writes in English, opening her work up to a far larger demographic. This, in turn, allows for more national and international discourse on her writing. However, one is also compelled to ask whether this literary form of activism, especially coming from an author from a highly privileged background, is enough?
Whether or not one thinks of other forms of dissent as superior or inferior or at par with literary activism, it often holds true that the political viewpoints expressed through literary means and welcomed into mainstream culture comes from a place of privilege. Being of a higher class and caste background cushions the blow of any repercussion thrown the writer’s way. While Roy’s persecution has received plenty of media attention, many activists from lesser backgrounds have been silenced without any backlash. For instance, Dalit activists Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale, and Mahesh Raut, who were arrested in June 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case. While Sen was released on bail six years later, the others are still being detained. Tribal activist and priest Father Stan Swamy, arrested under the UAPA for an alleged link to the Naxalite movement, died before his bail hearing while in state custody of a cardiac arrest on 5 July 21, which historian Ramchandra Guha called “a case of judicial murder.” Without denying that Roy’s safety has also been in jeopardy an umpteen number of times, the repercussions faced by these activists, unlike those with privileged upbringing and education, is on top of the systemic oppression they are already experiencing.
While her privilege may lead many to go as far as to say that Roy is an ‘armchair activist,’ that would be an unfair assessment. The writer's use of her privilege to speak out is, in and of itself, a form of activism. That does not, however, dissipate the feeling of disappointment at the fact that her words garner much more attention than writers and activists from less privileged backgrounds. As the author herself puts in The Algebra of Injustice (2001):
“There’s nothing such as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
What Roy says here is that everyone has a voice, has a narrative, has something to say. However, it is the listener or the reader’s responsibility to seek out voices with these silenced and lesser heard perspectives.
Such instances are all too common and stand to show that when protests are made by a member of a disadvantaged community, it comes with higher stakes and far less attention. Agree or disagree with her views, one cannot argue that Arundhati Roy is a resounding household name while many other activists' names are often lost in a sea of headlines that are only committed to short-term memory for one news cycle. Roy’s non-fiction, with its strong prose and vivid language, most definitely emotionally appeals to the reader. However, Roy's anger and passion often overshadow the intricacies of her arguments. For instance, as mentioned in The New Yorker article The Prescient Anger of Arundhati Roy by Samanth Subramanium, Roy repeatedly used a statistic – she writes that around eight hundred million Indians live on less than twenty rupees (about thirty cents) a day. That statistic, from a 2005 government report,
changed with time; by 2011, when she was still using the figure, the government estimated that nearly two hundred and seventy million people lived on less than thirty rupees a day.” Such unnoticed discrepancies speak to the fact that the loudest or most prominent voice should not be exempt from questioning.
Scholarly activism and socio-political unrest go hand in hand – the scholarly activism in question draws from what it sees and, simultaneously, contextualises it as part of the larger systemic issues of a country. Therefore, rather than merely criticising Roy, one can use her work as a primer to explore the work of other scholarly activists from diverse backgrounds. More than that, to give credit where credit is due, Roy makes an effort to keep her ear to the ground and uses her scholarly education to substantiate what she has to say. Perhaps, this can probe us to reflect on how our privilege works its way into our activism and dissent.
This is a question that Ashokans in particular need to reflect upon. A criticism that the students of this university often (and usually, with an amount of accuracy) face is that any form of protest or activism here comes from a place of sheltered entitlement. One has to look no further than the email chain, started on May 4, ‘Petition to Cut Ties with Tel Aviv University in Support of Palestinian Human Rights’ – a lengthy back and forth on whether or not Ashoka should cut ties with an Israeli university. The mail chain started with a plea issued by the Student Government to the Vice Chancellor to completely halt all current and future partnerships with Tel Aviv University. This followed a debate between the students, with one side supporting the petition (with 452 student signatories) and the other stating that since this is not a “total war,” there is no use in cutting ties. The fact that we occupy a position wherein we can debate on the stakes of a genocide from the safety and comfort of our dorm rooms, operating from a place of apathy, speaks volumes of our privilege and the way we choose (or choose not) to exercise it. That is just one instance. The scant participation in the caste census protest is another. Considering the great extent of our exposure and opportunity, academically and otherwise, what we can learn from Roy is to discard futile debate and engage in meaningful dialogue and concrete action.
(Edited by Devadeepa Das, Jyotsna Sidharth and Srijana Siri)
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