Arundhati Roy's take on the Anna Movement

Arundhati Roy is one of those journalists/writers/activists in India who have a high survival understanding in a field where a static absence means death. She keeps controversial topics close to her chest and very honestly (and unfeigningly) maintains the i-dont-care-what-you-think-of me facade. She often speaks against the wind so as to preserve her position at a distance from the rest of her lot and stay alive. Her style is that of over simplifying things that have more complex solutions and complicating the matters that may have easier resolutions. She frequently reminds me of some modern witch who likes to be called a psychic behind her eyes highlighted with kohl, and who likes it even more when people call her a little cranky.

She has been on my list of irritating good looking women ever since her over simplified version of the Indian Naxalite movement; then she graduated to a new level when she spoke the simple absurdities in/about Kashmir. And in between she has had random opinions on India’s nuclear policy post the Pokhran nuke test. The latest point where she opened her supple mouth to bring some misplaced venom out was at the anti corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. She is highly critical of not just the new bill but also of the man and the entire movement. Though not in clear words, she calls Anna a fake Gandhian.

It is difficult to understand what problems can an ‘intellectual’ have with this movement (other than the mentioned attempt at standing away from the rest of the bourgeoisie intellectuals) that is clearly in favour of fighting corruption. Here are a couple of things that according to my analysis are responsible for this.

1. Roy has always been very vocal about her abhorrence for Narendra Modi, and despite the 2002 stain on the Gujarat collar Anna Hazare praised Modi’s development model in Gujarat.

2. Anna Hazare has had an old association with the RSS.

3. Anna does not support the popular practice of caste based reservations, and not just talks but also has brought into practice the Gandhian model of self dependence based on equal distribution of work in his Ralegan Sidhi.

4. Anna’s movement and the ongoing campaign is being handled by people who are associated with NGOs that gather their funds from multinationals like Coca Cola and Lehman Brothers. She is clearly upset with Arvind Kejriwal and Sisodia's NGO ‘Kabir’ that has received a donation of $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last 3 years.

5. Arundhati Roy, at the bottom of everything else, is a leftist and pays her homage to Marx by opposing everything that has a stench of a robust Capitalism and a hint of decentralization.

She has always been wary of globalization and privatising government wings to corporations and NGOs. Her biggest concern is that such NGOs and corporations will be out of the Lokpal bill ambit and hence will be free to do corrupt practices themselves. But what she refuses to understand is that it will ultimately be the tax payers’ money that will run these NGOs and corporations and wherever that goes the periphery of the Lokpal jurisdiction will go.

But sadly, I do not expect any sense of rationality from her. Had she been in possession of the right senses she would have made far better use of her Booker Prize money than donate it in a movement to stop a Hydel Power Project in Gujarat.

Reservation politics

Watching a political debate on the movie Arakshan being banned in three states of the country spurned an uncomfortable anxiety in my heart and liver. The panellists included a movie maker, a film critic and two Dalit activists. The caste of the former two was not declared so I presume they did not belong to the political jackpot class of the ‘down-trodden’. As expected there was a lot of hue and cry on the issue and a lot of absurd things were said that make you laugh in disgust when you hear them but leave you worried at the state of mindsets that are only becoming more and more popular, after the funny moment is over.

One panellist even said that the Bollywood filmmakers should take a cue from their Hollywood counterparts who foraged their ghettos to bring forth black actors, directors and other crewmen for the sake of equal opportunity and representation, and do something like that for Dalits in India. I have no idea about who those ghetto-raised actors and directors are, and on what research he based his statement on, but I was really aggravated to hear such a stupid thing coming out from a representative of a class that is supposed to be suppressed and needs to be brought up at the same pedestal as the rest of us in the country. If the leader who guides them believes in such alienating gimmicks then they sure have a bleak future and there is no way they are going to be a part of an Indian population that does not need to wear a caste badge on the sleeve.

The present state of the matter is so bizarre and so heavily ionized with political radicals that a casteless society in India is an impossible task. The caste system is being made more and more prominent by raising reservation ratios in colleges and institutions of merit. Every election campaign is considered incomplete without fondling the mammaries of caste. This practice is slowly but ruthlessly dividing the country into two portions of the reserved and the unreserved. Each of which has grudges against the other. The British were supposed to have devised and very efficiently brought into practice the system of divide and rule in India, and logically enough their successors have now become aware of the evil legacy.

I want to ask the ones who demand equal rights for the Dalits whether they will be able to remove words like ‘caste’ and ‘reservations’ from their electoral speeches! This is the only way to bring them at par with the rest of the country, by treating them exactly as the rest. And I promise, in less than a decade people will forget what ages have failed to wipe off from the Indian panorama.