[Reader-list] Reading Roy by Nadeem Paracha(in Dawn)

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Rashneek,

Thank you for forwarding Nadeem Paracha's article from Dawn. I find  
it very revealing.

Unlike Roy, who always, and invariably, (for those who actually  
bother to read her and not roll their eyes over every time she  
appears in print)  bothers to buttress her judgements in her  
political essays (which Paracha is well within his rights to call  
prejudices) with evidence and citation, I find, that Paracha, does  
not actually cite a single statement or fragment of writing by Roy.  
All he offers us is opinion. First he argues that Roy is guilty of  
providing fodder to  'right wing claptrap' and Islamists say. Then he  
says that she is guilty of  add an "anti-Islamist (particularly anti- 
Taliban), angle to her on-going narrative concerning India, Pakistan  
and the United States". So to Paracha, she is guilty of being both  
anti-Capitalism and anti-Taliban at the same time, how nice and  
convenient it would have been for the simple world of our baba-log,  
if she was one without being the other. At least then they would know  
which box to put her (and others like her) in.

(How terribly inconvenient that Chomsky is Jewish and Anti-Zionist.  
Why can't opposition to the policies of the State of Israel come in  
nicely drycleaned anti-semitic clothes. How terrible it is that many  
of the people, myself included, who oppose the occupation by India of  
Kashmir are also implacably opposed to Islamist ideologies of all  
kinds, and to the feudal aristocracy that rules Pakistan. How nice it  
would be, if we were good Taliban boys, or at least like most members  
of the Pakistani ruling elite, good old fashioned alchoholic Jihadis)

But coming back to the anti-Roy invective by Nadeem Paracha, I find  
it surprising that none of it, not one sentence , as I have said  
before, is said with a shred of evidence from within the easily  
available corpus of Roy's writing and public utterances. Quoting the  
dubious opinion of the newspaper called the HIndu, of all things to  
buttress an argument is not a sign of having done one's homework.

Basically, It is, I think, intellectually disingenuous to accuse of  
being something (soft on Islamists) , and then being its opposite  
(anti-islamist) , at the same time, and not bother to provide grounds  
for either of the accusations.

The disdain and animosity for Roy which animates the salons of Delhi  
and Islamabad alike has something to do, in my opinion, with the idea  
that she is somehow a 'class betrayer' to significant sections of the  
Indian and Pakistani elite. A 'person like us' (although she never  
was a 'person like them') whom the Suhel Seths, Tavleen Singhs and  
Nadeem Parachas of the world would have ideally liked to have kept as  
their little pet novelist, but who had the temerity to bare her fangs  
at them and expose their shallow and gilded world for what it was.   
Somehow, they can't live that down.

In Pakistan, they have done it many times, they did it to Faiz, who  
was imprisoned and exiled, and to many others. They did it to Eqbal  
Ahmed, too, when he was alive.



best

Shuddha


On 28-Aug-09, at 10:26 AM, rashneek kher wrote:

> http://blog.dawn.com:91/dblog/2009/08/27/reading-roy/
>
>
>
> Quite like Dr. Noam Chomsky, award-wining writer and activist,  
> Arundhati
> Roy, can be one of the most easily predictable intellectuals this  
> side of
> the post-Cold-War left.
>
> And also, quite like Dr. Chomsky (and Naomi Klein), Roy too is fast  
> becoming
> the provider of the intellectual fodder that wily and loud post-9/11
> advocates of 21st Century right-wing claptrap sumptuously feed upon.
>
> In fact, it is due to this feeding frenzy by so-called anti-West
> reactionaries (of assorted shapes and sizes) - who cleverly use  
> leftist
> critiques of the West to give some ‘intellectual weight’ to their  
> otherwise
> contemptuous spiels of racial, religious and political hatred -  
> that is
> gradually rendering people like Chomsky, Kalian and Roy somewhat  
> ineffectual
> in fully elaborating the otherwise progressive intent of their anti- 
> West/US
> narratives.
>
> Now hijacked and drowned by the noises emitting from right-wing  
> playmakers
> within the post-9/11 anti-US populism, Roy and Co. have tended to  
> sound
> hyperbolic to keep the dwindling left in the race featuring assorted
> celebrity-backed pomposity and demagoguism that is so spectacularly
> unveiling itself on TV screens and in seminars.
>
> It is interesting to note how the once sober, back-stage leftist
> intellectuals whose critiques of capitalism and ‘American  
> imperialism’ came
> attached with well thought-out thesis, rationales and ideas for a  
> new way,
> have reduced themselves to continue dishing out reactive and  
> irresponsible
> sloganeering revolving around narratives that are largely  
> unoriginal, and
> worse of all, smacking of the kind of cynical vanity one usually  
> expects
> from reactionary TV personalities such as Shahid Masood, Zaid Hamid  
> and
> Harun Yahyah.
>
> If such celebrity reactionaries can rightly be accused of exhibiting
> intellectual dishonesty by unabashedly plagiarizing leftist  
> critiques of the
> West, and anti-secular narratives devised by early 20th Century  
> Christian
> Fundamentalists, then their leftist counterparts like Roy and  
> Chomsky can be
> equally blamed for failing to openly condemn those who are using  
> their work
> to forward a clearly reactionary agenda.
>
> These are tricky times we live in; a time when the media can  
> neither be
> called liberal/leftist nor entirely conservative. Take the case of the
> Pakistani electronic media’s darling, Imran Khan. Within a single  
> sentence
> he manages to sound like a dedicated Socialist, a Taliban  
> sympathizer, and a
> conscientious democrat without even batting an eyelid. In other  
> words, just
> like the media today, the great Khan is merely playing to a gallery of
> jumbled up ideas that have been constructed by the media itself.
>
> However, no matter how populist and passionate the animation behind  
> such
> left-meets-right jumbling, its bottom-line remains reactionary in  
> essence.
> The effect of this colourful ideological circus has absolutely  
> nothing to do
> with reformism or democracy as such, but rather, the effect is  
> either pure
> entertainment or worse, the insinuation of an unsound modern political
> narrative within the psyche of the more impressionable and impulsive
> viewers.
>
> Coming back to Roy, it wasn’t really her terrific novel, ‘God of Small
> Things,’ that turned her into a celebrity in Pakistan; rather, it  
> is her
> (albeit bold) stands on matters such as Kashmir and (albeit hackneyed)
> understanding of ‘American colonial designs’ in the region that has  
> made her
> a darling of urban Pakistani drawing rooms.
> Nevertheless, it is also true that Roy is also perhaps the most  
> tolerated
> non-Muslim Indian amongst the usual India/Hindu-baiting Islamists.  
> No prizes
> in guessing why.
>
> Conscious of the intellectual and ideological dichotomy generated  
> by the
> acceptance that she receives from Pakistani leftist/liberal drawing- 
> rooms
> and in right-wing circles, Roy soon started to add an anti-Islamist
> (particularly anti-Taliban), angle to her on-going narrative  
> concerning
> India, Pakistan and the United States.
>
> But this angle soon falls flat (and in fact negates itself) at the  
> wake of
> her verbose ramblings about ‘American Imperialism,’ ‘Globalization’  
> et al.
> Thus, the question arises: How exactly is all this beneficial to the
> egalitarian and conscientious audience that Roy has in her mind? To  
> them
> this is not news.
>
>  But to those liberals/leftists who are more concerned about the  
> impact
> religious extremism, bigotry and counter-democratic moves are  
> having on
> their respective societies, these ramblings become an irritant when  
> they are
> liberally quoted by their rightist nemeses.
>
> If during the Cold War there were leftists who got stuck in the hey  
> days of
> the New Left in the 1960s - and consequently failed to counter the
> resurgence of the right-wing from late-‘70s onwards - Roy increasingly
> belongs to a generation of leftists who got embroiled in the post- 
> Cold-War
> anti-Globalization movements of the late 1990s. Her politics are  
> still being
> informed by the dictates and sentiments of these movements that  
> culminated
> with the anti-Globalization riots in Seattle in 1999 and then by the
> publishing of Naomi Klein’s classic book of the era, ‘No Logo.’
>
> Roy is still firmly entrenched in the 1990s (albeit with the spirit  
> of the
> archetypal 1960s’ radical), and like Chomsky, she too failed to  
> note the
> many elusive symptoms that are now clearly marking the fall of the
> post-Cold-War ‘New-Right.’
>
> What Roy seems not to realize (or clearly own up to), is the fact  
> that the
> New Right (‘neo-cons,’ etc.) and, for instance, it’s reaction,  
> ‘Islamist
> terrorism,’ are actually two sides of the same coin.
>
> It is true that the whole paranoid spiel about the so-called ‘war  
> on terror’
> was a creation of American neo-conservatives to help them to continue
> occupying the decision-making corridors of United States. The neo- 
> cons had
> looked to restoring the American pride that was lost in its  
> unsuccessful war
> against the Soviet-backed North Vietnam (1975).
>
> They did this by using the Regan presidency (1980-88), and the  
> media to
> create a Soviet ‘bogey’ radically heightening the Soviet threat by  
> more than
> doubling the projected size of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal  
> and its
> plans for world domination. This was done to force Reagan to take a  
> more
> militaristic stance against the Soviets.
>
> The Soviet Union’s incompetence during the Afghan war and its eventual
> collapse clearly stated the weakness of its economic and political  
> systems,
> and proved that the neo-cons’ exaggerated estimation of Soviet  
> power had a
> malicious intent. In fact, even had the US not intervened in the  
> war, the
> Soviets would still have been unable to hold on to Afghanistan. But  
> the
> neo-cons’ agenda insisted that the Reagan regime fatten autocratic  
> regimes
> like that of General Ziaul Haq in Pakistan and assorted Arab  
> monarchies to
> use them to heavily arm the so-called Afghan mujahideen against the  
> Soviets.
>
> After the collapse of the inflated Soviet bogey, the neo-cons lost  
> power in
> Washington, giving way to the moderate Bill Clinton years (1992-99).
> However, by 2000 the neo-cons were back. They returned much  
> stronger with
> the arrival on the scene of George W. Bush, especially after the 9/11
> attacks in 2001.
>
> Though to a certain extent, the justification behind the war on  
> terror was a
> bogey called Islamic terrorism, ironically this war was also aided by
> nihilistic Islamic fundamentalists like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
>
> Led by the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda is
> basically a group of failed Islamic revolutionaries; a bunch of  
> frustrated
> Islamists who were deluded into believing that it was they who  
> defeated the
> Soviets and could now impose Islamic regimes wherever.
>
> The truth is, it was the Soviet Union’s weak economy and worn-out  
> political
> structure and, of course, the billions of dollars worth of arms  
> that the
> mujahideen received from the US that did the trick.
>
> I am in total agreement with the line of thought that insists that the
> neo-cons and the Islamists are two sides of the same coin. And  
> that’s why
> the more terrorism the Islamists practiced, the stronger the neo- 
> cons got.
> After all, the neo-cons lost all purpose and requirement once the USSR
> collapsed.
>
> Interestingly, the bait of the post-Soviet Islamic bogey dangled by  
> the
> neo-cons was not only taken by groups of renegade Islamic  
> revolutionaries;
> the media took it too.
>
> In the West the media continues to portray skewed perceptions of  
> ‘Islamism’
> fed to it by the neo-cons; while in the Islamic world, the media is  
> playing
> out to the other side of the coin by indulging in crass speculative  
> gossip,
> conspiracy theories and images of the West sketched by frustrated  
> Islamists
> dreaming of a global Islamic revolution and the reinstatement of the
> Caliphate.
>
> Thanks to the media, this pseudo (but deadly) conflict has now  
> trickled down
> to realms of society as well. For example, today an average  
> westerner is
> more likely to feel uneasy if confronted by a person with a Muslim  
> name. He
> perceives this person with the aid of what he hears and sees in the  
> western
> media. He will see the Muslim as potentially violent, oppressive,  
> and most
> probably a wife beater!
>
> On the other side, a Muslim is just as likely to interpret western  
> society
> as being satanic, Jewish-dominated and obscene. This person’s  
> source in this
> respect is the media in the Islamic countries. It triggers a  
> flippant effect
> in which the person is then bound to do two things: either fall in the
> luring trap of the violent Islamist minority, or react by suddenly  
> donning a
> long beard or a headscarf.
>
> What really keeps the neo-cons and the Islamists afloat is the  
> larger social
> fall-out of this conflict. The conflict then becomes a battle of  
> reactive
> images in which a westerner influenced by neo-con rhetoric in the  
> media
> becomes Islamophobic, and a Muslim driven by his country’s  
> conspiratorial
> media suddenly grows a long beard or starts doing the hijab.  
> Paradoxically,
> he or she then becomes more receptive to what so-called leftists like
> Chomsky and Roy have to say about the West.
>
> To quote from an article about Roy in The Hindu (November 26, 2000):
> ‘Arundhati Roy might very well equal (activist writers) Orwell and  
> Karanth
> in her bravery. But she lacks their intellectual probity and  
> judgment. Those
> men wrote with a proper sense of gravitas, in a prose that was  
> lucid but
> understated, each word weighed before it was uttered. Perhaps they  
> were
> lucky to work in a pre-television and pre-colour supplement era,  
> when the
> principle would take precedence over the personality.’
>
> I think the above paragraph says it all. Writer-activists such as  
> Roy, Naomi
> Klein and even the more aged Chomsky have allowed themselves to be  
> bitten by
> the post-modern celebrity bug that usually feeds on their more  
> reactionary
> and right-wing counterparts.
>
> They have become too self-conscious of their ‘intellectual  
> importance,’ with
> their overall make-up now bordering on plain vanity. This is  
> something their
> bygone contemporaries like Edward Said and Iqbal Ahmed would have  
> balked
> at.
>
> *And, for example, while the later two’s writings and thoughts  
> actually
> helped improve the world’s understanding of the plight of, say, the
> Palestinians and the Third World in general, Roy and Chomsky’s  
> writings in
> the last five years have contributed more to fatten reactionary  
> arguments,
> even if the original intent of the writings were/are as noble as  
> those of
> Said’s and Ahmed’s.*
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -
> best
>
>
> -- 
> Rashneek Kher
> http://www.kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com
> http://www.nietzschereborn.blogspot.com
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Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net