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

[Venugopalan K M]

Well said, Shuddha!
Perhaps you made each point  that I too would have liked to share and
thus I feel relieved;
thanks,
Venu

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Shuddhabrata
Sengupta<shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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