[Reader-list] Arundhati Roy has stirred up a debate, not about Kashmir, but about herself

[Rajkamal Goswami]

Dear Aalok, Aima et al,

I am pasting an excerpt of Mr. Mirani's article published in the
Guardian on Sunday 15 August 2010 (link to this article cited below).

"...........India's problems with alcohol tend to be largely private.
Men, often working-class or rural (though by no means necessarily
either), drink too much, do no work and beat up their wives. Rare is
the Indian village where no woman has suffered abuse on account of her
drunk husband. Few middle-class families haven't had maids supporting
their abusive, alcoholic husbands. And because of India's baffling
excise laws, spirits tend to be cheaper than lower-alcohol content
beer or wine so everyone from college students to HR managers get
hammered on standard measures of 30ml..............."

Anyone who has traveled widely across India (by India I don't mean
just the metros and the towns) knows how asinine and vacuous the idea
is!

Further he talks about Gujarat being the only "dry” state in
India!!!!! I mean WTF??? What about Mizoram and Nagaland??? I guess
like AR and the separatist of the respective states, Mirani doesn't
consider them to be part of India!

I mean there are lot of other things which exemplify and illustrate
his shallow knowledge about India, its people and its pulses! For eg.,
he says that prohibition of Alcohol in India is not linked to
religion! Well the bans in Mizoram and Nagaland are pure biblical in
nature!
And with this kind of inane ideas and superannuated knowledge, Mr
Mirani concludes that Ms Roy is just "preaching to the converted" and
that her ideas just appeal to the "university lefties in India," and
"left-leaning publications of the west". The worst part is that the
discourteously arrogant guy doesn't stop there! He also decides to
write on behalf of the "intelligent readers sitting on the fence",
"middle-class India taking their first tentative steps towards greater
political involvement" and "public discourse" of India! Well, excuse
me but, I am certainly not willing to be represented by the fatuous
and dipsomaniac Mr. Mirani.

And I am sure most of the guys (whom Mr. Mirani claims to represent)
also wouldn’t!

Regards
Rajkamal


link to the articles cited :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/15/indians-independence-day-alcohol?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/31/arundhati-roy-kashmir-controversy





On 11/3/10, anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com> wrote:
> "For the university lefties in India, she confirms their worst fears of a
> nation falling apart."
>
> http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=68127
>
> (Prime Minister, Manmohan) Singh said, “running a government is not
> difficult, building a nation certainly is. This is what our people expect of
> us. We must never fail them”.
>
> Singh's words seem fresh to me (may be I feel like that). Fresh as my ideal
> young university leader who is telling his team to understand what is
> expected from them and what would fail if the expectations are not
> fulfilled. Critically thinking of building a nation could bring up
> uncomfortable discussions, especially when memories forgotten or sidetracked
> by the collective urban consciousness of India are brought back. These
> memories were heaped on top of each other like files of a dilapidated Public
> Works Department office, never numbered or organised. In between these
> heaps, are trapped the souls who bear the testimony of the bloody past that
> India as a nation has. I wonder, how is the author planning to deal with
> such a bloody past we have? What is this fascination that the author has
> about "picture of India"? If someone is painting a "bleak picture" of this
> country, how is it there are real people who have died real deaths, either
> for this country, or while defending their own rights, or crushed under
> might of the state? Or shall I consider this to be a part of the "nation
> building" exercise? Am i supposed to?
>
> For the author's concern of who would want to live in Arundhati's India, I
> would say that it is nothing but a rhetorical question posed to the readers
> in a bid to build consent. Similar tactics are used by a very prominent
> leader from Gujarat while addressing the rallies. I would suggest that the
> author doesn't undermine the sentiment of a university "lefty". This is
> where ideas take shape, and foundations are laid. The questions which are
> raised now is important for the future generations. Perhaps, author forgot
> about the future of this nation, while writing this piece.
>
> Thanks
> Anupam
>
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Aalok Aima <aalok.aima at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> "Who would want to live in Arundhati Roy's India? Who would even want to
>> read about Arundhati Roy's India? The government of India has many faults,
>> but even Roy has to admit that living in this country isn't entirely
>> intolerable. Confronted with the relentlessly bleak picture she paints,
>> one
>> in which the only good guys are murderers and mercenaries, who can blame
>> middle India for retreating into their iPods and tabloid newspapers?"
>>
>> "She is preaching to the converted. To the left-leaning publications of
>> the
>> west, she is an articulate, intelligent voice explaining the problems with
>> 21st-century India. For the university lefties in India, she confirms
>> their
>> worst fears of a nation falling apart. But to any intelligent readers who
>> may be sitting on the fence or for anyone from middle-class India taking
>> their first tentative steps towards greater political involvement, her
>> polemic serves to terrify and alienate."
>>
>> (i think, a truer expression would have been "For the university lefties
>> in
>> India, she CATERS TO THEIR FONDEST DESIRE of a nation falling apart" -
>> aalok)
>>
>> "   "Initially her dissent was seen as admirable, then as a novelty, and
>> now her view is largely marginalised." This week's shenanigans prove that
>> debate about Arundhati Roy is, as ever, thriving. But her writing is
>> rapidly
>> becoming irrelevant in Indian public discourse."
>>
>> ........ aalok aima
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/31/arundhati-roy-kashmir-controversy
>>
>> Arundhati Roy has stirred up a debate, not about Kashmir, but about
>> herself
>>
>> Roy has important things to say, but her tone and bluster ensure the only
>> people listening are those who already agree with her
>>
>> Leo Mirani
>> guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 October 2010
>>
>> Arundhati Roy does what any good polemicist should do. She annoys people
>> and forces them to take sides; she highlights an issue and gets people
>> talking. Too bad that what she gets them talking about has nothing to do
>> with the topic at hand. Inevitably, the debates she stirs tend not to
>> centre
>> around dams, or Maoists, or Kashmir, or even freedom of speech, but around
>> Arundhati Roy.
>>
>>
>> Speaking at a conference on Sunday, Roy said, "Kashmir has never been an
>> integral part of India. It is a historical fact." The rightwing opposition
>> BJP party, already in a mood over a similar conference last Thursday,
>> decided enough was enough – this was their issue of the week, never mind
>> that she has expressed similar sentiments before.
>>
>> The government of India, with its usual lack of backbone, explored the
>> possibility of arresting Roy for the laughably archaic crime of sedition.
>> On
>> Monday, the Hindustan Times reported she "may be booked for sedition". On
>> Tuesday, the Guardian decided she "faces arrest over Kashmir remark". By
>> Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times was convinced that "the Indian government
>> took steps to authorise the arrest". Come Thursday, and editorials and
>> blogs
>> appeared praising Roy. Somewhere amid the ruckus, Kashmir was forgotten.
>>
>>
>> There are many things that are wrong with India. Its foreign policy is
>> wishy-washy, its manner of handling internal security threats is dubious,
>> the way India's powerless are treated by the state is despicable, and
>> Kashmir – that great mix of the three – is an all-round disaster. All of
>> these are worthy of essays, of debate, of balanced analysis and – as
>> important – of partisan rants. There are plenty of rabid righties that
>> need
>> to be balanced by rabid lefties.
>>
>>
>> In an India obsessed with shiny new shopping malls and expressways and the
>> launch of the latest international luxury brand, in rapidly morphing
>> cities
>> where slum-dwellers are shunted out to the suburbs and even the raincoats
>> on
>> a policeman's back are sponsored, there is a desperate need for
>> polemicists
>> to remind the smug middle class about the 800 million-odd who don't get to
>> partake in what the tourism department calls Incredible India. Palagummi
>> Sainath, the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, did it with
>> elegance.
>> Arundhati Roy does it with infinite righteousness.
>>
>>
>> Roy wrote a paean earlier this year to the cause of the Maoists – a group
>> dedicated to the violent overthrow of the state and responsible for
>> beheading policemen, murdering civilians and killing dozens of soldiers –
>> while skewering the state for waging war on the poor. In her most recent
>> essay before the Kashmir kerfuffle, Roy told readers of one of India's
>> best-selling news weeklies that the government is a farce, the media is a
>> shambles, the military is not to be trusted, the mainstream communist
>> parties are a joke, and India's democracy is only nominal.
>>
>> Who would want to live in Arundhati Roy's India? Who would even want to
>> read about Arundhati Roy's India? The government of India has many faults,
>> but even Roy has to admit that living in this country isn't entirely
>> intolerable. Confronted with the relentlessly bleak picture she paints,
>> one
>> in which the only good guys are murderers and mercenaries, who can blame
>> middle India for retreating into their iPods and tabloid newspapers?
>>
>>
>> Roy has important things to say, but her tone and bluster ensure the only
>> people listening are those who already agree with her. She is preaching to
>> the converted. To the left-leaning publications of the west, she is an
>> articulate, intelligent voice explaining the problems with 21st-century
>> India. For the university lefties in India, she confirms their worst fears
>> of a nation falling apart. But to any intelligent readers who may be
>> sitting
>> on the fence or for anyone from middle-class India taking their first
>> tentative steps towards greater political involvement, her polemic serves
>> to
>> terrify and alienate.
>>
>>
>> As Salil Tripathi writes over at the Index on Censorship blog, "Initially
>> her dissent was seen as admirable, then as a novelty, and now her view is
>> largely marginalised." This week's shenanigans prove that debate about
>> Arundhati Roy is, as ever, thriving. But her writing is rapidly becoming
>> irrelevant in Indian public discourse.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Rajkamal