Dateline India: why Arundhati Roy's pants are on fire

Arundhati Roy is in many ways a gifted writer. In her first novel, The God of Small Things, which went on to win the Booker, she narrates a mesmeric, haunting story that offers a searing slice of an India where caste, class — and raging hormones — collide with tragic consequences. Since the time it came out in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, Roy’s book has served as a prism for countless sociologists to reflect on the “many Indias” that go to make up India. It’s also had countless admirers waiting earnestly for her second novel, in the hope that they could savour more of her lyrical prose and powerful narrative technique. But although Roy has been a prolific writer in these intervening years, spinning off 20,000-word polemical essays on everything from nuclear bombs to big dams (which she likened to nuclear bombs) to azaadi-seeking Kashmir to gun-slinging Gandhis to immoral Empires , the flow of fictional prose appeared to have dried up. In 2007, she gave a hint of a second novel in the works , but in subsequent media interactions, she confessed to having made little progress towards that end. [caption id=“attachment_21683” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Arundhati Roy’s polemical essays may grate on occasion, but even when they are monochromatic, they serve a useful purpose in forcing India to focus on its failings. Reuters”] [/caption] In an interview to The Guardian on Monday, in which she was asked yet again about when her second novel might come out, she noted that she had been working on one, but  that she doesn’t get much time to do it. “I’m a highly unambitious person,” she says. “What does it matter if there is or isn’t a novel?” Was the Booker prize for her first novel a burden that it was inducing a writer’s block? Not really, she says.  ““We’re not children all wanting to come first in class and win prizes. It’s the pleasure of doing it.” But when you read the rest of the article, you have to wonder if the line that divides Arundhati Roy’s twin worlds of polemical fact and prodigious fiction has begun to blur into nothingness. Asked why the ‘Western world’ didn’t get to hear as much of the Armageddon-world she narrates in her essays on India, Roy claimed, sensationally, that she had been “told quite openly by several correspondents of international newspapers that they have instructions – ‘No negative news from India’ – because it’s an investment destination. So you don’t hear about it.” Really, Ms Roy? So you think the ‘Western media’ avoids negative coverage of India – and deliberately at that? They shut their eyes to the infinite horrors that wrack India, which is why you’re compelled to be India’s “voice of conscience”? The notion that the ‘Western media’ is blind to the dark side of the ‘India shining’ story is easily disproved. In just the past few months, the same Guardian platform has unflattering reports on India – on everything from mass poverty and hunger to superbugs in Delhi’s water lines to the widespread prevalence of leprosy to the abortion of baby girl foetuses to the surrender of India’s national dignity . Even an art exhibition review makes passing mention about an India “where Dalits – ‘untouchables’– scavenge on rubbish dumps” and are “actually treated as dirt itself.” And as for the “ police state” that India runs in Kashmir , there have been more than a handful. All this from just one ‘Western media’ outlet – one that is particularly generous in the space that it gives writers like Arundhati Roy. I’m not even counting even more shocking narratives about the trade in human organs, in which India sadly tops. So, if that editorial edict to ignore the dark side of India because it is an investment destination has gone out, these writers must surely be risking their jobs and the space they’re given to write. This unflattering look at India is, of course, as it should be. An outside-in look, which takes in India with all its many flaws, grounds us closer to reality and keeps us from getting overly carried away by the India Shining story. But it’s not even as if a Western reader who is curious about India cannot encounter media narratives – even within India – that puts India in its proper perspective or explores the underbelly of India’s rise. Social commentators in India (and there are a few other than Arundhati Roy) offer a sobering outlook on India , while also acknowledging India’s merits as a middling – even if flawed - democracy. Arundhati Roy’s polemical essays may grate on occasion, but even when they are monochromatic, they serve a useful purpose in forcing India to focus on its failings. However, when she blurs the line between fact and fiction with claims that ‘Western media’ representatives in India are gagged from reporting on the “other India” that she has a proprietory knowledge of, she does neither herself nor her politics any good.