ARUNDHATI ROY IS INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
By Shashi Shekhar
Op-Ed
The Pioneer
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Arundhati Roy once described B R Ambedkar as India's most important
thinker and alleged that his life story had been 'sidelined'.
Ironically, she has shown little or no faith in constitutionalism
which was so dear to Ambedkar. Instead, she is constantly on the
lookout for the proverbial oxygen of publicity
Writer and activist Arundhati Roy while endorsing a new book on BR
Ambedkar titled Bhimayana -- Experiences of Untouchability described
Ambedkar as India's most important thinker while making the charge
that Ambedkar's life story has been deliberately sidelined.
The irony of course is the little faith Arundhati Roy has shown in
Ambedkar's constitutionalism.
Ambedkar, speaking in the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948
had this to say on the nature of the Republic of India: "Federation
not being result of an agreement no State has right to secede from
it. Federation is a Union because it is indestructible." In the same
speech Ambedkar also made a poignant observation on 'Constitutional
Morality', saying it is not a natural sentiment and that it needs to
be cultivated.
Sixty-two years on Ambedkar could not have been more correct, given
what little appreciation his most ardent fan Arundhati Roy has shown
for the same 'Constitutional Morality'.
In August of 2002 the Financial Express carried a telling editorial
on how thanks to the Tehri Dam 11 lakh hectares of land in Uttar
Pradesh were irrigated while farmers who depended on an additional
seven lakh hectares would be able to withstand another year's
drought. The "bhooka nanga" Bharat of these drought struck farmers
did not let them down that year despite the excessive snow melt and
unprecedented levels of water. The editorial asked a poignant
question --"Where was Arundhati Roy". The reference of course was to
the anti-Dam agitation by Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy that also
saw her in contempt of the Supreme Court.
Arundhati Roy's obstructionist activism in so many ways reminds us of
the many dangers Ambedkar had warned in his closing speech to the
Constituent.
On September 29, 2001 exactly 18 days after the most devastating
terrorist attack in modern history, a contingent of 25 Hartford
Connecticut firefighters, including its chief made the morning bus
and ferry trip across Long Island Sound to pay their respects to one
of 343 New York City firefighters who died trying to rescue people in
the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. On
September 29, 2001 while New York City was still burying its bravest
fire fighters and mourning their loss in funerals across the city and
its suburbs, an opinion column appeared in the Guardian, headlined,
"The Algebra of Infinite Justice". A column in which a presumptuous
Arundhati Roy sermonised to an Americca on how there was no moral
distinction between President Geirge W Bush and Osama bin Laden. That
was just 18 days after 9/11 while America was still mourning its dead
conducting funerals.
It was back then in 2001 a sign of the harvest of intellectualism
gone horribly wrong when Arundhati Roy failed to make a moral
distinction between a democratically elected head of state and a
known terrorist. It was also a travesty of human values that in her
failure she mocked those who died defending that democracy and had
not yet been buried.
It is the same travesty playing all out again as the moral legitimacy
of those who die defending the Indian Constitution is questioned
while forgetting that they died protecting that freedom to question.
Individuals like Arundhati Roy have no credibility not because they
hold views ideologically opposite to the rest of us but because they
are intellectually dishonest.
Intellectual dishonesty that was abundantly on display during a trip
to Pakistan when the phrase "Azaadi for Kashmir" never once crossed
Arundhati Roy's lips.
On August 16, 2002 Arundhati Roy famously declared herself a "Citizen
of the World" on a visit to Pakistan. In the same trip when asked for
her position on Kashmir, Arundhati Roy went on record to say that
"she had no position on Kashmir". In fact according to the PTI report
of August 16, 2002, when pressed further she had no "direct solution"
to offer. That she has become the flavour of the azaadi season in
Kashmir in the present times speaks of both her penchant for pitching
herself against the state to attract attention as well as to the
naiveté of her hosts.
This is why we must neither ignore intellectual anarchists like
Arundhati Roy nor must we unwittingly give oxygen to their acts of
intellectual arson. We must instead shame them by showing them up for
the hypocrites they are so that the unthinking masses don't make the
mistake of indulging them.
Hypocrites, who on the one hand swear by Ambedkar's vision, then go
on to sully that vision with their practice of the very same "Grammar
of Anarchy" that Ambedkar so disapproved of.
The writer is a social media commentator on contemporary Indian
issues.
http://dailypioneer.com/292729/Intellectually-dishonest.html
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Om Shanti
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