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When Arundhati gives it those ones
Why
can’t she be like the rest of us, for heaven’s sake?
What
is it about Arundhati Roy that elicits the sharpest of responses
from supposedly well-informed, middle-class urbanites like us? Why
is it that she sets the teeth of generally polite, generally well-meaning,
people on edge? It cannot be the way she looks. Or even the way
she talks. It certainly isn’t because she represents any real threat
to a status quo which is made of genuine adamantine, 100 per cent
blast-proof stuff.
The
next question, of course, is would she have stirred New Delhi’s
air like she has done for the past several years if she had conformed
to the general principle that writers should be read often and seen
occasionally — perhaps cutting a ribbon or two, judging a debate
or two, and generally occupying themselves in being full-time celebrities.
Roy’s
first mistake is that she does not conform to the mould. Her second
mistake is in being strikingly articulate about the most uncomfortable
things. She has, for instance, made her distaste for middle-class
India’s most cherished mascot — the nuclear bomb — clear in transparent,
even charged, prose. How dare she undermine India’s security and
use all those fancy words to do so?
Or
there she goes, insisting on making those farfetched connections
between families begging on the streets of the city and big projects
that, she says, have driven them there. How can she presume to attack
our chosen model of growth? Why can’t she learn to roll up the glass
of her car window and look ahead like the rest of us?
We
may have even tolerated her if she had left it at the level of ideation.
If she had confined herself to occasionally spouting her sanctimonious
spiel, like all those other loony leftists and secularists — the
current baddies on the national stage. But no, she will not rest.
She goes head-long into battle, joining rallies, shouting slogans,
courting arrest, ‘‘baiting’’ judges, hugging those who have rallied
in her support.
Who
does she think she is disturbing our equanimity — Joan of Arc? Rani
of Jhansi? Eva Peron? Britney Spears? For God’s sake, give us a
break. Why does she do this? For the publicity, possibly. Or, perhaps,
it is just an ingenious, Arundhatish way to elicit faxes of support
from the Italian Parliament and Robert Redford; to get the foreign
media to eat out of her hands. Really, the woman drives us to distraction.
Why can’t she be like the rest of us and know her place and keep
her peace?
As
for that spell in Tihar, well, she had it coming, didn’t she? It’s
a bit like an unrepentant and erring classmate being caned before
us. Something in us delights in her chastisement. Now, possibly,
she’ll learn to conform, behave like the rest of us, not step out
of line so blatantly.
Of
course, we know the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, is a shabby piece
of legislation that ostensibly serves to protect ‘‘respect for the
law’’ but which ends up being completely out of sync with the spirit
of a modern democracy. In the USA its presence is hardly manifest.
In the UK they haven’t found use for it in the last 70 years. The
great jurist, Lord Denning, had even observed,‘‘Let me say at once
that we will never use this jurisdiction as a means to uphold our
own dignity. That must rest on surer foundations.’’
Of
course, the Contempt of Courts Act must be used only in the rarest
of rare cases. But the case of a prize-winning novelist deploying
her pen to undermine our peace of mind does merit such a categorisation,
doesn’t it? And, indeed, such exemplary punishment.
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