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Arundhati Roy

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Arundhati Roy
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Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy (Malayalam: അരുന്ധതി റോയ്, Devanagari: अरुंधती राय) (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, activist and a world citizen. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel The God of Small Things.

Roy was born in Assam to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father, a tea planter by profession. She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school in Corpus Christi. She then studied architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard Da Cunha.

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Art

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradeep Kishen, in 1984, and became involved in film-making under his influence. She played a village girl in the award-winning movie Massey Sahib, and wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones and Electric Moon. She also wrote the screenplay for The 'Banyan Tree', a television serial.

Roy began writing The God of Small Things in 1992 and finished it in 1996. She received half a million pounds as an advance, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam. Contrary to some assumptions, Roy is not one of twins. This misinformation arose from the assumption that the character of Rahel is based on herself. We see this in the physical description of the character in her adulthood and also by some of this character's interactions with her mother, Ammu.

Arundhati Roy is the cousin of famous media personality Prannoy Roy.

Activism

The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. Since winning the Booker Prize, she has concentrated her writing on political issues. These include the Narmada Dam project, India's nuclear weapons and power company Enron's activities in India. She is a figure-head of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism.

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination, a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living, in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. She has since devoted herself solely to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes.

Criticism

Roy has been criticized as being Anti-American. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Select Education investigating books on the reading list of Title VI funded programs stated:

The Columbia Journalism Review cited Arundhati Roy, for example, as a prime example of an "anti-American" writer. Liberal author Ian Buruma, writing in The New Republic, published a review of Roy’s work entitled, "The Anti-American." (Roy’s title-essay from the book reviewed by Buruma was assigned in the U. C. Santa Barbara course.) Even leftist author Tod Gitlin, in the left-leaning magazine, Mother Jones, called Arundhati Roy "anti-American."[link]:

Brickbats & Bouquets

In 2002, Roy was convicted of contempt of court by the Supreme Court in New Delhi for accusing the court of attempting to silence protests against the Narmada Dam Project. In its judgement, the Supreme Court Of India noted "we feel that the ends of justice would be met if she is sentenced to symbolic imprisonment besides paying a fine of Rs.2000/-. While convicting the respondent for the contempt of the Court, we sentence her to simple imprisonment for one day and to pay a fine of Rs.2,000/-. In case of default in the payment of fine, the respondent shall undergo simple imprisonment for three months."http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/qrydisp.asp?tfnm=18299

Arundhati Roy after undergoing one day of prison sentence, decided to pay the fines instead of serving out three months.http://www.narmada.org/sc.contempt/aroy.stmt.mar7.2002.html

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence.

In early 2005, New Republic commentator Tom Frank sparked controversy with the comment, "Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy." [link]

In 2003 Arundhati Roy and her spouse were accused of building their house in a protected Forest area [link].

In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, 'The Algebra of Infinite Justice', but declined to accept it.

References

Bibliography

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See also

External links

 

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