Roy rejoinder: No gun intended
Arundhati's delayed “what-I-meant-was” leaves much to be clarified
| June 04 2010
Arundhati Roy, our leading public intellectual, has made a rare clarification. She says she never wrote the phrase “Gandhians with a gun”, used to describe Maoists in an essay she wrote for the Outlook in March. The phrase appeared in the sub-headline and Roy says it was written by the magazine. The British newspaper Guardian also carried the same article, under the headline “Gandhi, But With Gun.” Roy could be issuing a similar clarification for the Guardian too.
Addressing a public meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday, Roy reiterated: "I never called them Gandhians with guns. It was a blurb carried by a magazine. What I meant was that they (Naxals) are more Gandhian than any other Gandhian in their consumption pattern...their lifestyle, which is in stark contrast to their violent means of resistance."
We need to react to the clarification since we too had joined the debate (“Arundhati, propagandist with a fat dictionary”). In short:
(1) The Outlook article was published in the March 29 edition, on stands March 22. Roy's clarification, disowning the phrase, comes more than two months later. If she disagreed with the three words, she could have pointed it out much earlier.
(2) It is not exactly clear why she is on the defensive. She has, after all, not disowned that she has termed “the superiority of ‘the non-violent way’” as “ Gandhi’s pious humbug”. Or, making fun of the nonviolent means of resistance like hunger strikes which she had supported and advocated in the past.
(3) Roy is yet to explain what made her change her mind on non-violence. In her several essays (particularly on the Narmada Bachao Andolan), she was all for non-violence, all for Gandhian ways. Once can certainly evolve one's ideology, support Gandhi one day and (say) Narendra Modi the next day, but as a public intellectual, you are expected to explain. You can't be preaching non-violence one day and exhorting them to take up arms the next – without an explanation. That's the one explanation she should have given, instead of blaming her ideological confusion on the Outlook.
In her Mumbai lecture, she explained this much: “Gandhian way of opposition needs an audience, which is absent here.” Violence, on the other hand, has a ready audience, which according to Roy is the sole decider in things like this. Sad.
I think a public intellectual has a every right to react to different situations differently. I do not agree with her on the uselessness of non-violence, as in any civil insurgencies many innocents die, and civil liberties are curbed on the pretext of fighting anti-state forces.
The last para of this story talking abt 'speech' 'writing (or by an extension to bring in ethics, what is worth writing)' and 'audience' (or rather 'presence' and 'absence' of the listener, that grammatical second person taking soliloquies to the level of 'dialogue/s' or 'discourse'), reminds me of Gayatri Chakravarthy Spivac now much talked abbout essay: Can the Subaltern Speak? After having witnessed Gandhi leading the struggle for 'rights of immigrant population in south africa' through employment of 'civil disobedience' and 'non-violently asserting truth (or shall one say, an individual's belief in truth?)' and in inspiring mass movement in India against the colisation to win 'swarajya', why did Gayatri feel the need to title her essay on writing about a female freedome fighter from West Bengal the title, 'Can Subaltern Spoeak'? To put it another way, did subaltern speak from the vally of Narmada, when they got together at Harsud in that remarkable sammelan in late eighties? Did subaltern speak, and did their voice travel upto ears of noted 'non-violent' Gandhian activists who bloacked their footmarch at Gujarat Madhya Pradesh border village named Ferkuva in December 1991 and shouted upto a 'non-violent' octogenerian Baba Amte, a Go Back? When a 'non-violent' Gandhian Chunibhai Vaidhya stood in support of the symbol of violence, a mammoth Sardar Sarovar Dam blocking a non-violent peaceful footmarch of Narmada oustees led by Baba Amte, did Gandhi smile, beneath milky white marbles at Rajghat or shed a tear, Ashish? I think you will say, since Chuniukaka didn't gun down Baba Amte but merely lend his voice with purportedly silencing non violent subaltern opposition to dam, on both sides of Ferkuva what took place that December 1991 morning was non-violent protests embodying remarkable democractic diversity. What language should subalterns have spoken in to strike a conversational chord with Chunibhai in December 1991, Ashish? Should subalterns remain content seeing their voices drowned by 'non-violent' Gandhians, or falling on indifferent (pls don't copy edit and replace this word with 'deaf') ears of that grammatical second person? Should they then resign to soliloquies or 'singing to mirrors' the dirge of the death of non-violence in India? I am sure you would like to pick up that option for them, rather than being asked to shout against Baba Amte, Ritwick Ghatak and Arundhati Roy since their readings and interpretations of Gandhian non-violence is gravely misguided than that of Gandhian 'non-violent' activist, Chunibhai Vaidhya.
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