Arundhati Roy’s Clark Lecture 2020
Zafar Aziz Chaudhry
MARCH 1, 2020
In the murky environment of every ruthless state, there are always some sane voices which keep speaking against the repressive acts and policies of the state so valiantly and fearlessly that the state is afraid of taking action against such a person for fear of strong public reaction against the government. The only such woman in India these days is a bold woman namely Arundhati Roy, an intellectual, philosopher, novelist and prize-winning writer whose fame has spread beyond the boundaries of India and whose voice reverberates in all corners of world. Recently she was given the rare honour of delivering Clark Lecture 2020 in the Cambridge University of the UK, which honour is bestowed upon only one distinguished person in the world every year. Great critics and philosophers like TS Eliot and EM, Forster have earlier used this podium to speak their views.
MARCH 1, 2020
In the murky environment of every ruthless state, there are always some sane voices which keep speaking against the repressive acts and policies of the state so valiantly and fearlessly that the state is afraid of taking action against such a person for fear of strong public reaction against the government. The only such woman in India these days is a bold woman namely Arundhati Roy, an intellectual, philosopher, novelist and prize-winning writer whose fame has spread beyond the boundaries of India and whose voice reverberates in all corners of world. Recently she was given the rare honour of delivering Clark Lecture 2020 in the Cambridge University of the UK, which honour is bestowed upon only one distinguished person in the world every year. Great critics and philosophers like TS Eliot and EM, Forster have earlier used this podium to speak their views.
This lecture is normally for world audience and the issues raised in them are globally important.
Indian Premier Narender Modi’s repressive regime based on hatred against minorities is well known and any speaker of Indian origin cannot overlook to mention its prevalent political environment.
Arundhati Roy in her Clark lecture exposed the repressive and discriminatory policies against the largest minority of Muslims in India. She mocked the state slogan saying “Mussalman ka ek hi sthan, kabristan ya Pakistan!” or only one place for the Mussalman, the graveyard or Pakistan, is among the more frequent war cries of the murderous, sword-wielding Hindu militias and vigilante mobs that have overrun India’s streets.
She stated that for Muslims “now in life, as in death, segregation is becoming the rule”. The ruling BJP party derives its strength from the fascist creed of Hitler and Mussolini which identifies a party only when it believes in destroying millions of people by exterminating them in gas chambers.
She says that “In cities like Delhi, meanwhile, the homeless and destitute congregate in shrines and around graveyards, which have become resting places not just for the dead, but for the living, too. Muslim graveyards have literally become their ghettoes.” Kashmir now has a formally firewalled Internet, which could well be the future for many of us in the world. According to her, “It’s the equivalent of giving a thirsty person water from an eyedropper.”
By laying an information siege, thousands of Kashmiris, including children, civil society activists and political figures, are imprisoned —some under the draconian Public Safety Act. These are just the bare bones of an epic and continuously unfolding tragedy. While the world looks away, business has ground to a halt, tourism has slowed to a trickle, Kashmir has been silenced and is slowly falling off the map.
She says that “In cities like Delhi, meanwhile, the homeless and destitute congregate in shrines and around graveyards, which have become resting places not just for the dead, but for the living, too. Muslim graveyards have literally become their ghettoes.” Kashmir now has a formally firewalled Internet, which could well be the future for many of us in the world. According to her, “It’s the equivalent of giving a thirsty person water from an eyedropper.”
By laying an information siege, thousands of Kashmiris, including children, civil society activists and political figures, are imprisoned —some under the draconian Public Safety Act. These are just the bare bones of an epic and continuously unfolding tragedy. While the world looks away, business has ground to a halt, tourism has slowed to a trickle, Kashmir has been silenced and is slowly falling off the map.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has passed a new law that It is for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the wellspring of Hindu nationalism, and the parent of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — what Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws were for the Third Reich, conferring upon it the power to decide who was a rightful citizen and who wasn’t, based on specific documents that people were expected to produce to prove their heredity.
The citizenship law that, even if intricately constructed, is blatantly discriminatory against Muslims. In Delhi’s now iconic Shaheen Bagh protest, even a hundred thousand people, have blocked a major road for almost two months. This has spawned mini Shaheen Baghs across the country.
At the heart of Hindu` nationalism and the cult of Hindu supremacy is the principle of varnashram dharm, the caste system, or what the anti-caste tradition calls Brahminism. Brahminism organizes society in a vertical hierarchy based on a supposedly celestially ordained ladder. Right on top of the ladder are Brahmins, the embodiment of purity, the resting place of all entitlement. At the bottom, are the “outcastes”—Dalits, once known as Untouchables, who have been dehumanized, ghettoized and violated in unimaginable ways for centuries. The principles of equality, fraternity, or sorority are anathema to the caste system. It’s not hard to see how the idea that some human beings are inherently superior or inferior to others by divine mandate slides easily into the fascist idea of a Master Race. She stated that to escape the tyranny of Brahminism over the centuries, millions of Dalits and people from other subjugated castes have been converted to Islam, Sikhism and Christianity.
The politics of Hindu majoritarianism is also intricately intertwined with the question of caste
So, the politics of Hindu majoritarianism is also intricately intertwined with the question of caste. Even today, caste is the engine and the organizing principle that runs almost every aspect of modern Indian society. She cited the example of Sir Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning film, Gandhi, which was co-funded by the Government of India. Miss. Roy says that the film is inaccurate to the point of being false about Gandhi’s time in South Africa and his attitude toward Black Africans. Almost more disturbing is the complete absence of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who is easily as much or more of an icon in India as Gandhi is. Ambedkar, a Dalit from Maharashtra, was the man who challenged Gandhi morally, politically and intellectually. He denounced Hinduism and the caste discrimination it entailed, and showed Dalits a way out by renouncing the Hindu religion in favor of Buddhism. While Gandhi’s views on caste were not inimical to those of the Hindu right, his views on the place of Muslims in India were. That is what eventually led to his assassination by a former member of the RSS.
Ms. Roy refers to her first novel, “The God of Small Things”, published more than 20 years ago, and cites sexual and emotional transgression across caste lines. Much has been said about the novel’s lyricism, its metaphors, its structure, its understanding of children’s minds. But except in Kerala, where the novel was very well understood and therefore ran into some hostility, the caste question tends to be glossed over, or treated as a class issue. This is to understand absolutely nothing about Indian society. Certainly, caste and class overlap, but they aren’t identical, as India’s many Communist parties are discovering to their peril.
Arudhati Roy refers to her novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” where she has pointed out the dangers of class distinction in India, and its horrible consequence when India and Pakistan had become nuclear powers, turning Kashmir into a possible nuclear flashpoint. She fears that just as fascism will not be called fascism unless millions have been gassed in concentration camps, the nuclear threat will not be taken seriously until it is too late.
The citizenship law that, even if intricately constructed, is blatantly discriminatory against Muslims. In Delhi’s now iconic Shaheen Bagh protest, even a hundred thousand people, have blocked a major road for almost two months. This has spawned mini Shaheen Baghs across the country.
At the heart of Hindu` nationalism and the cult of Hindu supremacy is the principle of varnashram dharm, the caste system, or what the anti-caste tradition calls Brahminism. Brahminism organizes society in a vertical hierarchy based on a supposedly celestially ordained ladder. Right on top of the ladder are Brahmins, the embodiment of purity, the resting place of all entitlement. At the bottom, are the “outcastes”—Dalits, once known as Untouchables, who have been dehumanized, ghettoized and violated in unimaginable ways for centuries. The principles of equality, fraternity, or sorority are anathema to the caste system. It’s not hard to see how the idea that some human beings are inherently superior or inferior to others by divine mandate slides easily into the fascist idea of a Master Race. She stated that to escape the tyranny of Brahminism over the centuries, millions of Dalits and people from other subjugated castes have been converted to Islam, Sikhism and Christianity.
The politics of Hindu majoritarianism is also intricately intertwined with the question of caste
So, the politics of Hindu majoritarianism is also intricately intertwined with the question of caste. Even today, caste is the engine and the organizing principle that runs almost every aspect of modern Indian society. She cited the example of Sir Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning film, Gandhi, which was co-funded by the Government of India. Miss. Roy says that the film is inaccurate to the point of being false about Gandhi’s time in South Africa and his attitude toward Black Africans. Almost more disturbing is the complete absence of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who is easily as much or more of an icon in India as Gandhi is. Ambedkar, a Dalit from Maharashtra, was the man who challenged Gandhi morally, politically and intellectually. He denounced Hinduism and the caste discrimination it entailed, and showed Dalits a way out by renouncing the Hindu religion in favor of Buddhism. While Gandhi’s views on caste were not inimical to those of the Hindu right, his views on the place of Muslims in India were. That is what eventually led to his assassination by a former member of the RSS.
Ms. Roy refers to her first novel, “The God of Small Things”, published more than 20 years ago, and cites sexual and emotional transgression across caste lines. Much has been said about the novel’s lyricism, its metaphors, its structure, its understanding of children’s minds. But except in Kerala, where the novel was very well understood and therefore ran into some hostility, the caste question tends to be glossed over, or treated as a class issue. This is to understand absolutely nothing about Indian society. Certainly, caste and class overlap, but they aren’t identical, as India’s many Communist parties are discovering to their peril.
Arudhati Roy refers to her novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” where she has pointed out the dangers of class distinction in India, and its horrible consequence when India and Pakistan had become nuclear powers, turning Kashmir into a possible nuclear flashpoint. She fears that just as fascism will not be called fascism unless millions have been gassed in concentration camps, the nuclear threat will not be taken seriously until it is too late.
She draws the world attention to the fact that last year, 3,000 Dalits in a village in Tamil Nadu announced their intention to embrace Islam. She considers it as a sign of danger that when Modi government is moving to disempower and disenfranchise Muslims, this move of his would prove to be a pure political dynamite. This one example alone, according to her, justifies Ambedkar’s call to his people to renounce Hinduism?
Arundhati Roy is the author of “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” and “The God of Small Things”, which won the Booker Prize and have been translated into more than 40 languages. She also has published several books of non-fiction including The End of Imagination, Capitalism: A Ghost Story and The Doctor and the Saint. She lives in New Delhi.
About the current state of Kashmir, she bursts out in her traditional eloquence by saying, “Kashmir, the land of the living dead and the talking graves—city graveyards, village graveyards, mass graves, unmarked graves, double-decker graves. Kashmir, whose truth can only be told in fiction — because only fiction can tell about air that, is so thick with fear and loss, with pride and mad courage, and with unimaginable cruelty. Only fiction can try and describe the transactions that take place in such a climate. Because the story of Kashmir is not only a story about war and torture and rigged elections and human rights violations. It’s a story about love and poetry, too. It cannot be flattened into news”.
Thus the Clark Lecture is mostly devoted to scathing criticism of Indian government’s repressive and inhuman policies in the Held Kashmir, its unjust legislation of Anti Citizenship Act to curb Muslim minority, its cruel treatment of Dalits and their conversion to Islam. Ms. Roy also enumerates some details from her novels “God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” which reflect the sordid aspects of Indian government and its deteriorating culture made worse by its age old caste system.
If this lecture is given vast publicity as most other lectures from this podium are given, the world would very soon know the truth and reality of India’s life today, under fascist policies of its Premier Modi who is bent on gradually exterminating all casts, creeds and races except the Hindus.
The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence
Arundhati Roy is the author of “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” and “The God of Small Things”, which won the Booker Prize and have been translated into more than 40 languages. She also has published several books of non-fiction including The End of Imagination, Capitalism: A Ghost Story and The Doctor and the Saint. She lives in New Delhi.
About the current state of Kashmir, she bursts out in her traditional eloquence by saying, “Kashmir, the land of the living dead and the talking graves—city graveyards, village graveyards, mass graves, unmarked graves, double-decker graves. Kashmir, whose truth can only be told in fiction — because only fiction can tell about air that, is so thick with fear and loss, with pride and mad courage, and with unimaginable cruelty. Only fiction can try and describe the transactions that take place in such a climate. Because the story of Kashmir is not only a story about war and torture and rigged elections and human rights violations. It’s a story about love and poetry, too. It cannot be flattened into news”.
Thus the Clark Lecture is mostly devoted to scathing criticism of Indian government’s repressive and inhuman policies in the Held Kashmir, its unjust legislation of Anti Citizenship Act to curb Muslim minority, its cruel treatment of Dalits and their conversion to Islam. Ms. Roy also enumerates some details from her novels “God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” which reflect the sordid aspects of Indian government and its deteriorating culture made worse by its age old caste system.
If this lecture is given vast publicity as most other lectures from this podium are given, the world would very soon know the truth and reality of India’s life today, under fascist policies of its Premier Modi who is bent on gradually exterminating all casts, creeds and races except the Hindus.
The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence
