The Return Of Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy’s follow-up to The God of Small Things, 20 years in the making, is arguably already the literary event of the year. And the book isn’t even on the shelves yet. Roy is venerated abroad, treated like a saint. At home, though, she is derided as a terrorist sympathiser, a Naxalite, a communist, and secessionist. It hasn’t stopped her saying what she wants. And in her new novel, she doesn’t pull any punches, finding despair and devastation all around her, but reason, too, for hope.

- Shougat Dasgupta

Were Arundhati Roy just another writer, the release of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness on June 6, her much anticipated second novel 20 years after her coruscating Booker-winning debut, would be the subject of hyperventilation on the nation’s books pages alone. Except Roy is not so much a writer as a political lightning rod. And our nation has no books pages to speak of, the mainstream media treating books with the sort of kindly condescension the young and strong might reserve for the old and infirm.

In lieu of bookchat, in the run-up to publication, Roy has found herself as the inadvertent centre of a minor but gusty squall. “Instead of tying stone pelter on the army jeep [sic]”, tweeted the actor and BJP member of parliament Paresh Rawal, “tie Arundhati Roy!” After deleting the tweet, Rawal claimed he had been “coerced” by Twitter and that he stood by “the citizens and Indian armed forces under any situation and at any cost”. And to think that it’s Roy whom her critics describe as shrill and hysterical.