Saturday, January 14, 2006

Arsenic Laced Honey

Via Hindustan Times, Arundhati Roy declines Sahitya Akademi Award

Why? Because the award is linked to a government she opposes.

By "government", she doesn't imply the secular-left UPA government or its predecessor, the religious-right NDA government. She likely means our system of government -- and our way of life.

Ms. Roy is a leftist extremist who, in a throwback to the discredited ideologies of the Soviet era, seeks a revolution to overturn the advance in our economic freedoms -- what she contemptuously calls "the neo-liberal project".

The irony of this stale rebel being courted by the Indian establishment is hardly lost on her. Ever the publicity hound, she rejects the Sahitya Akademi award -- an act that will further endear her to the intellectual dwarfs -- and punishment gluttons -- who preside over our cultural scene.

The scandal here is that Ms. Roy was selected for the award in the first place. Her words may drip like honey, but her honey is laced with arsenic. Calling her vile manifesto literature is absurd. Sahitya Akademi should be ashamed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am not a fan of Arundhati Roy or her policies/polemics. However, the article linked to appears to imply that Arundhati Roy rejected the award because of the "environmental policies of the government"? By this I presume she must be referring to the Narmada project. And now this, after the Supreme Court verdict?

Jaffna: Isn't "Marxism" itself Western?

doubtinggaurav said...

PR,

From what I read of GOST,
she did not seem a big fan of Marxism.

Moreover she seems more of a "Well Educated Ignoramus"
than "Intellectual Dishonest"to me.

Ofcourse the effects are identitical in both the cases.

May be our intellectual class needs to "unlearn" few things.

Regards

libertarian said...

She's been called the Goddess of Small Ideas. Quite a study in inconsistencies as Jaffna pointed out. Hangs out with the laissez faire crowd, but spews her brew on the system that facilitates it. She truly is a story-teller extraordinaire - especially stuff she hardly believes in.

pennathur - you're right on the mark. The Balochis need her help to get the Punjabi "boot off their throats" (her words referring to the Indian government vs. Kashmir in particular and India in general). On second thoughts - never mind - she'll mess up a perfectly decent self-determination struggle.

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