When I learned I would have the opportunity to meet Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things - one of the highest-selling Indian novels in English, and one of the most beautiful and fiercely political works of fiction of recent decades - it was hard to contain my excitement.
Roy’s first novel had had a massive impact on me as a teenager and was the subject of my university dissertation. But its author is also a committed left activist - as indicated by the very context in which I met her, at the Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), or CPI(ML). Originally stemming from the Naxalbari uprisings in the 1960s, the CPI(ML) is today focused on mass movements rooted in Dalit and oppressed caste communities.
Roy was one of several writers, academics and activists invited to address the congress in solidarity, at a time when many public intellectuals are speaking out against India’s Hindu right regime, led by Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Truth and fiction
Roy’s collection of essays and lectures, Azadi: freedom, fascism, fiction (2020), describes ‘the slow buildup of what's been going on over the last few years,’ in her words. “The new citizenship laws, what's happening in Kashmir. It ends with the lockdown, when [migrant workers] had to walk 1000s of kilometres [to get home].”
Slogans featuring the word ‘Azadi’ [freedom] have been widely used in protests against the Modi government - but, as Roy highlights, the word has a complex history.
“Azadi is actually what the people who want…self determination from India in Kashmir used to use. [It was used] in Iran [and in] the feminist movement, then it became a slogan on the streets of India. There are lots of contestations about who is allowed to own that word.”
Few works of fiction tell the truth more starkly than 1997’s The God of Small Things, arguably a damning indictment of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), the ruling party in Roy’s home state of Kerala, from which the CPI(ML) originally split in 1969. The novel’s themes - caste and gender, the failings of certain strands of the Indian left on these issues - remain deeply relevant even as the left is tasked with fighting a far right central government. But has anything changed?
“[The CPI(M)] have always tried to conflate caste and class. I think that's been one of the biggest failures of the communist movement in India. [CPI(M) members] were infuriated by the book. Now, 20 years down the line, I think everybody has realised that unless you actually address caste - the engine that runs modern India - nothing is going to be politically relevant.”
Roy’s speech at the congress noted that “the anti-caste and anti-capitalist protests will have to come together to resist fascism.”
The Doctor and the Saint
Roy’s explorations of the Indian caste system extend beyond her fiction works. Her 2017 text, The Doctor and the Saint, examines the debates on caste and race between Gandhi and his contemporary, Dalit activist, social reformer and author of India’s constitution, B.R. Ambedkar.
“No questions are supposed to be asked about Gandhi,” Roy explains. “Dr Ambedkar wrote an iconic text, The Annihilation of Caste, to which Gandhi responded…looking at that debate, I started moving backwards right up to [when Gandhi] first started his political career…[It had been] either erased or completely rewritten…the first political victory that Gandhi won in South Africa, was fighting for a different entrance to the Durban post office so that [those] he called savages [black people], should not share the same entrance as Indians...[It was not] some fight on liberty and the end of segregation, quite the opposite.”
She refrains from completely shunning Gandhi. “He was…an extraordinary political mind...but he also was reactionary, often racist, often sexist. This inability to look at complexity has created real problems in intellectual decency.”
It occurs to me that the extent to which Indians have internalised colonial anti-black racism - even seemingly profoundly progressive Indians like Gandhi - is widely overlooked.
Roy agrees. “India is likely one of the most racist places in the world, if you meet any Africans and ask how it is for them here.” It is also not something she feels has been exacerbated under the current government, as “Casteism and racism have [always] been part of [Indian] society. What is more explicit now is the attacks on Muslims, on Christians, on the left…[the Modi regime] openly worships ideologues who said the Muslims of India should be treated like the Jews of Germany. Every day we hear calls for genocide, for the mass rape of Muslim women. There have been 300 attacks in [one] year on churches…It's a very frightening situation.”
A skewed media
Journalists have also repeatedly come under attack in Modi’s India. Prominent journalist and critic of Hindutva extremism, Gauri Lankesh, was assassinated in 2017 outside her home in Bangalore.
For Roy, “the most dangerous job right now is that of senior journalists” she explains. Adding, “the better you are at your job, the less the chances that you'll have a job. And if you have a job, you do it - you're in danger because the media is all skewed.”
Even mainstream Indian broadcasting service NDTV has recently been partially acquired by Modi’s close ally, billionaire Gautam Adani, a pivotal move indicating how far the Hindu right has monopolised the media landscape.
But, there is still space for independent media in Modi’s India.
“There are…tiny pinholes of light here and there, but basically, when history is written about this time, the media in India should [be looked at as] willingly part of this whole project. They are as bad as the lynch mobs…even more dangerous. And this includes social media...Twitter and YouTube, [they have] grovelled every time the government asked them to,” Roy explains.
In such a terrifying political climate, it can feel easy to latch on to Gandhi’s seemingly progressive vision for post-independence India - especially when this is under attack from the Hindu right. But fighting for a truly free India - not only free for some - has never been more important.
As Roy stated in her speech, urging the Indian left to condemn the government in the strongest terms: ‘Will we call [out] fascism as fascism only when a continent is destroyed?’
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya is a writer, activist and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine, interested in arts and culture and social movements.
Follow her on Twitter: @AnanyaWilson
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