Ivita Chakraborty
M.Ed. (2nd Sem)
COLLECTED NON-FICTION BY ARUNDHATI ROY.
NAME OF THE BOOK: MY SEDITIOUS HEART(COLLECTED NON- FICTION).
AUTHOR: ARUNDHATI ROY.
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2019.
Arundhati Roy stepped into the writer’s hall of fame after her debut novel, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, which actually lauded her with the BOOKER PRIZE in 1997. She actually devoted two decades to publish her second novel, THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS. She has been always busy in her writing domain. Over the past 25 years, she has composed dozens of non-fiction essays on wide range of topics beginning from India’s nuclear explosion to American Imperialism.
MY SEDITIOUS HEART compiles most of these essays, contributing a ringside view of the rebellious political conscience of one of India’s most celebrated writers. In this work, she constantly focuses on the millions of Indian Inhabitants who suffer from poverty, violence & injustice in India & worldwide, & the means that lead to this suffering & trauma. Roy herself is very conscious to the voices & backgrounds of her real- life characters, especially those who are holding a kingly position can make their voices heard through their speeches, policies or indeed their books. According to Roy, the desire to compose such issues arrived from her own cognitive dissonance:
I was a front-runner in the
Line- up of people who were
Chosen to personify the confident, new, market-friendly India that was finally taking its place at the high table. It was flattering in a way, but deeply
Disturbing too. As I watched people being pushed into penury, my book was selling millions of copies. My bank account was burgeoning. Money on that scale confused me. What did it really mean to be a writer in times as these?... I had written about love & loss, about childhood, caste, violence & families- the eternal preoccupations of writers & poets. Could I write equally compellingly about irrigation? About the salinization of soil? About drainage? Dams? Crop patterns? About the per unit cost of electricity? About the law? About things that affect ordinary people’s lives? Could I turn these topics into literature? I tried.
Roy’s overarching concern revolves around abuses of power that put economic profit over human lives. Some of her essays are focused on national issues & others on larger structural ones, but the local & the global issues are working in a constant contact, working in a parallel, producing & reinforcing one another in an eccentric mechanism, an accelerated cycle of chicken & egg. According to Roy, traditional politics is just terrifying as thousands can be infected at one time& virulence easily turns out to be massive. The original threat is arriving from both multinational corporations & an overlapping government, bolstered by an upper- middle class joyous to support “growth”. She claims that 50 million people have been forcibly expelled from their homes due to the creation of giant dams & other irrigation techniques that require their land, with the promises of relocation exposed to be scams or outright lies. Religion is often considered a tool of control & persuasion& oppressive riots have taken place that incorporates hundreds or even thousands of people.
Roy vehemently insists that in India a unique variety of Hinduism is speaking for the entire country, with other religions & lifestyles discriminated against. She states there are two India’s almost at war with each one another, one which she calls India shining & the other, simply, India, with the economic growth & prosperity of the first group depending upon the tamping down, kicking out, & disappearance of the poor, downtrodden & ‘’other”.
The significance of language is a major theme of most of Arundhati Roy’s works. She employed phrases like “free market”, “deepening democracy”, or ‘’women’s empowerment’’ have came to comprehend what people think & can be used to defend the most clamorous power grabs & most insidious underminings of equality. The best portion of Roy’s analysis is her own use of language: she possess a snarky, accessible voice & she seems to be genius at narrative, putting events in order & drawing a line with lucidity through what seems to be an overwhelming chaos.
‘’The Doctor & the Saint” , on the historical importance & continuing relevance of B.R Ambedkar, is a particularly illuminating essay, presenting Gandhi’s ambiguous biography as a politician in South Africa, suggesting that his political stances were prejudicial to the so called ‘’untouchables’’(today called as Dalits) & proposing the political reformer Ambedkar- a contemporary. Ambedkar belonged to a Dalit Background & raised his voice against the caste system prevailing in our customary traditional society.
Over the course of her research, Roy goes about offering readers a new selection of idols or atleast people we might read or appreciate today, from Ambedkar to PanditaRamabai to AnuradhaGhandy to Lyothee Thass to Faiz Ahmed Faiz. On a more philosophical level, Roy hints she would rather be content with the simple, godly with the simple, godly “small things’’ around her than privilege explosive growth. Perhaps we needn’t go so far, but she bears a funny, witty, warmhearted companion on our road to understand the power games being played & the rigid forms of rhetoric that are being utilized which is responsible for destroying lives & inhibit the expressions of thought. Roy has been successful in finding what is green, firm, fresh, sensual & resistant in our livelihood or the best part of ourselves.
Composed By: Ivita Chakraborty (M.ed 2nd Semester, Roll- 05, Madhyamgram B.Ed College).