Mahesh,
On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Mahesh Murthy <mahesh.mur...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > I'm a Tam-Brahm and I've seen this contempt-for-Arundhati thing among men > AND women, and not just of the Tam-Brahm persuasion either. > What's common to the lot that despise her is that they're all intellectuals > (or literary critics) - and to me it seems they think she hasn't paid her > dues in the Kanu Sanyal or Potti Sreeramulu sort of way to claim the > intellectual high ground that she does so well. Her critics are not only literary critics. Even within the Left there are many who dislike her. Even within activists she doesn't earn praise. If you see the two critiques at Kafila - one from mainstream Left, one from Trostskyites - you will see those two arguments. > Two arguments are trotted out. One that she writes for the farang reader, > not for the Indian. Sure enough, the deliberately over-florid prose in TGOST > is something that would choke bile in many Indian throats. But then Vikram > Seth in A Suitable Boy does the same thing, as does Rajkamal Jha in all his > work. And neither of those get the derision she does. Well, I do happen to dislike Jha, and I have nothing against writing for a foreign audience. Almost all audiences I write for, at one level, are foreign to me. (And I'm not even remotely placing myself at the same level as Roy's), > All three certainly understand the market of the American reader that loves > the idea of something Indian from a safe distance, much like those who have > 'Indian' food at a gentrified restaurant downtown once a quarter and then > bemoan the relatively colourless lives they lead. In some ways these 3 are > the slightly updated incarnations of Merchant-Ivory-Jhabwala, writing about > a fictitious India for a market that is happy to pay to read about it. They > make a good living at this - and more power to them for figuring out the > angle. Is Rajkamal Jha making a good living out of his writing? I doubt it. Blue Bedspread was fairly well-respected, but his latter two novels have largely sunk sans trace abroad, at least. > The other issue brought up is her choice of causes. Well, Ms Roy is a cause > celebre - and sure enough, she uses her fame to light up issues that are in > the dark - perhaps in a slightly more intellectual way than the > I'm-Lindsay-Lohan-I-Saved-An-Indian-Child method. Oh, she is more sincere than Lohan, but she is no Vanessa Redgrave, dedicated to one or two issues, unless a visceral dislike of democratic form of governance, as seen in India, the US, and Israel, is packaged as one cause. I don't mean this in a provocative way. > Sure you can argue her choice of expedience and issues. but I don't think > it's any different from what retired cricketers, not-yet-recognised > billionaire wives or wannabe film stars do when they are trotted out with > the cause-of-the-moment at their elbows in the glare of media strobe lights. > Now what is interesting is neither of these categories of folks: Vikram > Seth, Ruth Jhabwala et al or Neeta Ambani et al invite loathing like Ms. Roy > does. We have benign acceptance for the roles they are playing > Something in the combination that makes up Ms. Roy makes the teeth grate for > many, I've noticed. > Wonder why. :-) > It is her binary nature of thinking. She blamed Bush for an for-us-or-against-us mentality; she is as guilty of that. Salil
