Fwd: Hysterical Arundhati

after lies, it is now bad karma catching up with arundhati susan roy. all those years of vituperative concoctions are being distilled and poured back into her cup of woes which she can savor in leisure.

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From: Girish

http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/30195944/Wanted-anger-management.html   Roy confesses to writing many of the essays "in anger" and says that they have a common thread—"they are about the consequences of and the corollaries to democracy; they are about the fire in the ducts". But for a writer, anger needs to be channelled and combined with original research and cogent understanding so that it doesn't become a rant. By depending heavily on secondary sources and mixing up subjects and themes, Roy doesn't reach the quality of, say, Naomi Klein, and her impeccably researched and searing studies into the dark heart of capitalism.

edit: here are the excepts from the article also available at
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=138&page=8

Roy, in her article Who's she when she is at home? (The Outlook May 6, 2002) had given a vivid account of a mob attack on house of ex-Congress MP Iqbal Ehshan Jafri, who was unfortunately killed in the riots. Roy gave a graphic detail-"mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burnt them alive".

This event became a media-occasion for Roy to demonise Hindutva. But those who had read The Asian Age (May 2, 2002) would not have been impressed because in it late Ehshan Jaffri's son T.A. Jaffri said -"Among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad". So Roy was describing the stripping and killing of Ehshan Jafri's daughter's in Gujarat riots, who in reality were safe in another part of the globe.

Roy had begun her charter of hate with another damning description: "Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved 'OM' on her forehead".

Shocked by this despicable "incident", I got in touch with the Gujarat government. The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy's help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons. Thus she hedged behind technical excuses. I took up this incident in my rejoinder published as Dissimulation In Word and Images (The Outlook, July 8, 2002).