by Charles.S.Perera

Arundhati Roy came to fame after writing a book, The God of Small Things, for which she got the Booker Prize for 1997. Six million copies were said to have been sold in 80 languages. She now writes essays from Nuclear weaponisation in India and Pakistan to terrorism in Sri Lanka.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ She has become an activist on Issues related to Social Justice and Economic Inequality. This allows her to put every thing that she knows nothing about into either Social Justice, or Economic Inequality. It is like the human rights activists, and international crisis peddlers. There is nothing, but each one of them makes up some thing to make a big noise to say nothing. But fortunately there is some one to pay for them.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It is like the story I had heard of the broth made by the three friends who were journeying together. Each one of them had a small pouch of rice. After a long journey when they were tired and hungry decided to make a broth with rice as they had nothing else. They boiled a pot of water and each one , without being seen by the other two, pretended to drop a handful of rice into the broth. When the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-brothƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ had boiled long enough, they took out their bowls and with a ladle put a little ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-brothƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ in the bowl, and started drinking.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ There was no ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…- brothƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚, there was only water, as none of them had in reality put any rice into the pot. But none of them would say that there is no rice in the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-brothƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ as it would have been to admit ones own dishonesty. It was just water, but none of them wanting to show their dishonesty drank the water pretending it was the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-brothƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚, and that it was tasty.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Arundhati Roy did not bother to write any more books with the fame she got for the book, which some in India called obscene, and acclaimed by the West, who does not separate sex from art.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It had been said that she gets hysteric for nothing, and she replied , ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-“I am hysterical. I’m screaming from the bloody rooftops. And he and his smug little club are going ‘Shhhh… you’ll wake the neighbours!’ I want to wake the neighbours, that’s my whole point. I want everybody to open their eyes”.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ That is what she does she makes a noise whether there is substance in what she screams about or not. That makes her more important, listened to and even awarded prizes , just for screaming, to keep people awake. Genocide is a word that pops up repeatedly in her speeches, and in her mouth, the word itself has lost its real meaning. She is clever in making up words , she has many words in her book she had invented, to fit into what she has to say.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Speaking at the Convention on Operation Green Hunt and Genocidal attack on tribals by Indian State’ by the Federation Against Internal Repression, she said ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…- the resistance in central India was a fight against injustice and not a rebellion against the state as the government says it is.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ “The government is on the side of the corporates who want to take over the lands, forests, rivers, the traditional homes of the tribals. Operation Green Hunt follows the Bush doctrine of you are with us, or against us,” she said. “Anyone who resists this corporate takeover, whether Gandhian, tribal or Maoist, is branded a terrorist” .

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ She says the war in Sri Lanka is against the Tamil people, and adds that it was a corporate war. All the large Indian companies ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚¦ are now heading to Sri Lanka to make more money” . She says, “ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚¦..The political parties of Tamil Nadu were the only ones who could have stopped the genocide in Sri Lanka, but they chose to stand by silentlyƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ She likes controversy and opposes without reflection. She says Kashmiri people wants independence as Kashmir does not belong to India.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ She had said damning things about Sri Lanka just going on Western media reports. The excerpt below from Wikipedia is one such. ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-In an opinion piece, once again in The Guardian (April 1, 2009), Roy made a plea for international attention to what she perceived, based on reports, to be a possible government-sponsored genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. She cited reports of camps into which Tamils were being herded as part of what she described as “a brazen, openly racist war.”

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ She also mentioned that the “Government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide”, and described the Sri Lankan IDP camps where Tamil civilians are being held as concentration camps ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚«

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Ruvani Freeman, a Sri Lankan writer called Roy’s remarks “ill-informed and hypocritical” and criticized her for whitewashing the atrocities of the LTTE.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ These are the people that the Western Organisations recognise, by awarding Prizes. Even if Arundhati Roy were to be given credit to some of what she ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-screamsƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ about. She is mostly parroting the Western Media and Humanitarian activists with regard to the problem we had in Sri Lanka.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It is not justifiable to say that the War against terrorists in Sri Lanka was a war against the Tamil People, and that there was genocide, when the Sri Lanka Army saved hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians from the ruthless terrorists who were keeping them as a human shield to save themselves.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ And again it was not right to say the IDP camps were concentration camps, as the Government of Sri Lanka was not fighting against a civilised group of Tamil youth , but ruthless terrorists who had scant respect to lives of human being whether they were children, old men or women. The government while fighting a war, looked after the people, and administration of the Country as a whole, put up shelters and provided food and clothing to the IDPs, unlike any other government anywhere else in the world had so far done. Appreciation for all that is criticism and the effort to take the Armed Forces for courts for the elimination of terrorists.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Therefore Arundhati Roy when she screams about Sri Lanka, should find out real facts without screaming for nothing, and understand that poor developing countries have the ability do things that the rich countries are unable to do, with all their riches and technology. .