Arundhati Roy’s ‘an ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire’
(collection of her 14 essays or speeches she delivered in 2003-2004) became the
first book, I finished in 2016. Thank you Ujjwal Acharya Dai for the gift. As
Promised to Ujjwal dai here’s my summary of the book.
The book is a chilling & eye-opening account of
the struggle of people against "empire"(cartel of self-interested
corporate organizations & power hungry "pro-development"
governments). How the other side of story of this struggle is continuously
being repressed by continuous show of empire-side stories by "fair"
media lead my same people against whom this resistance is waged in the first
place. I felt her political/social writings and speeches are nothing short of
illuminating and amazing and I regret reading Arundhati this late, ( I wish I hadn’t
ignored her essays ), some of the essays from the book are eye-opener for me.
“The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky” (My favorite essay
from the book) is Arundhati’s tribute to one of the world’s greatest and most
radical intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, who showed us that nothing is what it
seems to be in the free world. He showed us how phrases like "free
speech", the "free market" and the "free world" have
little, if anything, to do with freedom. And he analyzed the penchant of the
United States to commit crimes against humanity in the name of
"justice", in the name of "righteousness", in the name of
"freedom".
The essay “Peace is War” deals with the importance of
the "free media" in the corporate globalization project. She
describes how neoliberal capitalists have managed to subvert democracy – by
infiltrating the judiciary, the press and the parliament, and molding them to
their purpose.
In “Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?” she uses the
allegory of quaint historic practices - like saving one good turkey and
slaughtering millions - to say that there are always a few good turkeys from
minority or oppressed groups that get rewarded, while the vast majority are
penned and imprisoned. She warns us that the forces against us are too great
for any one person, even a charismatic leader, to challenge.
In “Come September” that nationalism was the cause of
genocides in the 20th century. Like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, she deftly
shreds our most sacred doctrines. "Flags are bits of colored cloth that
governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial
shrouds to bury the dead."
Roy analyses the power ordinary people like us wield
in today’s world in her essay “Public Power in the Age of Empire”. The world
today is a deeply skewed reality. She says that both terrorism and the war on
terror share the same excruciating logic- they make ordinary citizens pay for
the actions of their government.
The scope of Roy’s discussion is broad, the bulk of
her evidence weighty, and yet her core messages are never lost from view. Some
of the major refrains of this collection have to do with the
ever-deteriorating, always illusory ‘free press’ and the need for truly
independent media; the need to insist upon and assert a role for non-violent
protest and resistance to imperializing projects; and the need to understand –
and then denounce – grinding poverty as a form of violence.
Roy pays particular attention to the parallels
between globalization in India, the devastation in Iraq, and the deplorable
conditions many African Americans, in particular, must still confront.
She examines the role of resistance movements that can
make a difference and return dignity to the term democracy. Whether writing
about the so-called war on terrorism, the media, AIDS in South Africa, the war
in Iraq, or caste politics in India; this passionate author puts before our
eyes the cause of justice for the poor, the oppressed, and the overlooked in
countries around the world.
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