Azadi - Arundhati Roy

CHAPTER FOUR
The Language of Literature
I
am truly honored to have been invited by PEN America to deliver this year’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write
Lecture. Had Arthur Miller and I belonged to the same generation, and had I been a US citizen, I suspect we’d
have bumped into each other while we answered summons to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In
India, my credentials are impeccable. My name is high up on the A-List of “Anti-Nationals”—and that’s not because
it begins with an A . These days the list has become so long, there’s a good chance that it might soon overtake the
list of Patriots. Of late, the criterion for being considered anti-national has been made pretty simple: if you don’t
vote for Narendra Modi (the prime minister) you’re a Pakistani. I don’t know how Pakistan feels about its growing
population.
Sadly, I won’t be able to vote for anybody this time around, because today, May 12, is the day that Delhi, my
city, votes. My friends and comrades (excluding those who are in prison) have been queuing up outside election
booths, with their hearts in their mouths, hoping the fate of Turkey and Brazil does not await us too. I don’t believe
it will. For the record, I accepted the invitation to speak here before the dates of the Indian election were announced.
So, if Mr. Modi wins by just one vote, remember that all of you share the blame.
Anyway, here we are in legendary Harlem, in the Apollo Theater, whose walls have heard, and perhaps secretly
archived, the heart-stopping music that has been made here. They probably hum to themselves when nobody’s
listening. A little Aretha Franklin, some James Brown, a riff by Stevie Wonder or Little Richard. What better venue
than this hall full of history to think together about a place for literature, at this moment in time, when an era that we
think we understand—at least vaguely, if not well—is coming to a close.
While many of us dreamt that “another world is possible,” some other folks were dreaming that, too. And it is
their dream— our nightmare—that is perilously close to being realized.
Capitalism’s gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees. Much
of the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the government of the United States. Seventeen years after
invading Afghanistan, after bombing it “into the Stone Age” with the sole aim of toppling the Taliban, the US
government is back in talks with the very same Taliban. In the interim it has destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives to war and sanctions, a whole region has descended into chaos—ancient
cities, pounded into dust. Amid the desolation and the rubble, a monstrosity called Daesh (ISIS) has been spawned.
It has spread across the world, indiscriminately murdering ordinary people who had absolutely nothing to do with
America’s wars. Over these last few years, given the wars it has waged, and the international treaties it has
arbitrarily reneged on, the US government perfectly fits its own definition of a rogue state. And now, resorting to the
same old scare tactics, the same tired falsehoods, and the same old fake news about nuclear weapons, it is gearing up
to bomb Iran. That will be the biggest mistake it has ever made.
So, as we lurch into the future, in this blitzkrieg of idiocy, Facebook “likes,” fascist marches, fake-news coups,
and what looks like a race toward extinction—what is literature’s place? What counts as literature? Who decides?
Obviously, there is no single, edifying answer to these questions. So, if you will forgive me, I’m going to talk about
my own experience of being a writer during these times—of grappling with the question of how to be a writer during
these times, in particular in a country like India, a country that lives in several centuries simultaneously.
A few years ago, I was in a railway station, reading the papers while I waited for my train. On an inside page I
spotted a small news report about two men who had been arrested and charged with being couriers for the banned,
underground Communist Party of India (Maoist). Among the “items” recovered from the men, the report said, were
“some books by Arundhati Roy.” Not long after that, I met a college lecturer who spent much of her time organizing
the legal defense of jailed activists, many of them young students and villagers in prison for “anti-national
activities.” For the most part this meant protesting corporate mining and infrastructure projects that were displacing
tens of thousands from their lands and homes. She told me that in several of the prisoners’ “confessions”—usually
extracted under coercion—my writing often merited a reference as a factor that led them down what the police call
“the wrong path.”
“They’re laying a trail—building a case against you,” she said.
The books in question were not my novels (at that point I had written only one—The God of Small Things ).
These were books of nonfiction, although in a sense they were stories, too—different kinds of stories, but stories,