WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.840 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. You know, for 00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:05.320 most writers, getting to that point of instant 00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:08.859 global literary superstardom, that's the peak. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:11.019 That's the goal, right? Exactly. It usually means 00:00:11.019 --> 00:00:13.419 a quiet sort of gilded life. You focus on the 00:00:13.419 --> 00:00:15.519 next book, you give some measured lectures, you 00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:18.929 accept the awards. But our subject today... Susanna 00:00:18.929 --> 00:00:21.530 Arundagi Roy, she did the exact opposite. She 00:00:21.530 --> 00:00:23.929 really did. She took that massive platform, all 00:00:23.929 --> 00:00:26.690 the intellectual and financial capital that comes 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:28.449 from winning something like the Booker Prize, 00:00:28.589 --> 00:00:32.189 and deliberately traded it. Traded it for what, 00:00:32.270 --> 00:00:34.750 though? For a life defined not by fiction, but 00:00:34.750 --> 00:00:38.439 by... relentless, often really confrontational 00:00:38.439 --> 00:00:40.899 political warfare. It is, I mean, genuinely one 00:00:40.899 --> 00:00:42.880 of the most remarkable and frankly expensive 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.219 pivots in modern literary history. Absolutely. 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:47.899 The moment she was established as this global 00:00:47.899 --> 00:00:50.619 literary figure, she basically decided her best 00:00:50.619 --> 00:00:52.859 work wasn't going to be another novel. No. It 00:00:52.859 --> 00:00:56.820 was going to be direct, uncompromising critiques 00:00:56.820 --> 00:00:59.659 of power, whether she was taking on India's huge 00:00:59.659 --> 00:01:02.520 dam projects, American foreign policy, or the 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:04.620 very foundations of global capitalism itself. 00:01:04.900 --> 00:01:07.280 So today, we're deep diving into the life and 00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:10.180 work of Arundhati Roy, a writer who got the highest 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:13.900 praise only to use that platform to, in her own 00:01:13.900 --> 00:01:17.159 words, scream from the bloody rooftops. Our mission 00:01:17.159 --> 00:01:20.140 today is to unpack the sources, to really get 00:01:20.140 --> 00:01:22.819 a handle on this journey. Such a rare blend of 00:01:22.819 --> 00:01:26.659 literary genius and just absolute moral certainty. 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:29.060 Yeah, we need to trace her development from an 00:01:29.060 --> 00:01:31.359 architecture student through that meteoric rise 00:01:31.359 --> 00:01:34.379 as a novelist and then really analyze why. Why 00:01:34.379 --> 00:01:36.640 did she pivot so intensely to being a political 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:40.299 activist and this necessary, very controversial 00:01:40.299 --> 00:01:43.400 critic of power? We're looking at a figure who. 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:46.239 consciously rejected literary celebrity. She 00:01:46.239 --> 00:01:48.299 rejected the comforts that came with it to focus 00:01:48.299 --> 00:01:50.920 on human rights, on environmental causes, and 00:01:50.920 --> 00:01:53.439 on exposing what she sees as institutional hypocrisy. 00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:55.920 The big picture here is examining the true price 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:57.739 of dissent. When you have a voice that's so unique, 00:01:57.819 --> 00:02:00.480 it just, it can't be ignored. Even when that 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:02.519 leads to sedition charges and years of legal 00:02:02.519 --> 00:02:05.099 pressure. Right. So we'll start with her background, 00:02:05.260 --> 00:02:07.620 which is highly unique, and the explosion of 00:02:07.620 --> 00:02:09.900 her first novel. Then we'll get into the decades 00:02:09.900 --> 00:02:12.780 of fiery essay writing where she took aim at 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:15.360 everything from nuclear policy to the very meaning 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:18.270 of freedom. OK, let's unpack this journey. Starting 00:02:18.270 --> 00:02:21.289 from her very unconventional roots. So she was 00:02:21.289 --> 00:02:24.310 born Susanna Arundhati Roy on November 24th, 00:02:24.310 --> 00:02:27.250 1961 in Shillong. Which at the time was part 00:02:27.250 --> 00:02:29.930 of Undivided Assam. It's now in Meghalaya. And 00:02:29.930 --> 00:02:32.349 what's instantly fascinating and maybe formative 00:02:32.349 --> 00:02:35.330 is just the sheer diversity and movement in her 00:02:35.330 --> 00:02:38.469 family background. Geographically, religiously, 00:02:38.469 --> 00:02:40.810 right from the start. That diversity is absolutely 00:02:40.810 --> 00:02:42.810 crucial. You can't understand her work without 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:45.330 it. It's this cosmopolitan yet somehow intensely 00:02:45.330 --> 00:02:47.840 rooted perspective that defines. everything she 00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:50.500 writes. Born into a Christian family, but her 00:02:50.500 --> 00:02:53.560 heritage spans these major cultural divides in 00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:56.400 India. Right. Her mother, Mary Roy, was a renowned 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:59.379 Malayali Christian women's rights activist. She 00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:01.819 was from Aimanam in Kerala, which becomes a key 00:03:01.819 --> 00:03:04.460 location in her fiction. And her father, Rajiv 00:03:04.460 --> 00:03:07.479 Roy, was a Bengali Christian tea plantation manager 00:03:07.479 --> 00:03:10.289 from Kolkata. So you've got this mix, Bengali, 00:03:10.370 --> 00:03:13.469 Malayali, Christian, and a fiercely political 00:03:13.469 --> 00:03:16.629 mother who was defying conventions herself. It 00:03:16.629 --> 00:03:19.150 must have shaped a deeply independent, critical 00:03:19.150 --> 00:03:21.750 worldview from very early on. Yeah, definitely 00:03:21.750 --> 00:03:24.550 not a conventional, settled background. Her parents 00:03:24.550 --> 00:03:27.289 divorced when she was only two. And she and her 00:03:27.289 --> 00:03:28.930 brother moved around a lot with their mother 00:03:28.930 --> 00:03:31.669 between Uri and Kerala. Exactly. She went to 00:03:31.669 --> 00:03:34.030 school in Kottayam, then later the prestigious 00:03:34.030 --> 00:03:36.490 Lawrence School in Tamil Nadu. And this early 00:03:36.490 --> 00:03:38.409 mobility, you know, combined with her mother's 00:03:38.409 --> 00:03:41.030 own legal and social battles, it really seems 00:03:41.030 --> 00:03:43.409 to have ingrained a skepticism toward any kind 00:03:43.409 --> 00:03:45.889 of entrenched social norm. And then that early 00:03:45.889 --> 00:03:48.150 instability gives way to her formal education 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:50.520 in Delhi. where she studied architecture at the 00:03:50.520 --> 00:03:52.680 School of Planning and Architecture, or SBA. 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:55.219 And it's in Delhi that she meets her first husband, 00:03:55.280 --> 00:03:57.960 an architect named Gerard Bakuna. They married 00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:00.939 in 78, lived in Delhi and Goa before separating 00:04:00.939 --> 00:04:03.919 in 82. Later, she married the independent filmmaker 00:04:03.919 --> 00:04:07.789 Pradeep Krishan in 1984. The sources say they 00:04:07.789 --> 00:04:10.349 collaborated a lot on film projects. They did. 00:04:10.469 --> 00:04:12.830 And though they live separately now, they seem 00:04:12.830 --> 00:04:15.169 to have this reflective partnership, which just 00:04:15.169 --> 00:04:18.509 continues that kind of defiantly unconventional 00:04:18.509 --> 00:04:21.370 approach she has to her personal life. That background 00:04:21.370 --> 00:04:23.310 in architecture school, it proved to be directly 00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:26.230 useful. Her initial career wasn't novels, which 00:04:26.230 --> 00:04:28.009 might surprise a lot of people. No, her first 00:04:28.009 --> 00:04:30.649 creative outlet was film. She worked in television. 00:04:30.649 --> 00:04:32.769 She even starred in a film called Massey Sahib 00:04:32.769 --> 00:04:37.439 in 1985. But she also wrote screenplays for two 00:04:37.439 --> 00:04:39.759 films directed by Purdue Christian. The first 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:42.980 was Electric Moon in 1992, and the other was 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:45.920 in which Annie gives it those ones back in 89. 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:48.500 And it was that second one, Annie, which was 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:51.360 semi -autobiographical. It was based on her own 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:53.639 experiences as an architecture student, and that's 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:55.579 what won her the National Film Award for Best 00:04:55.579 --> 00:04:58.560 Screenplay in 1988. So even before The God of 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:00.720 Small Things, she already had this national platform. 00:05:00.779 --> 00:05:03.800 She had recognition for her writing. Yes. And 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:06.180 what's fascinating here is that even in the pretty 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:08.740 small world of Indian cinema, you can see that 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:11.639 ferocious critical streak that defines her later 00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:13.920 nonfiction. All right. This comes out in 1994 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:16.920 when she gets a lot of attention for this scorching 00:05:16.920 --> 00:05:20.240 film review, The Great Indian Rape Trick. She's 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:23.399 criticizing Shakar Kapoor's internationally acclaimed 00:05:23.399 --> 00:05:26.350 film. Okay, let's unpack this moment because 00:05:26.350 --> 00:05:28.689 it's such a brilliant early marker of her future 00:05:28.689 --> 00:05:31.810 moral framework. What was the core of her critique? 00:05:32.029 --> 00:05:34.810 Her critique wasn't about the acting or the direction. 00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:38.029 It was. It was fundamentally about exploitation. 00:05:38.730 --> 00:05:41.310 Exactly. And the moral right of the artist. The 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:43.470 film is based on the life of Fulan Devi, the 00:05:43.470 --> 00:05:46.149 famous bandit and rape survivor. Roy charged 00:05:46.149 --> 00:05:49.629 the director, Kapoor, with exploitation. She 00:05:49.629 --> 00:05:52.410 questioned the fundamental right to restage the 00:05:52.410 --> 00:05:54.110 rape of a living woman without her permission. 00:05:55.100 --> 00:05:57.379 She basically argued that Kapoor had misrepresented 00:05:57.379 --> 00:05:59.759 Devi's life and sensationalized this immense 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:02.980 personal trauma for commercial gain and cinematic 00:06:02.980 --> 00:06:05.720 spectacle. That is a stunning precursor to her 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:08.220 later work. She's challenging the accepted ethics 00:06:08.220 --> 00:06:10.439 of creative power, the right of the powerful, 00:06:10.540 --> 00:06:12.259 whether they're filmmakers or governments, to 00:06:12.259 --> 00:06:14.240 use the trauma of the vulnerable for their own 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:16.800 purposes. It connects her early film critique 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:19.660 directly to her later political work. The theme 00:06:19.660 --> 00:06:22.459 is so consistent, the moral accountability of 00:06:22.459 --> 00:06:25.560 those in power. She just challenged it head on. 00:06:25.980 --> 00:06:27.959 That sets the stage perfectly for the literary 00:06:27.959 --> 00:06:30.500 explosion that came next. It's really hard to 00:06:30.500 --> 00:06:32.540 overstate the impact of The God of Small Things 00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.180 in 1997. It was an international phenomenon. 00:06:35.480 --> 00:06:37.620 It really was. She started writing it in 1992, 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:40.459 living in, you know, relative poverty, writing 00:06:40.459 --> 00:06:42.680 it longhand in the back of a van. And completed 00:06:42.680 --> 00:06:47.300 it four years later in 96. The book is semi -autobiographical, 00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:50.120 drawing so heavily on her childhood in I'm an 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:52.660 I'm Carola. It tells this sprawling, intimate 00:06:52.660 --> 00:06:56.420 story of fraternal twins. conflict, forbidden 00:06:56.420 --> 00:06:59.759 love. And its publication in 1997 was this immediate 00:06:59.759 --> 00:07:02.720 seismic event. It just catapulted Roy to international 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:05.120 fame. The commercial success was huge and it 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:07.279 was immediate. She got an astronomical publishing 00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:09.819 advance of half a million pounds for a debut 00:07:09.819 --> 00:07:11.819 novel from a pretty unknown author that was just 00:07:11.819 --> 00:07:14.620 unprecedented. It was a massive vote of confidence. 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:17.019 It secured her financial independence almost 00:07:17.019 --> 00:07:20.160 instantly. By the end of June 97, just weeks 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:22.680 after it came out, the book had been sold in 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:25.779 18 countries. It became the biggest selling book 00:07:25.779 --> 00:07:28.980 by a non -expatriate Indian author. That's a 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:31.899 major milestone in itself. Commercially, it was 00:07:31.899 --> 00:07:34.759 a phenomenon, but critically, the reception was... 00:07:35.230 --> 00:07:37.910 A lot more complex and controversial, especially 00:07:37.910 --> 00:07:40.250 back home. Let's look at that. The sources show 00:07:40.250 --> 00:07:43.089 the U .S. reception was wildly favorable. The 00:07:43.089 --> 00:07:45.310 New York Times listed it as a notable book of 00:07:45.310 --> 00:07:47.850 the year. Critics like Michiko Kakutani called 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:51.029 it a dazzling first novel. At once so morally 00:07:51.029 --> 00:07:53.990 strenuous and so imaginatively supple. But this 00:07:53.990 --> 00:07:55.410 is where it gets really interesting because the 00:07:55.410 --> 00:07:57.470 U .K. and India had much more mixed reactions. 00:07:57.810 --> 00:07:59.930 The Booker Prize win itself in 97 caused this 00:07:59.930 --> 00:08:02.769 immediate internal controversy. One of the 1996 00:08:02.769 --> 00:08:05.860 Booker judges, Carmen Cali. actually called the 00:08:05.860 --> 00:08:08.980 novel execrable. Extrable. Wow. Yeah. So it suggested 00:08:08.980 --> 00:08:10.959 this deep divide among the literary establishment. 00:08:11.180 --> 00:08:13.740 But then the outrage shifted from just aesthetic 00:08:13.740 --> 00:08:16.540 criticism to actual legal action in India. I 00:08:16.540 --> 00:08:18.319 remember the obscenity charges being incredibly 00:08:18.319 --> 00:08:21.120 high profile. Oh, yeah. In her home state of 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:23.160 Kerala, the political establishment was just 00:08:23.160 --> 00:08:26.060 outraged. The chief minister at the time, E .K. 00:08:26.100 --> 00:08:29.120 Nayanar, he specifically criticized the book's 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:31.800 unrestrained description of sexuality. And that 00:08:31.800 --> 00:08:33.960 led to her having to answer charges of obscenity 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:36.559 under the Indian Penal Code, which is a serious 00:08:36.559 --> 00:08:38.600 matter. It could have been at jail time. The 00:08:38.600 --> 00:08:41.000 irony is just palpable, isn't it? She's being 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.919 celebrated globally for her literary genius. 00:08:43.980 --> 00:08:46.120 And at the same time, she's being charged at 00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:48.840 home for immorality. Does this constant legal 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:51.059 and political pressure just fundamentally change 00:08:51.059 --> 00:08:53.700 the kind of writer she becomes? I think it has 00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:56.440 to. It cements her identity. She wins one of 00:08:56.440 --> 00:08:58.899 the world's most prestigious literary awards 00:08:58.899 --> 00:09:01.360 for a book, the Booker Citation called one that 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:04.039 keeps all the promises that it makes. While simultaneously 00:09:04.039 --> 00:09:06.740 facing criminal charges in her home state over 00:09:06.740 --> 00:09:09.399 that very same book. It immediately defined her 00:09:09.399 --> 00:09:11.879 platform not just as a global novelist, but as 00:09:11.879 --> 00:09:14.700 a dissident under fire. The Booker Prize was 00:09:14.700 --> 00:09:17.000 the moment she gained a kind of global immunity 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.860 and this huge platform to say what she wanted. 00:09:20.100 --> 00:09:23.320 And she used that platform not to hide, but to 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:26.419 speak even louder. And to target the very systems 00:09:26.419 --> 00:09:29.440 that were trying to silence her. That explosion 00:09:29.440 --> 00:09:32.220 and the controversy that followed, it sets up 00:09:32.220 --> 00:09:35.419 her definitive career shift perfectly. The sources 00:09:35.419 --> 00:09:38.950 confirm that since that 97 novel, Roy has dedicated 00:09:38.950 --> 00:09:42.929 almost all of her time, nearly 20 years, to political 00:09:42.929 --> 00:09:45.820 activism and nonfiction. earning her the description 00:09:45.820 --> 00:09:48.820 of being a renegade from the literary world it 00:09:48.820 --> 00:09:51.519 was a clear conscious choice and a very expensive 00:09:51.519 --> 00:09:54.379 one professionally speaking oh hugely she could 00:09:54.379 --> 00:09:56.500 have written another major novel right away consolidated 00:09:56.500 --> 00:09:59.779 her fame her wealth become the fictional voice 00:09:59.779 --> 00:10:03.179 of her generation instead she became this prolific 00:10:03.179 --> 00:10:05.659 highly focused non -fiction writer and activist 00:10:05.659 --> 00:10:08.159 and she quickly grew into a major voice for the 00:10:08.159 --> 00:10:10.480 anti -globalization movement and her philosophical 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:12.899 targets are enormous she's not just attacking 00:10:12.899 --> 00:10:16.870 small local She's a vehement critic of neo -imperialism, 00:10:16.909 --> 00:10:19.909 of U .S. foreign policy, and maybe most radically, 00:10:20.110 --> 00:10:22.809 she takes on the fundamentals of modern economic 00:10:22.809 --> 00:10:25.529 theory itself. That's the deepest, most challenging 00:10:25.529 --> 00:10:28.429 part of her philosophy. She opposes industrialization 00:10:28.429 --> 00:10:31.029 and this mantra of, you know, unfettered economic 00:10:31.029 --> 00:10:33.929 growth. In her collection, Listening to Grasshoppers, 00:10:34.049 --> 00:10:36.529 she described economic growth as being encrypted 00:10:36.529 --> 00:10:39.990 with genocidal potential. That is a startlingly 00:10:39.990 --> 00:10:42.590 radical statement. How does she defend that claim? 00:10:43.049 --> 00:10:45.460 that economic growth equals genocide. For Roy, 00:10:45.659 --> 00:10:48.360 the defense lies in the direct measurable human 00:10:48.360 --> 00:10:51.440 cost of that growth in places like India. She 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:54.440 argues that development requires massive resource 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:57.639 extraction, these huge industrial projects, privatization. 00:10:57.980 --> 00:11:00.179 Which inevitably leads to the forced displacement 00:11:00.179 --> 00:11:03.960 of millions of poor, often Adivasi or indigenous 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:07.360 populations. Exactly. Their culture, their livelihoods, 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:09.840 their very existence are erased in the name of 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:13.440 GDP growth. And she views the systemic erasure, 00:11:13.580 --> 00:11:16.480 this. sacrificing of millions for the benefit 00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:19.539 of a corporate elite, as a quiet, encrypted form 00:11:19.539 --> 00:11:22.000 of genocide. The economic model itself is inherently 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.139 destructive to people and the environment, in 00:11:24.139 --> 00:11:26.000 her view. And she certainly didn't shy away from 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:28.100 domestic critiques either. Almost immediately 00:11:28.100 --> 00:11:30.360 after the Booker win, she confronted one of the 00:11:30.360 --> 00:11:32.679 most sensitive topics in Indian geopolitics, 00:11:32.700 --> 00:11:35.559 nuclear weapons. Right. In response to India's 00:11:35.559 --> 00:11:38.100 nuclear tests in Pokhran, she wrote The End of 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:41.779 Imagination in 1998. It was a direct, forceful, 00:11:41.779 --> 00:11:44.100 and deeply moral critique of the government's 00:11:44.100 --> 00:11:47.519 nuclear policies. She argued that the state was 00:11:47.519 --> 00:11:49.860 using the bomb as a form of cultural validation, 00:11:50.220 --> 00:11:52.879 a way of announcing India's arrival on the world 00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:56.379 stage, but at a horrifying cost. She called the 00:11:56.379 --> 00:11:59.679 bomb the most totalitarian thing. Because once 00:11:59.679 --> 00:12:02.740 used, it spares no one, it destroys everything, 00:12:02.840 --> 00:12:05.120 it negates the future. And this critique was 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:07.419 later published in her collection, The Cost of 00:12:07.419 --> 00:12:10.000 Living, where she also expanded her focus to 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:13.519 oppose large hydroelectric dam projects, a cause 00:12:13.519 --> 00:12:16.000 that, as we'll see, would completely dominate 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.179 her activist life and lead to her first major 00:12:18.179 --> 00:12:20.460 brush with imprisonment. She has such an impressive 00:12:20.460 --> 00:12:23.220 output of nonfiction. This isn't just occasional 00:12:23.220 --> 00:12:26.179 commentary. She's built a substantial analytical 00:12:26.179 --> 00:12:29.120 body of work documenting these critiques, and 00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:31.799 she uses that same powerful, often poetic language 00:12:31.799 --> 00:12:33.970 that made her famous. It's the sh**. sheer volume 00:12:33.970 --> 00:12:35.750 and commitment that defines her. I mean, you 00:12:35.750 --> 00:12:37.809 look at the titles of her collections, The Algebra 00:12:37.809 --> 00:12:40.289 of Infinite Justice, War Talk, the huge collection 00:12:40.289 --> 00:12:42.429 My Seditious Heart, the titles alone show the 00:12:42.429 --> 00:12:44.730 direction she took. Away from the fictional worlds 00:12:44.730 --> 00:12:47.070 of childhood and toward justice, war, and dissent. 00:12:47.450 --> 00:12:49.149 It is worth saying, though, that after almost 00:12:49.149 --> 00:12:52.429 two decades of advocacy, she did publish a second 00:12:52.429 --> 00:12:55.509 novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in 2017. 00:12:55.929 --> 00:12:58.009 Which proves she hadn't abandoned the literary 00:12:58.009 --> 00:13:00.809 world entirely. No, and that novel was long listed 00:13:00.809 --> 00:13:03.470 for the Man Booker Prize. It confirmed her enduring 00:13:03.470 --> 00:13:06.909 literary power. But even in its sprawling structure 00:13:06.909 --> 00:13:09.789 and its cast of marginalized characters, trans 00:13:09.789 --> 00:13:13.149 people in Delhi, Kashmiri separatists, that novel 00:13:13.149 --> 00:13:16.129 draws directly on the political and social issues 00:13:16.129 --> 00:13:18.220 she spent her time in. 20 years fighting for. 00:13:18.399 --> 00:13:21.600 The activism became the setting, the characters, 00:13:21.759 --> 00:13:24.299 the central conflict of her fiction. Before we 00:13:24.299 --> 00:13:26.340 move on to the actual battle she fought, I think 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:29.120 her stated influences are so fascinating. It's 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.740 a true blend of high literature and political 00:13:31.740 --> 00:13:34.000 engagement, which really helps explain the texture 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.259 of her essays. Yeah, she cites canonical writers 00:13:36.259 --> 00:13:38.879 like Shakespeare, James Joyce, alongside powerful 00:13:38.879 --> 00:13:41.220 political voices like James Baldwin and Toni 00:13:41.220 --> 00:13:43.840 Morrison, and the magical realism of Gabriel 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:46.379 Garcia Marquez. And she said she learns from 00:13:46.379 --> 00:13:50.240 everybody, including imperialists, sexists, friends, 00:13:50.659 --> 00:13:53.559 lovers, oppressors, revolutionaries. Which suggests 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:56.340 her goal isn't just ideological purity. It's 00:13:56.340 --> 00:13:59.659 about comprehensive, nuanced understanding. She's 00:13:59.659 --> 00:14:01.840 absorbing the whole messy human condition to 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:04.820 inform her critiques. So the novelist's skill, 00:14:04.980 --> 00:14:07.779 the ability to craft beautiful, resonant language, 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.759 is merged with the activist's moral certainty. 00:14:11.340 --> 00:14:13.919 She gained the tools of the artist, but consciously 00:14:13.919 --> 00:14:16.340 chose to deploy them on the front lines of political 00:14:16.340 --> 00:14:18.799 struggle. Now we get into the core of her activist 00:14:18.799 --> 00:14:22.200 career. Direct, high -stakes confrontation with 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:24.779 the Indian state. The defining domestic battle 00:14:24.779 --> 00:14:27.259 for Roy was the fight against the Sardar -Sarovar 00:14:27.259 --> 00:14:30.320 project, this immense hydroelectric dam on the 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:33.100 Narmada River. This project was her initial litmus 00:14:33.100 --> 00:14:35.419 test. It really encapsulated everything she opposed. 00:14:35.879 --> 00:14:38.639 Massive centralized industrialization, the displacement 00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:41.159 of hundreds of thousands of marginalized people. 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:43.539 With little compensation. Then devastating environmental 00:14:43.539 --> 00:14:45.639 destruction, all in the name of this questionable 00:14:45.639 --> 00:14:48.379 national progress. She campaigned alongside prominent 00:14:48.379 --> 00:14:51.019 activists like Meta Patkar and the Narmada Bachao 00:14:51.019 --> 00:14:54.100 Andalan movement. She argued the dam would displace 00:14:54.100 --> 00:14:57.230 half a million people. often indigenous Adivasi 00:14:57.230 --> 00:15:00.049 communities, and would ultimately fail to deliver 00:15:00.049 --> 00:15:03.289 its projected benefits. But her opposition wasn't 00:15:03.289 --> 00:15:06.350 just verbal. She backed it with a serious personal 00:15:06.350 --> 00:15:08.950 financial commitment. That's right. The sources 00:15:08.950 --> 00:15:11.529 tell us she donated her Booker Prize money, which 00:15:11.529 --> 00:15:14.029 was substantial, plus royalties from her books 00:15:14.029 --> 00:15:16.799 on the dam issue, directly to the movement. This 00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:19.480 is a crucial point. She was sacrificing immense 00:15:19.480 --> 00:15:22.820 personal wealth for a cause, showing her activism 00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:25.240 wasn't just performance. And this commitment 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:27.659 brought her directly into conflict with the highest 00:15:27.659 --> 00:15:30.899 court in the land, leading to that highly publicized 00:15:30.899 --> 00:15:33.679 contempt of court case in 2002. Well, what happened 00:15:33.679 --> 00:15:36.200 there? Well, Roy was accused of disrupting proceedings 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:38.629 related to the dam. The Supreme Court issued 00:15:38.629 --> 00:15:41.370 a contempt notice against her. Her response in 00:15:41.370 --> 00:15:43.889 an affidavit was explosive. She didn't offer 00:15:43.889 --> 00:15:46.789 an apology or a legal justification. She launched 00:15:46.789 --> 00:15:49.250 a counterattack. What specifically did she say 00:15:49.250 --> 00:15:51.330 that provoked the court to find her in contempt? 00:15:51.570 --> 00:15:53.629 She essentially accused the court of demonstrating 00:15:53.629 --> 00:15:56.870 a disquieting inclination to silence criticism 00:15:56.870 --> 00:15:59.419 and dissent. She pointed out the irony of the 00:15:59.419 --> 00:16:01.659 court was pursuing contempt proceedings against 00:16:01.659 --> 00:16:05.019 her based on a potentially flawed petition, while 00:16:05.019 --> 00:16:07.360 at the same time refusing to investigate serious 00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:09.860 corruption allegations in military contracting 00:16:09.860 --> 00:16:13.120 deals, citing a case overload. So she didn't 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:15.620 just accept the charge. She charged back, accusing 00:16:15.620 --> 00:16:18.879 the judiciary itself of institutional bias. Absolutely. 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:21.480 And the court found her guilty of criminal contempt. 00:16:21.639 --> 00:16:25.940 The sentence was called symbolic. One day's imprisonment 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:28.940 and a fine of about 2 ,500 rupees. Which is about 00:16:28.940 --> 00:16:31.659 30 or 40 U .S. dollars. Right. And crucially, 00:16:31.740 --> 00:16:34.759 she refused to apologize. She served the jail 00:16:34.759 --> 00:16:37.259 sentence and paid the fine, establishing her 00:16:37.259 --> 00:16:39.379 reputation as someone willing to pay the physical 00:16:39.379 --> 00:16:42.250 price for her critique. But this high -profile 00:16:42.250 --> 00:16:45.009 activism also attracted intense criticism from 00:16:45.009 --> 00:16:48.330 her peers, specifically over her style. The environmental 00:16:48.330 --> 00:16:51.070 historian Ramachandra Guha, for example, criticized 00:16:51.070 --> 00:16:54.250 her advocacy as hyperbolic and self -indulgent 00:16:54.250 --> 00:16:57.070 with a shrill hectoring tone. And this leads 00:16:57.070 --> 00:16:59.330 us to one of her most famous and defining quotes. 00:16:59.649 --> 00:17:03.350 Her response to Guha was, I am hysterical. I'm 00:17:03.350 --> 00:17:06.150 screaming from the bloody rooftops. And he and 00:17:06.150 --> 00:17:09.630 his smug little club are going shh. You'll wake 00:17:09.630 --> 00:17:11.369 the neighbors. I want to wake the neighbors. 00:17:11.430 --> 00:17:13.970 That's my whole point. That perfectly encapsulates 00:17:13.970 --> 00:17:16.670 the difference between polite, acceptable dissent 00:17:16.670 --> 00:17:19.430 and the radical confrontation Roy favors. She 00:17:19.430 --> 00:17:22.029 believes polite dissent has failed, so screaming 00:17:22.029 --> 00:17:25.009 is required. Exactly. The stakes are just too 00:17:25.009 --> 00:17:27.930 high for measured academic critique. She sees 00:17:27.930 --> 00:17:30.529 these as humanitarian emergencies requiring an 00:17:30.529 --> 00:17:33.289 urgent emotional response. This confrontation 00:17:33.289 --> 00:17:35.950 with the state then escalated even further over 00:17:35.950 --> 00:17:38.289 the highly sensitive issue of Kashmir, leading 00:17:38.289 --> 00:17:40.769 to the most serious charges against her, sedition. 00:17:41.099 --> 00:17:43.519 This political firestorm started back in 2008 00:17:43.519 --> 00:17:46.259 when she explicitly supported Kashmiri independence. 00:17:46.799 --> 00:17:49.359 She cited these massive demonstrations that year 00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:52.039 where something like 500 ,000 people rallied 00:17:52.039 --> 00:17:54.339 in Srinagar. And she argued that these rallies 00:17:54.339 --> 00:17:56.960 were a clear democratic sign that Kashmiris desired 00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:00.279 secession from India, not union. This statement 00:18:00.279 --> 00:18:03.160 caused immediate and widespread political backlash. 00:18:03.519 --> 00:18:06.259 The major political parties asked her to withdraw 00:18:06.259 --> 00:18:08.859 her irresponsible statement. But she doubled 00:18:08.859 --> 00:18:12.569 down. In 2010, she was charged with sedition 00:18:12.569 --> 00:18:15.430 by Delhi police, along with a separatist leader, 00:18:15.650 --> 00:18:19.069 for an anti -India speech at a convention. And 00:18:19.069 --> 00:18:21.650 her specific controversial quote, which was the 00:18:21.650 --> 00:18:24.490 basis of the charge, was, Kashmir has never been 00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:26.890 an integral part of India. It is a historical 00:18:26.890 --> 00:18:29.589 fact. Even the Indian government has accepted 00:18:29.589 --> 00:18:32.210 this. We should probably convey the gravity of 00:18:32.210 --> 00:18:34.670 a sedition charge to the listener. What does 00:18:34.670 --> 00:18:37.599 that actually imply? Sedition is defined as encouraging 00:18:37.599 --> 00:18:40.279 disaffection against the government. This is 00:18:40.279 --> 00:18:42.420 a colonial era law that carries the potential 00:18:42.420 --> 00:18:45.460 for life imprisonment. For a writer, being charged 00:18:45.460 --> 00:18:47.740 with sedition is the ultimate challenge to free 00:18:47.740 --> 00:18:50.180 speech. And here's where we see the immense ongoing 00:18:50.180 --> 00:18:53.140 significance. The sources concern that the Unlawful 00:18:53.140 --> 00:18:56.279 Activities Prevention Act, the UAPA, was specifically 00:18:56.279 --> 00:18:59.579 invoked against them in June 2024. Nearly 14 00:18:59.579 --> 00:19:02.160 years after the original speech. What's the significance 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:05.410 of invoking the UAPA? The UAPA is an anti -terror 00:19:05.410 --> 00:19:08.309 law. It's extremely stringent. It allows for 00:19:08.309 --> 00:19:10.670 extended custody without bail, and it puts the 00:19:10.670 --> 00:19:13.869 burden of proof heavily on the accused. The fact 00:19:13.869 --> 00:19:15.789 that the state is resurrecting a decade -old 00:19:15.789 --> 00:19:18.490 charge and applying the severe anti -terror law 00:19:18.490 --> 00:19:21.190 shows the long shadow her political statements 00:19:21.190 --> 00:19:23.930 cast. And the state's continued willingness to 00:19:23.930 --> 00:19:26.670 prosecute public critics. She also consistently 00:19:26.670 --> 00:19:29.250 raised questions about sensitive security cases, 00:19:29.490 --> 00:19:31.990 like the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the 00:19:31.990 --> 00:19:35.380 trial of Mohammed Afzal Guru. Yes. Regarding 00:19:35.380 --> 00:19:37.380 Afzal Guru, who was convicted in that attack, 00:19:37.559 --> 00:19:40.240 she alleged state complicity and pointed out 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:42.460 what she called irregularities in the judicial 00:19:42.460 --> 00:19:44.920 process leading up to his hanging. She called 00:19:44.920 --> 00:19:48.140 his execution a stain on India's democracy. This 00:19:48.140 --> 00:19:50.539 stance, questioning the integrity of the state 00:19:50.539 --> 00:19:53.099 security apparatus and the judiciary, is one 00:19:53.099 --> 00:19:55.319 of the most polarizing aspects of her work. It 00:19:55.319 --> 00:19:57.480 is. Her defense is always that the novelist's 00:19:57.480 --> 00:19:59.420 job is to see beyond the official narrative. 00:19:59.799 --> 00:20:02.240 She views transparency and due process as the 00:20:02.240 --> 00:20:04.740 core protections of democracy. And when the state 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:07.359 waivers, she believes she must speak up. We also 00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:11.059 see her immediate visceral reaction to violence 00:20:11.059 --> 00:20:13.980 against marginalized communities. The Mothonga 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:17.539 incident in 2003. Yes, a land occupation by an 00:20:17.539 --> 00:20:19.700 Adivasi group that resulted in the death of a 00:20:19.700 --> 00:20:22.519 participant and a policeman. After visiting the 00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:25.319 jailed leaders, she wrote a blistering open letter 00:20:25.319 --> 00:20:28.069 to the chief minister of Kerala. her message 00:20:28.069 --> 00:20:31.150 was stark and uncompromising you have blood on 00:20:31.150 --> 00:20:34.650 your hands this is her style not just commenting 00:20:34.650 --> 00:20:37.289 from a distance but engaging directly with human 00:20:37.289 --> 00:20:40.289 tragedy and using moral language to indict those 00:20:40.289 --> 00:20:43.349 in power moving into contemporary politics her 00:20:43.349 --> 00:20:45.750 critiques of the current government led by Narendra 00:20:45.750 --> 00:20:48.690 Modi are equally direct. She called his nomination 00:20:48.690 --> 00:20:51.589 as prime minister in 2013 a tragedy. She has 00:20:51.589 --> 00:20:53.970 also argued that Modi has established a degree 00:20:53.970 --> 00:20:56.470 of control over India that is, you know, unrecognized 00:20:56.470 --> 00:20:58.470 in the West, saying that every institution has 00:20:58.470 --> 00:21:00.509 fallen in line. And during the height of the 00:21:00.509 --> 00:21:03.470 pandemic in 2021, her commentary on the government's 00:21:03.470 --> 00:21:06.230 response to COVID -19 was incredibly harsh. Yes. 00:21:06.349 --> 00:21:08.150 In an article for The Guardian, she didn't mince 00:21:08.150 --> 00:21:10.349 words. She described the government's handling 00:21:10.349 --> 00:21:12.630 of the pandemic as a crime against humanity. 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:16.140 Her political confrontation even extends to encouraging 00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:20.200 civil disobedience. In 2019, she urged people 00:21:20.200 --> 00:21:22.660 to mislead authorities during the Enumeration 00:21:22.660 --> 00:21:25.799 for the National Population Register, or NPR. 00:21:26.329 --> 00:21:29.390 And this is a complex but crucial point. The 00:21:29.390 --> 00:21:31.730 NPR is basically the first step toward creating 00:21:31.730 --> 00:21:34.809 the National Register of Citizens, the NRC. The 00:21:34.809 --> 00:21:37.509 NRC requires people to provide proof of citizenship 00:21:37.509 --> 00:21:40.009 and ancestry, and critics fear it could lead 00:21:40.009 --> 00:21:42.470 to millions, especially poor Muslims who lack 00:21:42.470 --> 00:21:45.369 documents, being declared non -citizens. Exactly. 00:21:45.690 --> 00:21:48.329 Roy saw the NPR data collection as a database 00:21:48.329 --> 00:21:50.849 for the exclusionary NRC. So by calling for people 00:21:50.849 --> 00:21:53.109 to mislead authorities, give fake addresses, 00:21:53.329 --> 00:21:55.900 refuse to cooperate, she was encouraging... active 00:21:55.900 --> 00:21:57.779 resistance. For which she was charged with a 00:21:57.779 --> 00:22:00.240 police complaint. Yes, but she clarified her 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.779 intent, calling it civil disobedience with a 00:22:02.779 --> 00:22:05.900 smile. Her protest was nonviolent, but absolutely 00:22:05.900 --> 00:22:08.440 active. Roy's intellectual platform is rarely 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:11.200 confined to India. She quickly used her international 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:13.700 standing to become a major critic of global power, 00:22:13.819 --> 00:22:16.420 specifically U .S. foreign policy, right after 00:22:16.420 --> 00:22:19.859 9 -11. Her 2001 piece in The Guardian, The Algebra 00:22:19.859 --> 00:22:23.380 of Infinite Justice, is this seminal piece of 00:22:23.380 --> 00:22:26.319 anti -war literature. She responded to the U 00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:28.660 .S. invasion of Afghanistan by saying the bombing 00:22:28.660 --> 00:22:30.859 was not revenge for New York and Washington. 00:22:31.140 --> 00:22:34.099 It is yet another act of terror against the people 00:22:34.099 --> 00:22:36.980 of the world. Here's where she uses that powerful 00:22:36.980 --> 00:22:40.359 literary device referencing Orwellian doublethink 00:22:40.359 --> 00:22:42.619 to challenge the rhetoric used by President Bush 00:22:42.619 --> 00:22:45.240 and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Right. When they 00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:47.539 claim to be peaceful nations fighting a just 00:22:47.539 --> 00:22:50.279 war, Roy delivered that unforgettable retort. 00:22:50.460 --> 00:22:53.259 Pigs or horses, girls or boys, war is peace. 00:22:53.559 --> 00:22:55.619 She was calling out the fundamental hypocrisy. 00:22:55.720 --> 00:22:57.819 And she used historical examples, listing the 00:22:57.819 --> 00:22:59.779 countries the U .S. had bombed or been at war 00:22:59.779 --> 00:23:02.500 with since World War II, disputing the core claim 00:23:02.500 --> 00:23:04.960 of America being a peaceful and freedom -loving 00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:07.000 nation. If we connect this back to her foundational 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:10.079 critiques, she sees the war on terror not as 00:23:10.079 --> 00:23:12.660 an isolated incident, but as a symptom of a larger 00:23:12.660 --> 00:23:15.269 disease. American -style corporate capitalism 00:23:15.269 --> 00:23:18.509 and empire. That's her ultimate synthesis. She 00:23:18.509 --> 00:23:21.170 argues that in America, the arms industry, the 00:23:21.170 --> 00:23:24.509 oil industry, the media, foreign policy, they're 00:23:24.509 --> 00:23:26.829 all controlled by the same business combines. 00:23:27.349 --> 00:23:30.210 For her, it's not driven by ideals. It's driven 00:23:30.210 --> 00:23:33.329 by a corporatized empire seeking profit. She 00:23:33.329 --> 00:23:35.309 continued this critique during the buildup to 00:23:35.309 --> 00:23:38.549 the Iraq War, delivering that powerful 2003 speech, 00:23:38.930 --> 00:23:42.329 instant mix imperial democracy, buy one, get 00:23:42.329 --> 00:23:44.730 one free. In that speech, she described the U 00:23:44.730 --> 00:23:47.750 .S. as a global empire that derives its legitimacy 00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:50.769 directly from God, suggesting this self -righteous, 00:23:50.930 --> 00:23:53.690 unchallengeable moral authority. Her ultimate 00:23:53.690 --> 00:23:56.650 rejection came in 2006 when she publicly called 00:23:56.650 --> 00:23:59.210 President George W. Bush a war criminal during 00:23:59.210 --> 00:24:01.089 his visit to India. So how do we distinguish 00:24:01.089 --> 00:24:03.650 between genuine political critique and the kind 00:24:03.650 --> 00:24:06.410 of inflammatory hyperbole like calling a sitting 00:24:06.410 --> 00:24:09.089 president a war criminal that risks damaging 00:24:09.089 --> 00:24:11.029 her credibility? That is the central dilemma 00:24:11.029 --> 00:24:14.049 of her career. her audience, who are often marginalized 00:24:14.049 --> 00:24:17.470 groups or anti -imperialist academics, this hyperbole 00:24:17.470 --> 00:24:19.789 is seen as necessary truth telling. Matching 00:24:19.789 --> 00:24:21.470 the severity of the language to the severity 00:24:21.470 --> 00:24:24.670 of the perceived crimes. Exactly. Critics, however, 00:24:24.829 --> 00:24:26.970 argue it pushes her outside the realm of serious 00:24:26.970 --> 00:24:29.049 political discourse and lets opponents dismiss 00:24:29.049 --> 00:24:31.990 her as just hysterical. But she seems perfectly 00:24:31.990 --> 00:24:34.549 willing to accept that tradeoff. Her advocacy 00:24:34.549 --> 00:24:36.650 extends fiercely into the Middle East as well, 00:24:36.750 --> 00:24:39.589 particularly Israel and Palestine. In 2006, she 00:24:39.589 --> 00:24:42.039 co -signed a letter calling the Lebanon war a 00:24:42.039 --> 00:24:45.539 war crime and accusing Israel of state terror. 00:24:45.779 --> 00:24:48.880 More recently, during the 2021 crisis, she defended 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.460 Hamas's rocket attacks, citing the right to resistance 00:24:51.460 --> 00:24:53.980 against what she views as illegal occupation. 00:24:54.259 --> 00:24:56.980 And in December 2023, she made a very prided 00:24:56.980 --> 00:24:59.380 statement about global silence on the conflict. 00:24:59.579 --> 00:25:02.339 She stated, if we say nothing about Israel's 00:25:02.339 --> 00:25:05.640 brazen slaughter of Palestinians. We are complicit 00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:08.940 in it. For Roy, silence is not neutrality. It's 00:25:08.940 --> 00:25:11.680 an active endorsement of the status quo. In 2024, 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.039 she joined thousands of writers in an open letter 00:25:14.039 --> 00:25:16.440 pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions. 00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:19.059 Interestingly, this fierce drive to contextualize 00:25:19.059 --> 00:25:21.180 conflict sometimes places her at odds with other 00:25:21.180 --> 00:25:24.099 major literary voices. Her comments after the 00:25:24.099 --> 00:25:26.259 2008 Mumbai attacks provoked one of the most 00:25:26.259 --> 00:25:28.519 intense pushbacks of her career, specifically 00:25:28.519 --> 00:25:31.940 from Salman Rushdie. They absolutely did. Roy 00:25:31.940 --> 00:25:33.680 argued that the attacks had to be understood 00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:37.599 in the context of wider historical issues. Poverty, 00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:41.880 the trauma of the 1947 partition, the 2002 Gujarat 00:25:41.880 --> 00:25:45.180 violence, and the ongoing Kashmir conflict. She 00:25:45.180 --> 00:25:47.319 did explicitly state that nothing can justify 00:25:47.319 --> 00:25:50.579 terrorism. But figures like Salman Rushdie strongly 00:25:50.579 --> 00:25:53.599 criticized her remarks. What was the core of 00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:56.509 his critique? Rushdie argued that linking terrorism 00:25:56.509 --> 00:25:59.710 to socioeconomic or historical grievances, even 00:25:59.710 --> 00:26:02.369 if you preface it with nothing can justify, inevitably 00:26:02.369 --> 00:26:04.710 sounds like an attempt at moral justification. 00:26:04.829 --> 00:26:07.529 Or at least a deflection of responsibility. Exactly. 00:26:07.710 --> 00:26:10.250 He implied she was sacrificing moral clarity 00:26:10.250 --> 00:26:13.430 for intellectual context. The Indian writer Tavleen 00:26:13.430 --> 00:26:16.089 Singh called her comments the latest of her series 00:26:16.089 --> 00:26:18.869 of hysterical diatribes against India. Roy's 00:26:18.869 --> 00:26:20.549 defense has always been that if you ignore the 00:26:20.549 --> 00:26:22.710 historical wounds, you can never truly understand, 00:26:22.970 --> 00:26:25.299 let alone solve. the violence that erupts from 00:26:25.299 --> 00:26:27.440 them. Her contextualization is meant to be diagnostic 00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:30.240 not an excuse. That's the crux of her methodology. 00:26:30.920 --> 00:26:33.119 She believes true justice requires addressing 00:26:33.119 --> 00:26:35.460 the root causes, which for her are systemic poverty 00:26:35.460 --> 00:26:37.400 and state oppression. We see her applying this 00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:39.779 same critical lens to other regional conflicts, 00:26:39.980 --> 00:26:43.019 like the civil war in Sri Lanka. In 2009, she 00:26:43.019 --> 00:26:44.880 called for international attention to what she 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:47.420 described as a possible government -sponsored 00:26:47.420 --> 00:26:50.500 genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. And she controversially 00:26:50.500 --> 00:26:53.799 described the IDP camps as concentration camps. 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:56.940 But she maintained a complex view of the LTTE, 00:26:57.240 --> 00:27:00.220 which was widely designated a terrorist organization. 00:27:00.859 --> 00:27:03.059 She didn't whitewash their actions. No, she didn't. 00:27:03.059 --> 00:27:05.700 She acknowledged that the LTTE's fetish for violence 00:27:05.700 --> 00:27:08.359 was cultured in the crucible of monstrous racist 00:27:08.359 --> 00:27:11.299 injustice that the Sri Lankan government visited 00:27:11.299 --> 00:27:14.519 upon the Tamil people. Again, it's that insistence 00:27:14.519 --> 00:27:16.640 on connecting the violent action of the non -state 00:27:16.640 --> 00:27:18.960 actor back to the original source of state injustice. 00:27:19.500 --> 00:27:22.440 As we synthesize her career, what stands out 00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:25.740 is this staggering duality. A writer who is simultaneously 00:27:25.740 --> 00:27:27.859 one of the most globally celebrated and one of 00:27:27.859 --> 00:27:29.880 the most legally prosecuted figures in modern 00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:32.269 literature. The list of awards is long, and it 00:27:32.269 --> 00:27:34.309 demonstrates the global impact of her voice. 00:27:35.009 --> 00:27:37.710 Obviously, the Booker Prize in 97 for The God 00:27:37.710 --> 00:27:40.250 of Small Things kickstarted everything. But the 00:27:40.250 --> 00:27:43.569 later awards shifted focus, really validating 00:27:43.569 --> 00:27:45.910 her role as a dissenting voice. She received 00:27:45.910 --> 00:27:47.789 the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award 00:27:47.789 --> 00:27:51.369 in 2002. The Sydney Peace Prize in 2004 for her 00:27:51.369 --> 00:27:54.250 work in social campaigns and advocacy of nonviolence, 00:27:54.329 --> 00:27:56.910 which is a fascinating contrast to her screaming 00:27:56.910 --> 00:28:00.049 style. The Orwell Award that same year, the Norman 00:28:00.049 --> 00:28:04.009 Mailer Prize in 2011, Time 100 in 2014. More 00:28:04.009 --> 00:28:06.589 recently, the St. Louis Literary Award and the 00:28:06.589 --> 00:28:08.809 European Essay Prize. But the most recent and 00:28:08.809 --> 00:28:12.130 perhaps most poignant award is the 2024 PEN Pinter 00:28:12.130 --> 00:28:14.910 Prize. This brings her back to the highest international 00:28:14.910 --> 00:28:17.930 literary circles, even as she faces renewed legal 00:28:17.930 --> 00:28:20.519 threats. at home. The prize recognizes a writer 00:28:20.519 --> 00:28:23.319 who casts an unflinching, unswerving gaze on 00:28:23.319 --> 00:28:25.220 the world. And what's fascinating is what she 00:28:25.220 --> 00:28:27.480 did with the award. She chose to share the prize 00:28:27.480 --> 00:28:29.740 money, naming the imprisoned British Egyptian 00:28:29.740 --> 00:28:32.980 writer Allah Abdel Fattah as the writer of courage. 00:28:33.259 --> 00:28:35.660 So she transformed a personal accolade into a 00:28:35.660 --> 00:28:38.500 political statement. It reinforces her core belief. 00:28:38.839 --> 00:28:41.339 The best use of her platform is not to bask in 00:28:41.339 --> 00:28:43.619 the glow, but to amplify the voices of those 00:28:43.619 --> 00:28:45.640 who have been silenced. Now contrast that with 00:28:45.640 --> 00:28:48.470 the awards she deliberately rejected or returned. 00:28:49.509 --> 00:28:52.359 She refuses to be co -opted. The first major 00:28:52.359 --> 00:28:56.039 rejection came in 2006. She was awarded the Sahitya 00:28:56.039 --> 00:28:59.000 Akademi Award, a major national award in India, 00:28:59.099 --> 00:29:01.259 for her essay collection The Algebra of Infinite 00:29:01.259 --> 00:29:04.099 Justice. She declined it. And her reason was 00:29:04.099 --> 00:29:06.460 very clear. She rejected it in protest against 00:29:06.460 --> 00:29:08.579 the Indian government violently and ruthlessly 00:29:08.579 --> 00:29:11.980 pursuing policies of brutalization, militarization, 00:29:12.140 --> 00:29:15.319 and economic neoliberalization. She viewed accepting 00:29:15.319 --> 00:29:18.240 it as tacitly endorsing policies she was fighting 00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:21.009 against. Years later, she revisited her early 00:29:21.009 --> 00:29:23.309 career and returned the National Film Award she'd 00:29:23.309 --> 00:29:25.930 won back in 1989. She returned that award in 00:29:25.930 --> 00:29:28.809 2015 as a specific protest against what she called 00:29:28.809 --> 00:29:30.970 growing religious intolerance and violence by 00:29:30.970 --> 00:29:33.390 right -wing groups in India. It just neatly bookends 00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:35.849 her career. Looking ahead, the sources tell us 00:29:35.849 --> 00:29:38.309 her upcoming book is Mother Mary Comes to Me, 00:29:38.410 --> 00:29:41.450 scheduled for September 2025. This sounds like 00:29:41.450 --> 00:29:43.569 a significant return to the personal. It is. 00:29:43.609 --> 00:29:46.230 It's a memoir focusing on her early years with 00:29:46.230 --> 00:29:49.109 her mother, Mary Roy, whom she calls my shelter 00:29:49.109 --> 00:29:52.369 and my storm. Given the immense influence of 00:29:52.369 --> 00:29:55.029 her mother, a powerful activist in her own right, 00:29:55.170 --> 00:29:58.130 this memoir promises to be an incredibly insightful 00:29:58.130 --> 00:30:01.410 look at the origins of her own relentless confrontational 00:30:01.410 --> 00:30:04.349 spirit. So after reviewing this incredible life 00:30:04.349 --> 00:30:06.849 of literary triumph and political trench warfare, 00:30:07.170 --> 00:30:09.940 what does it all mean for us? What really stands 00:30:09.940 --> 00:30:11.980 out when you look at the whole arc of her career 00:30:11.980 --> 00:30:14.880 is how she embodies this rare, maybe unique, 00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.160 combination of profound literary skill and uncompromising 00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:22.259 political engagement. She got instant celebrity, 00:30:22.500 --> 00:30:25.420 but consciously chose the harder path. Her journey 00:30:25.420 --> 00:30:27.980 is marked by the highest accolades, the Booker, 00:30:28.019 --> 00:30:30.460 the Payne Pinter Prize, but also by the most 00:30:30.460 --> 00:30:32.720 serious legal charges, including contempt of 00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:35.039 court and sedition charges that linger for over 00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:37.299 a decade. For you, the learner, Roy's career 00:30:37.299 --> 00:30:39.420 teaches us a powerful... lesson about the role 00:30:39.420 --> 00:30:41.940 of the creative voice. That for some, the greatest 00:30:41.940 --> 00:30:44.380 impact isn't in quiet fiction, but in the direct 00:30:44.380 --> 00:30:47.380 noisy confrontation of power. Her work forces 00:30:47.380 --> 00:30:49.339 us to consider the ethical responsibility of 00:30:49.339 --> 00:30:51.180 the artist and the price they're willing to pay. 00:30:51.359 --> 00:30:54.000 The ultimate takeaway is the choice between calm, 00:30:54.160 --> 00:30:56.920 accepted criticism, and the method she adopted, 00:30:57.160 --> 00:31:14.299 which she describes as hysteria. We've seen her 00:31:14.299 --> 00:31:16.839 quote. I want to wake the neighbors. That's my 00:31:16.839 --> 00:31:18.839 whole point. So the provocative thought we'll 00:31:18.839 --> 00:31:21.460 leave you with is this. In a world that's overwhelmed 00:31:21.460 --> 00:31:24.119 by noise and rapidly consolidating power, does 00:31:24.119 --> 00:31:26.400 choosing silence or measured politeness simply 00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:29.279 become complicity in the status quo? And what 00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:31.019 price are you willing to pay to wake the neighbors?