The God of Government-Bashing!

I’d picked up a book by Arundhati Roy on an impulse a couple of weeks ago and I must say that I don’t regret it at all. In fact, I ought to be buying the book for which she originally made it to the news - “The God of Small Things”- once I make the necessary arrangements. I love the way she writes! Her passion and her language are scintillating.

This book of her’s is all about clobbering governments – the devious schemes they design to decimate the public – and especially about the policies of the current one in USA. She goes at it hammer and tongs and could put any self-respecting blacksmith to shame. I wonder if she wrote this book with a pen or a gun that had a razor-sharp knife attached to it and what’s more – I might add that it probably was dipped in the most venomous poison you can ever imagine. The gun is pointed towards governments – that of democratic countries – USA/Britain and India. To say that she feels strongly about the USA government’s ‘policy’ toward Iraq would be a gross understatement. You’ve to read the book to believe it. You can’t get more sarcastic or bitter than that! Sarcasm simply oozes out of her. Interestingly enough, she is so focused on voicing her opinion about the USA government’s wrong doings that one has to read between the lines to know what it is that she thinks about the ‘so-called’ terrorists and everything else in ‘life’. She is categorical and directs all her energies on just one thing – that the whole story (of war) has been scripted, edited and directed by the current USA government. There seems to be no possibility of her approaching the story from any other angle at all, as she believes that there is only one player and that is the US government. One could almost mistake her to be on Iraq’s side, but level-headed observers who don’t get carried away by the bitterness of her language will see that all she intends to say is that the US government’s approach to Iraq is what she hates…nay….detests…! The hatred overshadows her feelings toward Saddam Hussein/terrorist outfits. Oops! She might not even approve of me calling some groups as terrorists. Take away the US government and you will generally have peace is what she seems to suggest though my interpretation may be wrong. (If I am right - maybe this is partial ignorance, but I am not so sure if governments are the only entities that prevent us from having peace. The ‘bad’ are everywhere!) She weaves a similar story in the case of certain happenings down here in India. Her sarcasm makes you grimace at the government while sometimes making you grin at her overtly cynical approach (eg: something like ‘US would certainly be saving the people that it kills from Saddam’!).

It is certainly a laudable effort as it seems she has taken on the task of speaking for the people, the task of inspiring civil disobedience and protestation against anti-public tendencies of the government. She speaks like a freedom fighter! Passionate indeed! I wish she had also pried into other root causes for disruptions in the society apart from pointing fingers at governments. Is it right to believe that all the bad that there is in the society is in the government? Or am I reading too much into it and it is just that she made governments’ tyranny her only topic for this particular book…