Roy, Arundhati (1961–)

Arundhati Roy was born to a Bengali father and a Syrian-Christian mother and grew up in Aymanam, Kerala, in India. She studied architecture at the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture. In Delhi, she earned her living by working as an aerobics instructor. In 1984, she met her second husband, Pradip Kishen, a filmmaker, and took active part in the art by writing three screenplays and acting a small part in the film Massey Sahib. From 1992 to 1996 she concentrated on writing her novel, The God of Small Things, for which she won immediate critical acclaim and the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in Kerala from the point of view of two twins, Estha and Rahel, pivots around the death by drowning of their half-English cousin, Sophie Mol. It is set against the backdrop of the Marxist power dynamics and lyrically addresses the problematic themes of family relationships, intercaste love, female empowerment and deprivation, and the complex role of English as a language of status and control in postcolonial India. Roy's characters and their concerns evoke Salman Rushdie's depictions of India's aspirations and almost inevitable shortcomings. Like Rushdie, Roy does not romanticize or expropriate the experience of family life in India, rather she captures its paradoxical emancipatory yet oppressive wholeness.

Roy considers herself a citizen of the earth, and she has become involved in social and political activism. With stark intellectual honesty, she has written on such various topics as India's nuclear tests, the consequences of unchecked progress in India, American neo-imperialism, the war on Iraq, Enron's dealings in India, globalization, and Israel's war crimes in Lebanon. Along with charismatic but polemical intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and French agrarian confederation leader José Bové, she has become a vociferous critic of rampant globalization and its catastrophic repercussions on local communities. Her writings have appeared in journals and newspapers throughout the world, and she has appeared and lectured in World Social Forums and anti-globalization meetings.

In August 1998, Roy signed an eloquent essay, titled “The End of Imagination,” which openly criticizing India's nuclear tests and policies. She mourned the passing of her world and disputed the claims of Hindu nationalists about the necessity of the bomb. Further, she contested the ideological constructs of identity, nation, and nationality in the Indian context.

Perhaps her most important contribution to social militancy is her opposition to the Narmada Dam Project in Western India and the unacceptable conditions of tribal rehabilitation. In 2002, the Supreme Court of India convicted her of contempt of court, imposing a fine and imprisonment.

Roy won the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004 and the Sahitya Akademi award in 2006, but she declined to accept the latter in protest of the Indian government's policies.