Globalizing Dissent: Arundhati Roy in Seattle

By Laila Kazmi

The renowned author and political activist Arundhati Roy was recently in Seattle as part of her US lecture tour. As a city which has become known for its political activism with events like the famous WTO protests in 1999 against corporate globalization and the large anti-war protests in 2003, Seattle regularly attracts big names. In the past lectures by personalities like Tariq Ali, the late Edward Said, and journalist and author Ahmed Rashid have drawn long lines of people.

This time, along with several of my Pakistani and Indian female acquaintances, I was especially excited to be waiting in line to hear a woman activist from India, the author of the Booker Prize winner God of Small Things as well as several political books including War Talk and her most recent An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. Having reached the scheduled talk at Seattle's Town Hall more than an hour early, we were lucky enough to get a place towards the front of the line for the sold out lecture.

The petite Arundhati Roy appeared on stage to a standing ovation by a crowd of 1,100. She was accompanied by David Barsamian, an American journalist and author of several books including Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire and Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said. Barsamian is also the director of independent weekly Alternative Radio. The talk was set up as a conversation with Barsamian asking Roy questions and she responding to them. A short book reading by Roy and then a book signing followed.

Quoting Roy from a previous interview, Barsamian started off their conversation by asking about the real fight which according to Roy is "that we're up against an economic system that is suffocating the majority of the people in this world". Using her own words, Barsamian asked Roy the admittedly difficult question, "What are we going to do about it? How are we going to address it?"

To that Roy responded, "I think one of the dangers that we face is that it all becomes about personality and we forget that the system is in place and it doesn't matter all that much who's piloting the machine. This whole fierce debate about Democrats and the Republicans, whether Bush or Kerry is better, it's like being asked to choose a detergent. Whether you choose Tide or Ivory Snow, they are both owned by Procter & Gamble." Commanding applause from the audience of mostly white Americans, Roy went on to speak about the recent elections in India where, as she put it, "We (Indians) were faced with outright fascism from the BJP."

Praising the American people for coming out in protest to the Iraq war in huge numbers, Roy stressed the importance of confronting the threat of empire-building. "So theoretically the only way to confront this is what all of us are [already] involved in, which is the globalization of dissent, which is the joining of hands of people who do not believe in Empires. We have to join hands across countries and across continents in very specific ways and stop this."

She talked about the fact that in the US and Europe millions of people protested against the Iraq war, yet the US and the coalition still went to war. This idea according to Roy, conflicts with the democratic principles and forces us to ask the following questions: "Is democracy still democratic? Are governments accountable to the people who elected them? And are people responsible for the actions of their governments?" These she said were some serious issues facing democracy today.

Coming back to the issue of elections in the US this November, Roy stressed that the American people have to "force the Democrats to say that they are against the war otherwise you are not going to support them".

She said that the fact that the American people were speaking out was a great sign of hope and she alluded to the difference between people and governments. "I am always called 'anti-American'. And I am so far from being anti-American because I have such a deep respect for what you (American people) do. I can assure you that if India and Pakistan were at war, it would be hard to find people to come out in the numbers that you have come out to protest the war. It is something which is encouraging to people everywhere."

In speaking against war or killing anywhere in the world, Roy also told the audience about the Gujarat violence in India where thousands of Muslims were murdered, burned alive, and women gang-raped.

During their talk David Barsamian stressed the importance of supporting independent, alternative media sources which really work hard to get the truth to the people. Roy spoke in agreement and talked about the new wave of independent documentary filmmakers that have emerged in the developing countries. "Technology has enabled documentary films to become such a powerful tool both for the right and for the left. In countries like India, it's become such an important political weapon. Governments are really frightened [about] how to censor it, how to stop it."

At one point Barsamian asked Roy about people, especially women, who have been her inspiration. She offered examples of bold acts by ordinary women from small towns and villages in India. She also acknowledged the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). "I think of all the women's resistance movements, the most remarkable is RAWA in Afghanistan. What a tremendous battle they have waged and continue to wage [against suppressive groups like the Taliban and the Northern Alliance]."

In closing her remarks Arundhati Roy reminded the Americans that they cannot talk about terrorism "without talking about repression, without talking about capitalism, without talking about occupation, and without talking about privatization".

Laila Kazmi is a freelance writer from Seattle and editor of Jazbah.org, a Web magazine about Pakistani women. Her articles have appeared in The Seattle Times, Dawn, Pakistan Link, & some Internet publications.

This article was first published in Pakistan's Dawn, Sep 12 2004.