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DAM-L LS: Ravi Rajan on Guha's Attack on A. Roy (fwd)
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subject: LS: Ravi Rajan on Guha's Attack on A. Roy
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>Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 11:42:58 -0800
>Subject: Ram Guha and Arundhati Roy
>From: Ravi Rajan <srrajan@cats.ucsc.edu>
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>I thought you might be interested in my take on the sad controversy
>surrounding Ram Guha's attack of Arundhati Roy (see
>www.the-hindu.com/2000/11/26/stories/13260411.htm)
>
>The article is published in Tehelka.com in the ecology and health section
>along with an excellent piece by Damandeep Singh.
>(The URL is: http://www.tehelka.com/enh.htm).
>
>Best, R.
>
>S. RAVI RAJAN
>Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
>University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
>
>Phone: 1 831 459-4158 "Don't Get Even - Get Odd!"
>Fax: 1 561 382-0878 - Bumper sticker
>Email: srrajan@cats.ucsc.edu
>
>------------------------------
>In Which Lord Ram Gave it Those Ones
>
>
>A reputed journalist once wrote to me and asked a simple question for a
>column he was about to write. Why is it, he asked, that Indian
>environmentalists are so routinely at each others throats? At that time I
>did not quite know how to respond. Sure enough, his observation is valid -
>and applies not only to environmentalists but to just about every Indian
>professional, including journalists and the academics, that I have
>encountered. Yet, I have found it difficult to pin the reasons down and
>afford an explanation. Until nowŠ
>
>On November 26, Ramachandra Guha, a historian and social commentator, wrote
>a piece in the reputed newspaper, The Hindu, in which he attacked the
>novelist and activist, Arundhati Roy, for her writings and utterances on the
>Narmada dam controversy. He ended the article with a statement that conveys
>the vitriolic essence of his polemic: "I am told that Arundhati Roy has
>written a very good novel. Perhaps she should begin another. Her retreat
>from activism would - to use a term from economics - be a "Paretto optimum":
>good for literature, and good for the Indian environmental movement."
>
>Mr. Guha's column, needless to say, has drawn considerable attention. On
>December 17, for example, The Hindu published no less than thirty letters in
>response. Twenty two of these sang Guha's praises, while eight expressed
>some reservations. Clearly, if this were a mob trial, Guha would win, and
>Arundhati Roy, lynched (as some might argue she already has). Curiously,
>though, 20 of the 22 pro-Guha letters were written by men, many, with Ph.D.s
>and academic reputations. Of the 8 contra letters, five were by women and
>three by men.
>
>Luckily, we do not live in an era of show trials and mob justice and there
>are many among us who like to partake of civilized discourse and consider
>controversial issues with care. Let us therefore systematically examine Mr.
>Guha's argument. In essence, he makes five inter-related points. Ms. Roy, he
>argues, is a new kid on the block and "as a work of analysis, it (her piece
>on the Sardar Sarovar dam) was unoriginal." Secondly, he declares, "Her
>vanity was unreal." Next, he describes her writing style as
>"self-indulgent," "hyperbolic," "irresponsible;" "stream of consciousness;"
>"romantic; and "characterized by "a conspicuous lack of proportion."
>Fourthly, he describes her as an "anti-patriot," akin to a "super-patriot"
>such as Arun Shourie. Both, he argues, "think exclusively in black and
>white" and "arrogate to themselves the right to hand out moral
>certificates." Last, but by no means the least, Mr. Guha attempts to seal
>his argument by comparing Ms. Roy, unfavourably, with two "genuine"
>"novelist-activists," - George Orwell and Shivram Karanth, who, he claims,
>are "men (who) wrote with a proper sense of gravitas, in a prose that was
>lucid but understated, each word weighed before it was uttered."
>
>Let us examine each of these propositions carefully. Consider Guha's first
>argument. Granted, Arundhati Roy is a new kid on the block on the Narmada
>dams controversy. ButŠ So what? I remember being constantly advised, as a
>doctoral student many years ago, that if there is something worth saying, it
>is worth saying again. Needless to say, this advise is particularly relevant
>to the world of political writing. Since when has activism been only about
>stating "original" things, as opposed to acting on and mobilizing around
>passionately held beliefs? As far as I can tell, Ms. Roy has never claimed
>that any of her writings were original. Rather, all she has been doing is
>lending her voice - as a citizen (albeit with celebrity) - to a cause that
>she happens to believe in. What exactly is wrong with that? Her style might
>well turn off some and Mr. Guha's response, as well as those of the many men
>who wrote to support him, testify to this. Yet, at the same time, it manages
>to motivate several others. Indeed, many who had been neutral on the
>controversy, have become new converts to the cause of the environmentalists
>in the valley and their wider cohort who, for more than two decades have
>been painfully building the case against large dams. Is this not the way
>with most political writing?
>
>Mr. Guha's second statement is a bit more puzzling. "Her vanity is unreal,"
>he says. For someone who makes so much about the need for careful
>scholarship, what, exactly, is Guha basing this contention on? Does he tell
>us something about Roy, the person, that speaks to this issue? Or, does he
>have privileged access to Ms. Roy's psychological state? If he does, he is
>certainly very discrete in suppressing such valuable and relevant data.
>Instead, Mr. Guha relies on one paraphrased extract from Ms. Roy's writings
>to drive home his message. Ms. Roy, he writes, "quoted, without irony, the
>judgement of her friend that after having written one successful novel she
>had seen it all, that a barren stretch of life lay before her until the
>final meeting with her Maker. She spoke of how she had disregarded the
>advise of those who she insisted that the tax man would come chasing her
>were she to write against the bomb." If indeed Mr. Guha is accurate in
>paraphrasing Ms. Roy and if, further, Roy is read strictly literally, the
>case can be made that Roy displays a hint of vanity. Even if this were the
>case, how, exactly, is Roy's supposed vanity, "unreal"? Surely, Mr. Guha
>provides no evidence to support such a serious claim, nor does he elucidate
>a method to investigate it further. In essence, he either wants us to
>believe him because he said so, or he is himself letting loose a hyperbolic
>polemic. If the former is true, then it will be truly sad, for a scholar who
>accuses a novelist of writing with "passion without care," should surely
>base his statements on factual accuracy and a commitment to method, not to
>speak of basic fairness. If, instead, the latter is the case, then surely,
>he de-legitimizes his own argument.
>
>To move to Mr. Guha's next point, it is obvious that he does not exactly
>like Ms. Roy's writing style. But then, style is a matter of both taste and
>training. What appeals to some does not appeal to others. Besides, different
>traditions of literary training emphasize different qualities. While it is
>certainly important for genres and intellectual traditions to converse with
>and thereby cross-pollinate each other, it is disingenuous to demand, as
>Guha does tacitly, that certain modes of linguistic expression and
>argumentation are illegitimate. Having assigned both Mr. Guha's and Ms.
>Roy's writings to my undergraduate classes, I often find that my students
>find the work of the former labored and that of the latter exhilarating and
>liberating. This is not to deride either genre or claim that either lacks
>validity - but just to point out that different styles of writing appeal to
>different audiences and serve different purposes. Indeed, as a teacher, I
>consider it my duty to help my students appreciate the internal logic of
>these very different methods and rhetorical styles.
>
>A related issue concerns the language Ms. Roy employs. Mr. Guha charges that
>she is hyperbolic. But is not the very point of deploying language for
>political purposes to do just that? Imagine what would have happened had
>Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar begun his famous speech by saying, "Ladies and
>Gentlemen - In the wake of my boss's assassination, I am here to socially
>construct your emotions so that your appendages in turn deploy themselves
>and dispatch yond Cassius and his conspiratory cohort to the other realm!"
>He would have probably got a few rotten eggs thrown at him - and surely Mr.
>Shakespeare would have sounded awfully like a trite post-modern academic!
>The point simply is that the very essence of the use of metaphor and the
>hyperbolic in language is to provoke, excite, mobilize.
>
>Indeed, this point was not lost on our first prime minister who described
>dams as the temples of modern India or his daughter who proudly ushered in a
>"Green Revolution." Are these not hyperbolic uses of language, and, given
>the controversies surrounding them, do they not display a "lack of
>proportion?" Surely, liberals and "the left" have a right to invoke such
>language too! It is important to note here that in making this attack
>against Roy, Guha disrespects the average reader - who, one can argue with
>considerable historical support, knows to sift the grain from the sand.
>Colorful language entertains, and entertainment is at the essence of any
>successful political campaign. In deploying the language she does, Ms. Roy
>is not thus a reckless renegade but part of a classical tradition of
>political satire that goes way back in several traditions of human history.
>Mr. Guha is thus engaged in a polemic against polemic - an inherently
>self-contradictory enterprise.
>
>A similar set of comments apply to Mr. Guha's characterization of Ms. Roy as
>a quintessential "anti-patriot." What exactly is Mr. Guha claiming when he
>accuses Roy of being exclusively black and white? Surely, he recognizes that
>drawing extreme contrasts is a time-honored method of drawing public
>attention in politics and religion alike, not to mention systems theory
>which argues the unit of information is difference?! Why, then, should a
>political writer not set up a polemic of contrast? And again, why should
>they not pronounce moral judgements? Where would art or science be if
>practitioners reserved their moral sensibilities for quiet conversations in
>their bedrooms? Thank God Tolstoy was not an Andropov and Marx not a bland
>neoclassical economist!
>
>Again, what method does Mr. Guha, the scholar, use in comparing Ms. Roy with
>Orwell and Karanth? Surely, they lived and wrote in different times and
>contexts. What, then, is the criteria for the comparison? Is he implying,
>romantically, perhaps, that their age was somehow superior to ours? Or, is
>he saying, as he seems to, that the only valid method of political
>expression is understatement or that the only measure of lucidity, an
>unmetaphorical realism? If this is indeed what he is contending, surely Mr.
>Orwell would be the first to part company! Moreover, how ironical that the
>scholar who did so much to draw our attention to the cultural politics of
>monocultures among the trees of Garhwal would now be such an ardent
>policeman of a literary monoculture of the most boring variety?
>
>Don't get me wrong. This is not a piece in defense of Arundhati Roy. I
>disagree with some of her formulations on both the nuclear as well as the
>Narmada controversies. At the same time, I find a lot in her work admirable.
>Again, I have gained a great deal from the lucidity of Ramachandra Guha's
>scholarship in environmental history and have, over the years, admired him
>as a scholar and a gentleman. Yet, I find that this particular piece by Guha
>does not engage with ideas, but rather with purported intent, which, in
>turn, is unsubstantiated by neither fact nor effective analytical criteria.
>Even in the one point of tangible engagement he does make - wherein he
>argues that a better resolution to the controversy would be to heed concrete
>engineering proposals to reduce the height of the dam - he fails to do
>justice to Ms. Roy's proposal that the dam be left unfinished - as a
>symbolic testimonial to the failure of the technological hubris it
>represents.
>
>It is indeed possible for reasonable people to disagree over such issues and
>I do not for a moment dispute the right or indeed the duty of citizens to
>engage and critisize the views held by others. After all, it is constructive
>debate that sustains a democracy. However, the sprit of such engagement
>ought to be a primordial sense of respect, fairness and grace. What I find
>objectionable about Mr. Guha's article is his employment, instead, of
>innuendo and character assassination as a component of his rhetorical
>strategy. Little wonder that so many of his supporters in the columns of the
>Hindu were government officials who ardently support the dam, corporate
>lawyers and other pro-dam business interests, and even one member of the
>ministry of defense. For a self-advertised "progressive" Mr. Guha has
>managed to mobilize a rather strange band of bedfellows!
>
>Like many, I can not help wonder where Guha's article came from. It may be
>masculine angst, as one of the female letter writers in The Hindu,
>suggested. Mr. Guha is hardly alone in that territory - I frankly know few
>men, I included, who does not suffer from this malaise! It may also be an
>unstated turf battle - between an established environmental social scientist
>and a celebrity upstart who threatens to upstage by changing the terms of
>reference of the script. Again, it may have its roots in a primordial and
>unexamined residue of a tradition of political indoctrination that drew
>sharp distinctions between reform and revolution, between the right and the
>wrong way of political mobilization and writing. Or, it could be a
>Brahmanical commitment to Truth - which does not allow for multiple
>perceptions of reality or for the legitimacy of diverse modes of political
>action. It may be all or none of the above. Indeed, I have no knowledge of
>where Mr. Guha is coming from. What is absolutely evident, however, is that
>whatever it is, Guha's piece is arrogant, self-righteous and condescending
>at the same time as it is unbalanced, unfair, and, above all, ungracious.
>
>To return to the beginning, this sorry episode serves to highlight a sordid
>facet of the psyche of many Indian environmentalists (and indeed other
>professionals). Tragically, we are quick to judge, condemn and reject -
>often, without taking the time to communicate or understand. Activists
>dismiss academics as denizens of the ivory tower; academics condemn
>activists as being unoriginal or simplistic; men condemn women and women
>men, as this sad case illustrates; those in the grass-roots reject their
>urban counterparts and vice versa - all amidst personality clashes, turf
>battles and contests of egos that are bigger than the collective psyche of
>the nation. Meanwhile, the forests continue to disappear, people continue to
>perish in avoidable disasters, urban pollution makes the infamous fogs of
>London and Los Angeles seem like utopias and the entire countryside
>progressively resembles a gigantic wastebasket. If there is anything I
>learn, it is that the most important environmentalist struggle is against
>our own inner selves. There is no way we can hope to save the world without
>humility, respect, and above all, grace.
>
>Ravi Rajan teaches environmental studies at the University of California,
>Santa Cruz. He can be reached at srrajan@cats.ucsc.edu
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