Hemalatha. K

Power Politics of New Imperialism in Arundhati Roy's An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Indian  writing in English has achieved universal standards and global recognition with writers like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy and others. In the collection of speeches delivered between 2002 and 2004 entitled , An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, the Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy has voiced her opinion on the  role of Imperial machinery in various  fields, right from the growth of corporate  power, caste and communal politics in India  to  the corporatised mass media functioning in a perverse manner. Frederic Jameson   has pointed out that:  
Post-modern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American and military domination throughout the world; in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death and terror (5). 
Conceding with this view and proceeding in the same manner Arundhati Roy has pointed out how America's war  against Iraq or Afghanistan is to assert its authority, its power of domination by curtailing freedom in country after country in the name of protecting  freedom, and suspending civil liberties in the name of protecting democracy. “All kinds of dissent are being defined as “ Terrorism”.All kinds  of laws are being passed to deal with it.” (Roy 42). 
Despite all the talk of  democracy and democratic rights, Arundhati Roy feels that the  world is run by three of the most “ Secretive” institutions in the world;   the International Monetary Fund , the World   Bank and the World Trade Organization all of which are dominated by the U S and where  all decisions are made behind closed doors and no one has any idea of what politics, beliefs or intentions lie behind them. Roy is confident that such “A world run by handful of greedy bankers and  CEO's whom nobody elected cannot possibly last”(43).  The fact remains that atleast for the present this is how  the world is being run, by a select group of people who are unconcerned about global welfare. 
An avid reader of Chomsky , Arundhati Roy was able  to understand the intensity of his views  and the relentlessness  with which he was up against the  propaganda machine.  When America bombed Hiroshima, after having announced   falsely that Japan was its arch rival , detrimental to its growth  , Chomsky has observed: 
“I remember I   literally could not talk to anybody. There was nobody. I just walked off by myself.  I walked off  into the woods and stayed alone for a  couple of hours... I felt  completely isolated” (Qtd. By Roy 72). 
This  is an insider, an American, denouncing the unfair and unjustified avarice of his own nation. After this incident Chomsky has written articles pointing out “a cool ,incriminating finger at  the  merciless, Machiavellian empire as cruel , self righteous and hypocritical as the ones it has replaced.” (Qtd. By Roy 72). 
Elucidating world politics clearly, Arundhati Roy opines that the word “Empire” not only refers to the  U.S. Govt. the World Bank ,the IMF,World Trade Organization and MNC's  but it also includes other  subsidiary heads and dangerous by products  such as “ Nationalism ,religious bigotry ,  fascism and of course terrorism.  All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate  globalization”(77). All these are the different  strategies  used by powerful nations to suppress and oppress the weaker ones.
Roy has observed how   India the world's biggest democracy with  its one billion population is being viewed as the biggest market by  the World Trade Organisation.  Corporatization and privatisation are being welcomed by the Indian elite and there are men who are selling the country's infrastructure to corporate  multinationals who wish to privatize water, electricity, oil,  coal, steel, health, education, and telecommunication. 
Corporate globalization will   rip  through people 's lives and massive privatization and  labour reforms would push people off their lands, out of their jobs and  as a result hundreds of   impoverished farmers commit  suicide by consuming pesticide. When America occupied Iraq it snatched  away its fields, homes,rivers, jobs,infrastructure and resources, so also  when M N C 's enter the Indian market in large numbers there is bound to be ruin. 
The reality is that many world banks Citi bank , A M R O and others are ready to barge in and  supply the needed  loan for  demolition  of settlements and the building of great dams  .  Describing in detail how the people of Harsud and neighbouring villages were encouraged, rather enticed to pound down their own houses   and settlements and go elsewhere so that the  Narmada dam could be built, Arundhati Roy blatantly exposes the corruption and insensitivity of the Government  authorities in dealing with  sensitive issues    like depriving people of their right to live  in their own ancestral villages with which they had developed an emotional bonding. As a last resort when the desperate people discussed the possibility of filing a  Public Interest Litigation at the Supreme Court. Justice B.N.Kirpal made a wisecrack:-“ Public Interest Litigation should not be allowed to degenerate into becoming  Publicity Interest Litigation or Private Inquisitiveness Litigation”(Qtd. By Roy 269).
The Honourable Judge need not  have made the wise crack if he had the sensibility to see the human suffering. So Arundhati Roy wishes to make  one realise that whether it is  Iraqi people resisting American occupation or whether it is  Harsud and nei ghbouring  village people resisting   the building of the  Narmada Dam,   these matters should be looked into with sensitivity, taking into  consideration the rights and dignity of human beings and should be dealt with in a humanitarian manner. 
Indians won their freedom from British rule in 1947 but 50 years later this hard won freedom is now being  jeopardised by political parties who are selling India off  in chunks. Arundhati Roy has rightly pointed out that: 
It is a myth that the free market breaks down national barriers. The freemarket does not threaten sovereignty , it undermines democracy. As the disparity between the rich and  poor  grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through  their” sweet heart deals” to corporatize the crops we grow, the water  we drink, the air we breathe, the dreams we dream , corporate  globalization needs an international confederate of loyal ,corrupt ,authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the Mutinies. Corporate globalization ... or Imperialism needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs   courts that pretend to dispense justice (80). 
The attack on “press “and “courts” is very significant because if the mass media  and courts of justice are also  corrupt and conniving with the forces  suppressing democracy , then there is no hope of redressal of  complaints.  
Discussing the role of media in crisis reportage Arundhati Roy has observed how crisis reportage in the “21st has evolved into an independent discipline  ---almost a science”(95). The reportage should be so effective so as to create mass hysteria. Throwing light on the ever deteriorating condition of an illusory free press, Arundhati Roy points out how 
it isolates the crisis, unmoors it from  the particularities of the history, the geography and the culture that produced  it . Eventually it floats free like a hot air balloon, carrying its cargo of international gadflies-specialists, analysts, foreign correspondents, and crisis photographers with their enormous telephoto lenses. Somewhere mid journey and without prior notice, the gadflies auto-eject and parachute down to the site of the next crisis, leaving the crest fallen, abandoned balloon drifting aimlessly in the sky, pathetically masquerading as a current event, hoping it will atleast make history.(95) 
In order to be in the news  the crisis reporting has to be captivating enough  to be able to survive long enough. Herein  Arundhati Roy feels that  
Every respecting people's movement, every issue needs to have its own hot air balloon,in the sky advertising  its brand and purpose. For this reason , starvation deaths are more effective advertisements for drought and skewed food distribution, than cases of severe malnutrition which don't quite make the cut (98). 
The powerful nations like U.S. , while amassing more and more weapons of mass destruction also increase the distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them. As part  of the “ structural adjustment” (Roy 39)  to massive corporate globalization , certain labour reforms are pushing people off their lands  and out of their jobs. While protecting the interests of western markets developing  countries are forced to  lift their barriers thereby making the poor become poorer and  the rich richer. In case protesters  and  activists who are against corporate globalization hold out marches they are labelled as “ terrorists” and  dealt with  as such. Such inhuman atrocities by superpowers need not go without  redressal.  Arundhati Roy  has pointed out  how an awareness needs to  be created amongt the people.  
Illustrating how the U.S. used  lies and disinformation around 11th Sept. attacks  to invade just not one country but two and  Afghanistan was also made to believe that the attacks were not to capture  Osama Bin Laden{because he could not be caught dead or alive} but to “ topple the  Taliban regime and liberate the Afghan woman from their burqas.” (Roy 19)  May be  the U S marines were on a feminist mission quips Ms. Roy. 
Edward Said in his essay “Origins of Terrorism” has pointed out how the very word “Terrorism has become synonymous with Anti- Americanism.”(111)  Enlightening us on all the various strategies adopted by MNC's , Ms. Roy has pointed out that the public can be empowered by joining world forums like W S F---World Social Forum which enables local resistance movements to link up with their counterparts in rich countries and  get justice on all occasions  right from resistance to the building of a dam  or in resisting N G O's who form a buffer between sarkar and public, actually enabling Govt, to  achieve its ends. Awareness has been created and a list of companies like Coke,  Pepsi , Mc.Donalds, American Express, USAID,etc.  have been enumerated on the Internet to be boycotted. Arundhati Roy is of the opinion : 
We cannot directly confront the Empire . We have to  isolate empire's working parts and  disable them one by one. Impose a regime People's Sanctions on every corporate  house that has been awarded a contract in post war Iraq... Each one of them should be named, exposed and boycotted (167). 
In order to insist on media indulge in  truthful reporting she insists that we support  independent  media like for instance Democracy now,  Alternative radio or South End press. 
In an era when “ Democracy has become  Empire's euphemism for New Liberal Capitalism” (Roy 53).  This fact has been elucidated by Chomsky wherein he has explained how phrases like “free speech,” “free market” or “free world” have little if anything to do with freedom,but it only means  America's freedom to trade with or fight with any country of its choice. Also  the “War on terror  is not  really about terror, and the war on Iraq is not only about oil. It is about  a super power's self  destructive  impulse towards supremacy,  stranglehold , global hegemony,” it is high time such dubious,  pretentious ,hypocritical, polices  are exposed and a tangible plan of action be taken against “ the apocalyptic apparatus of the  American empire.”(39) According to her, 
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what  they are selling- their ideas, their version of history , their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. (6) 
Edward Said has observed in an essay, “The Public Role of Writers  and Intellectuals” “ Part of what we do as intellectuals is not only to define the situation but also to discern the possibilities for active intervention, whether we then perform them ourselves or acknowledge  them in others who have gone before or are already at work...” 
The  visionary, thinker and activist Arundhati Roy has discussed global issues of immediate attention and has not only shocked and awed society but has advocated methods by which change can be brought about, not only in India but in the global arena. Arundhati Roy has used the  language to discuss problems and to awaken us from the stupor and languor into which great nations threw us into, by their skilful use of language and media to achieve their ends.

Works Cited

Jameson, Frederic. Post-Modernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London:Versov,1991  

Roy, Arundhati.  An ordinary person's guide to Empire. India:Penguin Books,2005 

Said, Edward. ‘Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals’: The Nation, 17 September, 2001, www. thenation.com