Field Notes on Democracy
Listening to Grasshoppers
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
In “gorgeously wrought” essays, the New York Times-bestselling author of The God of Small Things takes a critical look at India’s political climate (Time Magazine).
These “powerful” essays (Kirkus Reviews) examine the dark side of contemporary India, looking closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism, and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world’s largest democracy. Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy writes about how the combination of Hindu nationalism and India’s neo-liberal economic reforms, which began their journey together in the early 1990s, are turning India into a police state.
She describes the systematic marginalization of religious and ethnic minorities, the rise of terrorism, and the massive scale of displacement and dispossession of the poor by predatory corporations. She also offers a brilliant account of the August 2008 uprising of the people of Kashmir against India's military occupation and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai. Field Notes on Democracy tracks the fault-lines that threaten to destroy India's precarious democracy and send shockwaves through the region and beyond.
“Genocide, denial, and truth-as-a-victim are just a few of the big subjects dealt with by Booker prize-winning Indian author and activist Roy . . . [a] vivid inside look at India's turbulent growth.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Takes aim at India's self-image—and reputation—as the world’s largest and most vibrant democracy.” —The Washington Post
“After so much celebratory salesmanship about India the ‘emerging market,’ Roy draws us into India the actual country . . . one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.” —Naomi Klein, New York Times-bestselling author of No is Not Enough
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Genocide, denial, and truth-as-a-victim are just a few of the big subjects dealt with by Booker prize-winning Indian author and activist Roy (The God of Small Things) in this essay collection, written with fluid precision and acute rage. Covering rampant injustices in India and Kashmir perpetrated by governments and corporations, most in the past decade, Roy is unfailingly eloquent, sorting through a complicated network of special interests and partisan governmental groups to reveal nuances of corruption and oppression even to non-nationals. Roy worries that "the space for nonviolent civil disobedience has atrophied," but finds hope and joy in developments including the "hundreds of thousands of unarmed people" returning to Kashmir "to reclaim their cities, their streets and mohallas," and a generation raised in "army camps, check-posts, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a sound track" who have "discovered the power of mass protest and, above all, the dignity of being able to... speak for themselves." Roy details genocide instigated by Hindu interests against Muslims, revisits the recent Mumbai massacre, and pleads the people's case as vast rural areas are drained of resources while the Indian ruling class concentrates on corporate globalization. The Bush administration also comes in for scathing criticism in this vivid inside look at India's turbulent growth.
