Tag: Arundhati Roy

What makes a terrorist?

13th November 2004

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Returning to Arundhati Roy’s The Algebra of Infinite Justice once again, the Foreword written by John Berger is pretty entertaining. He waxes lyrical about Roy’s essays but makes one or two observations of his own. On the issue of terrorism he contends that what makes a terrorist is despair; a level of despair that few in the First World can imagine. This despair Berger describes as ‘the sense that your life and the lives of those close to you count for nothing. And this is felt on several different levels so that it becomes total’. He cites living for decades on a refugee camp as an example.

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Economy-class humanitarianism

10th November 2004

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I recently finished reading Arundhati Roy’s book, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, which covers a number of themes including US imperialism and the ‘war on terrorism’, the political economy of mega-dams (an Indian government ‘speciality’), and communal violence in India. It was a good read, and her skills as a novelist came to the fore on a number of occasions evoking images that the majority of ‘academic’ writers would struggle to produce (or not want to produce!). A particular favourite of mine was the passage describing the ‘humanitarian’ food drop in Afghanistan by the US air force in 2001. At the time, cynics saw this as little more than a public relations exercise after the intense bombing by US forces was drawing criticism for the ‘collateral damage’ it was causing. The food drop, amounted to one meal for 37,000 of the several million in dire need of food, and each packet was decorated with the US flag. Inside was rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers,

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