Arundhati Roy, however, should present a more compelling case for literary interventions into political disputation. Since winning the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things, eleven years ago, she’s devoted herself to politics, both as a writer and a campaigner. In India, she’s been active in the campaign against the Narmada dam, and has been an outspoken supporter of Kashmiri independence. Worldwide, she’s known as one of the leading writers of the New Left, a disciple of Noam Chomsky et al, and one of the most articulate opponents of what some people view as U.S. imperialism.

Her reflections on the attacks in Mumbai, then, were always going to arouse interest. In a piece entitled The Monster in the Mirror, published last weekend in the Guardian, Roy begins to challenge some of the accepted wisdom regarding the implications of the atrocities. Her central theme is that the Mumbai attacks don’t represent India’s 9/11, and that India should think very carefully before it acts. She reminds us that many other Indian cities have been targeted by terrorists this year, and that not all the terrorists have been Muslims. She reminds us that the poor were mowed down as indiscriminately as the rich, taking the Indian media to task for its obsession with elitist symbols like the Taj hotel, “the glittering barracades of India Shining.” She reminds us that the problem of poverty remains India’s most urgent problem.

These are all reasonable observations, and she manages to steer clear of the sentimentality which often creeps into her writing. Once she comes to the crux of her argument, though, things begin to unravel. I shall quote her in full:

“There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially “Islamist” terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime itself.”

This is a pretty transparent attempt to put a straw man up against an iron man. More than that, though, it  shows a disturbing lack of nuance. Yes, there are people who think like Side A and Side B. But what about the people in the middle? The people who reject these black and white dichotomies, who spend most of their life in the grey. Who understand that, yes, everything does have a context, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that draining the swamp will kill all the mosquitoes.

Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-a-Taiba, we are told, is on Side A. So are Babu Bajrangi and Narendra Modi, two of the instigators of the 2002 Gujarat massacres. By including such people in Side A, she’s stretching her own defintions, but that’s beside the point. The point is, she tells us, that Side B is better. “So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.” Again, the straw man, the needless dilemma, the false dichotomy. Side B does not have a monopoly on context, and – in that context – it’s noticeable that she doesn’t attempt to provide a context for the Hindu massacres of Muslims in the Gujarat.

But the context for all of this is much bigger, she tells us. It’s partition and Indian discrimination against its Muslim citizens, a failed policy towards Pakistan and homegrown state repression. All of these are important points. Roy is to be commended for her outspoken support of Kashmiri rights; she is like an Indian Amira Hass, with a bit more national pride (albeit of the anarchic variety). Then she reminds us once more: “Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.” In short, “What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.” Side B.

It’s frustrating when someone like Roy seems to willingly simplify herself. It’s even more frustrating that she’s a prize-winning novelist, no stranger to complication. For her to provide such great insight about Indian domestic problems, about the absurd way it’s gone about fighting terrorism, about Kashmir, about the Narmada dam, only to conclude by asking Indian’s to take the blame, is deeply disappointing. Perhaps, in this sense, it’s wrong to speak of her as a novelist dabbling in politics. She’s frequently said that the problem of injustice is so great that it must take priority over literature: her’s is the rare literary choice of action over contemplation. But she seems to have totally lost the subtlety which made her such a promising writer in the first place. 

She concludes with another simplistic dichotomy:  ”The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.” I hope somebody reminds her of this prediction in a few years time; I’ll happily take the bet that India will go on rumbling somewhere in between, somewhere in the murk of reality, somewhere where a one-time writer is falling between the cracks, neither narrating nor explaining, just losing the power of her art.

Dear Alex,
 
Shalom!
 
I wanted to express my personal (and my people’s) thanks to you for valiantly highlighting our cause by your articles in the Guardian. Much appreciated.
 
We’re also grateful that you have taken a principled stand, despite the recent attacks in Mumbai.
 
The people in Kashmir are horrified by the targeting of Jews by lunatic killers. These killers were Pakistani and had nothing to do with Kashmir. Nothing could be more against Kashmir’s cultural ethos and its tradition of co-existence than the heinous actions in Mumbai.
 
Jews are and always have been welcome in Kashmir. In fact, in 1991 when Jews were taken hostage by Pakistani militants, it was a Kashmiri group – JKLF which stands for secular independent Kashmir – that rescued them.
 
The simple, decent folk of Kashmir have nothing but feelings of brotherhood and hospitality for the Jewish people. You are always welcome here.
 
Kind Regards

Jaipur was bombed three days after I arrived in India. This is what I wrote at the time: “Terrorism – in its rational form – is successful only if it can impact on the civilian population, to change their behavior enough in order to draw concessions from the government. In a country the size of India this is a near-impossibility. To use the callous language of risk assessment, sixty dead in India is but a statistic.” After the near-schadenfreude of yesterday’s post on targeted assassinations, my reaction to yesterday’s awful events in Mumbai is rather more humble. India is now arguably the country with the greatest terrorist problem of them all. Even worse, the terrorism is increasingly adopting chaotic forms, forms which in many ways reflect life on the subcontinent, but seem impervious to attempts at prevention.

The Mumbai attacks seem to have been targeted at foreigners, and the demands for US and British hostages implies some kind of Al-Qaeda inspired involvement. This is why the Maximum City is dominating the news cycle. But it’s important to remember that local train stations were hit as well. Random bombs went off. Shots seem to have been fired  manically, like the climactic scene in Waltz with Bashir. Even the Habad house didn’t emerge unscathed.

It seems futile to ask what the people who perpetrated this act want. As ever, there is talk of Pakistani involvement (the background being recent moves by the Pakistani Prime Minister against the ISI), or perhaps groups from Bangladesh. Outlook reports that the terrorist were speaking in Arabic, and may have numbered Somalis in their ranks – at this stage all this is speculation.  The backlash from the BJP and its cohorts will be quick to follow, another blow against the world’s largest pluralist democracy. What is clear is that India has a terrorist problem that may yet prove to be more difficult to deal with than those experienced in other countries. I fear that Mumbai will not be the last city to be targeted.