Arundhati Roy's Public Power: A Closer Look at the India's Prominent Female Activist, Writer

When freedom means occupation, when democracy means neoliberal capitalism, when reform means repression, when words like "empowerment" and "peacekeeping" make your blood run cold- why, then, "public power" could mean whatever you want it to mean.
-Arundhati Roy (5)

Arundhati Roy gave the speech "Public Power: In the Age of Empire" back in August of 2004. Almost two years later, it still rings true. The United States in still fighting in the Middle East, first against terrorism, then to find weapons of mass destruction, and now to free countries of tyranny and set them up to have a peaceful democracy. That sounds like a superb goal, but the question needs to be asked: Do the people living in those countries want to be "freed"? And if so, do they really want to be like the United States?

September 11, 2001 really woke up Americans. Before that, most Americans probably didn't realize that outsiders didn't agree with the way the country was run and disagreed with capitalism. It was an unfortunate attack that took thousands of innocent lives, but once the story came out about who did it and why, the surprise disappeared, at least for me personally. I was a junior history major at Nazareth College at the time and had learned a bit about foreign affairs and international relations. While I do consider the tactics chosen to make the statement that the terrorists wanted to make was wrong, I do realize that they had to do something on a colossal scale in order to attract attention.

Roy reaffirms the importance of activism and protest in her speech. In a way, what the terrorists were doing was protesting. But now the United States is engaged in a war on terrorism that has sent many loved ones half way around the world to fight and die for their country. I support the troops, yes. But I do not support the war. I do not support the war on terrorism or the war in Iraq. Fighting a war on terrorism is such a contradiction of terms. How is that troops sent over from another country to fight and blow things up and loot and plunder and ultimately kill any different from hijacking planes and running them into buildings? Innocent people get killed, no matter what. And nothing gets solved.

The comment that Roy makes about America's Terror Alert system made me laugh. On page 8 she says,

A people bonded to the state no by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear. This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further acts of aggression. And so it goes, building into a spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the U.S. government's Amazing Technicolor Terror Alerts: fuchsia, turquoise, salmon pink.

It's true. The alert system sent people into a panic every time the color changed. Right after the attacks, it seemed every day the color changed. People would relax once they figured out nothing was going to happen, but as soon as the alert system hit red or orange again, the panic started again. It was a great way for the U.S. government to control the fear and anxiety of the entire nation.

Since that time, our military operations have expanded and now more and more people dislike the fact that our troops won't be returning anytime soon. The government, of course, doesn't want people openly protesting their policies and will try hard to shut down protesters and quiet dissenters. Roy vocalizes that this is wrong and that by doing this, the government is in fact encouraging terrorism. If people are continually not allowed to protest nonviolently and the government refuses to listen to them, then they will eventually take alternative actions. These actions could be violent, and will more than likely be larger-than-life in order to get their point across. Sounds strangely like terrorism, now doesn't it?

When I think about war protests, I think of the famous ones from the Vietnam War era. We don't have protests like that anymore. This is because we've been taught that protesting is a bad thing to do and doesn't really have an impact anyway. That's what we've been led to believe. However, Roy firmly disbelieves this. She says that the only way to stop a war is to protest and boycott it. "Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe" (39). The protests we see today are made into a spectacle, like most things in this country and dissent into mere expression.

I don't closely follow politics and since we invaded Iraq I've stopped following the war, or wars, or whatever it is we're at now. When we entered Iraq, I lost the little amount of faith I had in our current administration, but for purely selfish reasons. I wasn't thinking about the people in Iraq that would be affected. I was thinking about my friends and family. I'm at the average age that most soldiers are when they enter the military. My brother was thinking about enlisting, and I already had several cousins and friends that were in the army and the marines. I knew what this meant for them. There was a strong possibility that the next time I saw them, it could be at their funeral.

After some time, however, the historian in me kicked in and I began thinking about how the Iraqis would be affected. There was bound to be collateral damage, if that's what you want to call it. Innocent people were going to die and others would lose family members, their homes, their belongings, and their lives, as they'd always known them. All because the United States decided it was time to free these people and bring them democracy. If that's what democracy does to these people, why would they want it?

Since that time, Iraq has held elections that we've seen not exactly prove to be the most successful experience. Democracy has its limits. It can only do so much. By democratizing a nation that has never experienced democracy before, more problems are created than solved. All of Iraq's problems weren't going to magically disappear by the United States invading and changing their form of government.

Roy makes a lot of comparisons between India and the United States in her efforts to clarify the political and human stakes of public power. It was difficult to understand what she was trying to express in parts because I know absolutely nothing about India, other than the little bit of history and explanation she gives in her book, The God of Small Things. Although it was said in class that the book has no politics in it at all, this is incorrect. Politics are weaved throughout the story Roy is telling. She tries to explain how people who want change have to compete against traditionalists who like things the way they are. Change doesn't come easy and there's a heavy price to pay. I think this ties into her speech about public power because people will do what they can, but when those measures aren't enough, they'll go to the irrational stage if need be.

While the United States tries to play the hero, that isn't necessarily how the situation turns out. Those that attack America are doing it because they have their reasons to dislike what America has done to their country or in some way made their lives miserable. While the U.S. has tried to appear to do the right thing, we've also done a lot of wrong. I believe the term is karma: what goes around comes around. Americans can't be so naïve in thinking there is no hatred out there for us and that it will never touch us. Roy says that people within our own country need to speak up now to make changes for good and let our government know that we don't like what is being done. It's time for the public to take power.

Roy, Arundhati. Public Power: In the Age of Empire. Seven Stories Press, New York: 2004.