The Kerala Police is examining the possibilities of registering a case against rights activist and Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy over her recent speech in the State capital, Thiruvananthapuram, in which she derided Gandhiji by alleging that he was an out-and-out casteist and demanded renaming of all institutions known in his name.
The police action is on the basis of the several complaints they have received from Gandhian outfits and leading politicians. The Thiruvananthapuram Police has already written to the authorities of the Kerala University, where Roy had delivered her speech, demanding handing over of the full video recording of the speech.
While speaking at a seminar on July 17 organised in memory of Dalit leader Ayyankali by the Ayyankali Chair of the Kerala University, Roy, who is accused of having a tendency to shock the nation with her defiant speeches, had quoted Gandhiji extensively from his 1936 essay, Ideal Bhangi, to suggest that he was a casteist to the core.
The first objections to her attack on Gandhi had come from State Assembly Speaker G Karthikeyan of the Congress and this was followed by complaints to the State Director General of Police seeking initiation of a case against her. Sources in the Thiruvananthapuram Police said that they could do nothing till they examined the video of the full version of her speech.
Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala of the Congress had the other day handed over to the DGP a complaint lodged with him by the State president of the Congress(S), Ramachandran Kadannappally, a former minister, who had threatened to launch legal action against Roy. Chennithala sought a public apology from Arundhati Roy for deriding Gandhiji.
Roy said in her speech that Ayyankali was working here for the uplift and rights — including that for education — of the Dalits when Gandhiji was in South Africa. Upon his return to India in 1913, Gandhiji became Mahatma, Roy contended, adding that much of what was being taught in the country’s schools and colleges about Gandhiji were lies.
In her paper presented at the seminar on the ‘History of the Conquered and Oppressed’ at the university, Roy also reiterated her charge against Gandhiji that he was a leader who had viewed Dalits in the country through his Savarna perspective. She said the country which had showered more honours on Gandhiji than he deserved had forgot to treat Ayyankali in the right spirit.
Gandhiji had written Ideal Bhangi, in which he allegedly justified scavenging by a particular section of people, in 1936 the same year in which BR Ambedkar wrote The Annihilation of Caste, “one of the most brilliant intellectual texts full of rage against a system that still exists,” a report quoted Roy as saying in her speech at the Kerala University.
As it happens with all controversial subjects, heated arguments are still going on supporting and opposing Roy over her attack on Gandhiji. While Gandhian organisations and the State Congress are protesting her speech, many communists and rights activists have come out in support of the writer.