Arundhati Roy and Allen Ginsberg: Two Word Slingers Who Disapprove Deeply Embedded Credences

 

Arundhati Roy conquered the hearts of millions of readers with her outstanding literary creations particularly her masterpiece The God of Small Things and her latest non-fictional work Capitalism: A Ghost Story. The God of Small Things is a mind-blowing novel that won the Booker Prize in 1997. Later on I had chances to read some other wonderful books by Arundhati Roy titled Listening to Grasshoppers and The Algebra of Infinite Justice and I loved those two books as well while going through the strong messages the author conveyed through her intrepid, straightforward and whetted words about politics, class conflict and human rights. Recently, I have read another spellbinding book by Arundhati Roy that contains some of her interviews taken by different journalists. The book's title is The Shape of the Beast. It is a monumental blend of the author's opinions about global politics, terrorism, women rights, social issues such as Indian caste system, literature and some more important matters. Her words are just as striking as ever. In her interviews she harshly slated the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and she expressed her views about Indo-Pak relations too. She was asked a question about her reactions to people who criticize her statements. Her answer was "I wear that criticism as a badge of honor." Arundhati Roy's nonconformist standpoint reminds me, in some cases, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a leading figure in the American Age of Enlightenment and who is still remembered for his extremely individualistic and unprecedented thoughts about idealistic values and social equity expressed through his essays.

The methods with which some global institutions are exploiting poor countries are termed as 'colonization of knowledge' by Arundhati Roy in The Shape of the Beast. With highly qualified economists and policymakers, the donor states and donor agencies are in fact exercising a special form of intellectual imperialism, a neocolonial ploy sweetened with financial baits. And when third world states swallow those baits, the probable consequences are unfolded through the following expressions of Arundhati Roy, "We are tying ourselves into an intricate economic and strategic web. We're in the belly of the beast. Once you're there, you eat predigested pap. You do what you're told, buy what you're sold.” Disobeying such western strategies may result into severe consequences including military interventions, according to Arundhati Roy.

While talking about the US war on terror, Arundhati Roy remarked that, by bombing Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and its allies have rather empowered terrorism instead of eliminating it. Terrorists are now virtual celebrities, often hitting the headlines of top news agencies. Even they have the power to destabilize a country or to jeopardize a country's government. In the author's words, "In effect, terrorists now have the power to ignite war. They almost have the status of heads of state. And that has enhanced the effectiveness and romance of terrorism." In the same context she further added, “The US government's response to September 11 has privileged terrorism. It has given it a huge impetus and made it look like terrorism is the only effective way to be heard." In other words, terrorism has been idealized by the so-called war on terror triggered off by the US and its political associates from other continents who assist the United States with warfare. 

Arundhati Roy's approach to Indo-Pak tussle over Kashmir is also quite different from the opinions we hear from most of the political analysts. In her view India and Pakistan are so deeply inimical to each other that they want to keep the dispute over Kashmir alive in order to exercise reciprocal antagonism and to keep up an ultra-nationalistic zeal among their citizens. She said, “Kashmir is the rabbit that the governments of both India and Pakistan pull out of their hats whenever they're in trouble. 

They don't want to resolve the conflict. For them, Kashmir is not a problem, it's a solution." This comment from Arundhati Roy about the long-standing Kashmir issue seems really astounding and it makes us think twice about the way we look into the blazing dispute. Political leaders of both India and Pakistan should come up with earnest and objective intentions to end this conflict, at least to save the lives of innocent Kashmiri people. The same echoes resonate in Arundhati Roy’s book Azadi and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

The unending bloodshed and civil wars in different parts of the world have been analyzed by Arundhati Roy in the following way: "War is also an economic necessity now. A significant section of American economy depends on the sale of weapons. There has to be a turnover. You can't have cruise missiles lying around on the factory floor. The economies of Europe and the United States depend on the sale and manufacture of weapons. This is a huge imperative to go to war." The leading weapon-mongers of the west make an enormous amount of profit by selling guns and ammunitions to countries at war. So, if a war stops, a very lucrative profit-generating source closes down too. Therefore, wars, in the current world, are not kicked off to be halted. 

Neocolonialism has another instrument—language. Arundhati Roy says, in her pointblank words, "And then, of course, even language has been co-opted. If you say 'democracy', actually it means neoliberalism. If you say 'reforms', it actually means repression. Everything has been turned into something else. So, we also have to reclaim language now." In connection with these words from Arundhati Roy, I can recall a 'language game' played by America during the Vietnam War. While Vietnamese villages were being bombed by the US forces, thousands of people were getting killed. Thousands of people were running away to Vietnamese cities to save themselves. Samuel Huntington, an American political expert of that time, called it a process of 'urbanization'. That was undoubtedly a ruthless piece of black humor and an inhuman euphemism.

Another nonconformist poet was Allen Ginsberg who was born in Newark, New Jersey, on June 3, 1926. The son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, two Jewish members of the New York literary counterculture of the 1920s, Ginsberg was raised among several progressive political perspectives. A supporter of the Communist party, Ginsberg’s mother was a nudist whose mental health was a concern throughout the poet’s childhood. According to biographer Barry Miles, “Naomi’s illness gave Allen an enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis and psychosis.”

Allen Ginsberg was one of the frontline founders of the Beat Generation. The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks.

The Beat Generation poets denounced war and imperialism. Allen Ginsberg and other Beat Generation poets vehemently deplored the US war on Vietnam.

Allen Ginsberg visited Bangladesh during the Liberation War of 1971. His poem "September on Jessore Road" movingly describes the pangs and hardship suffered by millions of Bangladeshi people who took shelter in India during the war to avoid atrocities in the hands of Pakistan Army. Thus Allen Ginsberg's love for Bangladesh was reflected through his verses.

Allen Ginsberg was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became leading figures of the Beat Movement. The group led Ginsberg to a “New Vision,” which he defined in his journal: “Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.”

Around this time, Ginsberg also had what he referred to as his “Blake Vision,” an auditory hallucination of William Blake reading his poems “Ah! Sunflower,” “The Sick Rose,” and “Little Girl Lost.” Ginsberg noted the occurrence several times as a pivotal moment for him in his comprehension of the universe, affecting fundamental beliefs about his life and his work. While Ginsberg claimed that no drugs were involved, he later stated that he used various drugs in an attempt to recapture the feelings inspired by the vision.

In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco. His mentor, William Carlos Williams, introduced him to key figures in the San Francisco poetry scene, including Kenneth Rexroth. He also met Michael McClure, who handed off the duties of curating a reading for the newly established “6” Gallery. With the help of Rexroth, the result was “The ‘6’ Gallery Reading” which took place on October 7, 1955. The event has been hailed as the birth of the Beat Generation, in no small part because it was also the first public reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” a poem that garnered worldwide attention for him and the poets he associated with.

Shortly after Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The work overcame censorship trials, however, and “Howl” became one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages.

On April 5, 1997, in New York city, Allen Ginsberg died of complications from hepatitis. The literary works by Allen Ginsberg and Arundhati Roy put these two anti-establishment authors on similar heights on the basis of their consolidated stance over upholding equal rights and disapproving the geopolitical big daddies who instigate war. Nothing matters more to Arundhati Roy or Allen Ginsberg than humanity, freedom of expression and an egalitarian society.  

 
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is a
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