Arundhati versus Supreme Court

Arundhati Roy crossing swords with pro-dam/nuclear lobby is nothing new. But this time she has dared the Supreme Court on the issue of freedom of speech and has stirred up the judiciary by asking about its integrity. She has also triggered a debate on whether it is right for the Court to intervene in the creative pursuit of a writer.

The Booker-winning novelist-turned-activist, Ms. Roy now faces a contempt case in the Supreme Court. In the first hearing of this case held in first week of August, she was asked by the two-member bench to drop two paragraphs from her affidavit-in-reply in reponse to the notice issued by the Supreme Court. But she did not oblige, and requested the Court to go ahead with the proceedinds.(For full account of the case, please read my article 'The strange Case of Arundhati Roy' published on May 8,2001 on this site.)

Though the two-member bench has not yet pronounced its verdict, they are miffed with the author for her uncompromising attitude and stand. And chances are that they may send her to a jail for a term of six months. Arundhati, the quintessential rebel that she is, is not worried at all, and as she reveals in a recent interview, she is well aware of the consequences of her confrontation with the Supreme Court, and is ready to go to a jail. It is her writer's freedom that she is bothered about and nothing else.

"If the Court uses the Contempt of Court Law, and allows citizens to abuse the process to intimidate and harass the writers," writes Ms. Roy in her affidavit, "it will have the chilling effect of interfering with the writer's imagination and the creative act itself. The fear of harassment will create a situation in which even before a writer puts pen to paper, she will have to anticipate what the Court might think of her work. It will induce a sort of enforced, fearful censorship. It will be bad for law, worse for literature and sad for the world of art and beauty."

Ironically, the Roy-Supreme Court battle does not have much reverberation in India . Most daily newspapers, among the media, did not care to publish the news of the contempt case hearing. Then few writers across the country came out in the open to support her cause. At least that is what I found out after I had scanned through a number of dailies and periodicals. On the web, I have however found an inteprid article critising the Court for its role in this absurd contempt case.

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