Arundhati Roy

I have chosen to write about the piece by Arundhati Roy, "The Algebra of Infinite Justice" First I would like to talk a bit about Arundhati's background. She was born in a small rural town in Kerala India called Anmanam. She was the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize (a very prestigious literary award) in London for her book entitled "The God of Small Things". She is an esteemed social activist and has donated tens of thousands of dollars to charitable causes from grants and prize money she has received. She also has endured some controversy. In her home country Kerala, Chief minister E. K. Nayanan claimed that the only reason her book has been such a success in the west was due to it's "anti-communist venom". Marxist leader E. M. S. Namboodiripad also commented on how the Communist characters were portrayed. Also a case was braught agaist her by a lawyer named Sabu Thomas. Thomas claimed that her book was offensive and likely to "corrupt and deprave the minds of readers". This was due to a mild sexual scene in the last chapter and Thomas wished the entire chapter be removed. She was raised by a Christian mother and a Hindu Father in a country wracked with political turmoil. It is important to understand that Arundhati grew up in a place where religions and politics such as Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Marxism, and Democracy all exist in one playing field and continually wear at each other. When the U.S. invaded the Middle east she was glad to find out that the U.S. decided to set up their base in Saudi Arabia instead of India for fear if the U.S. came in it may actually weaken Democratic power in India and possibly give more power to the Marxist party.

In her essay "The Algebra of Infinite Justice" Roy talks about the policies of the United States and how it uses war and policies to promote the "American way of life". She starts by pointing out that even the name of this war "Operation Enduring Freedom" is a bit of an oxymoron. "Enduring freedom for whom?" she asks. Are we really trying to free these people or is the U.S. simply looking out for its own interests? This is the idea behind her title "The Algebra of Infinite Justice". This title refers to a math equation. The variables are r for riches and d for death toll. She describes it as "The equivocating distinction between the clash of civilizations and collateral damage". If r is greater than d then it's worth it. Is the oil value greater than the cost of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi men women and children? Evidently the U.S. thinks it is. "How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place?" she asks. I ask myself that same question. Her title also has a bit of a religious connotation because infinite justice, which comes from the original title of the war, in the Muslim and Christian religion can only be handed down by God himself.

Next she begins to show the relationship of the U.S. and Afghanistan before 9/11. It is very interesting to know that the U.S. and Afghanistan have in fact worked together in the past. She talks about the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S. C.I.A. and the Pakistani I.S.I (Inter-Services-Intelligence) trained, armed and empowered the mujahedeen, a religious extremist group, with the idea that we could spawn an Islamic jihad, or holy war, within the country. Evidently the U.S. hoped that by doing this the jihad would spread into Russia then causing a breakdown of the communist party. For ten years the C.I.A. funded the war without the warriors even knowing their religious war was really a political one. She goes on to state that after ten years of bloody battle the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan yet the civil war there raged on. At this point however the U.S. had lost interest and decided not to stick around. The situation continued to destabilize. Evidently the financing was not enough to continue the power struggle so the mujahedeen ordered farmers to plant opium as a "revolutionary tax". "Under the protection of the ISI, hundreds of heroine processing labs were set up across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA's arrival, the Pakistan/Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest producer of heroine in the world, and the biggest source on American streets. The annual profits, said to be within 100 and 200 billion, were ploughed back into training and arming militants." Wow some guys we chose to arm... kind of makes you wonder doesn't it?

Then in 1996 the Taliban came into power in Afghanistan, funded and supported by the ISI and many political parties in Afghanistan. She speaks of some of the atrocities performed by the Taliban, specifically it's inhumane treatment of women. So now the power struggle rages on. The only difference is we have switched sides. "Dropping more bombs on Afghanistan will only shuffle the rubble, scramble some old graves, and disturb the dead." In order to solve for the variable they have to all be on one side, only this time there is nothing left on one side, the problem is unsolvable.

Also this kind of leads us into what I believe to be her next point. "The U.S. government and governments all over the world are using the climate of war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, deny free speech, lay off workers, harass ethnic and religious minorities, cut back on public spending, and divert huge amounts of money to the defense industry. To what purpose? President Bush can more "rid the world of evildoers" than he can stock it with saints." This is one of my favorite quotes from

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