Age undoes us all. Turning 60, Arundhati Roy has become a ghastly waxwork depicting the hysterical lunacy that is the inheritance of one who might be termed Lord Macaulay's 'Brahmin' daughter.
Scroll has published this speech of hers which will be delivered to a supposedly Dalit organization-
I thank the organisers of the 2021 Elgar Parishad for inviting me to speak at this forum to mark what would have been Rohit Vemula’s 32nd birthday and the 1818 victory of the battle of Bhima Koregaon.
Vemula wanted to write popular books about Science in English- like Carl Sagan. But he topped himself because he wasn't Dalit and anyway his stipend had been suspended just coz he allegedly beat up another student. For some reason, this was considered very heroic- not the alleged hooliganism, but the hanging.
Bhima Koregaon was a victory for the East India Company which Lord Macaulay served. Roy herself has impeccably comprador credentials. Her father was a Bengali Brahmo- recall Raja Ram Mohun Roy & Dwarkanath Tagore spent a lot of their own money to lobby Westminster to permit unrestricted White settlement in India so that British power would burgeon- while her mother's ancestors were High Caste Kerala Christians who worshipped and lived separately from 'Pariah' Christians.
Both sides of her family have a great love for Macaulay's English. Their contempt for 'natives' is not modified by their own dusky features. Perhaps they imagine they are lighter in color. Roy herself played an Adivasi girl in an art-house film- an adaptation of Joyce Cary's 'Mister Johnson' which, quite ludicrously, tries to project White racism against Blacks in West Africa onto the Indian scene with Tribals, who are the same color as us, being depicted as 'Black'. Needless to say Roy's Adivasi girl exists only to get fucked. She has no agency.
Roy's people believe they are ersatz Whites speaking the Queen's English. But Roy's celebrity arises from her being seen in the West as an abject dusky whining away about the misery of her lot in an effortfully acquired parody of the Master's tongue.
Why has Elgar Parishad invited this shithead? The answer is that nobody else will come. The other guest is another Keralite (the Communists rule Kerala) who resigned from the Civil Service in solidarity with the Kashmiris. So, these cretins are still trying to advertise their anti-national credentials. They are objecting to the extension of statutory protection to Dalits in Kashmir Valley! What a wonderful own goal!
Who else has been invited? One guy is an upper caste ex Judge who is pushing 80 and who lost his deposit in the last election. Another is a Wire journalist who was arrested for retweeting a doctored post by a Hindutva type about the Ram Temple. This so called journalist must have been very naive to believe that the Sanghis don't want low castes to enter that holy place! Surely he was aware that bakhts love Modi who is OBC?
It is clear that actual Dalit leaders have given Elgar Parishad the cold shoulder. Still, why embrace a Macaulayite pseudo Brahmin? Why give her a platform?
It may have been thought that Roy is 'intellectual'. She would say something interesting. But she is ignorant and stupid. What she says is highly damaging to the Dalit cause.
Not far from here, Mahar troops fighting in the British Army defeated the Peshwa King Bajirao II under whom Mahars and other Dalit castes were cruelly persecuted and ritually debased in indescribable ways.
But the British Army later decided to stop recruitment of Mahars. They preferred high caste recruits from 'Martial' races.
Why advertise an anti-national feat of arms by Dalits? There are plenty of Dalit war heroes to celebrate from India's defensive wars.
From this platform let me join the other speakers to express my solidarity with the farmers
who treat their Dalit laborers like shit, which is how come Kanshi Ram's movement gained transaction in the Jat dominated areas
protest that is calling for the immediate withdrawal of the three Farm Bills that have been rammed down the throats of millions of farmers and farm workers and brought them onto the streets.
which does mean they can't be back home gang-raping Dalits. Still, it is a sacrifice in a good cause
We are here to express our sorrow and anger for the many who have died during the course of the protest.
Coz when people die of heart disease or if they are killed when their antics cause their own tractors to turn over crushing them to death, we feel sorrow and anger at...urm... the stupidity of a bunch of guys who exploit landless Dalits and migrant Biharis to do the actual backbreaking agricultural work on their farms. Incidentally, the guy killed when his tractor turned turtle was waiting to re-join his wife in Australia. He wasn't a farmer.
The situation on Delhi’s borders where the farmers have been peacefully camping for two months is becoming tense and dangerous. Every possible trick and provocation is being used to divide and discredit the movement. Now, more than ever, we must stand by the farmers.
But everybody Roy stands with goes to the wall. Sensible people wouldn't want her support.
We are also here to demand the release of the dozens of political prisoners – including those who have come to be known as the Bhima Koregaon 16 – jailed on ludicrous charges under draconian anti-terror laws.
If Roy is demanding something, there is an immediate and much larger counter-mobilization demanding the opposite.
Many of them are not just comrades but personal friends of mine with whom I have laughed, walked and broken bread.
But Roy hasn't joined them in jail. Laugh and walk with her by all means. Don't do stupid shit which gets you jailed because though she may still be walking and laughing and breaking bread all over the place, you won't.
Nobody, not even their captors probably believe that they have committed the hackneyed crimes they are being accused of – planning the assassination of the prime minister, or plotting murder.
But they are believed to be as batty as Roy and thus probably were engaged in the sort of hackneyed Revolutionary conspiracies which the Law declares to be a crime.
Everybody knows they are in jail for their intellectual clarity
No. If anybody thought those nutters had intellects they would have tried to get them to do something useful before they turned utterly senile. Even for the hard-core Naxals, these guys were 'useful idiots'- nothing more.
and moral courage – both of which are viewed by this regime as a significant threat.
Fuck off! Manmohan said the Naxals were a big threat. But they aren't really. They are useful to the BJP because they drive the Tribals and Dalits they terrify towards their own grass roots movements thus building Hindutva
To make up for non-existent evidence, the charge-sheets against some of the accused run into tens of thousands of pages. It could take a judge several years to just read these, let alone adjudicate upon them.
Like judges are greatly concerned with the fate of a bunch of senile tossers without either money or caste based support!
It’s as hard to defend yourself against trumped up charges
if you are a senile shithead who has been talking Seditious Conspiratorial shite to any and every other senile shithead in the vicinity for longer than anyone can remember
as it is to wake up a person who is pretending to sleep.
a brain dead person whom you are pretending is asleep.
In India we have learned that relying on legal redress is a risky proposition.
if you have no money and people think you are a stupid nuisance
In any case where and when have courts ever turned back the tide of Fascism?
Or Communism? Or Democracy? What matters is if Courts can hold the line on Crime.
In our country
like every other country
laws are selectively applied
because Justice is a service industry. It costs money to investigate wrongdoing as well as to launch an effective prosecution or mount a proper defense
depending on your class, caste, ethnicity, religion, gender and political beliefs.
more important than any of this is a person's personal attributes and resources.
So, while poets and priests, students, activists, teachers and lawyers are in prison,
because of a deficit in attributes and resources
mass murderers, serial killers, daylight lynch mobs, disreputable judges and venomous TV anchors
not to mention blathershites like Arundhati Roy
are handsomely rewarded and can aspire for high office.
but not in India, in Roy's case.
The highest, even.
Now, this casteist cunt is taking a dig at President Kovind.
Nobody with even average intelligence
which, sadly, Roy lacks. Paranoia, on the other hand, she has in plenty.
can miss the pattern of how the 2018 Bhima Koregaon rally, the 2020 anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and now the farmers protests have sought to be discredited and sabotaged by agent provocateurs in exactly the same way.
But they were discreditable ab ovo because they were anti-national. Bhima Koregaon celebrated the victory of a British multinational over indigenous people. The anti-CAA agitation protested the granting of refugees from Islamic persecution even though Inia is a majority Hindu country which has traditionally sheltered victims of Muslims violence. The farmers who are protesting get paid more for the same crop even though they are using migrant and landless laborers to do the heavy work. They are a relatively affluent class and appear to include Khalistani separatists who have mercilessly killed innocent Hindus.
Why speak of 'agent provocateurs'? We can see that people with long standing anti-national ideologies turned up of their own accord at these events. No doubt, this helped the BJP and hurt Congress and the Left but both were already shit so this sort of stupidity makes no difference to anything. It is just a 'tamasha' to pass the time.
The immunity they enjoy speaks volumes about the support they enjoy with the current regime.
But Roy too is immune. Indeed almost everybody is. Nobody cares what retarded shite they tweet or blog.
I could show you how this pattern has repeated itself over decades to bring these people to power.
No you couldn't. You are too stupid and ignorant.
As state elections approach, we await with dread what lies in store for the people of West Bengal.
Fuck off! Mamta will win. She beat the Commies but good but since some good people will always become Commies, Mamta must remain in place so as to beat dem Commies but good.
Over the last two years the Elgar Parishad as an event and an organisation has been relentlessly defamed and demonised by the corporate media.
But for whom nobody would have ever heard of it.
Elgar Parishad: to many ordinary people those two words conjure up a
senile Ambedarite party paid a little money to split the vote in some dusty Assembly seats nobody gives a fuck about
shady cabal of radicals – terrorists, jehadis, Urban Naxals, Dalit Panthers – plotting to destroy India.
but doing so in an entirely ineffectual manner because they are all very very fucking old and have wasted their entire lives on fantasies.
In this climate of name-calling, of threat, dread and anxiety, just to have organised this meeting is in itself an act of courage and defiance that deserves to be saluted.
by those too deluded to ignore it.
It’s incumbent on those of us up here on the stage to speak as candidly as we can.
so, they will tell stupid lies because that's as candid as they can get
Roughly three weeks ago, on January 6, as we watched an outlandish mob storm through the US Capitol carrying Confederate flags, weapons, gibbets and crucifixes, wearing furs and antlers – the thought that ran through my head was, “My Goodness, in our country we are already ruled by the Indian equivalent of these people. They’ve taken our Capitol Hill. They’ve won.”
Roy seceded from India long ago. The nutters running amok in the Capitol were exactly like Roy and the Elgaar Parishad accused. They live in a fantasy world.
Our institutions have been overrun by them.
No. Indian institutions have been run by the same type of people since Independence. But what is that type? The answer is that they are people who worked their way up through the law, the civil service, Party cadres and the Legislative and Ministerial posts, doing the boring day to day business of Governance and conversing mainly in Indian languages with ordinary Indian people.
Lord Macaulay may not have approved of this but he would not be such a fool as to compare a class of dedicated professionals to an unruly mob.
Our Leader appears before us in a different set of furs and antlers every day.
No he doesn't. He appears before us well coiffed and neatly dressed.
Our favoured elixir is cow urine.
But it isn't the favored elixir of Q Anon. Cow urine is only important to people who consider the cow sacred. India has a Directive Principle in its Constitution regarding cow protection.
They are well on their way towards destroying every democratic institution in this country.
No. They are the majority and thus democratic institutions express their views. But this has been happening from at least 1937.
The US might have managed to claw itself back from the brink to some semblance of imperial “normalcy”.
Imperial? Fuck is wrong with Roy? America decided not to go down an Imperial route long ago. Why put normalcy in scare quotes? The thing has been accepted as idiomatic since the time of Pres. Harding. We Indians are scarcely in a position to throw stones at American usage.
But we in India are being dragged back centuries into a past that we have tried so hard to escape.
This simply isn't true. It is a fantasy. Roy's casteist, comprador, anti-Hindu background and education may cause her to equate 'being dragged centuries backward' with the absence of European rule. But this extreme type of racism is itself considered reactionary by Europeans today.
It isn’t us – it isn’t this gathering of the Elgar Parishad that is radical or extreme.
No. You guys are senile and stupid.
It isn’t us who are acting illegally and unconstitutionally.
Because you are merely playacting.
It isn’t us who have looked away from, or overtly encouraged pogroms in which Muslims have been killed in their thousands.
But it is you and your ilk who have lied that 'pogroms' against Muslims have been orchestrated by the BJP. This has led to the consolidation of Hindu votes behind the BJP. Why? Hindus understand that the BJP gains, it does not lose, by punishing Muslims who attack non-Hindus or who kill policemen. In the context of rising Islamic militancy and terrorism around the world, this put Modi's India shoulder to shoulder with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Israel and so forth. However, it is only Communist China which has concentration camps for Muslims.
It isn’t us who benignly watch while Dalits are publicly flogged on city streets.
Yes it is. Roy's ancestors have been doing it for thousands of years. This silly moo took a long time to become aware that such a person as Dr. Ambedkar ever existed. Before that she was exercised by things like nuclear weapons, big dams, Enron and the 'War against Terror'. Her first novel features the custodial killing, by a Christian cop, of a Dalit. But only after she was chased away from every more modish type of activism did she finally settle on Dalit politics as her way to stay relevant.
It isn’t us who are pitting people against one another, ruling through hatred and divisiveness.
It isn't you who is doing anything useful or alethic.
That is being done by those that we have elected as our government and by their propaganda machine that calls itself the media.
No it isn't. The elected government of India wants to win the next election. The only way it can do this is growing the economy and improving Governance. It is not in Modi's interest for stupid shit to go down. It is in Roy's interest for people to believe stupid shit is going down because she herself is as stupid as shit and thus can only gain interessement in a situation where the other side is believed to be as stupid and sociopathic.
Two hundred years have gone by since the battle of Bhima Koregaon.
which wasn't a Dalit victory at all
The British have gone, but a form of colonialism that pre-dates them by centuries, lives on.
In so far as Roy incarnates it. But Modi and Kovind have a very different lineage.
The Peshwas are gone, but Peshwai –Brahminism h– as not.
Roy's ancestors claimed Brahmin status. Modi's did not.
Brahminism, I don’t need to clarify to this audience, but I do for others who many not know, is the term the anti-caste movement has historically used for the jaati-vyavastha.
It is true that Roy's maternal ancestors claimed to be Christian Brahmins and that they (on the evidence of her own first novel!) pitilessly killed Dalits and excluded them from their Churches, but Konkani Kshatriya Christians did the same thing. Muslim Pakistan still mistreats Dalits whether or not they have converted to Christianity. Japan has Untouchables but no Brahmins. Bali has Brahmins but no Untouchables.
Brahminism was originally used to designate all votaries of Vedic Religion. It may have been used by 'anti-caste' activists- but, if so, it was used in a misleading and mischievous manner. There has been plenty of anti-Brahminism in Tamil Nadu. But Dalits have faced more not less atrocities from dominant OBC anti-Brahminists.
The caste-system. It does not refer to Brahmins alone.
Why? Coz Roy is hoping to pass herself off as a Brahmin who has occult powers and thus who should be worshipped by these stupid Dalits.
Brahminism has been to the workshop though, and has emerged fitted-out with a modern, democratic sounding vocabulary and a stream-lined caste-management manual and programme (not new, but overhauled) that has mounted an existential challenge to the Dalit-Bahujan led political parties that once offered some hope.
In Roy's fantasy world, her supposed 'Brahmin' genes giver her super-powers. Also she knows about 'workshops'. So the Dalits should listen to her.
Sadly, Dalits aint stupid. Dr. Ambedkar married an actual Brahmin Doctor. But the Dalits didn't let her usurp any sort of political role. They have long known they are smarter than Brahmins. If the RSS offers them better opportunities to rise to the top, then they join the RSS and- like Kovind or Modi- rise up in the BJP. At one time it seemed that a Dalit headed party could cobble together coalitions but Mayawati's tenure as CM in UP showed that this involved keeping feudal Crime Lords in place. But this 'caste-arithmetic' ensured that 'maha-dalits' fell behind Muslims. Since Muslim Mafia families- some of which are descended from great Gandhians like Dr. Ansari- have always been comfortable doing deals with Thakurs and then Yadavs etc, the Dalits soon get squeezed out. Thus, to advance, they have to get behind the Party that improves Governance and permits the formal Economy to grow.
Right now, the chosen vaahan [vehicle] of 21st century Brahminism is the far-right, Brahmin-controlled Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which, after a century of unceasing labour, has, through its best-known member, Narendra Modi, taken power in Delhi.
But Modi isn't Brahmin. Roy thinks she herself is. It seems this far-right Racist who has publicly seceded from India is jealous that her own Brahmin (for self) controlled vehicle of self-glorification is now considered the intellectual equivalent of a broken down pram pushed by a smelly old bag lady.
Hilariously, the silly moo thinks she knows from Marxism!
Many, including Karl Marx himself, believed that modern capitalism would end or at least override caste in India. Has it?
Yes. Heritability of occupation breaks down under open markets and large scale industry.
Across the world, capitalism has ensured that wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
But people are still much better off than they would be under a command economy.
In India, the 63 richest people have more money than the 2018-’19 Union Budget for 1.3 billion people.
No. They have much less money than the Union Government. Their total assets may have a higher valuation but that is because real interest rates are low so Wealth could be a hundred times multiple of Income. Indeed, because the 'richest people' own highly leveraged intellectual property of a strategic type the market valuation of their wealth might be thousands or millions times greater than the present value of whatever income stream they actually produce. But such wealth may suddenly melt away.
A recent Oxfam study has found that in India during the corona pandemic, while hundreds of millions lost their jobs during the lockdown – 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 – India’s billionaires increased their wealth by 35%.
Why? Because an exogenous shock changed expectations. But what has this do to with 'Brahminism'? In Roy's mind everything is connected. No doubt the RSS controls Wall Street.
One hundred of the richest among them – let’s call them the corporate class – made enough to be able to distribute, if they wanted to, almost 100,000 rupees each to 138 million of India’s poorest people.
No they didn't. Roy is confusing income with wealth. You own a house worth a million. But your net rental income from it may be 50,000. If the richest redistributed their income, the poor would get too little for the windfall to make any difference. However, the poor might become worse off if the richest of the rich stop their role in switching resources to more productive uses.
Roy is welcome to divide her own income with the poor. It is what 'Brahminism' counsels.
A mainstream newspaper headlined this news as follows: “Covid deepened inequalities: wealth, education, gender.” The missing word in the report as well as in the newspaper headline, is of course, caste.
Because caste inequalities did not deepen. Some forward castes lost out to some mercantile backward castes. 'Creamy layer' Dalits shot forward. Some maha-dalits lost out along with Brahmin migrant laborers.
The question is, does this tiny corporate class – which owns ports, mines, gas fields, refineries, telecommunication, high-speed data and cell phone networks, universities, petrochemical plants, hotels, hospitals, food distribution outlets and television cable networks – does this class which virtually owns and runs India, also have a caste?
When it comes to marriage, yes- these guys have caste and religion and mother tongue (which is often Gujarati). But they tend to be of mercantile or peasant castes of 'middle' rank.
To a great extent, yes. Many of the biggest Indian corporations are family owned. To name a few of the biggest – Reliance Industries Ltd (Mukesh Ambani), Adani Group (Gautam Adani), Arcelor Mittal (Lakshmi Mittal), OP Jindal Group (Savitri Devi Jindal), Birla Group (KM Birla). They all call themselves Vaishyas, the trader caste. They are only doing their divinely ordained duty – making money.
While Roy is doing her divinely ordained duty- talking stupid paranoid bollocks. The fact is guys like Gates, Bezos, Musk etc. have made our lives better. We want them to have pots of money. In India the Ambanis and Adanis and so forth make stuff we need and also create good jobs. That's why we want these guys to continue to make money by providing goods and services we value. We don't want Roy to continue making money by saying 'India is a Nazi shithole' because that harms us. Still, the silly old moo has to do what silly old moos do.
Empirical studies about the ownership of corporate media and the caste breakdown of their editors, columnists and senior journalists reveal the strangle-hold of the privileged castes, mainly Brahmin and Bania, on designing and disseminating the news – real as well as fake.
But the media is shit. So what if some Bengalis- related to Roy- made money there?
Dalits, Adivasis and increasingly Muslims are almost absent from this landscape.
Muslims are present on the billionaire list as is one Dalit. However, unless they are Gujarati speakers they tend to have thrived abroad though no doubt they may have big investments in India- especially if they are from Kerala.
The situation is no different in the higher and lower judiciary, the upper echelons of the civil services, the foreign service, the world of chartered accountants, or plum jobs in education, health, publishing, or in any sphere of governance. Between them the population of Brahmins and Vaishyas is probably less than 10% of the population. Caste and Capitalism have fused to create a peculiarly lethal, peculiarly Indian alloy.
But this alloy is what has permitted the population to grow while experiencing some increase in material living standards.
Roy found a money-making niche and worked hard to maintain herself in that niche. She followed the logic of the globalized market in the same way that others who have acquired wealth did so. The difference is we need the stuff the Adanis and Ambanis are selling. We don't need Roy's shite.
Dalits want to rise up in the same way as others have done- i.e. through education, thrift and enterprise. But people like Roy subscribe to a 'Brahminism' which holds wealth creation to be evil. The job of Dalits is to protest against other people doing well. Their existence is a standing reproach to the powers that be. Thus they mustn't be allowed to climb out of poverty and alienation.
Prime Minister Modi, so relentless in his attack on the dynastic politics of the Congress party, is entirely dedicated to supporting and enriching these corporate dynasties.
No he isn't. He prefers the newer entrepreneurs to the dynastic sort. So do we all. Why? They work harder and are more innovative.
In Roy's world, a politician supposedly the tool of 'Brahminism' feels it necessary to attack a Brahmin political dynasty while dedicating himself to enriching non-Brahmin corporate dynasties. Why? What is the logic to this?
The palanquin in which he is showcased, for better or for worse, also rests on the shoulders of mostly Vaishya and Brahmin family-owned corporate media dynasties. To name a few – The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Hindu, India Today, Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran. Reliance Industries has a controlling share in 27 channels. I use the verb “showcased” because Modi has never directly addressed the press in his nearly seven years as prime minister. Not once.
Because the press is shit. Modi is smart. He went on Twitter in 2009 and never looked back.
Incidentally, Scroll.in is owned by Pierre Omidyar- an Iranian-American billionaire who knows a lot about advanced technology
While the rest of us are having our personal data mined and our irises scanned, an opaque system has been put in place to allow the corporate world to repay the unflinching loyalty that has been shown to them.
An opaque system keeps Roy in comfort and the semblance of political significance- that is true enough.
In 2018 an electoral bond scheme was introduced which allows anonymous donations to be made to political parties. So, we now have an actual, institutionalised, hermetically sealed pipeline that circulates money and power between the corporate and political elite. Small wonder then that the Bharatiya Janata Party is the richest political party in the world.
That would be a great wonder- if it were true. It isn't. The Chinese Communist Party is not just the wealthiest, it is also the most powerful, political party in the world. It is also pretty much the only real party in China.
Smaller wonder then, that while this tiny class-caste elite consolidates its hold on this country in the name of the people, in the name of Hindu Nationalism, it has begun to treat people, including its own voters, as an enemy force, to be managed, manipulated, waylaid, taken by surprise, attacked by stealth and ruled with an iron fist.
Why does Roy not mention the notorious fact that Modi Sarkar has performed cranial surgery on millions of people like her completely removing their brains and replacing it with shit?
The fact is, in thinking to patronize the Dalits, Roy has met her Waterloo. Dalits know that their own thinkers are smarter than Macaulayized 'Brahmins'. They also know that Religion is not about Caste, it is about God. Dalits are perfectly happy to ally with Muslims or any other productive group of people so as to raise up living standards for all. But this can only be done in the way Dr. Ambedkar- who had two PhDs in Economics, one in Fiscal policy from Columbia, the other in monetary theory from the LSE- laid down. This means some Dalits will become Billionaires by producing things of better quality and cheaper price than anyone else. After all, the Dalit millionaires of Kanpur helped Ambedkar. Other Dalits may rise in Government service or Medicine, Law, etc. However, agriculture can't contribute much. That was Ambedkar's own prediction. Give the farmers a 'soft landing' by all means but don't pretend that the Government can pay a large percentage of the population to ruin the environment.
It may be that the Dalits come to the top in both the RSS and the Christian Church thanks to their merit and determination. Nothing wrong in that. Every avenue of advancement should be pursued. Look at the Jews. At one time so greatly stigmatized as 'Killers of God' that they were subject to genocide, they came up both in Left wing parties as well as Right wing parties and Centrist parties. You could see them in the Trade Unions as well as in Big Business. They were the best comedians as well as the best romantic movie stars. Excellence in one field does not preclude excellence in another.
It is true there are substantial differences within the Dalit community but this is true of every other large collective. Just by fostering a sense of pride in the accomplishments of those who are rising by merit or conquering adversity, the entire community can come up.
Roy has worked hard to nurture her own career and niche position in the publishing world. Having been chased out of other fields- even the Naxals and Kashmiri separatists don't want her support- she is trying to do what Mahatma Gandhi did- viz. create a platform for herself by pretending to represent Dalits. Gandhi was stupid enough to believe most Dalits had 'only as much sense as cows'. But Roy has read Ambedkar. She knows Ambedkar was intellectually much superior to Gandhi. Still, she is hoping that Dalits will let her glom onto their movement so that she can continue to pretend she is still relevant. Since Dalits are kind hearted, they may not chase her away. But one consequence is that their Elgar Parishad will come to be seen as a foolish piece of theater designed to project some third rate or senile hacks.
Come to think of it Macaulay- once considered a promising British politician and quite a good writer- is now remembered more for his brief Indian sojourn. Roy is a suitable daughter of this sort of second rate anglophile 'Brahminism'.
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