ABSTRACT
Arundhati Roy is widely regarded as having reinvigorated the movement to prevent the further construction of the massive Narmada dams project, particularly the Sardar Sarovar Dam. With the publication of “The Greater Common Good,” fi rst in the Indian magazines Outlook and Frontline in June 1999, and then to a global audience in The Cost of Living later that year, Roy the novelist became an activist. For some, Roy’s emergence as a political writer is both refreshing and necessary for the emerging global justice movement. For instance, in an interview with Roy, Paul Kingsnorth describes her this way:
[Roy] has done what few other novelists, in these louche, post-modern times, have dared, or even been inclined to do. She has nailed her colours to the mast. Arundhati Roy is that most unusual, and welcome, of animals: a writer who takes sides. (par. 4)
Roy’s dissent against the Narmada dams or India’s nuclear program, of course, were not universally welcomed. In response to her criticism of the Narmada dam project, dam supporters in Gujarat burned her novel, The God of Small Things (1998), while other critics condemned her, a novelist, for daring to write on political issues. By analyzing Roy’s writings on the Narmada struggle, as well as representations of Roy as a “writer-activist,” in this chapter I examine the limitations of dissent as a political concept within the context of notions of (anti)globalization.
