My Seditious Heart

Collected Nonfiction

Arundhati Roy

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781608466733
• eBook ISBN: 9781608466740
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Two decades of commentary by the New York Times–bestselling author: "An electrifying political essayist . . . uplifting . . . galvanizing." — Booklist
 
From the Booker Prize-winning author of such works as The God of Small Things and  The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,  My Seditious Heart collects nonfiction spanning over twenty years and chronicles a battle for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world. Taken together, these essays are told in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Radical and superbly readable, they speak always in defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.
 
"Her lucid and probing essays offer sharp insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism and, in her most recent work, the insidiousness of the Hindu caste system. In an age of intellectual logrolling and mass-manufactured infotainment, she continues to offer bracing ways of seeing, thinking and feeling." —Pankaj Mishra,  Time Magazine
 
Praise for Arundhati Roy:
 
"Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays." —Howard Zinn
 
"One of the most confident and original thinkers of our time." —Naomi Klein
 
"The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating." — The New York Times Book Review

INDEX

9/11/1973 coup (Chile), 192–93

9/11/2001 attacks (US), 197, 225, 228, 270, 294, 376, 392, 447, 454, 457, 803–4; Islamophobia and, 473; War on Terror and, xx–xxii, 126–37, 139, 145–46, 190–92, 201, 207–9, 243, 255, 461, 656

11/26/2008 attacks (Mumbai), 447–48, 452–56, 460, 462, 465, 486, 493, 806–7

1857 Mutiny (First War on Independence), 570, 705

Aaj Tak, 388

Aam Aadmi Party (India), 810

ABC News, 243, 255

Abhinav Bharat, 459

Abu Ghraib, 353, 438

The Accused, 855

Achhut, 687

Adani, Gautam, 678

Adani Group, 678, 809

Ad Dharm movement, 688, 706, 770

Adi Hindu movement, 687

Aditya Birla Group, 678

Adityanath, Yogi, 824

Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (Adivasi Liberation Group), 233, 863

Adivasis, 46, 90, 123, 162–63, 356, 426, 472, 500, 526, 548–51, 574, 584, 605, 643, 652, 679, 682–85, 785, 813, 817–19, 863; Ambedkar and, 695, 763–65; displaced by dams, 25–26, 33–34, 53–54, 57–64, 95, 117, 153–55, 183–84, 234, 429; Maoists and, 295, 350, 476, 492–94, 501, 504–5, 545, 586, 592, 595–602, 612, 626, 788–89, 828–29; Tadvi, 61, 72; treatment by Hindu nationalists, 175, 275, 301, 424, 474–75, 600, 764, 781, 799–802, 807, 826, 828, 866, 899n17; treatment by Indian state, 19–21, 233–34, 239–40, 295–96, 303, 315, 349–50, 586, 624, 626, 640, 666, 765–66...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• The End of Imagination
• The Greater Common Good
• Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin
• The Ladies Have Feelings, So … Shall We Leave It to the Experts?
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice
• War Is Peace
• On Citizens’ Rights to Express Dissent
• Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?
• War Talk: Summer Games with Nuclear Bombs
• Ahimsa (Nonviolent Resistance)
• Come September
• The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky
• Confronting Empire
• Peace Is War: The Collateral Damage of Breaking News
• An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
• Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)
• When the Saints Go Marching Out: The Strange Fate of Martin, Mohandas, and Mandela
• In Memory of Shankar Guha Niyogi
• Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?
• How Deep Shall We Dig?
• The Road to Harsud
• Public Power in the Age of Empire
• Peace and the New Corporate Liberation Theology
• Breaking the News
• “And His Life Should Become Extinct”: The Very Strange Story of the Attack on the Indian Parliament
• Custodial Confessions, the Media, and the Law
• Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial, and Celebration
• Azadi
• Nine Is Not Eleven (and November Isn’t September)
• Democracy’s Failing Light
• Mr. Chidambaram’s War
• The President Took the Salute
• Walking with the Comrades
• Trickledown Revolution
• Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord
• I’d Rather Not Be Anna
• Speech to the People’s University
• Capitalism: A Ghost Story
• A Perfect Day for Democracy
• The Consequences of Hanging Afzal Guru
• The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar-Gandhi Debate
• Professor, P.O.W.
• My Seditious Heart
• Appendix
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover