Rebel with a cause: At 64, Arundhati Roy remains one of our bravest voices

I was a third-year undergraduate student when I bought a battered second-hand copy of 'An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire', a work of non-fiction, by Arundhati Roy from Nilkhet. The cover at the corner had been chewed by what I assume was a rat; that explains the Tk20 price tag. 

I opened it during a lecture, expecting casual political commentary. Instead, each line struck with the precision of a surgical blade—fierce, unembellished, and poetic in a way that left no room to look away. 

She criticised the Bush administration's war in Iraq without flinching, condemned the BJP's aggressive Hindu nationalism without hesitation, and sliced through euphemisms with an almost disarming clarity. 

I remember excitedly whispering to a friend sitting next to me, "She is wild!" and she shot me an irritated glare for interrupting her concentration. Anyway, that moment became my real introduction to Arundhati Roy—unlike many who had met her long before, usually through The God of Small Things.

But I knew then: this was a voice I would return to again and again. Like many, I felt a deep sense of regret—why hadn't I found her earlier?

And now, on 24 November, this fearless woman—author, activist, dissenter, moral troublemaker, turned 64.

Three decades after her Booker Prize debut, she remains one of South Asia's most forceful public intellectuals—a writer whose political clarity continues to make governments uncomfortable, admirers inspired, and opponents furious.

At 64, Arundhati Roy stands as a reminder of what happens when individuals choose clarity over comfort. She isn't universally liked, nor does she try to be. That, in fact, is what makes her essential.

Born in Shillong in 1961 and raised in Kerala, Roy grew up watching her mother, Mary Roy, take on discriminatory inheritance laws that denied Christian women equal rights. The legal battle, which stretched for years and culminated in a landmark Supreme Court verdict, became an early lesson for Arundhati: challenging structural injustice is rarely easy but always necessary.

That lived experience shaped her understanding of the state, the law, and the consequences of speaking plainly.

Roy trained as an architect and drifted through different creative jobs in Delhi—unwilling to be boxed in—before finding her voice in fiction.

The God of Small Things arrived in 1997 with the force of a cultural event. The novel earned a Booker Prize, sold globally, and placed Roy on the world literary map. Many expected another novel. Instead, she turned toward politics, choosing the harder and far more contentious path of public dissent.

Roy's essays in the 2000s and 2010s built a body of work that challenged the dominant narratives of India's development story. She wrote about the displacement caused by mega-dams, the militarisation of Kashmir, the persecution of minorities, the vulnerabilities of tribal communities, and the widening gap between India's rich and poor.

Her writing was supported by meticulous reporting: long travels, conversations with communities the state preferred to ignore, and a willingness to document violence she believed was being normalised.

Her positions drew predictable backlash. She was accused of sedition, denounced in parliament, vilified online, and portrayed by critics as a threat to national unity. But she rarely moderated her tone.

One of the most significant solidarities in Roy's political life has been her bond with Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam. Their friendship is grounded not in literary admiration but in a shared understanding of what it means to document the uncomfortable truth.

Alam, known globally for chronicling political violence and state repression in Bangladesh, has long praised Roy's refusal to compromise. Roy, in turn, has defended him publicly during moments of state crackdown—including his 2018 arrest—framing his detention as part of a broader South Asian pattern of silencing dissent. Their friendship illustrates a deeper point: South Asia's democratic backsliding is regional, not national. And so is resistance.

Roy's political interventions have kept her under continuous scrutiny. She has been charged with contempt, threatened with sedition, and summoned for her statements on Kashmir. Her recent criticisms of majoritarian nationalism and the transformation of India's political landscape continue to attract hostility from ruling circles.

Yet, even with mounting pressure, she maintains that dissent is not a performance—it is a responsibility.

"Writers don't just find stories," she once wrote. "We are sometimes compelled to refuse silence."

In 2025, Roy published Mother Mary Comes to Me, her debut memoir that examined her complicated relationship with her mother, a woman who shaped her politically, intellectually, and emotionally. "My shelter and my storm," as she describes her mother. Critics described the book as "absorbing and unguarded," offering a perspective on Roy that her political essays rarely reveal.

The memoir also demonstrated something many forget: Roy never left literature. Even in her fiercest political writing, the novelist's precision remains.

Roy stands today as a chronicler of India's contradictions: its democratic ideals and authoritarian turns, its economic ambitions and human costs, and its vibrant civil society and shrinking freedoms.

Her work does not pretend to offer solutions; instead, it documents the fractures that define the present. She writes not to reassure but to alert. To critics, this is too pessimistic. To supporters, it is necessary truth-telling.

Her influence reaches far beyond India. Across South Asia, where press freedoms are eroding and civic spaces shrinking, Roy's insistence that dissent is democratic oxygen resonates with writers, journalists, and artistes. It resonates especially with those who, like Shahidul Alam, know firsthand what happens when governments decide that questioning them is a crime.

At 64, Arundhati Roy stands as a reminder of what happens when individuals choose clarity over comfort. She isn't universally liked, nor does she try to be. That, in fact, is what makes her essential.

She compels us to confront questions we prefer to postpone:
What does a nation erase in the name of progress?
Whose suffering becomes invisible in the pursuit of growth?
And who pays the real price when dissent becomes a punishable act?

In a region where governments grow increasingly intolerant of scrutiny—Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Myanmar—the Roys and the Shahidul Alams are not mere artists or intellectuals. They are safeguards. They remind us that the distance between democracy and authoritarianism is measured not by how loudly governments speak, but by how freely citizens can.

She forces us to examine our complicity, our silences, our distractions. Roy often says she writes because she must. But the truth is larger: she writes because someone has to.

And in an age where speaking plainly can cost a person their freedom or their safety, Roy remains what she has been since she first startled me in that lecture hall years ago: an unquiet citizen refusing to make peace with injustice.

At 64, that refusal is not just admirable. It is necessary.