Background

Arundhati Roy was born as Suzanna Arundhati Roy, in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to Ranjit Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea planter and Mary Roy, a Malayali Syrian Christian women's rights activist. She spent most of her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala.

Education

Roy attended school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi.

Career

Roy's career began with television and movies. She wrote screenplays for “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones” (1989), and she also appeared as a performer. Later, she wrote for “Electric Moon” (1992) both movies were directed by her husband Pradip Krishen. However, disenchanted with the film world, Roy did various jobs, including running aerobics classes. She received great attention only in 1994 when she criticized Shekhar Kapoor’s film Bandit Queen based on Phoolan Devi. She denounced the movie calling it “The Great Indian Rape Trick” in her film review.

After her much-acclaimed novel, The God of Small Things of 1997, Roy began working as a screenplay writer again and wrote for television serials such as “The Banyan Tree” and the documentary “DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy” (2002).

Roy also contributed to We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, a book released in 2009, that explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying their diversity and the threats to their existence.

In 2017, she published her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. She currently works as a freelance writer and screenwriter, living in New Delhi.

Achievements

• Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997). She is also the author of her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness of 2017, and a number of non-fiction books.
  
  She won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989, for the screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, but in 2015, she returned the national award in protest against religious intolerance and the growing violence by rightwing groups in India.
  
  In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India's Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it "in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by 'violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation'".
  
  Roy was featured in the 2014 list of Time 100, the 100 most influential people in the world.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Walking with the Comrades

    (From the award-winning author of The Ministry of Utmost H...)

    2011
  • War Talk

    (As the United States pushes for war on Iraq, Arundhati Ro...)

    2003
  • Capitalism

    (Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democ...)

    2014
  • The Doctor and the Saint

    (Democracy In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy reveals some u...)

    2017
  • The End of Imagination

    (The End of Imagination brings together five of Arundhati ...)

    2016
  • Kashmir

    (Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is an impassioned attempt t...)

    2011
  • Power Politics: Second Edition

    (Roy explores the politics of writing, the costs of develo...)

    2002
  • The God of Small Things 1997
  • The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 2017
  • Things that Can and Cannot Be Said 2016
  • El dios de las pequeñas cosas 2010

Politics

Roy is also known as a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes. In an interview with the Times of India published in August 2008, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India after massive demonstrations in favour of independence took place—some 500,000 separatists rallied in Srinagar in the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India for independence on 18 August 2008, following the Amarnath land transfer controversy. According to her, the rallies were a sign that Kashmiris desire secession from India, and not union with India. She was criticised by Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for her remarks.

Roy has also campaigned along with activist Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam project, saying that the dam will displace half a million people, with little or no compensation, and will not provide the projected irrigation, drinking water, and other benefits. Roy donated her Booker prize money, as well as royalties from her books on the project, to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Roy also appears in Franny Armstrong's Drowned Out, a 2002 documentary about the project. Roy's opposition to the Narmada Dam project was criticised as "maligning Gujarat" by Congress and BJP leaders in Gujarat.

In an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled "The algebra of infinite justice", Roy responded to the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan, finding fault with the argument that this war would be a retaliation for the September 11 attacks.

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies.

In August 2006, Roy, along with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others, signed a letter in The Guardian called the 2006 Lebanon War a "war crime" and accused Israel of "state terror". In 2007, Roy was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate".

Roy has criticised the Indian government's armed actions against the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India, calling it "war on the poorest people in the country". According to her, the government has "abdicated its responsibility to the people" and launched the offensive against Naxals to aid the corporations with whom it has signed Memoranda of Understanding.

In 2013, Roy described Narendra Modi's nomination for the prime ministerial candidate as a "tragedy". She further said that the business houses were supporting his candidacy because he was the "most militaristic and aggressive" candidate.

Connections

At the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, Roy met her first husband, architect Gerard da Cunha. The two lived together in Delhi, and then Goa, before they separated. Roy then met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984. However, the couple eventually separated.

Currently, Roy is single and lives in New Delhi.

Father:

Ranjit Roy

Mother:

Mary Roy

Her mother was a Malayali Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala.

First husband:

Gerard da Cunha

Second husband:

Pradip Krishen