Reimagining the Post-COVID 19 World: A Critique of Arundhati Roy’s Azadi . Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

  
Arundhati Roy’s Azadi . Freedom.  Fascism. Fiction. (2020) is a clarion call to the world at large and India in particular to break the shackles of obsoleteness, and reimagine a new and improved world. This wakeup call has been prompted by the pandemic which has brought the entire globe down on its knees. It has forced humankind to question the values that modern societies have been built on – all that they have chosen to venerate and those they have derided. COVID-19 has ridiculed borders: geographical, political, economic and cultural. The pandemic for Roy is a “portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (214). This anthology consists of 9 essays/ lectures written between 2018-2020. They are all linked together as they yield insights into how the world should be recreated. This paper attempts to critically assess the diverse ways in which Roy seeks to reinvent the world post -pandemic.


1.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a fictionalized representation of the new reimagined India.
'Azadi' (freedom) to Roy is synonymous with her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. This is because the novel gives her the freedom to be as complex as she wants, to oscillate between diverse spaces, languages and time. In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Roy recreates Indian heterogeneity and diversity. She creates a world that proudly proclaims Indian heterogeneity and scoffs at the concept of 'One nation, one religion, one (Anjum) and even people who forsake their caste and creed like Azad Bharitiya. The narrative ropes in transgenders, along with the other two sexes. Roy says that although it has been written in English, this story involving these characters in this duniya had to be imagined in several languages only then could it have been feasible. "It is a story that emerges out of an ocean of languages, in which a teeming ecosystem of living creatures swim around … some friendly with each other, some openly hostile, and some outright carnivorous" (14). Roy rightly presents India as a land of differences and it is in the accommodation of these differences that her strength lies.
Again, although the novel is backgrounded against the turbulent political ambience of the nation: Kashmir conflict, rising Hindutva, Maoist struggles and the Dalit assertion (403), it ends on a note of optimism. It provides a ray of hope to the nation in the form of Jebeen the Second. She is a child discovered at Jantar Mantar where people from across the nation have gathered "to fight for a better world in this democracy zoo" (132). She is raised at Jannat Guest House, the graveyard where caste, class, creed, colour and sex differences are of little significance. In fact, the needy, the homeless and injured animals are given shelter in this guest house. At school the students are taught Science, English, Mathematics and Computers and in return they teach their tutors Urdu and "something of the art of happiness" (399).
Unlike in the real world where there are horrors of war and subversions of secularism and democracy, in Miss Jeebeen the Second's world there is peace and happiness. Moreover, she is raised by the hijra protagonist Anjum, whose adopted kid Zainab is both professionally adept and also a humane young lady. 2. English is the language of the future.
In Azadi Roy says that the future can only be reimagined with the English language.
English is the language of the future and therefore writing and speaking in English cannot be considered a way of paying obeisance to the British Empire. On the contrary, it is a pragmatic response to the situation. As English opens doors for intellectual, professional, and social opportunities, Roy feels there is an imperative need to master it. Roy also endorses the views of Dalit activists that the denial of quality English education to the underprivileged is a culmination of the Brahmin tradition of denying the subaltern the right to pursue knowledge.
Roy supports the Dalit scholar, Chandra Bhan Prasad for understanding the importance of English and building a temple in the village to the Dalit goddess of English. "We will use English to rise up the ladder and become free forever" (Azadi 12). In order to buttress her argument, Roy also cites the example of Dr B. R. Ambedkar's classic denunciation of the Hindu caste system in English -Annihilation of Caste. Roy feels that had it been given expression in another language, it would have been elbowed out of the mainstream. Roy also cites her personal example to underscore the importance of English (Azadi 19). As a student at her mother's school, Roy is reprimanded for speaking in the vernacular. As punishment she is made to write "I will speak in English" a thousand times (19). Again, in her second novel

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Roy even names a character -The Man Who Knew
English. Anjum the protagonist of the novel fittingly says knowing "English makes you clever automatically?" (4).
Interestingly, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness has been translated into 48 languages making it accessible to the non-English speaking world too.

3.
Kashmir issue should be amicably resolved. India should be devoid of caste conflicts, religious fundamentalism and should be environment friendly. These are age old obstacles and they continue to pull the nation backwards.

She says that
There was a time when dissent was India's best export. But now, even as protest swells in the West , our great anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist movements for social and environmental justicethe marches against big dams, against the privatization and plunder of our rivers and forests against mass displacement and the alienation of indigenous peoples, homelandshave largely fallen silent. India appears to be silent on all matters of national and international significance. (100) Roy considers the Pandemic as a hinge moment in human history, as it shows that the entire globe is undeniably interconnected and hence we cannot disengage with each other's problems. She encourages the readers to boldly walk into the new world leaving behind the shackles of chauvinism, animosity and prejudice and bravely reimagine a new world, and fight to ensure that the dream is realized.