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Reading Arundhati Roy Out of Context
Rajmohan Gandhi's assertion that Arundhati Roy has taken statements made decades ago out of context and not provided the sources for her arguments are turned against him. This response to Gandhi's "Independence and Social Justice" (EPW, 11 April 2015) cites two such instances.
Rajmohan Gandhi’s article “Independence and Social Justice”(EPW, 11 April 2015) is a response to Arundhati Roy’s essay “The Doctor and the Saint” which appeared in March 2014 as an introduction to a new edition of B R Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. Gandhi’s main thrust in his response is that Roy has attacked Mahatma Gandhi and that this violates the key principles of historical debate, namely, that statements made 50 or 100 years ago should be seen in the context they are made, and that pertinent information should not be left out. However, his arguments are not convincing, and Gandhi himself is guilty of reading events and statements out of context. I want to illustrate this with two points that he has tried to make.
At one place, he tries to discredit Roy’s argument by saying she has not provided any sources for the same:
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