Review of Aruna Roy’s "The Personal Is Political"

BOOK REVIEW

The Personal Is Political: An Activist’s Memoir
by Aruna Roy

Harpercollins India
2024
Pages: 272
ISBN-10 †: ‎ 9356998590
ISBN-13 †: ‎ 978-9356998599

Aruna Roy is a household name for her contribution in visualizing and spearheading the campaigns of the Right to Information and the Right to Food which led to the progressive Right to Information and Food Securities Act. Both these legislations have empowered the poor and radically changed the face of contemporary India. However, her continual presence in rural India has also provided a bridge between the urban and the rural and those who with a conscience want to make a contribution in bringing in the change. In this exquisite and compelling memoir, Aruna shares with disarming candour, wit and even humour the journey of her comrades and herself in the belief that the personal is political.

The book shares her growing up in an educated Tamil household that was open to ideas and all religions; she was listening to Carnatic music but also the choir and celebrating all the festivals. It was her grandmother Lalita Krishnaswami who by working for leprosy patients in the slums from the 1920 to the 1950’s and her open disregard for caste and religious divides, who changed the values permanently of the family. Aruna starts by teaching at Indraprastha College in Delhi University, her alma mater but prepares for and gets into the Indian Administrative Service, this is perhaps the most coveted job even today for the pomp, power and position it evokes. However, her desire is to serve the poor but she is told by her first boss that his ‘wife would not like it if she travels with him’ and she is to remain in the office. Aruna shows her ability to speak out right then; she indignantly refuses to do clerical work and asks for a transfer. Her next boss in Puducherry enables her to travel within the field which proves useful but then she resigns from the I.A.S to join Tilonia – the Social Work Research Centre started by her husband Bunker Roy who she describes as a Doon-school educated, squash player with a passion for rural development.

It is in the villages of Rajasthan that Aruna learns from the school of hard knocks when a village woman responds to her request for a conversation brusquely, ‘I have no time for the likes of you’. Aruna is taken aback for she was used to having conversations with many as an IAS officer but she realizes that she is now no longer perceived to be in a position of power. But this is how this memoir is invaluable and a treasure house of learning. Aruna’s account of how we have to overcome our arrogance of a ‘let’s teach them attitude’, that literacy classes ignored a woman’s physical incapacity to study after a hard twelve-hour workday or to appreciate the wealth of oral stories and grassroot knowledge they had, is both compelling and invaluable. The programme for literacy was started at Barefoot College, Tilonia with accepting that women needed both the time and space for the skill and four women leaders across caste and religion – Naurti, Mangi, Billan and Haseena volunteered to attend the course with a daily honoranium to compensate for the loss of wages. In the afternoons however, the positions were reversed and this is the key – ‘the women taught us the politics of gender in the village, their understanding of power and oppression and how they sought liberation of it’. All this feeds into programmes for women in Wayanad, Kerala and Koraput, Odisha which leads to great programmes including the pathbreaking Women’s Development Programme with the saathins. It is teaching us with all humility that true liberation is mutual and in the pedagogy of the oppressed we need to unlearn and learn anew.

Aruna also reveals many experiential moments. She undertakes to understand how the wage of unskilled labour was being calculated and the time and skill it takes to load mud with a rake onto a pan, place it on ones head and chuck it at the site. In the process she realises she did not have the skill to master this ‘unskilled work’ and permanently damages her back. The humility and dedication it took to do this is itself revealing of the kaleidoscope that is Aruna; honest, open and ever willing to learn and unlearn.

The Social Work Research Centre started in an abandoned TB sanatorium and had no access to piped water and electricity when she came after quitting the IAS. Even the cook goes on leave, assuming that since she was there she would cook for everyone! But slowly SWRC gets established with its building, and a crafts centre that has a sign, ‘when you buy here you do not just shop. You support a craftsperson’.

But Aruna now leaves yet again.

She now moves to Devdungri a rural village in Rajasthan where she lives in a mud hut with Shankar, Anshi, Nikhil and a goat. There is no electricity or running water and they have to grow their own vegetables but here is an honest attempt to link action with reflection and theory with practice along with an intense personal sharing that leads to growth. It is here that MKSS – Mazdooor Kisan Shakti Sanghathan is born and grows but this a book that has to be read, savoured and absorbed. It has rich insights on feminism, philosophy and politics as the people who are used and discarded see it.

My interaction with Aruna was during the Right to Food campaign in Jaipur, where I found her always warm, accessible and with a gentle, down to earth and loving manner. This is not the life of a woman born to privilege but of a sensitive woman who has the courage to ask tough questions, follow a calling for social justice and creates an alternative family of comrades and friends all of different ages and backgrounds. The afterword by Shankar Singh and Nikhil Dey is worth reading as it gives an insight of how they met in the 1980’s, worked and lived together. The book also gives us an insight on how this is possible for each one of us, provided one has the courage and the ability to strip oneself of fear of the unknown and an ego and all that we have been schooled. This is a book that should be required reading in all the high schools and colleges of India because it is of an ordinary woman’s courage to do extraordinary things. The blood and sweat of the mazdoor and kisaan runs in her heart and veins and Aruna along with her band of satyagrahis rekindles hope of the true freedom that was envisaged by our freedom fighters.

Aruna Roy is a national treasure; a red ruby, and this book is a gem. If I have a quibble it is that it has no index and footnotes; one has to scan a QR code!
Read it slowly; unlearn, learn and re-learn. Then practice.

Sagari Chhabra