Nation Notes

Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, whose essay deploring India's decision to test atomic weapons appeared in The Nation ("The End of Imagination," September 28, 1998), is, as she told a reporter, "deeper in the soup." Active in an anti-dam campaign in India, this past spring she led a demo protesting the Indian Supreme Court's decision to allow construction of a dam on the Narmada River that will displace 200,000 people and harm the region's fragile ecosystem. Some lawyers at the scene trumped up complaints about Roy threatening them, and the Supreme Court charged her and two other leaders of the protest movement with criminal contempt. That charge was dismissed, but at the hearing Roy submitted a blistering affidavit calling the court's action an attempt "to silence criticism and muzzle dissent." The judges ordered her to withdraw the affidavit. She refused and will go on trial for contempt at the end of October, acting as her own lawyer and facing imprisonment. In our view, her affidavit has it exactly right, and the Supreme Court is even deeper in the, um, soup. Let the Indian Embassy in Washington know your view.

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