Writer-activist Arundhati Roy has messaged me to say that in my latest National Interest, I have quoted her inaccurately as having described Maoists as ‘Gandhians with Guns’.
She says she never said that. It was a copywriter on the editing desk of Outlook magazine, and she later wrote to Outlook clarifying this.
Here’s her article in the Outlook issue dated 29 March 2010, and her clarification three months later, in the issued dated 7 June 2010.
Outlook published her note without a response and the article remains on its website in the original, unamended form, with the strap line reading “Gandhians with a Gun?”
After Outlook, British newspaper The Guardian published the same article in five parts. Each was headlined “Gandhi, but with guns”. You can see these here.
If Arundhati Roy wrote to The Guardian to object, we haven’t been able to find it yet. However, the same five articles, with the same headline, can still be found on The Guardian website. There was apparently no objection from her to this while the five parts were published in a globally respected newspaper. This is where our fact-checker had checked.
Arundhati Roy appended the exact paragraphs in her clarification in Outlook, referring to both Gandhi and guns. You can read it here. She is correct, that she did not specifically describe Maoists as ‘Gandhians with Guns’, and I was wrong. So, my apologies here. Whatever my views on her politics and activism, it is my responsibility to be totally and literally accurate, especially while saying something in criticism of her, which is often the case. So, apologies again, have amended the reference to her in my National Interest accordingly.
In her June 2010 note in Outlook, she had said that her reference to Gandhi and guns had subtler meaning. And that anyone who mistook it to mean she called Maoists Gandhians with Guns “is either a little slow or has no sense of irony or both”.
I do not rule out the likelihood of my being either, or probably both. Just that I’m not sure the fine editorial team at Outlook, and the venerable editors of The Guardian would be flattered to be bracketed with me.
— Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief