MY WAY

The Mary Roy Style of Activism

Shahina KK | 01 Feb, 2014

Arundhati Roy’s mother, who has a history of feisty public engagement, has joined the AAP

KOTTAYAM ~ “Everyone has a right to demonstrate. You spent two days in jail in support of the Narmada struggle.” This was what Mary Roy said to her daughter, writer-activist Arundhati Roy, when the latter expressed scepticism about Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s street protests.

At the age of 80, Mary Roy has just joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), but this is not her first tryst with public life. In 1984, she challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 under which daughters in the Syrian Christian community were not entitled to equal rights to ancestral property. The 1986 verdict in her favour instantly made her a target for both community leaders and politicians relying on Christian votes.

Roy’s house is on the campus of the Corpus Christi school she founded in Kottayam. Visitors are greeted by a strange sight at the entrance: in the verandah, there is the foundation stone of a bio-manure unit and crematorium. It was laid in 1996 by the then state PWD minister. Keeping it there is Roy’s protest against a garbage dump near the school. It is also a reminder of how neither the bio manure unit nor crematorium was ever built by the government. Roy says, “This stone, laid by the minister, was left untouched over the years. I brought it here. I want every visitor to my house to see it and know the negligence of the government”.

“I want to see an alternative in politics,” says Roy on why she joined the AAP. “So far, the Congress, BJP and Left have proved to be failures in bringing about change.” Though Roy defends Kejriwal’s recent actions, she doesn’t think it was a good idea for a chief minister to personally take to the streets. “He has a right to do what he did, it would have been better if someone else had led the protest,” she says.

Roy does not want to disclose Arundhati’s take on her joining the AAP. “We are two different independent individuals. She has her own political views and I have mine,” Roy says.