When Amrutha showed us the book that she was reading, there was a collective gasp of excitement.

Arundhati Roy’s Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Amrutha is very eloquent about her admiration of this writer. For her, The God of Small Things is nothing less than a Bible, compulsory reading on days when the world ceases to make sense. And now after twenty years of monochromatic non-fiction, Roy is back, and this made her pre-order a copy.

The book is now well-known for the number of reviews it has garnered. Amrutha has no complaint about the lyricism of the book. For the first two hundred pages of the book, Anjum the transgender character occupies center stage. At some point in the novel, Amrutha says that so many characters make their presence felt that you feel you are in a train into which a stream of people continuously flows into.

Unlike the India in the books by Khushwant Singh and Salman Rushdie, Roy’s India is easy to relate to, especially to millennials as it is the India of the Maoists, Kejriwal, Kashmir, Ayodhya, corruption, Anna Hazare and this becomes the problem with Anjum’s story for Amruta. She fears that the book ends in propaganda and that Roy’s view is a little too uni-dimensional for a country as vast and complicated as India. “It was when the book stopped being fictional that I felt betrayed that she had masqueraded Anjum’s story as a fiction. If I wanted to read about the problems our country faces, I could read the newspaper!” she said.

So this is what a betrayed fan looks like.

As is the case in many BYOB Parties, readers subconsciously pick books that showcase similar authors. So Sonali got Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar with an introduction written by Roy. Unlike Amruta, Sonali is more taken by Arundhati Roy’s monochromatic non-fiction.

The Annihilation of Caste shows two contrasting leaders- one the saintly Gandhi who removes his upper garment to identify with the masses and the other the maverick Ambedkar who wears a suit to challenge casteism. Both of them believe that they have the answers about how the country is to be led and what values should constitute the Indian rubric.

The premise of the book is a story in itself. A Hindu reformist group invited Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to deliver a lecture but since they knew that the man was audacious they requested for an advanced copy. Their doubts proved true. Ambedkar had planned to use the lecture as an opportunity to denounce Hinduism and its caste system. Since this was unacceptable to them, they de-invited him and true to Ambedkar’s fiery nature, he published the speech instead. He also responded to the Mahatma’s justification of caste.

What Sonali admires about the book is the coherence of the arguments that Ambedkar presents. He provided a scholarly critique of the Shastras and disagrees with Gandhi’s sugar-coated version of casteism. Even today Ambedkar’s views remain controversial and some of his opinions border on scandalous.

Watch this video where Roy debunks what she calls the Gandhi myth.