The applause started at 7:40 p.m., when she was first introduced to the overflow crowd at the San Francisco Hilton. By the time Arundhati Roy finished an hour later -- by the time this novelist-activist-public intellectual completed her speech titled "Public Power in the Age of Empire" - - the audience had given her two standing ovations, 20 more rounds of applause and countless variations of more personal salutations like, "That's right!"

Roy says she doesn't want to be "iconized" by the public, but it's happening anyway. After readings and speeches, she's mobbed by people seeking her handshake, her signature in a book or a photograph to prove they got close to this firebrand from India. Firebrand may be an understatement. Last Monday at the Hilton, where she addressed the American Sociological Association, Roy generated some of her biggest responses when she urged the United States to immediately pull its troops from Iraq and "pay reparations" to Iraqis, criticized John Kerry and other Democrats ("How dare the Democrats not be anti-war!") and described President Bush's Cabinet as "thugs."

Arundhati Roy was inspired by her mother, who successfully challenged India's inheritance law. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

Two days later, at a KPFA fund-raiser in Berkeley, Roy energized the sold- out crowd within minutes of taking the stage by saying, "We have to strategize and take our struggle forward."

It's been seven years since Roy burst onto the international literary scene with "The God of Small Things," her semiautobiographical novel about a hard-luck family in southern India. Roy could have been content to stay within the confines of fiction -- and some critics say she should have -- but she was too restless for that. Her first big project: fighting dam building in India. Roy's celebrity helped generate media coverage of India's anti-dam movement, which objects to the way New Delhi's water projects have displaced millions of poor people. Roy has also opposed India's nuclear weapons capabilities and its embrace of capitalism -- issues that connected her with international human rights groups such as the World Social Forum.

Roy's name is now synonymous with other well-known activists and liberal figures, including Noam Chomsky (who calls Roy "a wonder"), Howard Zinn (another big fan) and Michael Moore. In fact, Roy has essentially given up her love of fiction for a full-time career as a social critic. She still writes prodigiously, but every one of her new books -- such as the just-released "An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire" -- is a critique of current affairs. It's hard to find another writer who made such a big splash with a first novel ("The God of Small Things" commanded a $1 million advance, won the Booker Prize and has been translated into more than 30 languages), then veered so quickly into activist nonfiction, but Roy's background gives clues to her transition.

Raised in Kerala, an Indian state whose electorate supported the Communist Party for many years, Roy is the daughter of a woman who successfully challenged India's inheritance law as it applied to Kerala's Christians. Under the old law, a daughter could claim only one-fourth of what a son could claim; Mary Roy's case was a landmark ruling in India that showed the younger Roy that activism could be a central mission. Even before writing "The God of Small Things," Roy wrote a series of essays called "The Great Indian Rape Trick," which criticized filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and "The Bandit Queen" for the way she says the drama exploited the life of Phoolan Devi. Devi was a lower-caste woman who, after being sexually attacked, led a group of men on robberies and at least one revenge killing. Roy argued that Kapur should have gotten Devi's permission to depict her rape on camera. Roy even helped convince India's courts that the movie's filmmakers erred.

"I'm someone who has a very political way of looking at things," says Roy, sitting on the steps of Union Square for a brief interview.

In person, Roy is soft-spoken and nothing like a rabble-rouser. She seems to save her sharpest words for the printed page. For her public speeches in the United States, Roy usually reads essays she has written. In fact, Roy says, her onstage comments are really written for herself. That many people (especially liberal thinkers) agree with her statements is but a kind of bonus.

"I think what probably drives me as a writer is a curiosity to understand and to keep understanding," Roy says. "When I write, I write for myself, not just in order to let people know, because the writing clarifies things to me."

Roy, who saw Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" during her Bay Area visit ("It was fantastic"), is one of many people outside the country who've taken an active interest in the November presidential election. Though she wants to see U.S. voters oust Bush from office, Roy doesn't believe that Kerry and the Democrats offer a viable alternative to Republicans. She says Bush's conservative agenda will continue even if Kerry wins. Roy says the same thing happened in India, where in May voters turned away the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in favor of the Congress Party.

"I personally don't think that public power today is about voting in an election," Roy says. "If you look at the Hindu nationalists and the Congress Party, the BJP is out of power -- but they set the agenda already in the country. And the debate and the discussion and everything have been shifted to the right. What you get is a situation in which we don't really have choice. It's an apparent choice. I'm not an expert on the U.S. elections, but I know this much: Kerry has said that, even if there were no weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq), he would have still supported the war, and that he intends to send 40,000 more troops, and that he hopes to get U.N. consensus. (This way), they'll get Indians and Pakistanis to die there instead of Americans, and the French and Russians and Germans will share a little more than just what Halliburton and Bechtel have. As a person who belongs to a 'subject nation,' I don't know if that's supposed to make me more happy."

Arundhati Roy spoke at a Berkeley benefit Wednesday. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

Regardless of what happens in November, Roy says that progress shouldn't be measured in terms of "wins and losses." Citing her work in India, Roy says that dam building is continuing on a large scale in the country, but the anti- dam movement has succeeded in stopping smaller projects and has persuaded some international investors to withdraw their support for the dams.

"The philosophy that I believe in is, I'm not doing something in order to win," she says. "I know people who go out to do their stuff every day knowing that the chances of anything happening are not very high. But if you're involved in something on a real basis, as opposed to just conceptually -- if you look at the anti-dam movement, sure the dams are getting built, but there's a whole different attitude of people involved in the struggle. It's not that the police can go in there (anymore and crack down illegally). Those are huge victories -- in a way, bigger victories than stopping the dam. India is a bullying society in many ways. And to just see people stand up to the police is such an amazing thing. Just to see that is a huge victory. . . . Ten years ago, big dams were like secular temples in people's heads. But now the faith has been broken. And people know the government is building these dams and violating the rights of people and doing it anyway. Even saying (my activism) was a complete failure -- I'd rather be doing this. That's the kind of person I am."

Roy says that she might one day write another novel but that "I never think in advance. I never have plans. I still don't. The truth is that fiction is my big love. But often you're in a situation where it's very hard, especially because I live in India, not to intervene immediately when someone is shot or police have opened fire. In India, we have all these anti-terrorism laws, with thousands of people being picked up. We have the highest number of custodial deaths in the world. And still, India retains its reputation as some kind of spiritual destination and a real democracy, which it is not, by any means. My life is a bit out of my control right now. My plans keep getting ambushed by the real world."

Roy laughs at her comment. Though it's difficult to tell this from her nonfiction, she has a keen sense of humor. During her two Bay Area talks, Roy, 44, often had her audience laughing. She has a magnetic presence, which leads to steady attention from the media, but she's cautious of it -- especially "corporate media," which she says focuses on superficial issues. (An example, perhaps: In 1998, People magazine named Roy, who is striking, one of the world's "50 most beautiful people.") Though some of Roy's critics say she is a grandstander, Roy is comfortable with who she has become, and how far she has come. At 16, she left home and lived in a squatter's camp in New Delhi before turning to architecture as an academic pursuit. To earn a living, she taught aerobics for a few years. Eventually, she found her mark as a writer with a strong voice.

Says Roy: "I wouldn't feel I was doing anything right if everyone stood up and applauded."

© 2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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