Team Anna Bill un-Gandhian: Roy

CHENNAI: The Jan Lokpal Bill that Team Anna is demanding is an “un-Gandhian piece of legislation” that would concentrate power in the hands of a few, writer Arundhati Roy has said. She also warned that such a bill could lead to an even more lopsided society. “A very strong anti-corruption law will become a tool for the middle class to take advantage of the poor, who are always alienated,” said Roy.She also noted that unrest is brewing across the country on a wide range of issues, including corruption. “It is just that Maoists happen to be the most militant among the lot,” she added.Roy suggested that the anti-graft protests and the stir against Koodankulam nuclear power plant were more profound than the armed conflicts waged by the State. “I find these battles more profound than the battles for self-determination or ethnic nationalism, because they are battles for new definitions of civilisation itself,” she said.Roy’s comments came at a function to launch seven books of Kalachuvadu Publications here. The function also saw a minor disruption as a pro-Tamil group raised slogans against the publisher, accusing it of having a pro-Sinhala stance. Cheran’s ‘Kaadattru’ and ‘A Second Sunrise’, Stalin Rajangam’s ‘Sadhiyam: Kaikoodatha Needhi’, G Raghupathy’s ‘Dalitukalum Thaneerum’ were the Tamil books released. Apart from these, Tamil translations of Arundhati Roy’s ‘Broken Republic’, Bashrat Peer’s ‘Curfew Night’ and former UN Sri Lanka spokesperson Gordon Weiss’s ‘The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers’ were also released.