Supreme Court dismisses PIL against Arundhati Roy’s book cover showing her smoking

Senior advocate Gopal Kumaran, appearing for the petitioner, contended that the cover lacked statutory health warnings and questioned whether the substance being smoked was tobacco. The bench, however, observed that Roy is an established literary figure and that the book does not promote smoking. The CJI also remarked on the petitioner’s apparent pursuit of publicity.

The Court further held that the memoir does not amount to an advertisement under Section 5 of COTPA, which prohibits promotional content relating to tobacco products.

Dismissing the petition, the bench stated: “The book does not constitute any violation of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2013… The SLP is dismissed.”

Mother Mary Comes to Me is Arundhati Roy’s first memoir, a sweeping, intimate recounting of her life from childhood in Kerala to adulthood in Delhi.

What the Kerala High Court had said

The case had earlier been rejected by the Kerala High Court, which delivered a sharply worded order criticising the petition as a misuse of the public-interest litigation (PIL) mechanism. A division bench of Chief Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice Basant Balaji wrote: “Courts must ensure that PIL is not misused as a vehicle for self-publicity or personal slander. The petitioner has chosen to file this PIL only to garner self-publicity and to cast personal aspersions on respondent Arundhati Roy.”

The High Court noted several key points:

📌 The petitioner had not examined the book, nor the legal framework, nor the disclaimer included on the cover.

📌 He had bypassed the expert Steering Committee established under the 2003 Act, a body specifically empowered to handle alleged violations of COTPA.

📌 His arguments relied on “suppression of material facts” and irrelevant accusations, including claims of “intellectual arrogance” by the publisher.

📌 The court concluded that the PIL was “misconceived,” “legally unsustainable,” and filed without “even minimal effort to ascertain the facts.”

The Supreme Court, while concurring with the High Court’s reasoning, remarked that the High Court had been “merciful” in its treatment of the petitioner.

What Mother Mary Comes to Me Is about

Mother Mary Comes to Me is Arundhati Roy’s first memoir, a sweeping, intimate recounting of her life from childhood in Kerala to adulthood in Delhi, and especially of her complex, formative relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, the celebrated educator and activist known for her landmark fight for equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women.

The memoir, written in the emotional aftermath of her mother’s death, interweaves personal memory, political history, humor, and moments of deep vulnerability. It echoes the lyrical expansiveness of Roy’s fiction (The God of Small Things, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness) and the moral clarity of her political essays.

The publisher describes it as an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and “savage grace,” and a narrative about how Roy became the person and writer she is—shaped by circumstance, rebellion, and an extraordinary mother who was “both shelter and storm.”

Penguin included a clear statement on the cover: “Any depiction of smoking in this book is for representational purposes only. Penguin Random House India does not promote or endorse tobacco use.”

What Mother Mary Comes to Me Is actually about

Overshadowed by the debate over the photograph is the memoir itself, Roy’s first, written in the aftermath of her mother Mary Roy’s death. Mary Roy, an educator and activist, was a formative and formidable influence in the author’s life.

The memoir traces Arundhati Roy’s journey from her childhood in Kerala to her adult life in Delhi, moving through the personal, political, and emotional terrain that shaped her as a writer. It blends the narrative sweep of her novels with the clarity and conviction of her political essays.