Booker Prize-winning author and essayist Arundhati Roy says Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) could break India into little pieces, as has happened earlier with Yugoslavia and Russia, but adds that ultimately the Indian people will resist Narendra Modi and the ruling Bhartia Janta Party's fascism.
In an interview with a prominent journalist, Karan Thapar, for The Wire, Arundhati Roy says the present situation in the country is "extremely depressing" but she believes there are signs that the Indian people are climbing out of the hole they've fallen into.
She said she has faith in the Indian people and believes the country will emerge out of the dark tunnel it is presently within.
"Over the last five years, India has distinguished itself as a lynching nation. Muslims and Dalits have been publicly flogged and beaten to death by vigilante Hindu mobs in broad daylight, and the 'lynch videos' then gleefully uploaded to YouTube," she said, adding: "The infrastructure of fascism is staring us in the face... and yet we hesitate to call it by its name."
Arundhati Roy also spoke about Kashmir, which remains under siege since August 2019 when Modi's government scrapped its special status by abrogating Article 370 that provided Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir a special status.
She explains what she meant when in her Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture ("The rise of Modi and the Hindu far right") she said of the Kashmiri people: "Why should they want to be a part of India? For what earthly reason? If freedom is what they want, freedom is what they should have."
Kashmir
Arundhati Roy also explains the way she sees the relationship between Kashmir and the rest of India when she says: "Kashmir may not defeat India, but it will consume India."
This opinion is also echoed by one of the characters in her book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Musa Yeswi, who says something very similar. "One day Kashmir will make India self-destruct in the same way... You're not destroying us, you are constructing us. It's yourselves that you are destroying."
When asked by The Wire if her point is that the bell that tolls in Kashmir is actually tolling for India, Arundhati Roy clearly agreed and explained that the way India's values, principles, constitutional commitments are being undermined by its behavior in Kashmir, will eventually corrode and consume the rest of the country.
In Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture delivered in November 2019, weeks after the annexation of Kashmir, Arundhati Roy pointed out:
"Right now, 7 million people in the valley of Kashmir, overwhelming numbers of whom do not wish to be citizens of India and have fought for decades for their right to self-determination, are locked down under a digital siege and the densest military occupation in the world. Simultaneously, in the eastern state of Assam, almost two million people who long to belong to India have found their names missing from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and risk being declared stateless. The Indian government has announced its intention of extending the NRC to the rest of India. Legislation is on its way. This could lead to the manufacture of statelessness on a scale previously unknown.
"During Modi's second term, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has stepped up its game. No longer a shadow state or a parallel state, it is the state. Day by day, we see examples of its control over the media, the police, the intelligence agencies. Worryingly, it appears to exercise considerable influence over the armed forces, too. Foreign diplomats and ambassadors have been hobnobbing with Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Chief. The German ambassador even trooped all the way to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur to pay his respects.
"In truth, things have reached a stage where overt control is no longer even necessary. More than four hundred round-the-clock television news channels, millions of WhatsApp groups and TikTok videos keep the population on a drip feed of frenzied bigotry."
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