Arundhati Roy is an award winning Indian novelist, essayist and activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things. Her writings on various social, environmental and political issues have been a subject of major controversy in India. Do you know, Arundhati Roy is a big sympathizer to Maoists/Naxals and Kashmiri militants? Why she always shouts from roof tops to support Naxals and Terrorists. What’s the problem of Arundhati Roy. Is she a traitor?
Since The God of Small Things she has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics. She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She also criticizes India’s nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron’s activities in India.
Reasons why people are calling her traitor.
- Her support for Independent Kashmir — In August 2008, in an interview with Times of India, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India. She told anti India rallies in Kashmir were a sign that Kashmiris desire secession from India, and not union with India. In October 2010, at a seminar in Delhi named “Azadi – The only way” she participated with Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Varavara Rao. She also said that “Kashmir should get azadi from bhookhe-nange Hindustan”.
When I was in Kashmir.. what broke my heart on the street of Srinagar was when people say “Nanga Bhukha Hindustan, Jaan se Pyara Pakistan” and I said no because “Nanga Bhukha Hindustan” is with you, and if you are fighting for a just society then you must align yourself with powers and here are people who have fought their lives opposing Indian state….You have to look beyond stone pelting and how the state is using people. …You have to know your enemy and you have to be able to respond by aligning tactically, intelligently, locally or internationally.
- In response to India’s testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of the Indian government’s nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living (1999), in which she also crusaded against India’s massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
- She has called for the death sentence of Mohammad Afzal to be stayed while a parliamentary enquiry into these questions are conducted and denounced press coverage of the trial.
- She also criticized Indian Government’s armed actions against the Naxalite-Maoist insurgents, she called it “war on the poorest people in the country”.
Karan Thapar: How do you perceive the Maoists?
Arundhati Roy: I perceive them as a group of people who have at a most militant end in the bandwidth of resistance movements that exist
Karan Thapar: but do you support any attempt to overthrow the Indian state?
Arundhati Roy: ..If I say that I support the Maoists’ desire to overthrow the Indian State, I would be saying that I am a Maoist. But I am not a Maoist.
Karan Thapar: .. what about the tactics that the Maoists use?..
Arundhati Roy: There is already a civil war…when your village is surrounded by 800 CRPF men who are raping and burning and looting, you can’t say I am going on a hunger strike. Then, I support people’s right to resist that.