Arundhati Roy speaks
N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)
Kathmandu: Let’s talk of Arundhati Roy and listen to what she talks of her own nation-India in the recent days and weeks.
Our attention has been drawn by a recent Tweet posted by one Indian national, Sandeep Choudhary who claims, quoting Arundhati Roy as saying (sic), “I don’t know on what grounds India can be called a democracy”.
In fact, it is the question many people ask in the South Asian region as to what for India should be taken as the largest democracy given the insulting and subjugating behavior exhibited by Indian regime towards its smaller neighbors.
As is understood, a true democracy never coerces and destabilizes the neighboring countries which India does at regular intervals.
Only recently Sri Lanka and Bangladesh has been strongly believed by the South Asian experts that the upheaval in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were the creation of the Indian regime.
Nepal is a permanent case which ever remains under terror of the Indian regime and it is widely believed that Nepal currently is being run by the RAW machinations posted in Nepal.
However, who those agents are remain yet to be exposed. But what is for sure is that the day these RAW posted traitors are exposed, will be manhandled right in the streets much the way the Sri Lankans treated their “august” leaders.
Dhaka too in the recent days has remained tense as “protests” due to skyrocketing fuel prices continues unabated.
In addition, at the people level, there is a feeling that their own government has too much inclination towards Indian regime which got reflected in the recent weeks when the sitting Foreign Minister A. K. Momen appealed the Indian establishment to help his country in institutionalizing stability so that such a stable nation is of immense benefits to PM Sheikh Hasina’s bouncing back to power in the approaching elections.
This does mean that B’desh takes India as its “caretaker” and thus appeals for stability.
Inviting Indian interference? Perhaps yes.
How the Bangla population may have taken the foreign Minister’s appeal is any body’s guess.
B’desh people are taken as strong nationalists in the entire South Asia.
Now back to Arundhati Roy (Born 1961):
Arundhati, needless to say, is a sharp critique of her own country and at regular intervals; she pounces upon India and the Indian society’s inadequacy or of several wrong doing(s).
In a way she is the undeclared spokesman of the minority Indians such as Muslims and the Dalits and of other neglected tribes.
Only recently, the veteran Indian author of international repute, Arundhati totally exposed, writes The Pakistan Observer dated August 9, 2022, “the so-called Indian egalitarianism, the disintegration and growing intolerance in Indian society, and the hypocrisy of those institutions that are meant to be custodians of justice and democratic norms”.
The Observer says, Arundhati while talking to Aljazeera, blatantly said that, “the practice of bulldozing Muslim homes and businesses for purely punitive reasons is proof that India is transitioning pretty brazenly into a criminal Hindu fascist enterprise”.
Arundhati made remarks while talking to Aljazeera that “this rapid transition of India into a total hegemony under the dogma of RSS ideology has now started haunting the country’s Muslim minority as well as the international community and the liberal voices within India”.
The Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy on May 05, 2022 had compared, as per the Business Standard, May, 2022, today’s India to a plane moving in reverse, the one which she argued is “headed for a crash”.
She made these observations while launching of the book titled “Why you fear my way so much?” written by the jailed human rights activist G. N Saibaba.
Making a jibe at India, the straight forward Indian critique Arundhati Roy took “India as a land of ‘sophisticated jurisprudence”, the one where laws are applied differently depending on your “caste, class, gender and ethnicity”.
In an email interview with the US news outlet, the CNN, June 2022, Arundhati says, “the ruling party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janta Party), considered to be the one of the richest political parties in the world, and is only the front office of the RSS. Founded in 1925, the RSS, traditionally controlled by a handful of Brahmins (the so-called upper caste), now has millions of members including PM Modi, who has been a member since his teenage years, and most of his cabinet ministers”.
Needless to say, the RSS men are fanatic Hindus.
Indian PM Modi’s hatred of the Indian Muslims and the Indian Dalits remains no longer a secret but yet India is a “democracy” for some developed Western countries and the USA only in that Indian establishment is a strong partner of the US in the QUAD security instrument.
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel “The God of Small Things”, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the bestselling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is needless to say, an internationally recognized political activist so she is disliked by the Indian establishment.
And here is Swedish Professor Ashok Swain:
This Swedish Professor of Indian origin too to a greater extent takes India not as a democracy but a mobocracy.
Let’s listen to what he has to say in his fresh Tweet. He says, “A US based journalist of ‘Vice News’, Angad Singh, who had produced a documentary on Shaheen Bagh protest was deported from Delhi airport immediately after reaching India. He had come for a family visit. This is the state of the world’s so-called largest democracy”.
Not only the uncomplicated Professor Ashok Swain, but the sane and intellectuals across the globe take India as a mobocracy but not a democracy as is given to understand by a section of Western media who possess special love and honor for India because of its inclusion in the Quad security conglomerate led by the US.
Shaheen Bagh is a place in Delhi only recently remained a popular area/venue of protests against the Citizenship Amendments Act.
Shaheen Bagh got world attention between December 2019 and January 2022, recall media agencies.
Now Bilkis Bano story:
When Arundhati Roy made a comment like “India as a land of ‘sophisticated jurisprudence”, the one where laws are applied differently depending on your “caste, class, gender and ethnicity”, we are reminded of the horrifying tale of a Muslim woman Bilkis Bano(19 or 21) a resident of a village close to Ahmedabad.
Then a pregnant Bilkis Bano on March 3, 2002 during the engineered riots in Gujrat, fourteen members of Bano’s family were killed in the violence that is taken as Gujrat Massacre.
This violence not only took the precious life of Bano’s 3 years old daughter whose head was smashed on the ground by the perpetrators but Bilkis Bano herself was “gang raped”, according to Scroll.in dated August 27, 2022.
The then Chief Minister of Gujrat was Narendra Modi who is now the India’s Prime Minister.
The news outlet further claims that “protests are being held in different parts of India against the Gujrat government’s decision to summarily “release all 11 men convicted of Rape and murder in the Bilkis Bano’s case”.
And yet India is the largest democracy for the US? Fun unlimited. When the USs will take note of Indian shortcomings?
Arundhati has spoken the truth and the truth only.
Ashok Swain once again:
The Swedish Professor Tweeted recently wherein he stated “When has it become the Hindu culture to welcome rapists after they get released from jail? They had garlanded the Bilkis bano rape convicts in Gujrat, now they are garlanding a rape accused Hindu Godman after his release from jail in Madhya Pradesh, India”.
Indian media reports that on August 15, 2022, the Gujarat government announced its verdict to set liberated the 11 men sentenced to life imprisonment in the Bilkis Bano gang rape and mass murder case of 2002.
The WIRE (India) dated August 31, 2022, writes that “On March 3, 2002, eleven men – 1.
Jaswantbhai Nai, 2. Govindbhai Nai, 3. Shailesh Bhatt, 4. Radhesham Shah, 5. Bipin Chandra Joshi, 6. Kesarbhai Vohania, 7. Pradeep Mordhiya, 8. Bakabhai Vohania, 9. Rajubhai Soni, 10. Mitesh Bhatt, and 11. Ramesh Chandana – armed themselves with swords, sickles and sticks, got into two white vehicles and went out on a pre-meditated human hunt. When they found their target, the Sanskari 11 gang-raped the women among them and murdered a total of 14 people in cold blood.
Bilkis Bano was gangraped presumably by these cultured” Indian nationals who were just freed.
Will all these Himalayan blunders and fault lines, India yet is a largest democracy for the developed West more so for the USA? This is simply more than a riddle.
Geeta Pandey for the BBC, New Delhi, 19 August says, “Bilkis Bano, in a statement, called the decision to free the men “unjust” and said it had “shaken” her faith in justice. “When I heard that the convicts who had devastated my family and life had walked free, I was bereft of words. I am still numb,” Bilkis said.
Is the champion of Democratic world USA is listening? The US must listen to keep South Asian peace and stability.
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