Arundhati Roy’s statements on Kashmir have earned her a lot of criticism from the ultra-nationalistic media and politicians. By muzzling dissent, the country is not just hurting Kashmiris but itself. Showkat Ali reports.
Kashmir has seen a dose of quite a few ‘liberals’ who come to Kashmir and lecture on the virtues of India. They ask the locals to see the bright side of the country. Many would fly down with a glass of juice to coax separatist leaders sitting on fast to break their hunger strike. They made good headlines. However, Arundhati Roy is an exception. She articulates the problems and aspirations of Kashmiris without indulging in lecturing. And for this she pays a heavy price.
Booker winner and rights activist Roy has been the target of right-wing nationalist rage over her statements on Kashmir. She has been especially targeted for saying that “Kashmir was never an integral part of India”. The assaults on her, led by the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party, started with personal visceral attacks followed by demands to jail her under sedition laws and a mob attack on her Chankyapuri house.
The only celebrated author of Indian origin living in India, 48-year old Roy has been campaigning against big dams, for the rights of those displaced by big dams and mining companies, against unlimited corporatization, rights of the adivasis (aborigines) and the plethora of “injustices” done by the Government of India under the garb of nation building and economic progress.
“Unlike the pseudo-bleeding-heart-liberals, who make frequent appearances on news television discussing the places and people they most probably have never visited or met, she travels to those places, listens to people, understands their plight and articulates their woes,” says Mohammed Irfan a political science student. “She is targeted for views, though correct, which are not generally in line with the popular perception created by an aggressive ultra-nationalistic media.”
There have been a few people who have spoken against the injustices done to millions of Indian poor or against their sufferings but the government and the media have marginalized them by branding them traitors or inconsequential insanes and calling them names.
“Khuswant Singh is a classic case of the systematic branding of those, who espouse views different from the so-called mainstream. Though he is a learned scholar of contemporary religion (Sikh history), most of the people know him only as the writer of, In the company of Woman and as a ‘dirty old man’ or a sex-fiend drunkard,” says Irfan.
So Arundhati, the most known face among the few Indians who choose to ask difficult questions to their government, is the most demonized of them all. In a recent interview to Karan Thapar of CNN IBN news channel, she called the name calling and attacks on her as, “an old game.”
The government does not stop there, it has more lethal arsenal in its armour, which it is ready to use against the people, with different views.
Earlier, when Roy wrote an article about Maoist insurgents and the Adivasis of the so called red corridor, the government threatened to prosecute her. Roy had given a journalistic account of what was happening on the other side of the battle lines in the war in Chhatisgarh which is also called Operation Green Hunt.
Media widely reported that the Director General of Police, Chhatisgarh was seriously examining whether writer Arundhati Roy should be prosecuted under the Chhatisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA) / Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for having written the article Walking With The Comrades, which was published by Outlook.
Some people in the civil society at that time expressed their concern and asked the government to exhibit some sanity.
“Given its disquieting record of persecuting local journalists and activists for daring to stray from the official line, any attempt to book Arundhati Roy for her article would confirm the government’s determination to choke off dissenting voices, especially to prevent any independent information from coming out of this theatre of War,” said a statement signed by a few social activists like Admiral R.H. Tahiliani (Former Navy Chief and Chairman Transparency International), Amit Bhaduri (Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Anoop Saraya (Professor, AIIMS), Arvind Kejriwal (RTI Activist, Magsaysay awardee) and Badri Raina (Former Professor, Delhi University).
The trend of harassing political dissenters for their “seditious” writings and actions started early, writes Asish Nandy in the Outlook magzine.
“It started with the breakdown of consensus on national interest in the mid-’70s. Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency and introduced serious censorship and surveillance, she claimed, to protect national interest, democracy and development,” Nandy said.
The similarities among the various different political parties in muzzling dissent were made evident as both Congress and BJP, apparently two opposite parties, saw a fit case for slapping sedition charges against Arundhati Roy.
Senior Congress party leader and Law Minister Veerappa Moily calling Roy’s comments “most unfortunate”, said that while there is freedom of speech, “it can’t violate the patriotic sentiments of the people.”
The BJP demanded her arrest and booking under sedition laws. “There is a perfect case against Geelani-ji and Arundhati Roy. A FIR (first information report) should be filed and they should be arrested. The language they have used is objectionable and is attack on the country’s integrity,” BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.
That is what the political parties profess in their public statements and the common internet users are calling for lynching Arundhati on discussion forums and message boards of newspapers in the same manner as they have been making open calls for genocide of Kashmiris in the most abusive language.
“The future of censorship and surveillance in India was very bright. It’s not only the government that loves it but a very large section of middle-class India too would like to silence writers, artists, playwrights, scholars and thinkers they do not like,” says Nandy.
The loud shouting has effectively changed the discourse from serious injustices to the bogey of freedom of speech, says Kashmiri journalist Arshad Hamid.
However, a section of the intellectual class in the country is wary that drowning these voices and leaving no space for dissent is going to curtail the freedoms in the country at large.
Writer and senior journalist Jug Suraiya of the Times of India says, “Is the call for azadi in Kashmir a legitimate political demand which must be countered through political dialogue and negotiation or is it a security threat, instigated by Pakistan, which has to be dealt with by police and military action? It is a question which threatens to split into two not just Kashmir but the whole of India’s civil and political society.”
There are serious problems in India apart from Kashmir. More than 836 million people live on less than twenty rupees a day. Sanitation and access to clean, portable drinking water is a dream for half its population. But that does not appeal to the comparatively well off Indian. The propounding of popular view and the intolerance for dissent is too obvious for anyone to side with people like Arundhati.
“The demand for azadi provided it is not accompanied by a call for armed insurrection is not a law and order or security problem but a political problem that has to be addressed politically. But this political process cannot even begin if the very word azadi is banned from the debate as being seditious, a threat to India’s security and ultra vires the Constitution. If the Indian state was to lock up everyone who voiced or was at least willing to listen to the call for azadi it would have to lock up not just a sizeable portion of Kashmir’s population but also that of India’s as a whole.
Is anyone Kashmiri or otherwise who is willing to at least discuss azadi necessarily a subversive? If that is the case, then it is not Kashmiri azadi that we have to worry about. What we have to worry about is the loss of azadi, the loss of freedom, of India’s democracy,” Suraiya opines.
