Syed Hamad Ali
Published 06 October 2008
The controversial author speaks to newstatesman.com about India and Kashmir and her view that even if he’s elected Barack Obama will govern like just another white man.
Ever since she shot to global fame following her 1997 win of the Booker prize for The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy seems to have concentrated her creative energy on raising awareness about pressing social and political issues.
This is the woman who described terrorism as the “privatisation of war” and called George Bush a “world nightmare incarnate.”
No surprise then she was dubbed “the Indian author of one good novel and many peevish essays” in a New York Times article.
Roy, who is an anti-globalisation campaigner, once famously said that the “only thing worth globalising is dissent.” As an opponent of the Iraqi invasion she walked a very fine line of what is considered acceptable when she was quoted urging people to “become the Iraqi resistance”, albeit through non-violent means.
Last month the Indian novelist wrote a lengthy newspaper article calling for Kashmir’s freedom in which she argued: “India needs azadi [freedom] from Kashmir just as much as – if not more than – Kashmir needs azadi from India.”
Predictably, accusations of “sedition” and of being a “loose cannon” were once again lobbed by critics inside the country’s political establishment.
“Here in India you have people saying that the government should do to Kashmir what the Russians are doing to Chechnya,” Roy tells the New Statesman. “There is a great admiration for military solutions right now.”
So it comes as no surprise her detractors would prefer Roy to keep quiet – especially when it comes to Kashmir.
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(Submitted by reader)