by ARUNDHATI ROY & LAURA FLANDERS
Two years ago this month, the first cases of Covid-19 were reported in the United States. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew,” wrote acclaimed author and activist Arundhati Roy just weeks into the shutdown. So have we? Two years on, what’s changed and what hasn’t in the US, India, and globally in a world that often seems to be teetering on the brink. If our goal is a better society, a world that is sustainable, just, and free, how are we doing, and what role do writers, literature, and language itself play in helping us find our way? This time on the LF Show, we explore all of this and more with Arundhati Roy who joins us from her home in New Delhi, India. Roy is the author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness as well as numerous essays on human rights, environmental justice, and global capitalism. This Spring, a new edition of her book of essays Azadi: Fascism, Fiction, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus will be out from Haymarket Books. All that and a closing commentary from Laura about American Exceptionalism and the pitfalls therein.
Arundhati Roy is a writer and a political activist. She is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, (1997 Booker Prize Recipient), and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A collection of her essays from the past twenty years, My Seditious Heart, was recently published and Azadi: Fascism, Fiction, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus will be available in April also by Haymarket Books.
CONTENT
Introduction with Arundhati Roy 0:00
Rise of Narendra Modi & Threats to Democracy in India 5:33
India & the United States Political Climate Compared 9:14
Breaking from Our Bubble to See the Big Picture 14:01
The Pandemic is a Portal 17:01
A Fascist World is Breathing 23:56
Have you checked your American exceptionalism lately?
I mean it. Have you checked where you stand on the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations, and that the ghastly things that happen elsewhere, like fascism, or authoritarian rule, can’t happen in this place?
I thought about that recently when I had the pleasure of interviewing Arundhati Roy, the renowned Indian novelist, essayist and activist. This spring, the good people at Haymarket Books are publishing a second edition of Roy’s latest collection of essays. It’s called Azadi: Fascism, Fiction, and Freedom in the Time of the Virus, and in it she brings readers up to date on, among other things, the state of democracy in India.
“It’s a carcass,” she writes, “dragged about by one party without accountability, headed by a man whose power rests on the use and threat of use of violence.”
Under the rule of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist RSS party, India’s been steadily dismantling the institutions of democracy, such that as Roy puts it, just a shell remains. A situation where elections can only be fought by people who have money, and social protections and rights exist on the books but only in real life if you’re considered to belong to the right race, religion, gender and class.
The more I listened to Roy talk about India the more I heard echoes of the US. Perhaps not here, not yet, but by no means impossible.
As Stephan Marche, author of The Next Civil War, wrote in the Guardian recently, 2022 is kicking off in the US with elected sheriffs openly promoting resistance to federal authority in the US, militias training in preparation for war; threats against members of Congress up by 107% and death threats having become a part of the daily work life of election supervisors and school board members alike.
Z Communciation for more