Pulling Fingernails Won’t Turn Kashmiris Into Indians, Pleads Arundhati Roy

[Pak123]

By Arundhati Roy

SRINAGAR, Indian-Occupied Kashmir—I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice.

I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal **** and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaaf’ – justice – from India, and now believed that Azadi – freedom – was their only hope. I met young stone-pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.”

 

[Karachiite]

An amazing woman.

 

[xenia]

Kashmir Interview​

By Arundhati Roy

Source: DN!
Thursday, October 28, 2010


AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the award-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy, facing possible arrest in Indian on sedition charges after recent comments she made about Kashmir.



Earlier today, an Indian politician from the right-wing BJP party filed a written complaint against Roy after she publicly advocated for Kashmir independence and challenged India’s claim that Kashmir is a, quote, "integral part of India." The area of Kashmir has been at the center of a decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan. Arundhati Roy made the comment at a conference organized to call on India to formally admit that Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute. If charged and convicted of sedition, Arundhati Roy could face up to life in prison.



On Tuesday, she defended her statements made at the conference. She wrote, quote, "I said what millions of people here say every day...I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world."



Roy went on to write, quote, "Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free."



Well, last month, I had a chance to interview the author of The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, about Kashmir. We spoke in London. She began by describing how Kashmir is the unfinished business of the partition of India in 1947.



ARUNDHATI ROY: Since the 1990s, which is when—you know, at the same time that the war in Afghanistan, the American one, its jihad in Afghanistan, and India realigned itself and became, you know, what it is now, sort of completely aligned with the US. And, you know, the whole problem in Kashmir, the militant armed struggle for independence—I mean, there was always a struggle for independence. It’s not independence. It’s not ever been really a part of India, which is why it’s ridiculous for the Indian government to keep saying it’s an integral part of India. But that armed struggle claimed the lives of 68,000 people, because India today has 500,000 troops manning that little valley. It’s the highest, most militarized zone in the world.



India has done everything wrong there. Apart from a military occupation, it has completely rigged elections. It has changed that valley into a little sort of puddle, a little pool of spies and informers and intelligence networks and torture chambers. And today, you know, it’s come to a stage where people have just had enough. Now you don’t even know who the rulers are—I mean, who the leaders of the uprising are, because it’s just people who cannot take it anymore. But the government still is quite busy trying to manage the crisis. You know, there’s are all sorts of shady things going on. Cleaning mobs are setting business—buildings on fire, when it does look very much as though the intelligence agencies are doing that themselves in order to, you know, paint—once again paint this uprising in a different light.



But the fact is that it’s a bit like feeding a population heavy metal in its diet all the time. And that metal, that toxicity, it just lives in the body, you know, and it goes into different places at different times, but the body never gets rid of it. And now that toxicity has reached a stage where I really think that until the international community somehow pays attention, this small valley is going to be just squashed by this completely, I mean, intransigent juggernaut that is the Indian state, that will not back off, doing something absolutely—absolutely immoral, you know? Absolutely as bad as it is in any other kind of occupation, including the Israeli occupation of Palestine, you know? But Kashmir, nobody talks about.



AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been there.



ARUNDHATI ROY: Of course I’ve been there. I spend a lot of time there.



AMY GOODMAN: And so, how does it fuel what is happening in Pakistan, and maybe even going into Afghanistan?



ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I mean, obviously, Pakistan and India, Kashmir is the toxic center of that relationship. And unless it’s resolved, I don’t think any part of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India can be—that whole area is like getting more and more toxic, you know? And what—right now the fact is that the US is deeply involved in all of it. And as far as—



AMY GOODMAN: How?



ARUNDHATI ROY: Because of what it’s been doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan all these years. But right now in India, I mean, the Congress government can’t resolve Kashmir on its own, because the right-wing BJP is there to stymie it at any point of time, you know? So it does need now an intervention from a larger community that is saying to this country that this is just not acceptable.



AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen?



ARUNDHATI ROY: I think there has to be a kind of undiplomatic, if you like, intervention. A lot of people from outside need to look at that issue very carefully and stop looking at India as if, "Oh, it’s just this market where we can—you know, it’s a good financial destination, so let it do what it wants in Kashmir," because that’s—the whole thing is going to unravel. So I do think that even the Americans need to look into Kashmir and, you know, talk about it, since they are involved in creating this cesspool there now.



AMY GOODMAN: The conflict is what? Who is fighting for what?



ARUNDHATI ROY: The Kashmiris. See, Jammu and Kashmir used to been an independent kingdom at the time of partition. And when partition happened, all these independent princely states were told that they could, you know, decide whether they wanted to go with India or with Pakistan, which is already a bit strange. You know, why should—I mean, what was the moral logic behind that? But anyway, in Kashmir, there had already been a democratic movement against the king, who was actually a Hindu king ruling Muslim—a majority Muslim state. So the king really didn’t have any moral authority at the time. And when partition happened, because of how it happened, he signed a letter of ascension, you know, asking India to send in troops. But that was based on the fact that there would be a plebiscite later. And that plebiscite never took place, you know, and the situation just became worse and worse and worse. So, right now what they are fighting for is what they call "Azadi," which is independence from India and from Pakistan.



AMY GOODMAN: And why the escalation of violence now and the escalation of protest now?



ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, it’s the third year in succession, you know? In 2008, first—there’s always some pretext, you know, but the pretexts are not important. In Kashmir even, if the electricity goes off, it turns into a struggle for independence. You know, so, in a way, it’s sort of looking away from the issue to find the immediate cause.



But the immediate cause this time—last summer it was two girls who were drowned, who were—you know, who were sort of killed and drowned, and then they said—I mean, whose bodies were found in this shallow water. And they said, oh, you know, they drowned in this three inches of water or whatever it was. Year before that, it was over the sort of transfer of land to this Amarnath Yatra, which is a sort of Hindu pilgrimage trust. And this year, it’s because protests happened and the police started to shoot into the crowd and kill young boys, and it just became bigger and bigger and bigger ’til now, already sixty or seventy young people have been killed.



But the point is that it’s never been so huge, the protests. They’ve gone on—it’s gone on for months. They’re not being able to diffuse it. They don’t know who to arrest. They don’t know who to kill. You know, they’re longing for it to become the same old, same old—you know, some militants that they can say are sent from Pakistan—but they can’t deal with these basically unarmed crowds, stone-throwing stone pelters. They don’t know how to deal with them. So, every day, every day, the anger increases, and a few more are killed, and the anger increases.



AMY GOODMAN: Well, clearly the US has tremendous power, because it has billions invested in India. The latest is nuclear power deals, US corporations there. And, of course, the US pours billions into Pakistan. So, what do you think the US can do—and not just the government, but people calling for justice? What do you feel is just?



ARUNDHATI ROY: I think, for example, Obama is going to India now, and India is desperately trying to sort of, you know, push—like for the Commonwealth Games that are happening now, they are pushing all the beggars into some park and, you know, putting billboards around them so that no one will see them. And they are trying to do something similar in Kashmir, desperately trying to shut the problem away from public scrutiny before he comes.



But I think that the most important thing is now not to allow India or Pakistan to speak for Kashmiri people, you know? Because Kashmiri people need a space in which to think. They’ve just lived all their lives with a palatine bag over their heads and a gun pointed at their temples. They need—somebody needs to create the space for them to be able to say what they want, because this is a whole population that is in—living in the most insufferable conditions.



AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, speaking about Kashmir. We were sitting in London a few weeks ago, where she had come to visit. She is back in India now, and she faces possible arrest for sedition, for talking about Kashmir in the way she has described on Democracy Now!, calling for India to formally admit that Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute.

 

[KS]

An amazing Blog literally shredding the misleading plea of our Suzanne Arundatti.

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Hey woman,

Congrats, you are back in news! You were trending on Twitter and featured in Google trends. And thanks, you made many guys look up dictionary.com to understand what sedition meant. You are really of some use!

Well, I read your statement, and I loved it because it was not a ******* 30,000 words essay! Anyway, I had some reactions, please find them below (in bold and in red, adjectives that you prefer?):

Kashmir, Oct. 26: I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. (Wonderful, you are going places woman, wished you had cared to write something from Bihar or UP; people are suffering due to neglect and bad politics there too, but wait, stay where you are.) This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. (LOL! You read and believe newspapers? But I guess that’s what you do when you wake up in the morning – take up a newspaper and find if your name appears anywhere. If not, you plan how it can.) I said what millions of people here say every day. (Millions of people say benc**d in India every day, that doesn’t sanction that term any “social acceptance&#8221 I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written and said for years. (Absolutely, you have NEVER said or written anything NEW. You just pick up issues, after reading the morning newspapers, and join the bandwagon.) Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. (Sorry, I didn’t really care to read the transcript of your speeches. Can you make them a bit shorter? I’ve an attention span problem.) I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; (Oh, Kashmir is an area under military occupation? Thanks, will update my general knowledge and Wikimapia, but wait, how come you were allowed there? Don’t all democratic rights cease to exist in an area under military occupation? Or were you an “embedded activist” like those embedded journalists of CNN in Iraq during the Gulf War?) for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; (Really? Or are you ******* kidding me?) for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; (What the **** is a “Dalit soldier” with a “grave”? I thought Dalits existed only within Hinduism and Sikhism, where there are no graves. Oh okay, next you are writing a 300,000 essay on why Dalits are neither Hindu/Sikh/Christian/Muslim nor Indian, and why the need justice and liberty from the tyrannous Brahminical Indian state?) for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state. (Oh great, so this whole country is under some kind of occupation – police state – what the ****, you opened my eyes, where is the red flag?)

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal **** and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. (Yes, “last year”, and you are visiting the place “now” because your heart bleeds for a common Kashmiri.) I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. (Wait a minute; you were also in Delhi a couple of weeks back. Did you meet any Kashmiri Pandit, for whom you claimed to be seeking justice in the earlier paragraph?) We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get insaf — justice — from India, and now believed that Azadi — freedom — was their only hope. (Have you seen the Bollywood movie Gulaal? You can sit in such circles almost in each part of this country and listen to cries of Azadi from imagined powers. There are Brahmins in this country, whom you think control everything, who feel “trapped” in the modern state that is implementing reservations for everyone except them.) I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. (Did you meet that Indian policeman who lost his eye after a 5 kg stone hit his eye?) I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones. (I once traveled with a Hindu in Ahmedabad, who told me how Muslims had created an “acid pool” in “their area” and used to throw Hindus in them during riots; there have been many riots in Ahmedabad, not just during 2002, for your kind information. Of course I didn’t believe him and went out to write an essay or even a fake news article. I don’t believe people easily and form opinions. If the state can’t be trusted blindly, that doesn’t mean I’d trust every other non-state actor blindly. Oh, non-state actor!)

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. (Yes, there are idiots who take you seriously.) On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. (ROFLMAO!) It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. (But you are fine and your conscience is not disturbed if someone does the same to people and force them to say that they are NOT Indians?) It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. (“just” one or “just one”? People like you are surely not going to let this society be “just one”. It would be broken into Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Brahmins, Christians, Poor, Rich, Women, etc. I want my society and country to be “just one” for god’s sake!) Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. (Yes, yes, pity the nation that produces such writers. Today I’m proud of Chetan Bhagat, seriously.) Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free. (Yes, I’d pity the nation only if you were “actually” jailed, and you won’t be, dear, because this is a country that doesn’t need your pity.)

An open letter to Arundhati Roy | Blog of Pagal Patrakar

 

[justanobserver]

^
I've read this, awesome stuff

 

[KS]

And a followup to the above article:

Its a rather long one - but please read through it,you wont regret it.
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Not even a fake news article had attracted so much of traffic and reaction in a single day as my open letter to Arundhati Roy did (I’m not patting my back but mere stating a fact that might be insignificant for you). While most of the reactions were on expected lines (I knew many people were hell irritated with Roy calling India “bhookha nanga”, and they would lap it up), some of the reactions amused, shocked and disgusted me.

There were comments, again on expected lines, on both the facebook page as well as here on this blog, which were abusive (towards Ms. Arundhati Roy, me, or to fellow readers); that was disgusting, but as a rule, I would ignore them and not comment upon their “merits”.

The other reaction, rather criticism, was that the language I used was unfair, unkind and uncouth (?). Hello! This article was published and categorized in “Rants” to begin with. When I shared it on twitter and facebook i.e. when I “solicited” readership, I put that “rants” and “strong language” disclaimers upfront. If you were not comfortable with “rants”, you should never have bothered to read it. If you click a link with NSFW disclaimer at your workplace, only you are to be blamed if you lose your job.

The third reaction, which was the most important for me and because of which I’m writing this follow up article, was the confusion whether the article was just on Arundhati Roy or about the wider Kashmir issue. I replied to a couple of comments, but I thought I should make that clear to each and every one, and hence this article.

Well, my open letter to Arundhati Roy was “only” about her ubiquitous claims of being a rights activist and NOT at all any commentary on the Kashmir issue. It was a “rant” against her, and not against the Kashmiris, not even against the “separatist” Kashmiris.

But why, you may ask, why this rant?

I would ask you, why does anyone rant? When one is upset, angry, irritated or hurt. I was hurt. And I was hurt by a “truth”.

Yeah, it might appear as if I’m making a U-turn, but of course, the issues that Arundhati Roy regurgitated (not “raised”, mind you) surely has tinges of truth that hurts one’s “national pride”.

And that “truth” is that there are thousands in this country, some would claim millions, living in that state called Jammu & Kashmir, who simply don’t feel like “Indians”, even as rest of us scratch our heads and feel clueless over what so horrible have we done to them to make them feel that way (I know many of you activists types are itching to recite the list of “atrocities” performed by the Indian state over Kashmiri people, but just hold on for a few minutes).

So Arundhati Roy deserved that “rant” for speaking the “truth”? Not really. As she herself wrote in her statement, “I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written and said for years.”

One is inclined to ask, why no rant against those “other commentators”, why pick on Arundhati?

Because Arundhati Roy is a charlatan. She “pretends” to be what she is not. And this is exactly why I don’t like India TV, which pretends to be a “news channel” but is not, or Arindam Chaudhuri, who pretends to be “an educator” but is not; those who had been following Faking News would know that these two have often been at the receiving ends of my “rants”.

And that’s why I don’t “dislike” Chetan Bhagat, because he doesn’t pretend to be a “literary writer”, which he is not, and calls himself an “entertainment writer”. A couple of his interviews that I have read, he has candidly admitted that he writes “for the masses”. And hence I was not being too sarcastic in my open letter, when I said, “Today I’m proud of Chetan Bhagat, seriously.” Yeah, but I hate his ToI editorials; he should stop “pretending” there.

Anyway, coming back to Arundhati, I don’t like her (and ranted against her) because she is intellectually dishonest and an attention seeker. My rant was more an attempt to show the hollowness of her “support” to a cause than the “cause” itself. Maybe if you read it ignoring the swear words, if you are not comfortable with them, you’d come to know what I mean.

e.g. when I ask her why she didn’t care to visit the house of any Kashmiri Pandit in Delhi even as her “statement” makes a claim that she was fighting for their cause, I am attempting to show her “intellectual dishonesty”, and when I say, “Absolutely, you have NEVER said or written anything NEW. You just pick up issues, after reading the morning newspapers, and join the bandwagon”, I am hinting at her “attention seeking” character. I am neither commenting on the plight of Kashmiri Pandits nor am dismissing the “bandwagons” she jumps over as being frivolous ones.

Now some of you may argue that even if she was intellectually dishonest or attention seeking, at least she “raises” some issues and makes people and the establishment take notice of them.

Seriously, you believe that?

What great help has she done to any “movement” or “cause” she has supported till date? In fact, she weakens the arguments and causes of those with whom she sides, thanks to her hyper-exaggerated and ridiculous statements.

Don’t’ believe me? Because I call myself “Pagal Patrakar” (and not “pretend” like Madam Arundhati to be sane)? Fine, I’d quote others, who are not “pagal” and make you see the point:

Roy’s early essays were written in a voice that some progressive Americans would call “prophetic,” but like many prophets she tended to overstate her case. There are no small things anymore. This stridency tended to make her writing less agreeable, too. What came next was predictable: September 11, which deranged many things, had the effect of turning her into a zealot.

This is not written by some agent of Brahminical India, this is the opinion of Isaac Chotiner, one of the executive editors of The New Republic, an American magazine of politics and the arts, which is acknowledged to be supporting “liberal social and social democratic economic policies”. Isaac makes these comments while reviewing one of her books/essays, and further notes:

But this book is not a plea for a more humane capitalism (something we urgently need). Instead, it is an attack on many of the good and democratic aspects of modern Indian life. Even worse, it is an assault on democracy itself. Roy’s status as a famous woman of the far left has obscured the fact that she is an outright reactionary.

Precisely! Arundhati Roy doesn’t attack any “capitalist” “corporate” or “Brahminical” establishment through her ridiculous statements, but she attacks “democracy” itself, and that makes her a text-book case of a “reactionary”. You can read the full article here.

That was a “liberal” and “progressive” American calling her a “zealot” and “reactionary”, and that American is not “pagal”, unless Arundhati fans choose to call him that (and they may, for they love her so much and hate America so much!). Fine, if poor Isaac is termed “pagal”, I’d now quote someone who calls himself “great” – The Greatbong.

For the religious fundamentalist the villain is anyone who does not accept his God(s) as their savior(s). For Roy, the principal evil agents are the “oppressors”—— USA, UK, Israel ,India, and corporations (not specifically in that order) with her animus being directed specifically towards upper-class so-called “Brahminical” Hindus.

That’s Arnab Ray, a famous blogger and author, who blogs with a penname Greatbong. Unfortunately he calls his blog as “Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind”, but in this article, he clearly betrays the “demented mind” of Arundhati Roy (before the guardians of good language and civilized behavior pounce on me, I’d like to clarify that I have used “demented” as a synonym for “irrational” or “unreasonable” for Ms. Roy, not “crazy”, which I have kept for myself, not sure what Arnab means for himself).

One of the sermons I received for ranting and using “bad language” against Arundhati from the pro-Arundhati gang was those famous lines by the German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller: then they came for me — and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Niemöller talks about Communists, Jews, Unionists and Catholics in his famous statement, but he doesn’t call upon people to speak up for the rights of “zealots”, “reactionaries” or “fundamentalists”.

And seriously, I’m dismayed that people think that Arundhati Roy can make any difference to the Kashmir issue. She raised a stink over the tribal/Naxal issue, and when the government asked her to be a part of the solution, she backed off. That’s her contribution to one of her pet-causes.

Here in Kashmir, more than 100 people were killed in the last couple of months, and the government was forced to appoint “interlocutors” to solve the problem. Geelani might dismiss the appointment of interlocutors as an eyewash, but when did you hear a nation appointing “interlocutors” to talk to its own citizens? This term is usually used to refer to people helping nations talk to each other. Remember Shashi Tharoor had got in some “controversy” over its use?

Was the government pushed to take that step due to the assays or essays of Arundhati Roy? In fact, once she came into the picture, poor Geelani faced the threat of being arrested over sedition charges! That’s her “Midas touch” to a problem she espouses, or “pretends” to espouse.

Nonetheless, Arundhati has EVERY right to say what she told, and NO WAY should sedition charges be initiated against her. She has been “ranting” against the Indian state for long and daring them to arrest her. She shouldn’t be arrested, for “ranting” is no crime.

And fans of Arundhati, please give me some rights to “rant” against her, especially when I don’t “pretend” to be indulging in anything else but in a rant.

And you know, fans of Arundhati, you were not hurt by my “rant” or “bad language”, you were hurt because truth hurts. The truth about your dear Arundhati hurts, I know. I’m sorry to have hurt you.

http://blog.fakingnews.com/2010/10/truth-hurts-follow-up-to-the-open-letter-to-arundhati-roy/

 

[vikramaditya AC]

She is desperate for attention!!

 

[Hulk]

By Arundhati Roy

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal **** and murder of Asiya and Nilofer

She is talking about 2 women who were allegedly raped and later found one of them was virgin.
Don't you think it is a proud movement, we have discovered how to **** someone and still let her be virgin.
On serious note this was a bogus case and nothing is established against state actors, it could well be done by non state actors.