Arundhati Roy with terrorist Yasin Malik
“The British drew the map of India in 1899— so that country became a colonizing power the moment it became independent, and the Indian state has militarily intervened in Manipur, in Nagaland, in Mizoram, in Kashmir, in Telangana, during the Naxalbari uprising, in Punjab, in Hyderabad, in Goa, in Junagarh…So often the Indian government, the Indian state, the Indian elite, they accuse the Naxalites of believing in protracted war, but actually you see a State—the Indian State—that has waged protracted war against its own people or what it calls its own people relentlessly since 1947, and when you look at who are those people that it has waged war against— the Nagas, the Mizos, the Manipuris, people in Assam, Hyderabad, Kashmir, Punjab—it’s always a minority, the Muslims, the Tribals, the Christians, the Dalits, the Adivasis, endless war by an upper caste Hindu state, this is what is the modern history of our country”
— Excerpt of the speech by Arundhati Roy,delivered on October 21, 2010 at a seminar titled ‘Azadi: The Only Way’
Her critics label her a Maoist sympathiser. Is she?
“I am a Maoist sympathiser. I am not a Maoist ideologue, because the communist movements in history have been just as destructive as capitalism. But right now, when the assault is on, I feel they are very much part of the resistance that I support”
— Arundhati Roy in an interview with Stephen Moss published in ‘The Guardian’ on June 05, 2011.
In 2017, Maleeha Lodhi, then Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN quoted Arundhati Roy to castigate India’s policies as murderous by showing a photo of a injured girl, however that photo was a girl of Gaza and not of Kashmir. But Lodhi quoted Roy : “These horrific murders are only a symptom. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.” However, later on The Wire in order to defend Roy’s intentions, stated that Lodhi misquoted Roy by omitting words like “of deeper malaise” after the word “symptom” and “millions” after “Whole populations”. But does that changes the meaning and intentions of of Roy ?
In 2017 Maleeha Lodhi, then Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN quoted Arundhati Roy to castigate India’s policies as murderous by showing a photo of a injured girl, however that photo of the girl was of Gaza and not of Kashmir. Later on The wire in order to defend Roy’s intentions stated that Lodhi misquoted Roy by omitting some words from the original version. But that doesn’t changes the intentions of Roy.
Arundhati Roy’s book Broken Republic delves into sympathising with Maoist terrorists and making arguments defending the maoists by asserting that they are the people fighting for their land and mines and trying to protect them from State which is under attack. This work is quoted by many Left-leaning scholars on several occasions.
In her essay “The Greater Common Good” published in 1999 she was critical of the Narmada River Valley Project by criticising the projects on the grounds that it will disturb the “social ecosystem” of tribal people and “Social links have been smashed, communities broken up” due to the construction dams.
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