IRA MATH­UR

In June 14, weeks af­ter In­dia cel­e­brat­ed the tri­umph of sec­u­lar­ism in its re­cent elec­tion when the na­tion­al­ist BJP lost over 300 seats in Par­lia­ment, Del­hi Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Vinai Ku­mar Sax­e­na sanc­tioned the pros­e­cu­tion of In­dia’s best-known liv­ing au­thor-ac­tivist Arund­hati Roy and Dr Sheikh Showkat Hus­sain over com­ments made about Kash­mir at an event in 2010. The com­plaint per­tained to Roy’s com­ment that the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry of Kash­mir was not an “in­te­gral” part of In­dia and ac­cused her and oth­ers of ad­vo­cat­ing for the se­ces­sion of Kash­mir from In­dia.

Lat­er in June, Roy was ho­n­oured with the pres­ti­gious PEN Pin­ter Prize 2024. Chair of Eng­lish PEN Ruth Borth­wick called Roy an in­ter­na­tion­al thinker whose “pow­er­ful voice is not to be si­lenced,” adding, “Roy tells ur­gent sto­ries of in­jus­tice with wit and beau­ty. While In­dia re­mains an im­por­tant fo­cus, she is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist thinker.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions Hu­man Rights Of­fice has al­so voiced con­cern over the use of an­ti-ter­ror laws in In­dia to si­lence crit­ics. High Com­mis­sion­er Volk­er Turk urged In­di­an au­thor­i­ties to drop the cas­es against Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hus­sain.

To­day, Book­shelf ho­n­ours fear­less thinkers and writ­ers like Roy and re­pro­duces part of a speech she gave at the Swedish Acad­e­my on March 22, 2023, at a con­fer­ence called “Thought and Truth Un­der Pres­sure.”

Arund­hati Roy is the au­thor of The Min­istry of Ut­most Hap­pi­ness and The God of Small Things, which won the Book­er Prize and was trans­lat­ed in­to more than 40 lan­guages.

The fol­low­ing is an ex­cerpt from Roy's speech at the Swedish Acad­e­my on March 22, 2023, at a con­fer­ence called Thought and Truth Un­der Pres­sure. The full speech can be found on­line.

“Our new In­dia is an In­dia of cos­tume and spec­ta­cle. Pic­ture a crick­et sta­di­um in Ahmed­abad, Gu­jarat. It’s called the Naren­dra Mo­di Sta­di­um and has a seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty of 132,000. In Jan­u­ary 2020, it was packed to ca­pac­i­ty for the Na­mastey Trump ral­ly when Mo­di fe­lic­i­tat­ed then-US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Stand­ing up and wav­ing to the crowd, in the city where dur­ing the 2002 pogrom Mus­lims had been slaugh­tered in broad day­light and tens of thou­sands dri­ven from their homes, and where Mus­lims still live in ghet­tos, Trump praised In­dia for be­ing tol­er­ant and di­verse. Mo­di called down a round of ap­plause.

A day lat­er, Trump ar­rived in Del­hi. His ar­rival in the cap­i­tal co­in­cid­ed with yet an­oth­er mas­sacre. A tiny one this time, a mi­ni-mas­sacre by Gu­jarat’s stan­dards. In a work­ing-class neigh­bour­hood on­ly kilo­me­tres away from Trump’s fine ho­tel and not far from where I live. Hin­du vig­i­lantes once again turned on Mus­lims. Once again, the po­lice stood by. The provo­ca­tion was that the area had seen protests against the an­ti-Mus­lim Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act. Fifty-three peo­ple, most­ly Mus­lim, were killed. Hun­dreds of busi­ness­es, homes and mosques were burnt. Trump said noth­ing.

Burned in­to some of our minds from those ter­ri­ble days is a dif­fer­ent kind of spec­ta­cle: a young Mus­lim man is ly­ing griev­ous­ly in­jured, close to death, on a street in In­dia’s cap­i­tal city. He is be­ing prod­ded, beat­en, and forced by po­lice­men to sing the In­di­an na­tion­al an­them. He died a few days lat­er. His name was Faizan. He was 23 years old. No ac­tion has been tak­en against those po­lice­men.

None of this should mat­ter much to the provosts of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic world. Ac­tu­al­ly, none of it does. Be­cause there is, af­ter all, busi­ness to at­tend to. Be­cause In­dia is cur­rent­ly the West’s bul­wark against a ris­ing Chi­na (or so it hopes), and be­cause in the free mar­ket, you can trade a lit­tle mass rape and lynch­ing or a spot of eth­nic cleans­ing or some se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial cor­rup­tion for a gen­er­ous pur­chase or­der for fight­er jets or com­mer­cial air­craft. Or crude oil pur­chased from Rus­sia, re­fined, stripped of the stig­ma of US sanc­tions and sold to Eu­rope and, yes, or so our news­pa­pers re­port, to the Unit­ed States, too. Every­body’s hap­py. And why not?

For Ukraini­ans, Ukraine is their coun­try. For Rus­sia, it’s a colony, and for West­ern Eu­rope and the US, it’s a fron­tier. (Like Viet­nam was. Like Afghanistan was.) But for Mo­di, it’s mere­ly yet an­oth­er stage on which to per­form. This time to, play the role of states­man-peace­mak­er and of­fer hom­i­lies such as “This is not the time for war.”

In­side what is in­creas­ing­ly feel­ing like a cult, there is so­phis­ti­cat­ed ju­ris­dic­tion. But there is no equal­i­ty be­fore the law. Laws are ap­plied se­lec­tive­ly de­pend­ing on caste, re­li­gion, gen­der and class. For ex­am­ple, a Mus­lim can­not say what Hin­dus can. A Kash­miri can­not say what every­body else can. It makes sol­i­dar­i­ty, speak­ing up for one an­oth­er, more im­por­tant than ever. But that, too, has be­come a per­ilous ac­tiv­i­ty, and this is what I mean by the ti­tle of my lec­ture—Ap­proach­ing Grid­lock.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, at just such a mo­ment, the list of things that can­not be said and words that must not be ut­tered is length­en­ing by the minute. Time was when gov­ern­ments and main­stream me­dia hous­es con­trolled the plat­forms that con­trolled the nar­ra­tive. In the West, that would, for the most part, be white folks. In In­dia, brah­min folks. And then, of course, there are fat­wa folks for whom cen­sor­ship and as­sas­si­na­tion mean the same thing.

If we lock our­selves in­to the prison cells of the very la­bels and iden­ti­ties that we have been giv­en by those who have al­ways had pow­er over us, we can, at best, stage a prison re­volt. Not a rev­o­lu­tion.

But to­day, cen­sor­ship has turned in­to a bat­tle of all against all. The fine art of tak­ing of­fence has be­come a glob­al in­dus­try. The ques­tion is how does one ne­go­ti­ate this hy­dra-head­ed, mul­ti-limbed, hawkeyed, for­ev­er-awake, ever-vig­i­lant, heresy-hunt­ing ma­chine? Is it even pos­si­ble, or is it a tide that must ebb be­fore we can even dis­cuss it? Seal­ing our­selves in­to com­mu­ni­ties, re­li­gious and caste groups, eth­nic­i­ties and gen­ders, re­duc­ing and flat­ten­ing our iden­ti­ties and press­ing them in­to si­los pre­cludes sol­i­dar­i­ty. Iron­i­cal­ly, that was and is the ul­ti­mate goal of the Hin­du caste sys­tem in In­dia. Di­vide a peo­ple in­to a hi­er­ar­chy of un­breach­able com­part­ments, and no one com­mu­ni­ty will be able to feel the pain of an­oth­er be­cause they are in con­stant con­flict.

It works like a self-op­er­at­ing, in­tri­cate ad­min­is­tra­tive/sur­veil­lance ma­chine in which so­ci­ety ad­min­is­ters/sur­veils it­self and, in the process, en­sures that the over­ar­ch­ing struc­tures of op­pres­sion re­main in place. Every­one ex­cept those at the very top and the very bot­tom—and these cat­e­gories are minute­ly grad­ed, too—is op­pressed by some­one and has some­one to be op­pressed by.

In 2019, the sev­en mil­lion in­hab­i­tants of the Kash­mir val­ley were put un­der a blan­ket telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­ter­net siege that last­ed for months. No phone calls, no texts, no mes­sages, no OTPs, no in­ter­net. None. And no­body was around to drop a Star­link satel­lite for them.

To­day, as I speak, the State of Pun­jab, pop­u­la­tion 27 mil­lion, is en­dur­ing its fourth con­sec­u­tive day of in­ter­net shut­down be­cause the po­lice are hunt­ing for a po­lit­i­cal fugi­tive and wor­ry about him ral­ly­ing sup­port.

By 2026, In­dia is pro­ject­ed to have one bil­lion smart­phone users. Imag­ine that vol­ume of da­ta in an In­dia-be­spoke DI­IA app. Imag­ine all that da­ta in the hands of pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions. Or, on the oth­er hand, imag­ine it in the hands of a fas­cist state and its in­doc­tri­nat­ed, weaponized sup­port­ers.

For ex­am­ple, say af­ter pass­ing a new cit­i­zen­ship law, Coun­try X man­u­fac­tures mil­lions of “refugees” out of its own cit­i­zen­ry. It can’t de­port them; it doesn’t have the mon­ey to build pris­ons for all of them. But Coun­try X won’t need a Gu­lag or con­cen­tra­tion camps. It can just switch them off. It can switch the State off in their Smart­phones. It could then have a vast ser­vice pop­u­la­tion, vir­tu­al­ly a sub­class of labour with­out rights, with­out min­i­mum wages, vot­ing rights, health­care or food ra­tions."

–End of Ex­cerpt

Arund­hati Roy has pub­lished sev­er­al non-fic­tion books and re­ceived nu­mer­ous ac­co­lades, in­clud­ing the Nor­man Mail­er Prize for Dis­tin­guished Writ­ing in 2011 and a place on Time's 2014 list of the 100 most in­flu­en­tial peo­ple in the world.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

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