The great novelist Arundhati Roy could soon go to jail over a 14-year-old speech. Last week, Delhi’s lieutenant governor VK Saxena gave the police the green light to charge her under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act—which is supposed to be aimed at terrorists—over “anti-India” comments made in 2010. The Act permits detention without trial.
Roy has long been politically fearless. Her 1997 novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the Booker Prize in the West, earned her charges of obscenity in her home state of Kerala. Since then, she has become as well-known for her activism as her fiction in India—speaking up for lower castes, and challenging Hindu nationalist bigwigs.
The charge against Roy relates to a speech in which she frankly discussed the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, half of which is ruled by India, and the other by its next-door nemesis Pakistan. But this de facto reality is obstinately denied by India’s nationalist bureaucrats—causing newspapers and textbooks to pretend the whole region belongs to India.
In her speech, Roy had the temerity to point out that Jammu and Kashmir had never been an “integral part of India.” More controversial still, she argued that the Indian state treated its part of Jammu and Kashmir as if it were a colony. (Just days before her speech, over 100 protesters had been killed in the region by Indian police.) Hindu nationalists promptly launched into splenetic rants about her “anti-India” views.
That Modi is digging up such an old affront has less to do with Roy’s views in 2010 than Modi’s in 2024. It comes at a moment when India is still reeling from a surprise election result. Having frozen the bank accounts of its rivals and locked up two opposition chief ministers, the alliance led by Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had expected to win 400 of the 543 seats. Instead, it won just 293. The result was widely hailed as a victory for Indian democracy; Modi, his critics said, had been cut down to size. Yet as the intimidation of India’s star dissident shows, the celebrations may have been premature.
Pratinav Anil is a history lecturer at Oxford University, and the author of, most recently, Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77. Follow him on X @pratinavanil.
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It is deeply disappointing that even outlets like the FP write about India from the leftist, one-sided, anti-India standpoint of the NYT and Al Jazeera. Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir is much like “Palestine’s” claim to all of Israel. I first stopped reading anything the NYT, Wapo etc wrote about India, then about Israel and now about anything. Looks like I’ll have to stop reading the FP on India too. I’m not in favor of censoring speech but Indian law censors all kinds of speech including anything that offends any community’s sensibilities. For example, India was the first country to ban Rushdie’s Satanic verses at the behest of Muslim leaders. Most Indians are offended by Roy’s championing of Maoist and Islamist terrorists ( the latter most recently attacked a group of Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir, killing 10 and seriously injuring over 30. She also advocates breaking India into five countries. Not sure why five nationalisms would be better than one but there you have it.
The author of the piece, Antil, is a rabid communist whose default position is opposing anything and everything that the Indian government does. India has been fighting Islamic terrorists in Kashmir and Maoist terrorists in the East, who have killed thousands of innocents over the last decades.
Arundhati Roy is not an activist fighting for "Human Rights". She is an active supporter of these terrorists. Utterly shameful that y'all would publish something like this. Why is terrorism against Hindus ok?
Just last week jihadi terrorists from Pakistan attacked a bus of Hindu pilgrims and gunned down seven of them. Where is the story on them?
Been with The FP since the beginning. Deeply deeply disappointed that they would publish this kind of one sided nonsense. I thought this place was different from NYT and WaPo and BBC. Will have to reconsider my subscription.