Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? If you’re an Adivasi (indigenous Indian) living in a forest village and the states arms comes & surrounds your village & starts burning it, what are you supposed to do? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.
“Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.” There are very few people who can live these words as much as Arundhati Roy when she was speaking about violent resistance against systemic oppression during a speech in 2011 prior to the release of her book ‘Broken Republic’. And it is for this very reason that the Indian state finds her as a thorn too sharp to be trampled upon. Arundhati Roy is one of the few voices that keeps giving frequent reality checks to the Indian populace whenever they show traits of ignorance or lack of empathy & she is considered polarizing by some for this very nature of hers.
It raises a pertinent question about why is truth & people who speak truth considered as nuisances in our society. One of the fundamental duties of any good citizen in a nation is to question, dissent & critically analyze every move of those in power. The very act of dissent is a patriotic act, an act to correct the wrongs in our country and to evolve as a society. And yet it is those dissenting voices that are labelled as ‘anti-nationals’, ‘Urban Naxals’, etc.
Can a speech about a disputed territory be considered as anti-national when both India & Pakistan had agreed to a plebiscite at the United Nations, when all that Arundhati was saying was to hold up to what is right, keeping our hyper-nationalist lens aside. The question of Kashmir has always been an extremely touchy subject for the 2 countries, while both have conveniently ignored & subjugated the most important voice in this matter – the Kashmiris. When we say that a place is an integral part of our state, the most important factor in that is the people living in that state.
Have we as a state ever consulted the people of Kashmir, in a free & fair manner to have their opinion on if they agree to the same. If not, & if there has been widespread resistance to this notion, then what is the point of reiterating the word “integrity” over & over again. The right to self determination is a basic human right, & when India & Pakistan agreed to Resolution 47, they agreed to give this right to Kashmiris. Can expressing an opinion on this be considered an anti-national activity? If having a differing view from the masses makes you a threat to your country then most of us can be considered as a national security threat.
My first reading of Arundhati Roy, was with her Booker prize winning debut novel – “The God of Small Things”. With her first novel , she had established herself as someone who was going to speak unpleasant truth’s about the caste & class structures in India. For many who label her as a ‘leftist’, although there is nothing wrong in being one, should take a read of her first novel where she ridicules the Savarna communist leadership in India for its blindness & prejudice towards caste atrocities & for failing to include anti-caste movement as a part of their class struggle.
Her book (Walking with the Comrades) on the resistance movement in the forests of central India is another instance where she took a difficult position in contrast to general public sentiments. To speak about the importance of the resistance not just in context of limiting corporate takeover of forest land, but also in terms of its importance in relation to climate change & how people from indigenous & tribal communities are at the forefront of this struggle.
Today, as Arundhati and Prof Sheikh Showkat Hussain are charged under the draconian UAPA law, it is more important than ever to stand up & speak for them as an ally, as a friend & more importantly as empathetic human beings. Ms. Roy once said that “there is no such thing as the voice of the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” Let us make ourselves heard until they silence us, for those who fought for our voices. For Arundhati & Dr. Hussain.