Renowned author Arundhati Roy thinks that the actions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims to be a nationalist party whose only concern is nation-building and safeguarding the interests of India, will have the complete opposite outcome— a break-up of India.
In an interview on The Wire with Karan Thapar on February 12, Roy said that Hindu nationalism could break up India, however, she expressed hope and confidence in the people of India saying that they will resist Modi’s fascism and not let the BJP succeed.
She reiterated that India is a social contract between a number of religions, a number of casts, a number of ethnicities, speakers of 780 languages. “Now this vision of a Hindu nation, one language, one religion, one country, it’s like trying to distil an ocean and fit it into a Besleri bottle, it is a process of extreme violence.”
“You’re seeing something huge and diverse being shrunk and hardened, it will blow apart,” Roy said claiming that Hindu nationalism could break-up India.
Roy also expressed serious concerns about the direction in which India is headed post-2014 with the election of Narendra Modi to the seat of prime ministership. She said that Indian democracy under Modi has become a corporate-political nexus.
“Four people run the country, two sell it, two buy it, and all four of them are from Gujarat,” the novelist quoted a farmer from the farmer’s protests as saying. She added that not even capitalist countries practice such monopoly capital. “The corporate class underwrites Hindu nationalism,” she remarked.
Furthermore, she said that institutions of democracy were being eroded during the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) rule, but now it’s much worse. “Every institution has been either penetrated, overtaken or at least compromised,” Roy stressed adding that in UPA, it was the best democracy that money could buy, now it’s democracy for those who can afford it.
The renowned writer cited the example of the Supreme Court still pondering over laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act, Article 370, etc, whether they are constitutional or not. “The office of the Prime Minister is being abused by the PM by making such announcements like demonetization or a national lockdown with four hours of notice or the announcement of the withdrawal of the farm laws which was as insulting as the promulgation of the farm laws,” she explained.
Adding that democracy has seriously eroded, Arundhati Roy said that professors, lawyers, activists, journalists are in jails, and a man like Yati Narsinghanand, who is openly giving calls for genocide is out on bail. “The courts, the entire state machinery is complicit,” she said. The activist further gave the example of the Karnataka Hijab Row, wherein too, she highlighted, the high court’s interim order restricting the Muslim girls from wearing the Hijab and thus giving up to the Hindu majoritarianism.
“We have sophisticated laws, but they are applied depending on caste, religion, gender and ethnicity,” Roy said, adding that we are becoming a Hindu majoritarian state.
Watch the full interview here:
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