I’m Ashamed of What’s Happening in
IndiaBy Arundhati Roy
November 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - " Indian
Express"
- Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of
the work we do, I would like to add the National Award
for the Best Screenplay that I won in 1989 to the
growing pile of returned awards. Also, I want to
make it clear that I am not returning this award because
I am “shocked” by what is being called the “growing
intolerance” being fostered by the present government.
First of all, “intolerance” is the
wrong word to use for the lynching, shooting, burning,
and mass murder of fellow human beings. Second, we had
plenty of advance notice of what lay in store for us —
so I cannot claim to be shocked by what has happened
after this government was enthusiastically voted into
office with an overwhelming majority*.
Third, these horrific murders are only a symptom of a
deeper malaise. Life is hell for the living too. Whole
populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and
Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure
of when and from where the assault will come.
Today we live in a country in which,
when the thugs and apparatchiks of the New Order talk of
“illegal slaughter” they mean the imaginary cow that was
killed — not the real man that was murdered. When they
talk of taking “evidence for forensic examination” from
the scene of the crime, they mean the food in the
fridge, not the body of the lynched man.
We say we have “progressed” — but when
Dalits are butchered and their children burned alive,
which writer today can freely say, like Babasaheb
Ambedkar once did, that “To the Untouchables, Hinduism
is a veritable chamber of horrors,” without getting
attacked, lynched, shot, or jailed? Which writer can
write what Saadat Hassan Manto wrote in his “Letter to
Uncle Sam”?
It doesn’t matter whether we agree or
disagree with what is being said. If we do not have the
right to speak freely we will turn into a society that
suffers from intellectual malnutrition, a nation of
fools. Across the subcontinent it has become a race to
the bottom — one that the New India has enthusiastically
joined. Here too now, censorship has been outsourced to
the mob.
I am very pleased to have found (from
somewhere way back in my past) a National Award that I
can return, because it allows me to be a part of a
political movement initiated by writers, filmmakers, and
academics in this country who have risen up against a
kind of ideological viciousness and an assault on our
collective IQ that will tear us apart and bury us very
deep if we do not stand up to it now.
I believe what artists and
intellectuals are doing right now is unprecedented and
does not have a historical parallel. It is politics by
other means. I am so proud to be part of it. And so
ashamed of what is going on in this country today.
Roy is the author of ‘The God of
Small Things’. Her most recent book is ‘Broken
Republic’.
opyright © 2015 The Indian Express