Arundhati Roy

FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF MY SEDITIOUS HEART AND THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS, A NEW AND PRESSING DISPATCH FROM THE HEART OF THE CROWD AND THE SOLITUDE OF A WRITER'S DESK Azadi-Urdu for Freedom-is the refrain in the iconic chant of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. And now, while Kashmir's streets have been silenced, the irony is that its people's anthem, with similar lyrics, rhythm and cadence, echoes on the streets of the country that most Kashmiris view as their coloniser. What lies between the silence of one street and the sound of the other? Is it a chasm, or could it become a bridge? In this series of penetrating essays on politics and literature, Arundhati Roy examines this question and challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. Roy writes of the existential threat posed to Indian democracy by an emboldened Hindu nationalism, of the internet shutdown and information siege in Kashmir-the most densely militarized zone in the world-and India's new citizenship laws that discriminate against Muslims and marginalized communities and could create a crisis of statelessness on a scale previously unknown. The essays include mediations on language, public as well as private, and the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. Azadi, she warns, hangs in the balance for us all.

Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

AZADI

Marion

I mention this because it taught me that the place for literature is built by writers and readers. It's a fragile place in some ways, but an indestructible one. When it's broken, we rebuild it. Because we need shelter. I very much like the idea of literature that is needed. Literature that provides shelter. Shelter of all kinds.

Over time, an unspoken compromise was arrived at.

I began to be called a 'writer-activist'. Implicit in this categorization was that the fiction was not political and the essays were not literary.

Fake news is the skeletal structrue, the scaffolding over which the specious wrath that fuels fascism drapes itself. The foundation on which that scaffolding rests is fake history - possibly the oldest form of fake news. The history being peddled by Hindu nationalists, that hackneyed tale of spurious valour and exaggerated victimhood in which history is turned into mythology and mythology into history, has been very ably perforated and demolished by serious scholars.

AZADI quotes

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