Rape has been used as a tool of violence in India, says Indian author Arundhati Roy
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” -Plato.
Kathmandu: Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel ‘The God of Small Things’, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997.
India’s veteran novelist is also known for her love and affection for those minority Indians who, since the advent of Indian Prime Minister Modi, feel like secondclass citizens in their own country.
Arundhati comes out at regular intervals with her scathing and piercing comments against the Indian regime that possesses, so far as we understand, concentrated hatred against the marginalized Indian Muslims, whose numerical strength in India far exceeds the strength of the real Islamic States even Pakistan.
Arundhati speaks against the plights of the Indian Dalits and more so of the ignored and, at times, “Muslims treated with cruelty residing in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, who assert that they are living in an open-air jail. Talking on the current plight of the caged
Kashmiri population, more so after the scrapping of the special status of Kashmir on August 05 2019, the veteran Kashmiri leader, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, once said while talking to Karan Thapar of the WIRE that, in his own words, “that at this moment the Kashmiri people do not feel and do not want to be Indian. He even went so far as to say that they would rather be ruled by the Chinese, a point he reiterated when he was asked if he really meant this”.
Dr. Farooq Abdullah heads the National Conference party and is being accused of being the most bulging ‘proIndia’ face in Jammu and Kashmir for the past four decades. However, this is not our concern.
It is widely believed that he has been close to Delhi since Jawahar Lal Nehru’s time.
During his interview with Karan Thapar, he said that “the Kashmiris were ‘slaves’ who were being treated like second-class citizens”. Thapar conducted this interview with Dr. Abdullah on September 23, 2020. The interview is still making rounds after rounds on YouTube. Thus, for a political personality of Dr. Abdullah’s stature; how could they say that they would prefer Chinese rule instead of India’s? What should then be inferred?
Thanks, China has not yet made any comments on Dr. Abdullah’s rounded proclamation.
Very interestingly, Dr. Abdullah’s Kashmir and some other five NorthEast Indian provinces like Manipur, Assam, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram are located very close to the Chinese border. This must have some meaning underneath.
The political health in these five North-East Indian states of late is not good which conversely or say by implication becomes advantageous to rival adjoining China automatically.
Voices from some fanatics claim that the required fuel for violence is being provided by neighboring China and Pakistan. Such accusations are not new as and when India enters into fresh internal trouble of its own making.
In addition, such whimsical charges become a regular marvel as and when Indian elections are at hand. Manipur has been under the flames for two and a half months.
The Manipuri flames have already approached Haryanaclose to New Delhi.
Back on Dr. Abdullah: This very much explains the anger and anguish of the senior Kashmiri leader as to what means India to the people and the denizens of Kashmir under Indian occupation.
So frustrated and enraged is yet another Indian Kashmiri leader Mehbooba Mufti. However, for exposing PM Modi’s continued atrocities in Kashmir, both Dr. Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are taken by the Indian regime as more Pakistanis than Indians. Now back to Arundhati Roy:
While receiving the Navmalayali Cultural Prize awarded by the Magazine itself, Arundhati said, the News Minute dated August 09, 2023, that the Manipur incident (violence) was not an isolated incident and that its repercussions were evident in other regions like Haryana and elsewhere”. Arundhati made these observations at the Kerala Sahitya Academy hall in Thrissur. Addressing the alarming rise in cases of sexual violence, Roy expressed her distress over the normalization of rape and the appalling support some women were providing to such heinous acts”. Elaborating further on the Indian scenario, Arundhati says, “Rape has been used as a tool of violence and we are in a situation today where women are telling men to rape women of other faiths and beliefs.
“This means we have gone psychotic and that the police are handing over women to a mob to be raped”.
Perhaps she was referring to the sorry tale of two women of Manipur wherein they were paraded naked and later left to be raped by the irate mob.
The West apparently made no statements when the two women were paraded naked in Manipur thus allowing
PM Modi abundant political space to pounce upon those who do not belong to his adhered faith.
Speaking more candidly, Arundhati said, “Manipur is witnessing a kind of ethnic cleansing and the Center is complicit… the state is partisan and the security forces are split”.
Summing up the ongoing chaotic violence in the North-East region of India, Arundhati says, “the vulnerability faced by the minorities, particularly the Muslims and the growing sense of insecurity due to the atmosphere of “intolerance”. Arundhati Roy in a simple manner expresses and has explained the true picture of her India as she has seen it over these recent days and weeks.
Back to violence:
A fresh report prepared by Kaushik Raj for the Qatar based ‘Al Jazeera’ dated August 12, 2023, referring to August 02, 2023, demonstrations held at HANSI city of Hisar district, one speaker from Hindu farright group Bajrang Dal –can be heard serving an ultimatum to local businesses to fire any Muslim employees working for them or face a boycott.”
Speaking on Haryana Violence, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee has said that “Every state, including those governed by BJP, is being incited with communal violence.
Haryana
This is being done with the elections in mind…. But the people do not really love these things. The common people, at the end of the day, want roti-kapdamakaan (food, clothing and shelter),” reports the Telegraph Online (India) dated August 03, 2023.
She accused the BJP of contributing to the disintegration and destruction of the nation, promising change under the 26-party INDIA coalition, of which Trinamul is a constituent, adds the Telegraph Online, India. Thanks to that so far no one in India has said that China and Pakistan were involved in inciting violence in Haryana.
Pakistani national Seema Hyder was, thankfully, not indicted of causing the Manipur and Haryana violence. Or else India has the habit of hurling accusations at Pakistan inevitably.
Had Haryana been at the India-China border, India would surely have accused China of inciting violence in India.
However, the fact is that, say seasoned political commentators in South Asia, India shall be the main architect of its own callous disintegration/ fracture/split if and when it happens!
The associated fact is also that if and when India disintegrates, it will do so with a great big bang whose tremors shall hit the entire South Asian nations that border the vast
Indian landmass.
For Nepal, the constant fear is that if the minority Muslims or for that matter the ethno-conflict victims who are pushed to the wall, they will certainly opt for using the open international borders and sneak into Nepal and bribing some “Brahmin” Chief District Officers will receive a Nepali citizenship certificate. This process has been going on since 1990 when a political movement sponsored and fully funded by India cut the wings of sitting King Birendra.
Reports are already there that Manipur victims have entered Nepal through the open Eastern border of Nepal that adjoins India’s most sensitive Chicken neck corridor, so reported the People’s Review Weekly some two weeks ago. The land exchange idea floated by Shrestha is mystifying:
Nepal’s acclaimed border expert Shri Buddhi Narayan Shrestha has been dayin-day-out encouraging Nepal’s political leadership to abandon the territorial claims to Kalapani-LipulekLimpiya Dhura but instead ‘compromise’ with the area of the Chicken Neck with India in order to expand the unhindered passage to B’desh sea ports such as Mongla for trading purposes.
Why he is insisting for so long on this “proposal” has surprised many