News Analysis India

Tag: Arundhati Roy

  • CPI (ML) Liberation convention: Arundhati Roy calls for ‘anti-Fascist’ grouping of opposition parties

    By PTI

    PATNA: Author and social activist Arundhati Roy Friday launched a sharp attack on the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and stressed the need for forging an “anti-Fascist” grouping of opposition parties.

    Roy was in the Bihar capital for addressing a convention organized by the CPI (ML) Liberation, which is a part of the multi-party ‘Mahagathbandhan’ but supports the Nitish Kumar government in the state from the outside.

    “The country is run by four people. Two of them happen to be buyers and the rest two are sellers. All of them belong to Gujarat,” said the writer evoking applause from the crowd.

    She was obviously referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.

    She said “Modi ji thinks that he need not speak about Adani, since the common people should remain ever thankful to him for five kilograms of ration. But the Hindenburg report speaks about a scam involving 100 billion dollars. It is the biggest corporate scam in the country.”

    Referring to the alleged proximity of the business tycoon with the prime minister, she said “Earlier, Modi ji used to travel by Adani’s aircraft. Now, Adani travels with Modi ji in the latter’s plane.”

    “The farm laws had been brought to benefit Adani and his ilk, which is evident from the fact that his warehouses had come up across the country,” Roy said.

    “No raids were ever conducted on properties owned by Adani. But BBC is paying the price for bringing to the fore the truth behind the Gujarat riots of 2002,” she quipped and questioned the “silence of US and UK” over the Income Tax department’s action against the international broadcaster.

    Lavishing praise on CPI(ML) Liberation for taking a “stand against Fascism,” she said it was essential to bring together all forces opposed to the “current capitalistic system, wherein five per cent people control 60 per cent of the nation’s wealth.”

    “It is good that different political groups opposed to the current ruling dispensation are making an effort to come together. Hopefully, the energy of public movements will also be harnessed,” said the celebrated author, who won the Booker for her debut novel “The God of Small Things” and has been actively associated with a number of human rights movements.

    ALSO READ | Hindutva unleashing violence to create artificial majority: Arundhati Roy

    The three-day CPI(ML) Liberation party Congress, which was inaugurated on Thursday, will conclude on Saturday.

    The invitees on that day include Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav and Jharkhand counterpart Hemant Soren.

    PATNA: Author and social activist Arundhati Roy Friday launched a sharp attack on the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and stressed the need for forging an “anti-Fascist” grouping of opposition parties.

    Roy was in the Bihar capital for addressing a convention organized by the CPI (ML) Liberation, which is a part of the multi-party ‘Mahagathbandhan’ but supports the Nitish Kumar government in the state from the outside.

    “The country is run by four people. Two of them happen to be buyers and the rest two are sellers. All of them belong to Gujarat,” said the writer evoking applause from the crowd.

    She was obviously referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.

    She said “Modi ji thinks that he need not speak about Adani, since the common people should remain ever thankful to him for five kilograms of ration. But the Hindenburg report speaks about a scam involving 100 billion dollars. It is the biggest corporate scam in the country.”

    Referring to the alleged proximity of the business tycoon with the prime minister, she said “Earlier, Modi ji used to travel by Adani’s aircraft. Now, Adani travels with Modi ji in the latter’s plane.”

    “The farm laws had been brought to benefit Adani and his ilk, which is evident from the fact that his warehouses had come up across the country,” Roy said.

    “No raids were ever conducted on properties owned by Adani. But BBC is paying the price for bringing to the fore the truth behind the Gujarat riots of 2002,” she quipped and questioned the “silence of US and UK” over the Income Tax department’s action against the international broadcaster.

    Lavishing praise on CPI(ML) Liberation for taking a “stand against Fascism,” she said it was essential to bring together all forces opposed to the “current capitalistic system, wherein five per cent people control 60 per cent of the nation’s wealth.”

    “It is good that different political groups opposed to the current ruling dispensation are making an effort to come together. Hopefully, the energy of public movements will also be harnessed,” said the celebrated author, who won the Booker for her debut novel “The God of Small Things” and has been actively associated with a number of human rights movements.

    ALSO READ | Hindutva unleashing violence to create artificial majority: Arundhati Roy

    The three-day CPI(ML) Liberation party Congress, which was inaugurated on Thursday, will conclude on Saturday.

    The invitees on that day include Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav and Jharkhand counterpart Hemant Soren.

  • Today’s India is like a plane flying backwards and headed for a crash: Arundhati Roy

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy on Wednesday compared today’s India to a plane moving in reverse, the one which she argued is “headed for a crash”.

    She was speaking at the launch of the book titled “Why do you fear my way so much?”, a selection of poems and letters written by jailed human rights activist G N Saibaba.

    Roy said from spearheading “truly revolutionary movements” in the 1960s for redistribution of wealth and land, its leaders are now seeking votes — and winning elections — in the name of distributing “5 kg rice and 1 kg salt”.

    “Recently, I asked a pilot friend of mine, ‘Can you fly a plane backwards?’. He laughed out loud. And I said this is exactly what is happening here where the leaders of this country are flying the plane in reverse, everything is falling, and we are headed for a crash,” said the author of bestselling novels “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”.

    The 62-year-old writer described India as a land of “sophisticated jurisprudence”, the one where laws are applied differently depending on your “caste, class, gender and ethnicity”.

    “What are we doing here today? We are meeting to talk about a professor who is paralysed 90 per cent and has been in jail for seven years. That is what we are doing. That is enough. We do not have to speak anymore. That is enough to tell you what kind of country we are living in. What shame is this?,” she said.

    Saibaba, who has over 90 per cent physical disabilities and uses a wheelchair, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 by a sessions court in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district for having maoist links and engaging in activities amounting to “waging war against the country”.

    The court held Saibaba and others guilty under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

    His service as assistant professor at Delhi University’s Ram Lal Anand College was terminated on March 31.

    CPI general secretary D Raja, who released the book at Jawahar Bhawan, reiterated his demand for the immediate release of Saibaba.

    He said the government of the day is highly mistaken if it thinks it can defeat a communist by labelling him a ‘terrorist’ or putting him behind the bars.

    “The government of the day thinks by labelling some people as ‘urban maoists’, ‘urban naxalites’ , ‘anti-nationals’, ‘terrorists’ or putting them in prison or torturing them in prison, they can succeed. I warn them they can never succeed. A communist can be killed, but a communist can never be defeated, Mr Modi,” he added.

    The book launch was also attended by Saibaba’s wife Vasantha.

    She recounted how her husband who was born into poverty in the town of Amalapuram in Andhra Pradesh overcame his disability to top his university and become a highly regarded professor.

    She also talked in detail about wheel-chair bound Saibaba’s alleged inhuman treatment in Nagpur Central Jail’s solitary confinement, his poor health, including a cardiac condition and chronic and severe spinal pain, and multiple parole refusals even for a few days to attend his mother’s funeral.

    The book, published by Speaking Tiger, is priced at Rs 450 and available for sale on offline and online stores.

  • Arundhati Roy backs farmers, says new laws will break the backbone of agriculture sector

    By PTI
    PUNE: Eminent novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy on Saturday came out in support of the farmers who are agitating on Delhi borders, and said the new farm laws which they are opposing will help only the corporate sector.

    Speaking at Elgar Parishad, a conclave, Roy also slammed the BJP governments at the centre and in states over issues such as anti-conversion laws and lockdown.

    “It is very important for us to stand by the farmers,” the Man Booker award-winning writer said.

    “The new agriculture laws will break the backbone of the farm sector and give the control to the corporates,” she said, alleging that the Union government was trying to discredit the agitation.

    ​ALSO READ | Ghazipur border: Resolve grows stronger, farmers say movement not affected by January 26 incident

    Roy referred to arrests of several Left-leaning activists including Sudha Bharadwaj under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act following the December 2017 Elgar Parishad in Pune.

    As in the the case of ongoing farmers’ movement, there were attempts to discredit the Elgar Parishad and the activists associated with it by terming them as `urban naxals’, she alleged.

    All the jailed activists should be released immediately, she demanded.

    “During the lockdown when lakhs of people lost their jobs, the wealth of industrialists grew by 35 per cent,” she charged.

    She also blasted the BJP-led Union government for announcing lockdown for coronavirus in March last year with only four hours’ notice, calling it an “ambush”.

    Criticizing the ordinances issued by BJP-ruled states to penalize `fraudulent’ religious conversions, Roy said many Muslim youths and families have been targeted under the garb of these laws.

    ALSO WATCH:

    Thousands of farmers have been protesting since late November at Delhi’s borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, demanding a rollback of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

    The protesting farmers have expressed apprehension that these laws would pave the way for the dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) system, leaving them at the “mercy” of big corporations.

    However, the government has maintained that the new laws will bring better opportunities to farmers and introduce new technologies in agriculture.

  • Editorial :- Soniya Gandhi Aur Rahul Urban Naksalijm Ke Mukhiya Hain ….?

    The start of a not-for-my-name campaign such as Robert Vadra’s Jija Tahasin Punawalah started on the patronage of Pakistan, in the same way, the campaign of ‘Mein Urban Naxal’ has been started by Arundhati Roy and others by the so-called intellectuals.

    It means that being called the Naxalite is going to be a matter of pride for some people. All these leaders are led by Congress President Rahul Gandhi at the behest of Sonia Gandhi. In this, the role of a special assistant is played by Manu Singhvi and Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid.

    Salman Khurshid had said in the last week that the freedom of expression and freedom of expression in the presence of the leftist student leaders in the presence of the leaders who were engaged in freedom during the martyrdom of Afzal Guru in JNU; Were against the policy of liberalism.

    Congress spokesman and Supreme Court advocate Manu Singhvi opened the doors of the Supreme Court in midnight against the arrest of the Arun Naxal (Marxist) supporters. He did not take such a step against Nirbhaya as a reporter who did the same.

    P Chidambaram has now made a statement that ‘no matter as urban naxalism, they are leftist intellectuals’.

    It is notable that it was Chidambaram who took over as Home Minister during the UPA regime, he said that the Naxalites are our first rank enemies. He said that we can finish whatever we can, whatever we can.

    In truth, they are representing the Urban Naxalism at the UPA Government’s time.

    One of the main propaganda of Urban Naxalism is the destruction of India’s glorious history, creating an environment in the entire country against Hinduism.

    That is why Chidambaram said in Lucknow: The fact that poverty was always in India and it was promoted as a prosperous country was false. He said that giving education that India was prosperous 500 years ago and was a land of milk and honey, factually incorrect. There was poverty in India and it was. Yes, there was certainly a prosperous area somewhere.

    He said that books that teach lessons of India’s glorious past should be burnt.

    Carl Marcus also thought this: Calicut’s father, the age of Marcus, considered India to be a historically poor country. He claimed that India’s “golden period” is just an illusion. India has always been a country of poor and hungry. Not only that, Marcus had said that the British rulers did good by destroying India’s cottage industry and economy, so that India could be modernized.

    From India, which has a symbolic glorious history of the saffron flag, it has the institutions and leaders who look after the interests of the Congress and other India. That is why all these people consider saffron as poison.

    When Kamal Haasan returned from Tamil Nadu after coming to Tamilnadu with the mantra of Kerala Chief Minister Vijayan, Stalin, the newly elected president of the DMK, said today that he is against saffronisation.

    While imitating the urban Naxalism, Rahul Gandhi tried to give a different religion to Lingayat for the distribution of Hindus in Karnataka.

    As soon as Beni Hinn and Rambabu, Rahul Gandhi is trying to defame people by adopting a polychromatic form. Beni Hinn’s wife was a friend of Sonia Gandhi.

    The second basis of Urban Naxalism is the propaganda against soldiers, and infiltration in the army:

    On this basis, the leaders of the Left and the current Congress are misguiding against the Indian army. Sandeep Dikshit of Congress had even asked Army Chief Rawat to the roadside of the road. Congrats and party leaders also questioned Surgical Strike.

    Ghulam Nabi Azad said till now that the operation of the Indian army in Kashmir is killing more civilians than the terrorists.

    This proves that Congress leaders are the leaders of Urban Naxalism.

    It is also necessary to discuss some of what is related to the Church of the Naxalism.

    There are 4 wings of armed forces in the west: the army, the air force, the navy and the church.

    On the arrest of Urban Naxalism, especially the anger is being shown by the Congress and the Left leaders across the country.

    In response to this, Rahul Gandhi said that: In the new India, there is only one place for the NGO and its name is RSS. All other NGOs should be closed. Send all the workers to jail and shoot the complainant. Welcome to New India.

    The reason behind revealing such kind of fury is that the hard work is being done by the current government on those who were anti-India activities which were anti-India activities with the help of western countries.

    It has come to the notice that NGOs running anti-India activities are supported by Christian missionaries from Western countries.

    It is often said that there are four wings of armed forces in the west: the army, the air force, the navy and the church.

    Officials say that behind the sudden increase in urban Naxal activities, there has been foreign aid from church based missionaries. Due to this, Rahul Gandhi gave the above statement.

    Amar Bhushan, former officer of Research and Analysis Wing says that funds have been stopped after action on NGOs. Missionaries, Naxalites and their urban allies have become desperate. Now they will look for all possible ways to break the country. Bhushan says, in my opinion, the urban Naxalite is the most dangerous.

    Nepalese Maoists of Nepal