Today is Arundhati Roy’s birthday; acclaimed novelist, political essayist, and activist who is best known for her novel The God of Small Things, which became a worldwide bestseller and won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. Her latest book Azadi (freedom) was published in September of this year, and consists of nine stand-alone essays, written between early 2018 and early 2020 and were originally delivered either as lectures or long-form print pieces. The word ‘azadi’ (freedom) is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. 

These two calls for freedom are unpacked in the series of essays, where she asks what the connection is between the Kashmiri’s call for azadi and the ‘new’ cry for azadi on the streets of India. In a conversation with Nick Estes, co-presented by Haymarket Books to celebrate the release of Azadi, Arundhati Roy began by explaining the use of the Urdu word ‘azadi’ which has long been a chant for feminists and is now the haunting cry of Kashmiris.

ہم کیا چاہتے ہیں ? آزادی!  

Translation: What do we want? Freedom!  

Indian administered Kashmir has been disputed territory ever since the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947. In her essay Silence is the Loudest Sound, Roy says that Kashmir is the ‘unfinished business of the “Partition”’. The region has been home to a longstanding movement for self-determination, and unsurprisingly, the Indian government’s response has been heavy-handed and destructive.

In August 2019, Kashmir faced a digital siege after the Indian parliament revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which granted the region the right to its semi-autonomous ‘special status’ and its own Constitution. At midnight on the 4th of August 2019, phones in Kashmir went dead, internet connections were cut, and 12.5 million people were locked down under a strict military curfew in one of the most densely militarised zones in the world. This form of political repression is one of the many violent measures adopted by India’s government to crackdown on political mobilisations and protests in Kashmir.

‘What India has done in Kashmir over the last 30 years, is unforgivable.’

- Arundhati Roy in her essay The Silence is the Loudest Sound 

Just months after the region was stripped of its status and brutally integrated into India, Modi’s right-wing Hindu Nationalist government introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA),  which provides a route to citizenship to members of six religious minority communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan- but not for Muslims. The bill, in conjunction with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a supposedly definitive list of Indian citizens, faced heavy criticism for being anti-Muslim and unconstitutional. If the bill was actually aimed at protecting minorities, it would have included Muslim religious minorities who have faced persecution in their own countries. Instead, it was the latest in a string of anti-Muslim policies rolled out by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

Whilst Kashmir was silenced, massive protests occurred in the streets of India in response to the anti-Muslim citizenship law where people were demanding a different kind of azadi. In the series of essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. 

Roy has always been an outspoken critic of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist movement. She’s received death threats from the far-right, and has been accused of being ‘anti-national’. In an essay titled India: Intimations of an Ending she calls out what she sees as the absurdity of a ‘doctrine of One Nation, One Language, One Religion, One Constitution’ being imposed on a region that is ‘not a country’ but a complex and diverse ‘continent’. The rise of Hindu nationalism is a threat to democratic values, has ‘eulogised the densest military occupation in the world’, and has continued to put minorities at risk.

‘Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.’ - Arundhati Roy in her essay The pandemic is a portal

COVID-19 has taken its toll worldwide, but Kashmiris are now faced with an aggressive military lockdown coupled with measures put in place due to the pandemic. Although the seven month communications blackout was lifted just before the pandemic began, the valley still experiences blackouts; curtailing circulation of news and information, restricting social and emergency communications, and criminalising all forms of political interactions and mobilisations as threats to ‘national security’. 

In her conversation with Nick Estes, Roy reflected on the politics of worldwide lockdowns and the polarisation of our society- or as she puts it- ’those who had to walk home vs those who get to fly home’. When asked about possible forms of solidarity with Kashmiris, Roy expressed that those who don’t know what is happening in Kashmir need to read about it first. She suggested reading a report published by the JKCCS on the internet siege in Kashmir, which provides an overview of the harms, costs, and consequences of the digital siege in Jammu and Kashmir from August 2019 to when it was published in August 2020. 

Arundhati Roy’s beautiful story telling, political activism, and critical essays, are unmatched. Her presence in the literary world is multi-faceted and will continue to push conversations forward about Kashmir and the future of India’s democracy.

Written by Lina Idrees