Menu
Menu

Pulling Fingernails Won’t Turn Kashmiris Into Indians, Pleads Arundhati Roy

Posted by Web Editor on Oct 26th, 2010

Print This Post Print This Post Email This Post Email This Post

 

  • Pity that nation that jails those who ask for justice’
     
  • ‘No one should be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians’ 

 

India’s most famous novelist meets with the husband and brother of two Kashmiri women raped and killed by Indian Army soldiers. All major Indian newspapers warn Roy of imminent arrest on sedition charges.

 

BY ARUNDHATI ROY | Monday, 25 October 2010.
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

 

SRINAGAR, Indian-Occupied Kashmir—I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaaf’ – justice – from India, and now believed that Azadi – freedom – was their only hope. I met young stone-pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.”

 

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist and Booker Prize recipient. She is opposed to her country’s occupation of Kashmir. This comment was published by SOS Kashmir

© 2007-2010. All rights reserved. PakNationalists.com
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium
without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

 


4 Responses for “Pulling Fingernails Won’t Turn Kashmiris Into Indians, Pleads Arundhati Roy”

  1. [...] Denmark— My advice to the Indian power elite is to let Arundhati Roy speak her mind for justice for all – Indians, Pakistanis and most of all for [...]

    Reply
  2. Blue says:

    She is truly a humanitarian and should be respected for her brave stance while taking pride in being an Indian.
    Had Kashmiris been followers of religion other than Islam, facing atrocities at such a large scale, international pressure would have surged to give them independence long ago.
    Still, it is in the interest of Bharat to sincerely review her policies and give due right to Kashmiris supporting them to establish their own independent state or join the country of their choice.

    Reply
  3. Parvez Amin says:

    The time has come for Pakistan, India and Kashmir to form a KIP Common Market and trade not fight. No visas for any of these nationals for visiting and working in each other’s countries.

    Reply
  4. idrees says:

    Excellent courage and clarity of thought underlined with an acute sense of justice and concern fro humanity. Ms Arundati is a phenomenon and may she be the torchbeare to others in the world.
    idrees

    Reply

Leave a Reply