Arundhati Roy’s home truth regarding “Kashmir not being an integral part of India” has irked the Indian government, which is contemplating taking action against her and hardliner Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Gilani under charges of sedition and is seeking legal opinion in this regard. The famed Indian novelist, essayist and human rights activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality, won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002. On October 24, 2010, at a seminar in Delhi named “Azadi – The only way”, where Roy took part with Hurriyat Conference leader S.A.S.Geelani and Varavara Rao, Roy said that “Kashmir should get Azadi from bhookhe-nange Hindustan”. Her remarks attracted criticism from the BJP leader Arun Jaitley that she was promoting secession of the Union of India, and that the central government was not acting on the issue and prosecuting Roy and others.
Arundhati Roy had claimed that soon after independence in 1947, India became “colonizing power.” Roy spoke in the “Wither Kashmir: Freedom or enslavement” seminar organized by the Coalition of Civil Societies (CCS) in Srinagar. Arundhati also supported Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Shah Gilani on his pro-Azadi remark on Kashmir during a meeting in New Delhi on October 21. However, after the charge-sheet by the Indian government, Arundhati Roy has declared: “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.” Roy has made two speeches in New Delhi and Srinagar in the past few days in which she sought independence for Kashmir from India. The writer said she has read in newspapers that she may be arrested on charges of sedition for her remarks supporting “Azadi” for 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,” she said.
Earlier too Ms. Roy has been in trouble. In an interview with Times of India published in August 2008, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India after massive demonstrations in favor of independence took place—some 500,000 separatists rallied in Srinagar in the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India for independence on 18 August 2008, following the Amarnath land transfer controversy According to her, the rallies were a sign that Kashmiris desire secession from India, and not union with India. She was criticized by Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for her remarks.
The fact is that Indian rule in Occupied Kashmir is illegal and illegitimate not only according to international law but according to the Indian Partition Act of 1947; according to which, all princely states were given the option to join either Pakistan or India. The approved principle was that if the ruler of the state was a Hindu but the majority of the subjects were Muslims or vice-versa, the subjects would have the right to express their option of which country they wanted to join. In Kashmir, where the ruler was a Hindu but 98% of the Kashmir Valley were predominantly Muslim, this principle was violated by India. Maharaja Hari Singh, the Hindu ruler was yet to declare his accession, when Indian forces landed in Srinagar and occupied the Valley and forced the Maharaja to sign the letter of accession to India. Pakistan sent its troops to liberate the Kashmiris but India resorted to the United Nations.
The UN declared all the territories as disputed and passed several UN resolutions calling India and Pakistan to allow a UN administered plebiscite. Unfortunately, India not only reneged on the UN Resolutions, but tried to declare that Kashmir is an integral part of India. Pakistan and India went to war in 1965 and 1971 but the Kashmiris remained under Indian subjugation. Having tired of waiting for the fulfillment of the UN Resolutions, the Kashmiris took up the cudgels of fighting for their own rights. Their just struggle for liberation was met with brute force by India, which launched a reign of terror, killing and maiming lakhs of Kashmiris in a bid to subdue them. India not only failed miserably but also lost face that it has been unable to control the movement. It has resorted to torture, extrajudicial killing and unlawful detention of the Kashmiris.
India did not follow the principle of accession in the case of Hyderabad and Junagadh either, and annexed them by force. The case of the Kashmiris has been pending for over six and a quarter decades but there has been no let up in the bloodshed and tyranny on the part of India. Arundhati Roy, who has been vociferously advocating the cause of Kashmiris, does not mince her words in stating that India had launched a protracted war to suppress the ongoing movement in occupied Kashmir by its military might. She maintains that the ongoing movement had highlighted the aspirations of the Kashmiris and it was high time for the Kashmiri people to set goals for Azadi and achieve them systematically. She cautioned that there was an elite section in the occupied territory, which was allowing the oppression. She also hailed the role of Kashmiri women in the ongoing movement. It is for the world to take cognizance of the plight of the Kashmiris. US President Obama will be visiting India in November; he had promised to help resolve the Kashmir crisis but has forgotten it under Indian pressure. If he truly aspires for peace in the region, he must help resolve the crisis.
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