Renowned South Asian writer Arundhati Roy returned her National Award
for Best Screenplay to the Indian government on Thursday. She had won
the award in 1989. Returning her award, the Booker Prize winner said
she was “so proud” to join the writers, filmmakers and academics who
have returned their awards to protest against attacks on minorities,
murder of rationalists, threats to free speech, enforcement of beef
bans in India, and the vicious remarks by leaders of the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Fortunately,
not all Indians are of the same mind as the philistines currently
running amok, and the artistic and literary communities are gradually
organising themselves into a response, at the moment limited to
returning the awards they have been given by their government.
Arundhati Roy has a global profile, a voice that is widely heard and
her writings widely read — a Booker prize winner no less. She speaks
of the current “ideological viciousness” as an assault on the
collective IQ that has the potential to tear the country apart if it
is not stemmed. Melodramatic as that may seem, Ms Roy may not be wide
of the mark in what she fears. She is also prescient, saying that
there is no surprise at what is afoot, people knew what they were
voting for and there was a plenitude of advance notice as to what was
going to happen if Mr Modi was elected. Intolerance feeds in the
sewers and quickly grows fat, becoming the fell beast that slouches
down the road to Dhaka, Delhi and Islamabad. Give this beast an inch
and it will take the proverbial mile. Unhappily, the Pakistani
response to the assault on Indian secularism and freedoms has also
been fairly predictable.Many sections of the political class, media
and civil society here have seemingly revelled in the recent tensions
in India because it has allegedly exposed the real agenda of the Modi
government and its supporters. But if that were true, could the rise
of a rabid right-wing politics in India possibly be in any way good
for Pakistan or the region?Sadly, myopia appears to reign on both
sides of the border. Perhaps most telling is that a Pakistani
criticising the Pakistani state is increasingly considered an
anti-patriot at home while an Indian criticising the Indian state is
considered a hero — and vice versa. The politics of fear and hate
appear to be on the march on both sides of the border.
