[Reader-list] An open letter to Arundhati Roy

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

An open letter to Arundhati Roy

October 27, 2010<http://blog.fakingnews.com/2010/10/an-open-letter-to-arundhati-roy/>
by Pagal Patrakar <http://blog.fakingnews.com/author/pagalpatrakar/>

Link - http://blog.fakingnews.com/2010/10/an-open-letter-to-arundhati-roy/

Hey woman,

Congrats, you are back in news! You were trending on Twitter and featured in
Google trends. And thanks, you made many guys look up dictionary.com to
understand what sedition meant. You are really of some use!

Well, I read your
statement<http://www.hindustantimes.com/Arundhati-s-statement-from-Srinagar-Full-text/Article1-618034.aspx>,
and I loved it because it was not a fucking 30,000 words essay! Anyway, I
had some reactions, please find them below (in bold and in red, adjectives
that you prefer?):

Kashmir, Oct. 26:* *I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir.  *(Wonderful, you
are going places woman, wished you had cared to write something from Bihar
or UP; people are suffering due to neglect and bad politics there too, but
wait, stay where you are.)* 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.  *(LOL! You read and believe newspapers? But I guess that’s what
you do when you wake up in the morning – take up a newspaper and find if
your name appears anywhere. If not, you plan how it can.)* I said what
millions of people here say every day. *(Millions of people say benc**d in
India every day, that doesn’t sanction that term any “social acceptance”)* I
said what I, as well as other commentators, have written and said for years.
*(Absolutely, you have NEVER said or written anything NEW. You just pick up
issues, after reading the morning newspapers, and join the
bandwagon.)*Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches
will see that they
were fundamentally a call for justice. *(Sorry, I didn’t really care to read
the transcript of your speeches. Can you make them a bit shorter? I’ve an
attention span problem.)* I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir
who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; *(Oh,
Kashmir is an area under military occupation? Thanks, will update my general
knowledge and Wikimapia, but wait, how come you were allowed there? Don’t
all democratic rights cease to exist in an area under military occupation?
Or were you an “embedded activist” like those embedded journalists of CNN in
Iraq during the Gulf War?)* for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of
having been driven out of their homeland; *(Really? Or are you fucking
kidding me?)* for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on
garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; *(What the fuck is a “Dalit
soldier” with a “grave”? I thought Dalits existed only within Hinduism and
Sikhism, where there are no graves. Oh okay, next you are writing a 300,000
essay on why Dalits are neither Hindu/Sikh/Christian/Muslim nor Indian, and
why the need justice and liberty from the tyrannous Brahminical Indian
state?)* 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. *(Oh great, so this whole country is under some
kind of occupation – police state – what the fuck, you opened my eyes, where
is the red flag?)*

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. *(Yes, “last year”, and you are visiting the place “now”
because your heart bleeds for a common Kashmiri.) * I met Shakeel, who is
Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother.  *(Wait a minute; you were also in
Delhi a couple of weeks back. Did you meet any Kashmiri Pandit, for whom you
claimed to be seeking justice in the earlier paragraph?)* We sat in a circle
of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever
get insaf — justice — from India, and now believed that Azadi — freedom —
was their only hope.  *(Have you seen the Bollywood movie Gulaal? You can
sit in such circles almost in each part of this country and listen to cries
of Azadi from imagined powers. There are Brahmins in this country, whom you
think control everything, who feel “trapped” in the modern state that is
implementing reservations for everyone except them.)* I met young stone
pelters who had been shot through their eyes. *(Did you meet that Indian
policeman who lost his eye after a 5 kg stone hit his eye?) * 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. *(I once traveled with a Hindu in
Ahmedabad, who told me how Muslims had created an “acid pool” in “their
area” and used to throw Hindus in them during riots; there have been many
riots in Ahmedabad, not just during 2002, for your kind information. Of
course I didn’t believe him and went out to write an essay or even a fake
news article. I don’t believe people easily and form opinions. If the state
can’t be trusted blindly, that doesn’t mean I’d trust every other non-state
actor blindly. Oh, non-state actor!)*

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting
India to break up.  *(Yes, there are idiots who take you seriously.)* On the
contrary, what I say comes from love and pride.  *(ROFLMAO!)* 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. *(But
you are fine and your conscience is not disturbed if someone does the same
to people and force them to say that they are NOT Indians?)* It comes from
wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. *(“just” one
or “just one”? People like you are surely not going to let this society be
“just one”. It would be broken into Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Brahmins,
Christians, Poor, Rich, Women, etc. I want my society and country to be
“just one” for god’s sake!)* Pity the nation that has to silence its writers
for speaking their minds. *(Yes, yes, pity the nation that produces such
writers. Today I’m proud of Chetan Bhagat, seriously.)* 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. *(Yes, I’d pity the nation only if you were
“actually” jailed, and you won’t be, dear, because this is a country that
doesn’t need your pity.)*