Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy, Photo Vikramjit Kakati/Wikimedia Commons
Renowned author Arundhati Roy, whose intellectual honesty on Indian forces’s reign of bloodshed in Kashmir is taken as act of treason by the BJP followers, is once again the target of hateful comments and threats to life.
Actor Paresh Rawal, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party espouses exclusionary Hindutva ideology, suggested Sunday that the Indian army should tie award winning and internationally acclaimed writer Roy to a jeep the same way it did with a Kashmiri – as a human shield against protesters in the disputed Kashmir territory.
Rawal, who is a BJP Lok Saba (National Assembly) member, tweeted on his official account:
Instead of tying stone pelter on the army jeep tie Arundhati Roy !
Last month, the Indian army picked Farooq Ahmed Dar, a 26-year-old Shawl maker and tied him to their jeep, paraded him around in a stark display of cruelty. The Indian army action clearly was a warning to Kashmiri protesters that anybody resisting them would meet the same fate.
The response to Rawal’s tweet was also callous disregard for human dignity – a fast eroding concept in Modi’s India as secularism continues to recede under the threat of BJP allied groups including the RSS and Bajrang Dal.
The Wire noted on its website that Rawal’s tweet provoked followers to issue threats of physical violence against the writer and others.
“This is mild … every indian should be violent physically with traitor like arundhati rai who always raise her voice against India,” a twitter user wrote. Others said they would like to stone or even set fire to a jeep if Roy was tied to it.
Another twitter user said he would tie Roy behind his vehicle and drag her on roads.
Playback singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya added to the agony of intellectuals and writers, when he suggested that Roy and others sharing her views should be shot dead.
In its official response to The Wire, BJP spokesperson G.V.L. Narsimha Rao, distanced the party from Rawal’s tweet. “Arundhati Roy has been known for anti-India propaganda over Kashmir as she is a compulsive attention seeker. Such people are best ignored rather than being commented upon.”
Writers, journalists and human rights activists, who raise a voice against the ruling BJP are often subjected to harassment and accusations of being traitors.
Long considered a secular democracy, India’s standing has slumped internationally with several media outlets, newspapers, foreign governments, human rights organizations and the United Nations condemning discrimination, violence and repressive government measures in the country.
