Popular author and writer Arundhati Roy spoke to Mehdi Hasan of Al-Jazeera and said that it has become increasingly difficult to live in India without being terrified amidst the kind of propaganda and hate on Television and Whatsapp groups.
Arundhati Roy who has been vocal about the propaganda of the current ruling government was talking to Mehdi Hasan for an interview with Al-Jazeera. In the interview, while they were talking about genocidal tendencies in the country, Arundhati said,
“It’s impossible to live here (India) and have to watch the propaganda night and day from television channels and hate groups on WhatsApp without feeling terrified.”
In the 2 minute clip released on Twitter, Roy reiterates that genocide does not happen overnight and that it takes a while. As per her, there have been efforts of ‘cultural preparation’ where an entire community is being dehumanized that lays the ground for the genocide. Roy also accused the Union Home Minister Amit Shah of calling the Bangladeshi immigrants as termites during one of his speeches about the Citizenship Amendment Bill. She said,
“Citizenship Amendment Law has already been passed, detention centers are build, it suggests that there will be hierarchical citizenship where some people have more rights than others.”
Government exploiting Pandemic
Earlier, speaking to German media DW, Arundhati Roy accused the Narendra Modi government of exploiting the pandemic to inflate hate tensions between Hindus and Muslims. She said that the pandemic has exposed the worst of India as she referred to the attack on one community for spreading the coronavirus in the country. She further said,
“I think what has happened is COVID-19 has exposed things about India that all of us knew. This crisis of hatred against Muslims comes on the back of a massacre in Delhi, which was the result of people protesting against the anti-Muslim citizenship law. Under the cover of COVID-19, the government is moving to arrest young students, to fight cases against lawyers, against senior editors, against activists and intellectuals. Some of them have recently been put in jail.”
This is not the first time Arundhati Roy was criticizing the BJP government. Earlier, she had compared the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Source: Free Press Journal
