This month, the highest ranking bureaucrat of the state of Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena, gave his permission for the Delhi police to prosecute Arundhati Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain for remarks they made at a public event 14 years ago. The opposition Aam Aadmi party governs Delhi, but the capital’s police reports to the central government’s home ministry. While the prime minister, Narendra Modi, lost his parliamentary majority in the recently concluded elections, the prosecution of Roy shows that those who expected a chastened government willing to operate differently are likely to be disappointed.
Hussain and Roy are to be tried for making speeches at a conference called Azadi [Urdu for “freedom”]: The Only Way, which questioned Indian rule in the then state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hussain is a Kashmiri academic, author and human rights activist. Roy is among India’s most celebrated authors, with a wide following around the world.
After Roy won the Booker prize in 1997, for The God of Small Things, she became the nation’s darling. It was the year of India, in a sense: the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, and the year Salman Rushdie, the first Indian-born winner of the Booker, published a volume anthologising new Indian literature. Roy was a fresh voice from the still young, post-independence India, reminding us of the multitude of stories from the subcontinent not yet told. She became an idol to be followed and imitated. Indeed, in Mira Nair’s 2001 film Monsoon Wedding, a character who wants to pursue creative writing at an American university is told by an uncle: “Lots of money in writing these days. That girl who won the Booker prize became an overnight millionaire.”
But many of those uncles – powerful and privileged – are no longer happy with Roy. When Saxena announced that Roy could be prosecuted under India’s draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), because she had said at this event that Kashmir had never been an “integral” part of India, there was outrage abroad from intellectuals and writers’ organisations, but responses in India were less spirited. While politicians such as Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress were prompt in criticising the move, others on social media commended the government and gleefully admonished those who defended Roy. Their reasoning: Roy was “anti-national”, unpatriotic, sympathising with terrorists, and needed to face the full force of the law.
The UAPA is a draconian law – being granted bail is extremely difficult, and the accused can be taken into custody before the trial even begins. And the proceedings may not begin for years, as has happened to several leading dissidents during the Modi years. But its use against Roy in this case is puzzling. Lawyers have pointed out procedural gaps: it is not known if the Delhi police has filed a formal report, known as “charge sheet”, after conducting investigations, which is necessary before prosecution can begin. India’s highest court requires the authorities to explain why they wish to use the UAPA, and Saxena’s order offers no explanation. Nor does a 14 June note published on social media that carries his signature. Under UAPA, central government approval is necessary before prosecution can begin, and the authority can grant such permission only after there has been an independent review of evidence gathered. It is not known publicly if any of those steps have been taken, raising profound questions about the legality of the approval itself. Some lawyers believe that the government may have invoked the UAPA to sidestep the legal bar of the statute of limitations.
Despite this travesty, if Roy is not getting an outpouring of public sympathy, it has to do with how India has changed in the past quarter of a century. Its elite are keen to shed the past image of a poor, struggling country. India deserves a seat at the main table, they say; and dissidents and writers who question Indian policies are inconvenient do-gooders whose pessimism interferes with India’s ascent. On significant issues on which much of India’s majoritarian, powerful elite believes there is consensus, Roy is the naysayer.
Consider Roy’s views on Kashmir, the disputed territory over which India and Pakistan have gone to at least three wars, and where Pakistan-supported insurgents have sought independence. The Indian army has stationed tens of thousands of troops there, and human rights groups have accused the Indian state and extremist groups of abuses. Roy has listened to Kashmiri voices and challenged India’s human rights record for more than a decade. She has persistently opposed India’s governing consensus and conduct in Kashmir – her last novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – describes the Kashmir crisis graphically. Triumphalist Indians don’t like to hear such criticism.
Nor do many Indians like her questioning the wisdom of building large dams to produce electricity or irrigate farms. Building dams was the dream of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru; he called dams “temples of modern India”. The dams helped farms and generated power, and well-meaning development experts questioned Roy’s stance. But Roy showed how they also displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The dispossessed saw the mandatory land acquisitions as a land grab by the powerful.
Roy has also written critically of Gandhi’s views on the “untouchable” caste Dalits, calling them discriminatory and patronising, and has been a vocal critic of India’s nuclear tests and arsenal. These views offend India’s conservative and liberal opinion. India’s peaceniks admire Gandhi; India’s Hindu nationalists hate Gandhi but love the bomb. The fact that she wins accolades abroad, and prominent western publications give her space to write, rattles and rankles them even more. The powerful in India want to hear only praise; Roy keeps reminding the world of the rot within.
Whether or not Roy gets prosecuted remains to be seen; prosecuting authorities may feel the evidence isn’t enough, or much time has passed, and her lawyers may succeed with their procedural objections. The government too may prefer the ambiguity, hoping that the threat of prosecution might keep her, and other dissidents, silent.
But one thing is certain: it was wrong to assume that Modi has changed. Pursuing someone as high-profile as Roy is the government’s way of warning critics that they must not expect anything different. The sword hangs over the critics; Roy reminds us why the pen must remain mightier than the sword.
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Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York and is on the board of PEN International. His latest book, The Gujaratis, will be published this year
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