Arundhati Roy - the "leftist" Ann Coulter of India!

Again, it's been a long time since I wrote - I just have not had the push or inspiration for blogging. But, today something caught my attention - my friend was watching some videos on Arundhati Roy's opinions on Kashmir and I was outraged by the comments Ms.Roy made about how the "militarised colonialists" aka India are oppressing the "freedom fighters" in Kashmir. I would have written it off as another publicity-hungry stunt by the media elite. However, it is such "human right activists" that the western media listens to, and forms an incorrect opinion of India. By equating the militancy in Kashmir to the Maoist insurgency, Ms.Roy loses whatever credibility she might have had in the discussion. Both of these issues might have legitimate concerns and reasons, but there is a way of postulating things. She prefers to ignore the holistic perspective of the complex Kashmir issue, by oversimplifying the point of contention and concentrating on a single viewpoint. For those of my friends who do know know about Ann Coulter, just google her up - she is one of the most vitriolic right-wing ideologues in the US today. Ms.Roy seems to be the "leftist" counterpart of Ms.Coulter, in India.

First of all, let us take a brief, unbiased look at the history of Kashmir (mostly taken from wiki):

Kashmir was one of the major centres of Sanskrit scholars in prehistoric times, and the Mauryan emperor Ashoka is often credited with having founded the city of Srinagar. In the late 4th century AD, Kashmir was a Buddhist seat of learning. By the 14th century, Islam gradually became the dominant religion in Kashmir. By the early 19th century, the Kashmir valley had passed from the control of the Durrani Empire of Afghanistan, and four centuries of Muslim rule under the Mughals and the Afghans, to the conquering Sikh armies. The Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu (as it was then called) was constituted between 1820 and 1858, under the British rule. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which Kashmir sided with the British, and the subsequent assumption of direct rule by Great Britain, the princely state of Kashmir came under the paramountcy of the British Crown. The reigning monarch in 1947 at the conclusion of British rule of the subcontinent, was given the right to opt for either Pakistan or India or to remain independent. However, when the Maharaja was deliberating his choices, in October 1947, Pashtuns from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province invaded Kashmir, resulting in the Maharaja signing the Instrument of Accession to India, and the Indian soldiers entering Kashmir and driving the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars out of the state. Since this time, Kashmir has been considered a "disputed territory". The UN Security Council passed resolution in 1948, that the invading Pakistani army retreat from Kashmir and that the accession of Kashmir to either India or Pakistan be determined in accordance with a plebiscite to be supervised by the UN. Since the Pakistani army never left the part of the Kashmir, India used it as a reason to not hold a plebiscite. India could have taken the higher road at this point of time, and held the plebiscite, but was well within its rights not to hold its end of the bargain since Pakistan failed to do the same. In 1949, the Indian government obliged Hari Singh to leave Jammu and Kashmir and yield the government to Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of a popular political party, the National Conference Party. Since then, Kashmir has always been considered an integral part of India - as much as any other state of India. In fact, Kashmir has been given more autonomy than any other state because of the special circumstances.

However, there has been continued violence in Kashmir, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits as well as the Muslims living there. A lot of this can be attributed to the continued infiltration of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists into Kashmir across the border. The Indian army might have been involved in some human right violations, but they need to be present there to protect our borders from Pakistan. Any independent state has the right to protect its borders from occupation by other countries, but the army must be involved in atrocities against the people. The media and intellectuals like Ms.Roy should work as protectors of the people in these areas, shedding light on the transgressions of the army if there are such barbarities, and getting justice through the judicial system of the country, rather than inciting secession.

Now, let us concentrate a bit on Ms.Roy's speech about the issue of Kashmir. Let me start off by saying that the speech was given to a very pro-azaad-Kashmir/anti-India crowd in Srinagar, as was evident by the big round of applause she got, after proclaiming that Kashmir has never been an integral part of India, and supposedly this is not a radical stance she has taken, but the Indian government has already accepted it. I do not believe that the Indian government has ever accepted that Kashmir is not an integral part of India, as is evidenced by the history of the state. Ms Roy then goes on to say that, starting from the day India won independence, it became a colonial power, of its own right. This is a ridiculous statement to make - India never occupied territories outside of its boundaries. Kashmir acceded to India - was never "occupied" or "taken over", as was tried by the Pakistani army. Ms.Roy states other examples such as Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram - I am not conversant on the issues in the North Eastern parts of India. She also quotes other states such as Punjab, Goa and finally, Telengana. Telengana has always been a part of India - a part of the state Andhra Pradesh. Given a chance, Ms.Roy seems to want to break up India into 30 small countries, which will be incessantly in conflict with one another; then, probably break them further up into smaller countries, until they are all individual villages.

Ms.Roy then says that the Indian government sends Tamilians to fight in Kashmir, Punjabis to fight in Maoist areas, Kashmiris in Punjab and so on - she seems to conveniently forget that the Indian army is a single cohesive unit, which is not broken up in terms of states that the jawans come from - they are not sent out on basis of their origin either. The entire speech is filled with such baseless accusations, trying to further alienate the already instigated crowd, from a pro-Indian standpoint. She refers to the fact that the Indian army is fighting against Kashmiri people as India supposedly does not consider the Kashmiris as "our own" - if this is not provoking the people, what is. There is a legitimate reason for the army to be deployed in Kashmir - if not for the army, Pakistan would have occupied major portions of Kashmir a long time back, and the remaining portions would have been taken over by China.

Ms.Roy then goes on to say that the struggle in Kashmir is painted as a struggle against fundamental Islamists, and even if it is, it is the will of the people to have one and they should be allowed to their will. If Ms.Roy had lived in a fundamental Islamist nation, she would have understood the issues facing people in such countries - it is very easy to rhetorically speak on issues, when one is not faced with the same. She briefly and brusquely, refers to the disintegration of the Soviet Union as "capitalism winning its Jihad against soviet communism in the mountains of Afghanistan", and "US flipped and suddenly founding fathers waging jihad against soviet union became the world's greatest terrorists" - there were intricacies and nuanced international relations at that time in history, which Ms.Roy wants to ignore. Given a choice, I would rather be in an open, democratic (probably capitalist) country than a closed, communist country. I believe Ms.Roy would choose the same as well, but since it is just a "speech" and she does not have to make the actual decision of choosing one over the other, she has the luxury of making such statements. After listening to her speech for about 20 minutes, I was so incensed that I just could not take it any longer.

I do not even want to get started about Ms.Roy's support for the Maoists. The acts of violence committed by the Maoists against the Indian army and police, the sole aim of the Naxal movement being overthrowing the Indian state from the areas they have control over - these have completely voided the right of the Maoists from taking up arms for the sake of the "poor tribals". I do empathise with the tribals who have actually been affected by the inequitable treatment of the government - this issue needs to e addressed, but not by the arm-wielding, anti-nationalist Maoists.

I am the first to agree that the Indian democracy has a lot of flaws. Corruption is quite rampant in the government; the rate of unemployment and poverty is high; population is growing at an alarming rate everyday - even with all this, we should take into account that India is still a fledgling democracy, just 63 years old. It needs more time to mature as a country, to develop itself socially and economically and become a "developed" country. We are on our way there, and instead of impeding our progress, if people like Ms.Roy consolidate their efforts on other useful endeavors such as shedding light on the "real" issues of people with an unbiased view, exposing corrupt officials, developing a better judicial system with the people with a background in law forming a major backbone of the legislative process, improving the quality of media coverage and such, instead of sensationalising issues by making controversial statements to an already-polarised crowd, we souled be taking a few steps forward on our way to a developed India. Ms. Roy has to realise that she has the right to speak out as she does, only because of the fact that India is a democracy and not a fundamentalist or a communist country. If she cannot appreciate the fact, she needs to have the experience of living in a fundamentalist Islamic country like Iran or a communist country like China.