THE Delhi Police was perhaps justified in claiming in its status report to the Metropolitan Magistrate, Delhi, that the speeches made at the Convention on Kashmir held in New Delhi on October 21 were not seditious. The tone and tenor of Arundhati Roy's speech, which has now been released by the Delhi Police, could hardly incite violence.
In her speech, Arundhati Roy claimed that Kashmir had never been an integral part of India. She also described the struggle in Kashmir as a struggle for justice. Her speech is notable for linking the struggle in Kashmir with the struggles elsewhere in India. She said:
So often the Indian government, the Indian state, the Indian elite, they accuse the naxalites of believing in protracted war, but actually you see a state the Indian state that has waged protracted war against its own people or what it calls its own people relentlessly since 1947, and when you look at who are those people that it has waged war against the Nagas, the Mizos, the Manipuris, people in Assam, Hyderabad, Kashmir, Punjab it's always a minority, the Muslims, the Tribals, the Christians, the Dalits, the Adivasis, endless war by an upper-caste Hindu state, this is what is the modern history of our country.
She recalled her observation made in the course of the agitation in Kashmir against whole acquisition of land for the Amarnath Yatra that India needs azaadi from Kashmir just as much as Kashmir needs azaadi from India. She explained that when she said India, she did not mean the Indian state, but she meant the Indian people because she thought tolerating the occupation of Kashmir (today, she claimed, there are 700,000 security personnel manning that valley of 12 million people, and this constituted, according to her, the most militarised zone in the world) is like allowing a kind of moral corrosion to drip into our blood stream.
She made a fervent plea for an alliance between the people's struggle in Kashmir and other struggles in the rest of the country on the common plank of justice. She said: There should be deep solidarity between the struggles in Manipur, the struggles in Nagaland, the struggle in Kashmir, the struggle in central India and in all the poor, squatters, the vendors, all the slum dwellers, and so on. But what is it that should link these struggles? It's the idea of justice because there can be struggles which are not struggles for justice, there are people's movements like the VHP is a people's movement but it's a struggle for fascism, it's a struggle for injustice, we don't align ourselves with that. So every movement, every person on the street, every slogan is not a slogan for justice. So when I was in Kashmir on the streets during the Amarnath Yatra time, and even today I haven't been to Kashmir recently but I've seen and my heart is filled with appreciation for the struggle that people are waging, the fight that young people are fighting and I don't want them to be let down. I don't want them to be let down even by their own leaders because I want to believe that this fight is a fight for justice. Not a fight in which you pick and choose your justices we want justice but it's OK if the other chap is squashed'. That's not right. So I remember when I wrote in 2007, I said the one thing that broke my heart on the streets of Srinagar was when I heard people say, Nanga Bhooka Hindustan, jaan se pyaara Pakistan'. I said, No. Because the nanga bhooka Hindustan is with you. And if you're fighting for a just society then you must align yourselves with the powerless.' The Indian people here today are people who have spent their lives opposing the Indian state.
In an article she wrote, published in The Hindu, she suggested that perhaps the Delhi Police should posthumously file a charge against the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, too, for what he had reportedly said about Kashmir. She cited 14 instances of Jawaharlal Nehru's reported remarks on various occasions to suggest that Kashmir has never been an integral part of India.
V. VenkatesanCOMMents
COMMents
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