[Reader-list] An open letter to Arundhati Roy

[Venugopalan K M]

In bad taste, and also sexist!
(Condolence)
Like to share (the) 'only' worry here:  why should one feel this
t..r...a....s.....h worth writing/reading/sharing ?!

 Oct 27, 2010 at 8:44 PM, Aditya Raj Kaul <kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:

> An open letter to Arundhati Roy
>
> October 27, 2010<
> http://blog.fakingnews.com/2010/10/an-open-letter-to-arundhati-roy/>
> by Pagal Patrakar <http://blog.fakingnews.com/author/pagalpatrakar/>
>
> Link - http://blog.fakingnews.com/2010/10/an-open-letter-to-arundhati-roy/
>
> Hey woman,
>
> Congrats, you are back in news! You were trending on Twitter and featured
> in
> Google trends. And thanks, you made many guys look up dictionary.com to
> understand what sedition meant. You are really of some use!
>
> Well, I read your
> statement<
> http://www.hindustantimes.com/Arundhati-s-statement-from-Srinagar-Full-text/Article1-618034.aspx
> >,
> and I loved it because it was not a fucking 30,000 words essay! Anyway, I
> had some reactions, please find them below (in bold and in red, adjectives
> that you prefer?):
>
> Kashmir, Oct. 26:* *I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir.  *(Wonderful, you
> are going places woman, wished you had cared to write something from Bihar
> or UP; people are suffering due to neglect and bad politics there too, but
> wait, stay where you are.)* This morning’s papers say that I may be
> arrested
> on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on
> Kashmir.  *(LOL! You read and believe newspapers? But I guess that’s what
> you do when you wake up in the morning – take up a newspaper and find if
> your name appears anywhere. If not, you plan how it can.)* I said what
> millions of people here say every day. *(Millions of people say benc**d in
> India every day, that doesn’t sanction that term any “social acceptance”)*
> I
> said what I, as well as other commentators, have written and said for
> years.
> *(Absolutely, you have NEVER said or written anything NEW. You just pick up
> issues, after reading the morning newspapers, and join the
> bandwagon.)*Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches
> will see that they
> were fundamentally a call for justice. *(Sorry, I didn’t really care to
> read
> the transcript of your speeches. Can you make them a bit shorter? I’ve an
> attention span problem.)* I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir
> who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world;
> *(Oh,
> Kashmir is an area under military occupation? Thanks, will update my
> general
> knowledge and Wikimapia, but wait, how come you were allowed there? Don’t
> all democratic rights cease to exist in an area under military occupation?
> Or were you an “embedded activist” like those embedded journalists of CNN
> in
> Iraq during the Gulf War?)* for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy
> of
> having been driven out of their homeland; *(Really? Or are you fucking
> kidding me?)* for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited
> on
> garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; *(What the fuck is a “Dalit
> soldier” with a “grave”? I thought Dalits existed only within Hinduism and
> Sikhism, where there are no graves. Oh okay, next you are writing a 300,000
> essay on why Dalits are neither Hindu/Sikh/Christian/Muslim nor Indian, and
> why the need justice and liberty from the tyrannous Brahminical Indian
> state?)* for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in
> material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is
> becoming a police state. *(Oh great, so this whole country is under some
> kind of occupation – police state – what the fuck, you opened my eyes,
> where
> is the red flag?)*
>
> Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had
> remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape
> and
> murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a
> shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been
> brought to justice. *(Yes, “last year”, and you are visiting the place
> “now”
> because your heart bleeds for a common Kashmiri.) * I met Shakeel, who is
> Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother.  *(Wait a minute; you were also in
> Delhi a couple of weeks back. Did you meet any Kashmiri Pandit, for whom
> you
> claimed to be seeking justice in the earlier paragraph?)* We sat in a
> circle
> of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would
> ever
> get insaf — justice — from India, and now believed that Azadi — freedom —
> was their only hope.  *(Have you seen the Bollywood movie Gulaal? You can
> sit in such circles almost in each part of this country and listen to cries
> of Azadi from imagined powers. There are Brahmins in this country, whom you
> think control everything, who feel “trapped” in the modern state that is
> implementing reservations for everyone except them.)* I met young stone
> pelters who had been shot through their eyes. *(Did you meet that Indian
> policeman who lost his eye after a 5 kg stone hit his eye?) * I traveled
> with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in
> Anantnag
> district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out
> as punishment for throwing stones. *(I once traveled with a Hindu in
> Ahmedabad, who told me how Muslims had created an “acid pool” in “their
> area” and used to throw Hindus in them during riots; there have been many
> riots in Ahmedabad, not just during 2002, for your kind information. Of
> course I didn’t believe him and went out to write an essay or even a fake
> news article. I don’t believe people easily and form opinions. If the state
> can’t be trusted blindly, that doesn’t mean I’d trust every other non-state
> actor blindly. Oh, non-state actor!)*
>
> In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting
> India to break up.  *(Yes, there are idiots who take you seriously.)* On
> the
> contrary, what I say comes from love and pride.  *(ROFLMAO!)* It comes from
> not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their
> finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians.
> *(But
> you are fine and your conscience is not disturbed if someone does the same
> to people and force them to say that they are NOT Indians?)* It comes from
> wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. *(“just”
> one
> or “just one”? People like you are surely not going to let this society be
> “just one”. It would be broken into Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Brahmins,
> Christians, Poor, Rich, Women, etc. I want my society and country to be
> “just one” for god’s sake!)* Pity the nation that has to silence its
> writers
> for speaking their minds. *(Yes, yes, pity the nation that produces such
> writers. Today I’m proud of Chetan Bhagat, seriously.)* Pity the nation
> that
> needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass
> murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the
> poorest of the poor, roam free. *(Yes, I’d pity the nation only if you were
> “actually” jailed, and you won’t be, dear, because this is a country that
> doesn’t need your pity.)*
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You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a
nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the
foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR



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