Impossible to live in India without being terrified:
Arundhati Roy to Mehdi Hasan
By Free Press Jourbal Web Desk 23 April 2020
Link to TV interview
(Mehdi
Hasan and Arundhati Roy on India, Narendra Modi, and the Coronavirus
Speaking
to Al Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan, author and political activist
Arundhati Roy said that it has become impossible to live in India
without feeling terrified from the propaganda on television channels
and hate groups on WhatsApp.
She
said, "Its 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."
Reiterating
her previous comment that the situation in India is approaching
genocide, Roy said that genocide isn't something which happens on a
Sunday morning. "There's a huge cultural preparation that takes
place, where a whole community is dehumanized, is profiled," she
added.
Roy
said that Home Minister Amit Shah referred to Bangladeshi Muslim
immigrants as termites when he was bringing in the contentious
"anti-Muslim" Citizenship Amendment Bill. She added,
"Citizenship Amendment Law has already been passed, detention
centres are build, it suggests that there will be hierarchical
citizenship where some people have more rights than others."
"Muslims
are in danger on the streets, Muslim vegetable vendors, Muslims just
walking on the road getting lynched," Roy said.
Earlier,
speaking with Germany’s DW, Arundhati Roy said that the Modi
government was ‘exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame
tensions between Hindus and Muslims’.
She
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," she continued, "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."
Arundhati Roy compares PM Modi to Hitler, claims ‘coronavirus’ pandemic 'almost genocidal'
By FPJ
Web Desk
Saturday, April 18, 2020, 10:28 AM IST
Author
and political activist Arundhati Roy told a foreign
news channel
the Modi government was ‘exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to
inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims’.
Roy,
known for her anti-establishment views, which can border on the
ludicrous like the time she called the Rafale fighter jet a carrier,
claimed the situation was approaching ‘genocidal’.
Here is link to her talk with German TV channel DW.
ON
DW news Muslims
in India accused of 'corona jihad' | Interview with Arundhati Roy
90,104
views •17
Apr 2020
She
told Germany’s DW: “I think what has happened is COVID-19 has
exposed things about India that all of us knew. This crisis of hatred
against Muslims," she continued, "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."
It
must be pointed out that in the Delhi riots, both Hindus and Muslims
were killed, a fact Arundhati Roy glosses over while calling it
‘massacre’.
Falling
upon ponderous comparisons to the Nazis, Roy compared it to the
Holocaust, saying: "The whole of the organization, the RSS to
which Modi belongs, which is the mother ship of the BJP, has long
said that India should be a Hindu nation. Its ideologues have likened
the Muslims of India to the Jews of Germany. And if you look at the
way in which they are using COVID, it was very much like typhus was
used against the Jews to get ghettoize them, to stigmatize them."
On
Wednesday, the Delhi Police booked Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad
Kandhalvi and few others for culpable homicide not amounting to
murder after some of the attendees of the religious congregation died
due to coronavirus.According to reports, Kandhalvi had organised the
religious gathering at Nizamuddin Markaz last month against the
social distancing protocol imposed by the Centre to curb the spread
of the deadly disease. An FIR was registered against the cleric on
March 31 at Crime Branch police station on a complaint of the Station
House Officer of Nizamuddin.
An
FIR lodged against Saad and others under section 304 of the Indian
Penal Code (IPC). According to Section 304, whoever commits culpable
homicide not amounting to murder shall be punished with imprisonment
for life, or imprisonment of either description for a term which may
extend to 10 years. Earlier, Maulana Saad was booked under sections
which were bailable but after the addition of Section 304, it will be
tough to secure bail.
