9 Is Not 11
I am completely under the spell of this fabulous piece of writing, brutally honest and eminently sensible.
essay: terror in mumbai
9 Is Not 11
(And November isn't September)
ARUNDHATI ROY
We 've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the 'Bad Guys' he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on 'terrorist camps' in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
Hating Arundhati Roy
Why We Love To Hate Ms Roy - (OUTLOOK)
Arundhati Roy certainly has a stomach for controversy. By writing several articles and providing an introduction to a book defending Mohammad Afzal Guru (13 Dec, A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament), the main accused in the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, she has stuck her neck out again. Ever since the lady made her views on the matter public, many furious friends have called. "Who does that woman think she is?" they have thundered, accusing her of "passing off conspiracy theories as investigations". As far as they are concerned, Roy should be the first citizen in their rogue’s gallery of ‘anti-national’ elements. No other writer inspires as much anger and mountains of hate mail to publications where she writes as this ‘petite woman’.
Kashmir,Azadi and Arundhati Roy
UPDATE from SAJA Forum, articles, news and comments here
UPDATE: Arundhati's brutally frank piece where she asks this question:
The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?
"India needs azadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azadi from India.”
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