Skip to main content

Azadi

 


Book Review

Title: Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction

Author: Arundhati Roy

Publisher: Penguin, 2020

Pages: 243, Price: Rs499

 

Arundhati Roy is a personification of intellectual acumen coupled with moral indignation. She belongs to the realm of rebellious angels. Her writings show us clearly the truth as she sees (and she sees more clearly than most ordinary people) and also make us feel what she feels provided we are on the side of ugly truths. Her writings can also create more enemies of whom she has already gathered too many around her.

Azadi is a collection of nine essays most of which were originally lectures delivered to diverse foreign audiences in the period of 2018-2020. The themes of these essays are indicated in the subtitle of the book: freedom, fascism, fiction. Roy deals with the particular variety of fascism that is being practised in Modi’s India which gives too much freedom to one section of citizens and denies even the freedom to exist to others. Fiction becomes the only valid way of understanding a reality of this sort which is considered sacrosanct by the majority while it decimates a few million people slowly and not so slowly.

The issues raised in the book are not new. We are familiar with them all: fascism and certain Modi-created demons such as demonetisation, empty slogans like ‘Make in India’, degradation of universities and institutions, decimation of the agriculture sector, lynching, and projection of genuine Dalit problems as sheer Naxalism.  Kashmir is a recurrent theme. RSS and its multi-faced demons come and go. Fiction, particularly Roy’s recent novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, holds all these together like a magic fabric the patterns on which keep changing as we move from one essay to the next showing us new realities and new meanings.

Modi’s India does not want non-Hindus. That has been made clear enough by the various thuggish organisations affiliated to the RSS. Muslims are the primary targets. Right from the 2002 Gujarat riots to the recent Citizenship Amendment Act, too many things have been perpetrated by Modi and his henchmen to alienate the Muslim population in the country.

Even before Modi, independent India has always been “an upper-caste Hindu state”. But pre-Modi, India had a hypocritical secularism which is what actually “made India possible” [emphasis in original]. “That hypocrisy was the best thing we had,” says Roy. “Without it, India will end.”

This book shows how Modi and his protean army are putting an end to India. Modi wants to make India “One nation, one religion, one language.” It is a chimera that can’t be achieved without a shocking lot of bloodshed as well as surreptitious methods (which are all in practice now).

Democracy has been strangled for all practical purposes by Modi who behaves precisely like a dictator. Those who question him too much are done away with one way or another. Those who support him can not only get away with rape and murder, assault and lynching, but also get rewarded for their devilish loyalty. In Roy’s words, “Lynchers, and others accused in hate crimes, including mass murder, have been rewarded with public office and honoured by ministers in Modi’s cabinet.”

One of the most diabolically effective tactics employed by Modi is the fake news industry which is “corporatized, Bollywoodized, televised, Twitterized, atomized, weaponized, WhatsAppized, and is disseminating its product at the speed of light.” India is a living lie under Modi. Modi has converted 1.3 billion people into walking frauds.

There are a few out of those billions who refuse to swallow the fake patriotism shovelled down their throats by a demoniac leader. They still dare to speak the truth. “It’s a battle of those who know how to think against those who know how to hate,” says Roy. “A battle of lovers against haters. It’s an unequal battle, because the love is on the street and vulnerable. The hate is on the street, too, but it is armed to the teeth, and protected by all the machinery of the state.”

This is the ultimate tragedy of any nation: hate reigning supreme pretending to be sacred nationalism. Roy’s book exposes this demon that has taken charge of India.

Comments

  1. The Moon's BOYFRIEND September 19, 2020 at 9:53 AM

    Why does this keep tellin' me that I should get out of this country asap?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 19, 2020 at 10:09 AM

      Aren't you asking the question wrongly. I think it should be "how" instead of 'why'. How should I get out asap?

      Delete
  2. Pr@GunSeptember 19, 2020 at 2:21 PM

    That's a great review Tomichan,
    Look forward to read the book for sure.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 19, 2020 at 3:10 PM

      Glad I motivated you to read the book. I am a fan of Roy's intensity of expression.

      Delete
  3. dee NambiarSeptember 20, 2020 at 9:35 AM

    I see so many parallels between India & US these days. Sad ones! Odd times.
    I'm sure the documentation was nicely done.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathSeptember 21, 2020 at 11:29 AM

    Interesting review- Looks like a hard hitting book!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
10 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more