Modi’s Art of Censorship

One of the infinite ironies about Narendra Modi’s India is its flagrant censorship while claiming to be the most tolerant civilisation. A Guardian report today informs us that Arundhati Roy’s 2020 book, Azadi, is banned in Kashmir for promoting a “false narrative and secessionism.” Being a fan of Ms Roy’s rebellious spirit, I buy her books as they are published. I had reviewed this book (Azadi) back in 2020 when it was published.

The Congress government that ruled India for a very long period, before Modi’s rhetoric mesmerised the Indian electorate, was highly flawed. Corruption ran in its every single vein. Yet it was far better than what Modi brought in its place. The glaring hypocrisy of the Congress was a glue that held India together, Ms Roy says in this censored book of hers. What she means to say is that though secularism was not practised sincerely or consistently the pretence of it acted as a binding force that maintained a kind of social and political equilibrium. That ‘pseudo-secularism’, as Modi’s party labelled it, gave people from different religions and backgrounds a reason to believe in a common national project.

After Modi became the Prime Minister, Ms Roy argues, even that pretence was dropped. Secularism was replaced with overt majoritarianism which in essence was a rejection of the inclusive ideals enshrined in the Constitution. Now Modi & Co are all set to censor out the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ from the Preamble to the Constitution. Ms Roy says in Azadi that “India has been neither secular nor socialist. In effect, it has always functioned as an upper-caste Hindu state. But the conceit of secularism, hypocritical though it may be, is the only shard of coherence that makes India possible. That hypocrisy was the best thing we had. Without it, India will end.” 

Today Modi’s India is hounding the Muslims and Christians. Ms Roy’s book says that “millions of India’s Muslims are the descendants of people who converted to Islam to escape Hinduism’s cruel practice of caste.” The truth is that most Christians in the North Indian states are also similar converts.

Islam and Christianity in India were largely reactions to the perversions of Hinduism. In pre-Modi years, the Brahminical system made life impossible for certain people who then escaped their bad fate by quitting their religion. In Modi-fied India, the same people are hounded day in and day out in the name of religion instead of caste. India wasn’t ever a bit as great as Modi makes it out to be in his eloquent speeches all over the world.

True, Hinduism has one of the most sublime philosophies in the world’s religions. Advaita, for example, towers above everything else that any religion could teach. The problem is that such notions remained in the books. In practice, Hinduism was a cruel religion that oppressed a lot of people in the name of caste and other such distinctions. Nehru’s leadership, which Modi keeps blaming every now and then, had its limitations; but it was humane to say the least. Modi’s leadership, on the other hand, is as brutal as Hitler’s.

As I am writing this, reports are coming in that some Christian priests and nuns were attacked in Odisha today by the hooligans of the Bajrang Dal, the rogue wing of the BJP. After Modi became the PM, more than 4000 similar attacks have taken place on Christians in the Hindi belt.

Who benefits out of these attacks? Ms Roy’s book, now censored in Kashmir, gives the answer. “Between 2016 and 2017, even as the world economy tanked, the BJP became one of the richest political parties in the world.” Today in 2025, Modi’s party is perhaps the only political party in the world that does not know how much money it has and where all that is stashed away. And where all those riches come from.

Ms Roy raises a lot of unsettling questions. No wonder her book has been censored. But hers is not the only one to suffer that fate in Kashmir: 25 books have been made to vanish from what now is a central government’s colony.

Can we imagine a better India? That is the last question in Azadi.