Why Arundhati Roy thought she is not a veteran artist, she may not be bound by the political and artistic beings of the nation. So many much better artists or not even one book wonders would never demand to or say what they want about the internal or external policies of this country, about the diction and the right of the people to break away from the union. One cannot set these boundaries as we are already after the ban on Salman Rushdi’s Satanic Verses. We have become a nation of self sectoring cowards. As an artist whether it be M.F.Hussain, Anupam Kher, Nasaruden Shah or Arundhathi Roy, we should never say anything which is outside our power.
Rattling before an audience is entirely different from writing a book. Here Arundhathi’s is not a matter of writing something related to Kashmir. There is always freedom for a writer or an artist. In the case of political activist there are certain restrictions too. When one is operating as a political activist has to be more cautious about his/her words. One respects Arundhati much better than any other respected woman. The kind of argument which Arundhati spills is bound to make it more rational. When she asks people of Kashmir to ……………… . Every Indian has feelings. The feelings of soldiers, feelings of mothers who lost their children, the feelings of hundreds of pundits who are forced to live in camps. The common man has very high feelings. There is a concept that writers, actors and artists only have the feelings and upheavals and they only feel rightly about a fact or a situation. There are many who have lost heavily in the context course. They are the most important people here. Nobody cares that an artist is carrying freedom of expression of everybody else. It is not only if Arundhati Roy is right or wrong. The point of issue is, do artists of varying degree like M F Hussain to any other vernacular artist have the right to speak their mind to a critical political issue like this. Do they have the right to speak anything directing the split up of India? A citizen’s freedom is limited by the constitution. It has expressly stated that every citizen should think and act to maintain the clauses of the constitution and the integrity of the country even if it encroaches upon the freedom of his/her speech. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean…………. Is India becoming an intolerable country? The government is becoming highly irresponsible to allow anything to go just because somebody is a writer, a painter, an academician a……… It doesn’t mean that he/she is above the constitution. Then what is the need of a constitution. If we are going to speak on these lines, then there is no need for constitution, no laws…… we will go jolly good society where everyone will speak his mind
What we need to do is understand the person. May be Arundhati is just trying for another prize .. a greedy cunning personality .. nothing else . She sounds like ISI megaphone. Is she balanced and thoughtful in her saying. We have people around us who live here and later for a small material gain sell their souls, take shelter outside without having the least shame to be a slave of that country. What we need to do is to understand these types of people. I feel deeply sorry for the soldiers who gave away their life to win Kashmir for Indians, Indians like Arundhati Roy.
So sad, a booker prize winner saying this. Is she aware that she's insulting the martyrdom of thousands of soldiers who fought and died for it?
