The Socialist Worker, October 2, 2009
Arundhati Roy is the renowned author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997. But Roy is equally well known as a determined social movement activist and leading voice of the global justice movement.
Roy’s new collection of essays, titled Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, examines the dark side of democracy in her native India. It looks at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just beneath the surface in a country that projects itself as the world’s largest democracy.
Here, we republish an essay from the book that provides a brilliant account of the summer 2008 uprising against Indian occupation by the people of Kashmir–a disputed region partitioned between India and Pakistan, and subject to Indian military rule in the section it controls.
FOR THE past sixty days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarized zone in the world.
Tags: Amarnath cave conflict, Arundhati Roy, Azadi, demands for freedom, democracy, free Kashmir, India, Kashmir, military occupatioin, military terror
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