This is the second in a ten-part series on Kashmiri writers who refuse to be silenced. Arundhati Roy—Booker Prize-winning novelist, renowned writer, and fierce advocate for India’s oppressed—has been vilified for speaking the truth about Kashmir. But as the siege tightens, her voice rises, shattering the silence in plain sight, refusing to be stilled. Part I
“On the fifth of August the Indian parliament unilaterally breached the fundamental conditions of the Instrument of Accession by which the former princely states of Jammu & Kashmir agreed to become part of India in 1947. It stripped Jammu & Kashmir of statehood and its special status under Article 370, which included its right to have its own constitution and its own flag.
“The dissolution of the legal entity of the state also meant the dissolution of Section 35A of the Indian Constitution which secured the erstwhile state residents’ privileges and made them stewards of their own territory.
“In preparation of the move, the government flew in more than 50000 troops to supplement the hundreds of thousands already stationed there.
By the night of the 4th of August, tourists and pilgrims had been evacuated from the Kashmir Valley. Schools and markets were shut down. More than 4000 people arrested.
“That included politicians, businessmen, lawyers, rights activists, local leaders, students, and three former Chief Ministers. Kashmir’s entire political class, including those who have been loyal to India, were incarcerated. By midnight, the internet was cut, and the phones went dead.”
"Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds," Roy once wrote. (BBC, 2024).
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s public life is marked less by the acclaim of her fiction than by her unflinching stance on her country’s political crises. Known worldwide for "The God of Small Things", her legacy as a writer is bound to her fearless critique of India’s occupation of Kashmir and other dispossessed citizens. Where others take refuge in fiction, Roy enters the storm, exposing the state’s hypocrisy and puncturing the grand illusions of democracy.
In November 2019, delivering the Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture in New York, Arundhati Roy spoke of the India few wish to acknowledge. She laid bare the reality of seven million Kashmiris trapped under military lockdown; their aspirations crushed beneath the weight of what she called "the densest military occupation in the world." (Roy, 2019).
"Right now, seven million in the Valley of Kashmir, overwhelming numbers of whom do not wish to be citizens of India and have fought for decades for their right of self-determination, are locked down under a digital siege," she said. (Roy, The Nation, 2019).
Such words do not go unanswered. The Indian government, intolerant of dissent, has long sought to discredit her. She has been branded a "Western sympathizer", an "anti-national", a "traitor" parroting "foreign propaganda." (BBC, 2024). More than a decade after her remarks on Kashmir, Delhi authorities have authorized her prosecution under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law notorious for lengthy detentions without trial.
The move follows Roy’s 2010 statement: "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this." (BBC, 2024).
The charge against Roy is not sedition—the colonial-era law has been suspended—but UAPA, which sidesteps statute limitations, ensuring that a speech delivered 14 years ago can now serve as grounds for prosecution. This came just after Modi’s re-election, signalling that critics will be made to pay.
"Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds," Roy once wrote. (BBC, 2024).
Militarisation in Kashmir
Yet, Roy does not retreat. "The real violence is not in the militancy or the so-called separatism. It is in the refusal to allow the Kashmiri people their voice." (Roy, 2010). The August 2019 revocation of Article 370, which stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status, was, to Roy, an act of conquest. More than 50,000 additional troops were flown in, thousands of Kashmiris—including former chief ministers—were detained, and a complete communications blackout was enforced.
"The Indian parliament unilaterally breached the fundamental conditions of the Instrument of Accession," she stated in her 2019 speech. "It stripped Jammu & Kashmir of statehood and its special status, which included its right to have its own constitution and its own flag." (Roy, The Nation, 2019).
To question the morality of this is to invite retribution. To say, as Roy has, that "the only thing keeping India in Kashmir is the military" is to risk imprisonment. The response of the state has been to smear, to vilify, to prosecute.
There is a method to this madness. Roy says the BJP’s playbook has long relied on fabricating enemies. "To reignite flagging passions, all they need to do is pick a villain from the gallery and unleash their dogs of war." (Roy, The Nation, 2019). Pakistan, Kashmiri terrorists, Bangladeshi infiltrators, or the ever-convenient figure of the Muslim “anti-national.” The script is well-worn, but it works.
While Roy has withstood the brunt of nationalist fury, the persecution extends beyond her. The crackdown on Kashmiri writers, journalists, and activists has intensified. Hundreds of books have been seized, newsrooms raided, reporters arrested. The silence is not incidental—it is manufactured.
And yet, as Roy has long argued, silence is never absolute. "Not all the roaring of the 60,000 in the Houston stadium could mask the deafening silence from Kashmir," she said in 2019.
Roy’s voice, like Kashmir’s, refuses to be buried. The siege of Kashmir continues. The trial against Roy looms. The state believes that enough force can end a conversation, erase an idea, suppress a truth. But the truth, as Roy has proven time and again will not be silenced.
(Ira Mathur is an Indian-born multimedia journalist based in Trinidad.)
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