With great power comes great responsibility

Arundhati Roy, a Booker prize winner and more recently, a social activist and campaigner must begin to choose her words carefully. She has a command over the English language and the State of India granting her the freedom of speech, does not necessarily mean she can go to town on issues that are delicate and need political maneuvering rather than hard hammering. Its time people like her realise that not every issue needs a campaign and a champion, some issues need time and patience. Getting on the nerve of the State for every damn issue is not the way forward, it merely hardens stances and reduces the room for negotiation. Indirectly, its harming the cause of the same people whose cause she claims to espouse.


To me she is just a lose mouthed canon that goes off at wrong times and does not help any one's cause. Its time she is reined in and for good. Its time people know that the fundamental rights granted to us by the Constitution of India are inalienable but are not absolute. The misuse of the said rights will not be taken in good taste by the State. Every State needs a conscience keeper and it is for this sacred duty that every citizen must use his rights to freedom of speech, not to hammer in wrong places and cause unrest among the population. Ms. Roy seems to have lost it completely and not for the first time. She has been testing the patience of the State of India for more than a year and acting counterproductive to the same State that gives her the right to free speech.


Firstly, it was the Naxal issue. Every Indian empathises with the atrocities meted out to some tribals long-long ago. This issue was not resolved and some left wing extremists took this up to justify their war on the Indian state. They started blowing up bridges, killing police personnel and causing lot of infrastructure damage. In short, they did not allow these areas to develop on the pace that rest of India is developing. Then comes our lady Ms. Roy and speaks on the same issue, only this time, blames India for not developing these areas and conveniently ignores the destruction caused by the Naxal movement. To her, if a Naxalite kills state police personnel its justified as "self defense" but if the State is imposing the rule of law in a land where it seems to have collapsed, it becomes excesses meted out by a rouge State. In her view, India should act as a banana republic and allow every region a right to secede from the nation. God forbid, if the State imposes its authority and sovereignty, it becomes a colonial power which colonises the said regions. I cannot fathom what kind of skewed mindset this is. Is she really naive or playing plain stupid. Is she on the payroll of the enemies of the State of India, trying to stay within the society and trying to disintegrate the nation. Mind boggles with naivety of her stupid arguments.



Kashmir is seething in the fires burning and every able minded Indian is concerned about how to bring back the normalcy in Kashmir. Now, more than ever its imperative on the State not to fail its people and India is doing just that by nominating 3 interlocutors to get every shade of opinion in the valley and try to assuage the pain felt by the Kashmiri in the street. Enter our trouble seeker Ms. Roy. First in Delhi, then in Srinagar she shoots her mouth off stating that India is a force occupying Kashmir and holding it. Indian army is meting inexplicable damage on the psyche of the Kashmiri and they are tortured, raped etc into saying that they are Indians. This one sentence should not be let to pass. It undermines our soldiers and the lifelong service that they have rendered to us. It is easy to criticise the Army, putting on their hats and standing within 300 feet of the LOC, facing the enemy guns is a whole different story. The Army has been doing this for past 60 years, protecting the territorial integrity of the nation. Be it Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunanchal Pradesh or West Bengal, they stand like a sturdy wall facing all the bullets and keeping the average Indian safe in the street. The very freedom that Ms. Roy uses to shoot her mouth off is achieved by the sweat and blood of the men in uniform, so we must not denigrate them so lightly who have served us so diligently. Agreed, many mistakes have been made in handling situations but then again we must remember that army is not trained to handle civilian areas so there is bound to be some collateral damage when they operate. Mistakes made by few officers (though not condoned) cannot be extrapolated to entire armed forces and there is no case for calling them an occupying force.



If the armed personnel knew that the freedom and sovereignty of India that they protect laying down their lives, will be talked about so lightly by "intellectuals" of the nation, who, forever espouse the "human rights" of the terrorists and naxals and denigrate the very forces that protect them, they would think twice before signing up for duty. The families would not send their sons and daughters in harms way to fight for the country if the citizens are going to throw away the objectives for few sensational sound bites. People like Ms. Arundhati Roy are not loyal to anything, neither the nation nor the cause that they stand for. They are merely publicity hungry individuals who find it fashionable to make ludicrous statements in the name of "freedom of speech" and "justice for poor".


I would sincerely appeal to the likes of Ms. Roy to not play with fire and to use their influence over society for solving problems rather than stoking fire using mindless speeches and articles. Its time the "intellectuals" come out of their ideal bookish world and be part of some practical solutions to the society.

So long...