"Don't Listen To Your Governments"

Speaking at a seminar in Islamabad attended by both Indians and Pakistanis, the 41-year-old Booker Prizewinner described the festering dispute between the two South Asian neighbours over Kashmir as politicalrhetoric.

The occasion? Official launch of The Daily Times of Pakistan. Among other Indians present -- ShekharGupta of The Indian Express and N. Ram of The Hindu

"When we talk about the Indo-Pakistan or Kashmir problem, we are assuming they are problems and thatpeople are searching for solutions," she said.

"I don't think this is the case. I think that for the governments of India and Pakistan, Kashmir is anot a problem, it's their perennial and spectacularly successful solution, ... it is the rabbit they pull outof the hat every time they face domestic problems..."It is not the only issue. It is only something thatdistracts attention from the real issues." 

"My position on Kashmir is that I don't have one. I don't have inflexible policies, I'm not part ofthe state," Roy said adding "it's the people that really want -- and need -- to solve theproblem." 

"In this talk of war and pointing of nukes, what are we being distracted from?" sheasked  

Earlier, greeted with a standing ovation, she said her star billing overwhelmed her. She started off withthe disclaimer: "I am not here to represent India." 

In the forty-minute address, the social activist famous for her stand against globalisation and dams likethe Narmada spoke on fame, fortune and life on the Indian subcontinent.

"Things get so heavy," she said, "I sometimes feel we have to approach them some other way." Ms Royspoke about growing up in the arcadia that is Kerala and "culturally speaking" making the long journey toDelhi. 

"We are worthy of literature," she said, referring to the people of the subcontinent. Declaring herselfa citizen of the world, Ms Roy said she wore no flag in her heart or head. "Flags," she said, "shrink-wrapone’s brain and are then used as a shroud."

Ms Roy said her work had prompted many in India to brand her a traitor and that she had been hauled over thecoals for being passionate, "as if that’s a crime." 

In 1997, when Ms Roy won the prestigious award for fiction, the Indian government, she says, "paraded meout along with Miss Universe and the man who invented our nuclear bomb and is now our president."

The summer of 1998 changed everything for Ms Roy. The nuclear detonations at Pokhran and Chaghai happenedwhile she was promoting her book in London. "Two women came up to me at the signing asking if I could speakwith them," she said. "I told them I would as soon as I was done with the signings." She said she feltconcerned because the women had been "a bit stiff". Two hours later she met the women and they asked MsRoy if they could hug her.

She called India's development of nuclear weapons "the final act of betrayal of a ruling class thathas failed its people ..The truth is, it's far easier to make a bomb than to educate 400 million people,"she said.

"This issue of social justice in both our countries is the fundamental issue, and as long as theseissues are not addressed, we
are going to be very, very weak tin pot countries."

 "Literature is the opposite of the nuclear bomb," she declared. "We are people ... we shouldknow each other’s stories, each other’s gaalis " 

She also read excerpts from her essay The End of Imagination, written in response to the Indian andPakistani nuclear tests, and a smaller piece, The Bomb and I. 

"The bomb is a challenge to god," she said. "And we should think about raising our voice because thebomb is not in our backyard, it is in us." 

She said the governments of both countries have imperiled the lives of its citizens.

Ms Roy said social injustices had become entrenched and were hampering all progress. "We should be talkingabout and fighting for the rights of the people. For the guarantee of their freedoms as citizens and people." 

She said she was "deeply suspicious" of nationalism especially since it was inevitably a cloak forcommunalism. She said she was not "anti-national", but against nationalism.

"To be an anti-national suggests that you are against that nation and therefore pro some othernation," she said. "I am deeply suspicious of nationalism. I am terribly worried about flags. I seethem as bits of cloth that shrink-wrap people's brains and then are used as a shroud to bury the willingdead."

Regretting the BJP-condoned pogrom in Gujarat earlier this year, Ms Roy said we should respect strength notpower.

"I am not courageous," she said. "I am only trying to speak the truth." She said this was the roleof all art, to push the boundaries of the imagination and to challenge, provoke and stimulate.

"Democracy is not a monster," she said referring to earlier comments made by Shekhar Gupta. "I see it asa plant, a tree. Something that cannot be kept in a room and windows locked."

Ms Roy said the oldest democracy in the world (America) was imploding because of market fundamentalism andits war on terror ("Or the war that terrorises," she said) and the largest democracy (India) was implodingbecause of religious fundamentalism.

In a Reuters report she was she was quoted as saying that if she has a message for the people of both thecountries, it is simple: "Don't listen to your governments."

"We are all members of an ancient civilisation, not a recent nation. We have so many things in commonand there is absolutely no reason to point nuclear weapons at each other.

"Eventually we have to ally ourselves with each other and we have to blow a hole in this huge dambetween us," she said.

"Bigots, fundamentalists on both sides can twist things to suit their own needs. I am terrified ofthat happening both in India and Pakistan... It is not about Muslims, Hindus. It's about fascism,majoritarianism, bigotry, these things."

"The governments raise the rhetoric whenever it suits them, and now they are sulking because peopleare taking their rhetoric seriously and saying: 'how can they think that we will probably have a war?"'