Azadi is a collection of nine essays, written between 2018 and 2020, the last of which is written just as the global Covid-19 pandemic shut down almost all the world. Each essay centres India and questions how the world’s largest democracy has fallen from grace and into the arms of fascism. She writes about Hindu nationalism, Kashmir and of the dangers and freedoms of being a writer. She writes beautifully and passionately about the country she loves. Azadi, is an Urdu word, derived from Persian, and literally translates to freedom. It is the chant that echoed in the massive demonstrations in Kashmir, probably borrowed from the Iranian Revolution. For Arundhati Azadi is a novel, the freedom to write in an increasingly subjugating world. Even as we are dug deeper into fascism, across the globe, only the language of our imaginations is yet to be policed. Her nonfiction has certainly made her enemies, with an impending prosecution for a speech she made in Delhi fourteen years ago on a conference on Kashmir, for which she has been a loud and ardent supporter. This collection of essays is dynamic and fearless, just like the author, and explores freedom, fascism and fiction in modern day India.

The first essay is titled “In What Language Does Rain Fall Over Tormented Cities?”  a quote from The Book of Questions by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Arundhati explores her own relationship with languages, from her early childhood grappling with the notion of a “mother tongue” to more recent incidents in which she is personally credited as a success story of the British Empire due to her ability to write (and be read) in English (by the English). India is a country of approximately 780 languages, of which only 22 are formally recognised in its constitution, with English and Hindi being the ‘official languages’ although English was supposed to have been removed in 1965. The alt-right government in India are working hard to create a “one nation, one religion, one language” movement across India, although the reality remains that India is far to diverse to squeeze into a single box. Exploring Empire through language and translations, through her own work and those of other writers, she identifies the weaponizing of words and slogans that once united a nation. The call for Azadi, an Urdu word, rings from all four corners of modern day India, from Kashmir, Gujarat, Kerala and West Bengal, and in multiple languages. And although language, especially English, can reek of privilege and exclusion, it is also possible for it to be a language of emancipation, something many of us living in the diaspora can relate to.

The next two essays explore India’s rapid decline into fascism with little or no pushback from its media. Modi is to India what Trump is to America and that’s evident through his right-wing ideologies such as “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan” (ironically all three words derived from the Persian- Arabic al-Hind) being the equivalent of “Make America Great Again”. Modi’s determination to create a Hindu India, based on his inaccurate interpretations of a long lost history, is in many ways similar to the swing globally to the right. However it’s much more complex in a country that is more akin to an Empire or a continent. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the richest political party in the world. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is a far right party and has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right paramilitary organisation. Its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. India however, contrary to Modi’s assertions, has never been a Hindu country, buts facts are a fascists nemesis. Even the word “Hinduism” with its Persian roots, was originally coined by Raja Ram Mohan Roy around1816–17 it was used by those Indians who opposed British colonialism, and who wanted to distinguish themselves from Muslims and Christians. In 2016, Modi experimented with disaster Capitalism, when seemingly overnight, he announced the demonetisation of 80 percent of India’s currency. Whilst small businesses, traders and the poor suffered enormously, a handful of corporations multiplied their wealth several times over.

In The language of Literature Arundhati speaks about her experience of becoming a target of the Modi government. Many of her friends and comrades have been arrested, with some still languishing in prisons today. The deliberate targeting of lawyers, journalists, lecturers and storytellers is an attempt to suppress the voices of opposition, of ideas and alternatives. She reminds us that in India the ones in jail are the lucky ones, the less fortunate are dead. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a far right protofascist group known to be the most secretive and most powerful organisation in India. Founded in 1925, its ideologies were greatly influenced by European fascism. They openly praised Hitler and Mussolini and their ambition is to have India formally declared a Hindu nation. The RSS runs a kind of shadow government with tens of thousands of branches across the country. It is traditionally controlled by a sect of west-coat Brahmins known as Chitpavan Brahmins. This essay also explores Brahminism and the Hindu caste system, which today is praised by white supremacists and racists from across the globe. I was shocked to learn that Gandhi considered the caste system a ‘genius’ of Hindu society and I’m looking forward to reading The Doctor and the Saint a book by Arundhati Roy in which she discusses this in more detail.

In the next two essays Arundhati Roy speaks about Kashmir. The parallels between what’s happening in Gaza today and what has been happening in Kashmir for the past few years, only without the visibility, is striking. On the 4th of August 2019 Kashmir was turned into a giant prison camp. Seven Million Kashmiris were locked into their homes, with internet and phone connections completely cut off. The very next day Article 370 from the Indian constitution was all but revoked. Kashmir was the only Muslim-majority region to join India during partition in 1947. Article 370 allowed the state of Jammu and Kashmir a certain amount of autonomy – its own constitution, a separate flag and freedom to make laws. Foreign affairs, defence and communications remained the preserve of the central government, however Jammu and Kashmir could make its own rules relating to permanent residency, ownership of property and fundamental rights. Crucially it could also bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. It has long been the ambition of the far right BJP government to change the predominantly Muslim demographic of Kashmir and therefore, much like what’s happening in Palestine, to allow Indian settlers to move in and overwhelm the indigenous population. And the parallels with Palestine don’t stop there. India is determined to rewrite its history and claim Kashmir as historically Hindu land. Today Kashmir is considered the most militarized zone in the world, its often referred to as “The valley from which no news must come” because of how often it is muted from the outside world. The Indian far right BJP government cut off the internet for over 500 days from 2019 and only restored it with a 2G connection. In a world where we need and rely on the internet every single day, for personal and professional reasons, Kashmir is cut off intermittently depending on the whims of the Indian government. Arundhati writes “What India has done in Kashmir over the last thirty years is unforgivable. An estimated 70,000 people – civilians, militants, and security forces – have been killed in the conflict. Thousands have been ‘disappeared’, and tens of thousands have passed through torture chambers that dot the valley like a network of small-scale Abu Ghraibs.”

The seventh essay, The Graveyard Talks Back: Fiction in the Time of Fake News, beautifully juxtaposes the story of India and its mostly Muslim graveyards and her latest novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which she says can be read as a conversation between two graveyards. The first is the valley of Kashmir, considered one of the most beautiful places on Earth, a Jannat (Paradise) of sorts, and is now, after thirty years of war, covered in graves. The other is the Jannat Guest House, the home which the protagonist of Roy’s novel, Anjum, builds her guest house, on the site of a graveyard. Conversations about Kashmir, outside of the governments propaganda, are strictly prohibited in Modi’s RSS India, but thankfully fiction isn’t policed in the same way. The chant of Azadi is captured in both fiction and in life. In the former the voices that are silenced in life are amplified in Roy’s novel as an anthem, a hymn and a prayer. And in India today chants for Azadi ring for entirely different reasons: from poverty, from hunger, from caste, from patriarchy and from repression.

The penultimate essay, There is Fire in the Ducts, the System is Failing is a rousing call to action, delivered after the 2019 election in India, in which Modi held on to power. As I write this, on the eve of an election in America, I’m reminded that election cycles come and go. Our democracies have been in decline for decades now, and each time we look for saviours, outside of ourselves. Arundhati Roy reminds us that no political party that intends to win elections will or can afford to take a moral position. That is on us. We have to be prepared to be unpopular, to be uncomfortable, to tell the truth, to put ourselves in danger. Brave journalists, students, lawyers and artists have always done this. Fascism is opposed to intelligence, intellectual debates and the flourishing of ideas. The regime in India has been quelling and quashing protests at universities for years now, just as we see police and security forces brutally dismantle student protests in the West in support of Palestine. But the brave students and lecturers continue to come out, time and time again. We have work to do. And a world to win, as Arundhati reminds us.

The final essay was written a month into the global lockdown following the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. The first case of Covid in India was reported on January 30th, just days after the Brazilian far right president, and covid denier, Jair Bolsonaro, chief guest to the Republican Day Parade, left the country. In February the Modi government was too busy planning for a Trump visit to bother with Covid. In March the first two weeks were devoted to toppling the Congress government in Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and installing a BJP government in its place. On March the 13th the health ministry made an announcement that Covid was not a health emergency and on the 19th Modi addressed the public himself, calling for a day of “people’s curfew” on the 22nd of March. He encouraged people to come out to their balconies, ring bells and bang pots for health workers, but failed to mention that India was exporting protective gear and respiratory equipment instead of keeping it for India’s health workers and hospitals. Then, on the 24th of March Modi appeared on screen again, to announce that from midnight India would be on lockdown. A nation of 1.3 billion people was given 4 hours to prepare for a total lockdown. All of India’s structural, social and economic inequality was laid bare for all to see as images of millions of impoverished, hungry, sick, old and young, men, women and children, blind people, disabled people, with nowhere else to go, began long marches home to their villages. Approximately 460 million people. At this point in the pandemic, no one knew what lay ahead. Arundhati Roy reminds us that pandemics have historically led to change, they have allowed us to imagine something different. She leaves us with a challenge, what can we create from this, what can we dare to imagine.

Azadi, like everything Arundhati writes, is brilliant. Her passionate arguments for freedom resonate, particularly in this year, as we’ve watched a genocide unfold before our eyes. Roy is never afraid to speak and share her truth. In a year where so many of our heroes have fallen, Arundhati has continued to speak truth to power. Never afraid of controversy, her unapologetic and ardent support for Kashmir has made her some powerful enemies, and yet she continues, as one of the few voices that raise awareness about about Kashmir. Azadi is freedom, against India’s occupation of Kashmir, freedom against fascism, freedom to write. Azadi is a call to all of us, to join her in this emancipatory struggle. It is the freedom to believe another world is possible.