You at the next event. Thank you pj. Book tv continues on cspan two television for serious readers. Good evening good afternoon we know we had people here all over the world. Greetings, welcome. The Elliott Bay Book company. On behalf of all of the people who are staging this production today we are delighted to be celebrating the publication of Arundhati Roys new book azadi. This is been published and launched with her in new delhi. In the evening hours. I am in seattle where it is still a new day. All of you joining us everywhere around the spectrum. May even be earlier in the morning. The publication was the suspicious one. First to acknowledge all of the books publisher. In publishing this book. Haymarket is published based in chicago in the u. S. Its been around since 2001. And dedicated to social justice books. They have come around for on for the past 20 years. You can certainly got it haymarket books. Org. They are huge part of this. It is a south asian arts organization. It was a response to the u. S. The ambitious south asian film festival. They were more of what they were about. They helped to present them. In the recent visits. In the bay company is where i work. The independent bookstore. I had been fortunate to work there. It was a long hard work for the good and private books. And to say a little of our history here. I dont want to go too far on the limb. From the spring of 1997. Seattle was one of the first. Thats all that happened. What really happens is in that remarkable book. Weve had visits since. The last one was for the second novel. It is the ministry of the most up up most happiness. There was a twentyyear time there. They were looking for another novel. There were other writings. These writings which were published initially in indian magazines. This is a form of a small books. They kept happening. We felt compelled to speak out about. And where those places met. With the slightly different combination. With a different title. This all kind of has been addressed with the publication last year. That was this tone. Its also noteworthy. It is a thousand pages of writing. With the book she is here for today its actually a book already to gears on from what the essay will look like. Is a very publication. Our nine pieces that have been written since then. Certainly things through india. With relevance here in the u. S. With Arundhati Roy will be nick s. With the citizen of the lower proulx suit. Also the cofounder. Also the offer of published last year which is a another independent radicalization. Later last year co edited this analogy. In standing with the standing lock. That activists and scholars. So they will have a conversation for the next hour or so you are invited to put questions in the chat field. As you are watching and those will be sent to nick. They will be sent and worked into the conversation. If you need to have access to that. There is information there. Your questions and comments. In the closed captioning. I will disappear in just a moment. Great hands now. Thank you all for wherever you are. In the places that you are joining us for this. I know you can only imagine the energy that would be there. And this is their first meeting. All of the things that we miss and not bringing together. This would be part of what we get to benefit from that. Director good energy and focus. And to the affirmation in support to the two people that are doing such great work. And of the book the book you are about to hear from. Thank you all. Thanks so much. As i was preparing for this particular interview as much as her work is the things that she has written. You can also look at the things she has been criticized for by the indian state as a testament to the power of this particular work and role as a writer. For me personally this is a great honor. Im a huge fan. I havent told her this offline. But im incredibly nervous because its a huge not honor for me to be talking to her and to have the opportunity to read this incredible book. It speaks to the moment in time and i wanted to begin this interview with a question about the books title which is a kashmiri word for freedom. You say that first word that comes to mind. As you write the introduction a novel gives the writer of the freedom to be as collocated as she wants. To move through the world language and time through society and community in politics. In many ways, you read the recent and long history of india through kashmir. Can you explain your choice of using this word and how it shapes the collection of essays. It is a word in which and then they came and mingled with those things. More recently and traveled i think from the revolution. It was used by feminist now and meaning for several decades has been the hunting cry they had been fighting that the military occupation. Oddly enough. There is a death silence in india about the struggle in and a silence from the left and the liberals of course. There is a lot of noise from the right which covers the story. What is very dangerous is that the large Muslim Population in india which is incorporation is 15 . Hundreds of millions of people they are a kind of hostage to the Independence Movement and the Indian Muslims have a completely different space that they occupy. They dont have the option of even thinking about freedom they have to think about how to live with dignity. And recently, this government came up with the new citizenship law which is on the old thing called the National Register. It was reactivated in the state of a son. 20million people were off of that register. And on top of that the government passed another law called the citizenship amendment act. And so suddenly there was a severely odd juxtaposition that happened last year. They have a special state on the indiana constitution. It was indicated into india. The siege with the most densely militarized zone in the world and almost for the whole of this past year they had been under curfew and silence locked down with coed and all of it. The massive protests came out on the streets of india by that citizenship law. And why they were silence it was the swell of a demand for a different kind. Obviously not independence. A cry for dignity for human rights. Being treated as equal citizens and that she was brutally crushed. The rest of india not with the kind of cruelty. It began to seem like there were internet cards. People have been brutalized and killed. This series of essays really began to ask what is the connection between the call and the new cry on the indian street. The essays are written from the point of view and imagination but then interrogates that idea. In the military form. The literary imagination you make a point in an essay a talk you gave about howure writer friend were talk about when are you going to get back to writing and the quoteunquote real work of a fiction writer and you make a powerful point in your career what you are doing is a form of literature, whether its fiction or nonfiction. So can you talk but all your role as a writer and playing out not just in the realm of political analysis and commenting on Current Events but also imagining new worlds through whether its through the god of small things or the ministry your most recent novel. Guest so, when i wrote the god of mall small things, obviously i used to work in im an architect and thin worked in cinema and this was my first book, and who could anticipate that kind of attention for a first book. It won the booker prize and sold millions of copies, and i found myself raising issues of this kind of embrace by an establishment that ive always been very suspicious of. I felt like my proteins were being melted down and i was turning into some domestic fame is also very domesticated, domesticking and everybody wants you to write the same thing. And it was around the time that india shifted from being this nonaligned power, poor country but a poor country with some spine, with some dignity, but with a great socialist underpinning. I mean, canada where i grew up was the first democratically elected communist government in the world if thats not an oxymoron but whatever. So i grew up with the strikes and the big protests and the red flags and the revolution was coming, and then suddenly by the 90s, everything changed, and the markets were opened, of course the soviet union collapsed and india elined itself with the free market, and suddenly the literary imagination, the sin nat tick imagination, the poetic imagination, the public language, everything changed, and in 97s way on the cover of every magazine. In 1998, the rite wing government came in and a new series of Nuclear Tests and i was being marketed as this sort of thank you in the india, the new india in the high table, and i knew that if i didnt have the option of keeping quiet because if i kept quiet that meant i agreed with all that. So i wrote the First Political essay which was called the end of imagination, and within hours i was kicked off the list, great sensation did and there was this incredible disappointment in me, by people around me, that how could you have done this . And i literally in that is that is say i was talk but the fact that Nuclear Weapons are its not just whether theyre used or not that this problem but but how they colonize your imagination and nationalize your imagination, change the public language, and i said if its antihindu and antiindian to have this imagination then i declare in this orgy of nationalism, the fairly princess just came out and shat on everybody. Just like out. But there was another world which suddenly kind of opened up to me, and i traveled, i and i reacted writing essays and people were unsure what is this . Is is academic, is it a journalist, a pamphleteer. They were somewhere between genres because there was certainly a it was an intervention. It was urgent. It was furious. It wasnt was more like i saw that these movements, i like the big antidam movement, the displacement of nations of people, ancient people. You know, there needed to be a story, like a story was a weapon in the hands of the movement. So i was not writing what people called to power. I was not writing some on the one hand this and on the other hand this and on the their hand this. I was saying this is our fight, and i am the writer on the side of the light. And people i think things might have change a little recently but theres this kind of furor of a writer being political, its the god of small things wasnt political. The people in thought was political and teaming with a subject that was absolutely taboo, to talk but caste and the ways in which he left has not been able to deal with it. But people managed change that interest its soful beautiful, its about children and language. People kind of work hard to soften the edges sometimes of writing, which is makes the for me when i started writing the political essays, they would get translated immediately into languages, made into pamphlets, distributed in forests and they understood the literature. People on the frontline. So, that is what i say in one of the else says, for me essays, for me, theres something but literature that is constructed between readers and writers, not between critics and literature festivals and reviewers but between readers and writers, which is urgent and which is a kind of shelter. So, its like there are some moments in my life to me a soul i mean, more than any royalties, more than any awards, like, i remember being in a village, way late at night, walk us through the paddies and there was a huge standoff because the government, which happened to be a left gunfight government, was trying to take over the land, give it to a huge Chemical Plant and there was firing i could hear the firing in the distance, and i was just Walking Around along. This man just appeared in the shadows and said, you know, i just want to thank you for understanding what were doing. They think the other side thinks we have weapons. We dont have weapons. We just use sticks and silhouette and pretend we have happens but we dont have anything but were fighting and very few people at that point everybody in the tv studios was turning gandhian and denounce violence when its easy for them. Expecting everybody to lie town and die while the land is taken; which is why i was so happy to read your piece. I thought, goodness, how much you would have had to talk about if you had come here and walked with the comrades in the forests of central india. Thats a really appreciate theres a lot to be said and i think one thing that a friend of mine once said, her name is lala, poet, i tried to be a poet. Not good at it but she said you have to look for poetry. Poetry is more than just words. You have to look for poetry in actions, and its the job of the writer to basically capture or to be able to see that kind of poetry, and one thing i really have been inspired by your writing specifically is that you dont confine yourself to one thing and i think theres a lot of expectation for people to be kind of characterized as a certain kind of writer. Youre a fiction writer, youre a poet. And we confront that especially within literary nationalism, especially people who are not part of kind of the european tradition but nonetheless have inherited the baggage of that, whether its through colonialism or imperialism, and one of the ways i appreciated that you pushed back on that is this idea of translation. The multiple languages that one has to know and to understand, and im not just talk us about languages that people speak because capitalism itself is a language. It transforms relations into profit. Transforms things into money. And ive been thinking about this because im writing a piece and i havent, like, crystallized what how i understand it, but i felt like you were really kind of challenging some ways more cosmopolitan than the cools mow poll tan people because youre looking at a place that is as you say, is simultaneously captured in different centuries and also overlapped in nations and different kinds of people that cant be just income passed in one kind of sing literary tradition. I think india one of the essays i say that a novel shouldnt have an enemy but if the ministry of happiness has an enemy then its the idea of one nation, one language, one religion, which is what the Modi Government and the fascists around him are trying to push for, but in india there are Something Like more than 700 languages spoken, 22 of them are official languages, and within each language there is such a history of colonizing, being colonized so many cycles of respect and disrespect, the words that will be used to describe this caste or that gender, and so like the first essay in the book, of course the caption is a line from which says in what language does rain fall or would tormented cities, and its really talking about the ministry of happiness sort of swimming the characters are swimming in this ocean of languages and you see, for example, the most shattering memory of people in modern day india is the memory of the massacres that took place in 1947 when india was partitioned and pakistan and india became two separate countries, although there were many nations where the violence, assimilation was as mach partition, but one of the things you see is that before the partition happened, language was partitiones. The language that used to call hindustani was partitioned into udu which is supposedly spoken by muslims and by hindus and the violence of that continues to this day. To this day you have fascist mobs, razeed to he ground some 300 years ago a poet of love. So language has been at the heart of much of the violence in this continent that is masquerading at a nation, and so even as i was saying earlier when they did the Nuclear Tests you could see the public language changed, and so and now you have when they start off on these National Register of citizens, and you have people who live in these Little Islands in the most distant parts of the area, mighty which keeps changing course, which has storms and tornadoes and consumed people alive but all of them have little plastic bags with their documents and they have internalized this bureaucracy, the legacy papers and waterless and similarly the people in the valley who are being displaced. By the dam, they have a whole other language by which they are described in government files. Pap. Project affected person. Canal affected or whatever. And like as a writer in this part of the world, to study love and violence and nationhood and religion, language is a perfect entry point. Host kind of elaborating on this idea of language and the partition of language, you talk about crasse in your work and this is me being the ugly american. We have a racial hierarchy in the country. No comparable but there are similarities, but one thing you talk about, its not so much a caste system but brohminism and the rebrohminnization of sections of Indian Society, specifically through this organization which you call the one on the most powerful organizations in india, the r. S. S. Can you explain about that . Because i think reading some of your interviews and then also people have messaged me privately and asked, isnt she brahmni evers, upper caste. Im not. My mother was a christian and my father belongs to an Organization Called the he also became a christian, so im not a brahmin and when the Anticaste Movement has traditionally word used the word brahminism, i the idea of caste hierarchy. Fundamentally the difference between a race andcaste and caste is that caste was given itself religious sanction. Christianity, islam, siekhism, all of them in the text may say all human beings are equal or brothers but, no, they also have their but in the relation texts you have a stipulated hierarchy and each caste so you have all four divisions which are called the brahmain, the the and then outside of it, the outcast and each of these is divided into tiny little castess and each one has hereditary occupation. This is the and you have the brohm brahmaics or the priests. The other their menials and the outcaste are the untouchable and unseeable. The violence of thinking like that, its unbelievable. And if you look at Indian Society and you look at even i would say most indian liberal intellectual, even left wing intellectual. Just allied this issue which is the engine on which Indian Society runs. So i have written a little book called to the doctor and the sane but a about conversations and debates between the most beloved leader of the gullits, and the most revered human being in the world probably, gandhi, and while i was researching this, i who am like everyone necessary the world in particularly millions of indians, indoctrinated in a completely false dub falsification of what gandhi was and stood for. So i went back and this little text is based not on speculation, modern interpretation but only producing his own writing. At the at the time when gandhi was in south africa, all of us are told that he fought racism, the fought segregation. No, his first battle in south africa was for a third entrance to be opened to the post office so that indians and blacks would not have to share the same entry. And he continuously in his writing made a difference between the indians indians whoe brothers of the imperial britain the lower caste who are liars and basically unreformable, and then that i traced that from his time in south africa, right up to the end of his life, how his views of race were informed by this childhood views on caste and how caste came back, the attitude to worker and women, and so like i said in these essaysnot elaborated upon like i have the in the doctor and the saint but fascism which we are experiencing news, it aadorns itself with fake news and bested on fake history and intellectuals laugh the corny fake history of the right but they themselves have created a fake history which has the rule of caste in this country which is absolutely the dishonesty is unbelievable. I democratic in the wake of the George Floyd Protests, which i would say that have erupted all over the world. Probably one of the largest mass protests in world history. The only thing i can think of comparable to them in this recent moment are in recent history is the mass demonstrations against the u. S. Invasion of iraq back in 2003, but in south africa, i believe it was south africa could i be wrong they top they would gandhi statue. It was in ghana. And the thing is, i its difficult to talk about this subject in just an interview because it is such a difficult subject, and this in the doctor and the saint im im not saying that gandhi had nothing to recommend. Im not saying that. He was brilliant politician, cunning politician. He had a lot of things that i think were visionary, but we cannot build an understanding of who we are and what we are fighting for unless we are honest about his views on race, on caste and women, and if you confront him, its very hard to prefix the word for me. I want to change gears a little bit and talk about an element in your writing that i think lot of folks here in this part of the world can identify with is the rise of some somebody like modi and specifically his alignment with somebody like trump and you write this in the nation piece that came out which ive read on the day it came off the presses. How this kind of howdy modi spectacle that happened in texas, is happening along side google trends that shows searches for kashmiry girl which is advertising territory for indian settlers to come in and to colonize and then also while trump visited india in his most recent meeting with modi, there was a massacre happening, and yes in my city. In your city. And both of them operate like modi seems to be a little bit more on the softer edge in this public appearance while having an iron fist, obviously in his crackdown against dissent, whereas trump doesnt really care but the thing they share in common is an authoritarianism and a make believe fantasy how they have debt with not only dissent but also the current pandemic, and also if you can maybe elaborate a little bit more on that in this relationship, this very loving relationship between these two leaders. Well, i think that the difference between them is that trump of course does have his mill militias and his Media Outlets but the institutions, whether its the army, the u. S. Intelligence services and whether it is the mainstream not fox news but the mainstream sort of press, are showing a kind of resistance to him, but modi is a person who has from the time he was a very young adult, been a member of this Organization Called the r. S. S. Which has modeled its on mussolinis blackshirts and openly praise history explore they have a massive infrastructure. Militia of Something Like 600,000 people. They have deep branches, hundreds of thousandsed of branches all over the country. They run they are the state. So the difference between the two is that one has the organization of fascism behind him as well as the 400 24 7 news channels and a great portion of bollywood which is an incredible ambassador of the hindu right with many honorable exceptions. So, you have a situation here where its a man that is running, and all the institutions and democracy have been taken over, but both of them are great friend, and in fact, one of the reasons why modi didnt reaction early to the covid pandemic is because trump was visiting and there was going be this huge namaste trump meeting which turn out to be a hub of massive coronavirus soon after that. But by the time trump came to delhi you had the protestors on the streets, very much like the black lives matter protests. There were millions of people on the streets against the citizenship law, which was by then it had become about more than just that. There was poetry there was students, universities were being just battered by police and so on, but then you have the massacre while trump was here, where it was just the brutality was unbelievable, and it was exhibitionist and we saul the videos of the police with these battered muslim men lying on the street, forcing them to sing the national anthem, forcing them to mocking them about the mobs burning down mosques and so on, and now of course, the whole narrative has been turned and muslims are being blamed for killing muslims, and major human rights activist students, all are being put into prisons every day. So, i dont think the coincidence that the three geniuses of the early 21st century, modi, trump, and on the top of the charts of coronavirus. But now today the newspapers are tell us not the tv gained newspapers that the Indian Economy has shrunk 23. 9 . Modi ordered a lockdown because fascists love spectacles so his spectacle was im going to call the most Strict Lockdown the world has ever known and 1. 38 billion people were given four hours notice and then it was like curfew, and that was like a chemical experiment, because suddenly you had millions of working class people who had no homes, who had no money, who had no way of getting home to their villages, walking, hundreds hundreds hundreds of kilometers home, getting beaten by police, sprayed with bleach and carrying the virus to the four corners of the country. So, right now were sitting on an economy that is crashed, millions of people out of work, a developing world under bored which india whose army was always on the alert on the western front with pakistan, now has to be battleready on 3,000kilometer long front on higher altitude warfare ready so they dont have forget weapons, dont even have warm clothes, and an economy that is collapsing. So, we are and we are looking at almost feel like youre sitting on a crater of a volcano cushioned with prop propaganda. That was my next question. The New York Times report that Indian Economy contracted nearly 24 , which is the most drastic fall in decades. Right . And ever, actually. Not just for like the this is a global thing. Its not just for india. Specifically as a country but for i think the u. S. Economy shrank like 9. 5 . In japan 7. 6 to give people an idea. I was thinking about this in terms of like even a country like beirut that hatted the explosion and they estimated initially to be 5 billion usd in damages, but they didnt account for, like, the actual blast radius which is 25 billion. The gdp of a country like lebanon is 50 billion. So have of it gdp was knocked out in almost in a single blast. In a single blast. In india, we must remember that it isnt because of just because of the corona lockdown. Before cornea, a 45, year unemployment, and moved dicame out one night and announced demop tiesation where 80 of the currency was made no longer legal tender. So, it was like some economists said like he had taken a gun and shot the heart of the engine of the moving car. Then now the wheels have been taken away but the problem is that the the poor do not exist in the imagination of the elite anymore. Since then 1990s. Even if you look at bollywood animals they used to be fighting, the poor, workers, unions, villages, now they just these films that are shown in they dont have poverty in them. Literature has for me most part no more poor people in it. Poetry has lost the poor. Theres no way of planning for them if they dont exist in your imagination. Which is why when they started walking, when the lockdown was called, it was they had been hidden away in the crevasses of cities, unacknowledged, and suddenly they appeared. So, you are in a situation where its like just been happening , like i recently said to somebody, feels like dike diabetic who had a silent heart attack after silent hart academic, its the propaganda that masks the illness and suddenly you have a situation where the heart is failing. In your kind of closing essay in this book, around the coronavirus, you write i think a very pertinent phrase, the pandemic is a portal and you talk about how in the past pandemics have forced societies to break with the past and imagine their world anew and i think this can be said of many crises that societies face. I feel after reading this book, not just reading this become but the times we live in, i feel less pessimistic about that now world and i think a lot of people feel the same way, and i guess a lot of the questions that were getting even in the chat now is, like, how do we imagine a new world in this particular moment as we have seen the intersection of the rise of fascism with this coronavirus pandemic and now we also have the question of Global Climate change that seems to have taken a back seat in this larger conversation. Well, that when i said the pandemic is a portal and the last paragraph are about what are we going to leave behind and what are we going to drag through the portal . Are we going to drag the carcasses of dead rivers and smoky skies . The idea that our oceans are filling up with ppe suits and masks, but i think more important is to understand the ways in which we are being controlled now, apart from the fact that nothing suit this fascist more than having us all obviously siloed into our homes. In a country like india thats not possible because people dont have the politics of the lockdown is completely people dont have homes that are locked a lockdown means social compression, not social distancing because its just impossible. So you are seeing data which shows that in poorer areas where people have been cramped up and people have just had to go about their work, there is a kind of greater resistance and a sort of herd immunity coming out, but i think the real danger that is that we face is that the idea that the classes that can be socially distant will begin to view those that cant be as a biohazardous about and a lot of attempt to try to see if the world can be made to work where the working classes, the labor classes that had to walk thousands thousands thousands of coil kilometers home and will be separated and can we have production in which these two classes dont meet at all. Can we do away with the biohazardous body, the surplus people. So, the government have shown all these governments, meaning the governments we are talking about here, yours, ours, have shown every sign that they will see the pandemic to increased control to increase surveillance, to increase the polarization of who is wealthy and who is not. But at some point, that is going to break apart, which i think we are seeing in the united states. I havent spent a lot of time there but i think that people like even this last two months in the runup to the election, people probably do understand that whatever happens in the election, the elects are not going to be the way to a new world. Although it is very important that trump is rooted out, but the new people that come in will not come in with a new imagination, and the polarization is so deadly that the chances of a kind of violence on the streets is very, very high. Similarly over here, the chaos that we can expect as things break down, maybe we shouldnt be so scared of it is what im saying. Nothing is going to transition so beautifully, so easily, with by without a kind of i dont know. Without a kind of real battle. Nothing will change. Which is terrifying to think that way but i think that way now. That maybe many of us will perish in it, but the polarization is so huge and so obvious and you know, conversations are not even happening. I had a final question and you dont have to an it, but i wanted to just ask, what is the future of indian democracy . So, i wonder if i i wanted to read something somebody sent it to me, and i it was like a little passage that i had written many years ago about democracy. Let me see if i can find it. Someone actually just sent me this yesterday. So this is from a essay i wrote called democracys failing light. Not in this book in a previous collection i. Saved the question here really is what have we done to democracy . What have we turned it into . What happens once democracy has been used up, when it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning. What happens when each of the institutions has metastasizees into something taken louisville what happens now that democracy and at the free market have fuse evidence into a single predator organism with a constricted imagination that re revolves around the idea of maximizing profit. Is it possible to reverse this process . Can something that has mew tate go back to being what it used to be . So when i look at india, india well, lets say, the british left in 1947. By the 1960s, there were revolutionary struggles against fuddalism, calling for land for the tiller, the redistribution of wealth, calling for revolution. By the those moms were moms were crushed, mercilessly crushed. By the 1980s and the 90s the large movements, Indigenous People fighting against displacement. So from asking for the redistribution of wealth we were reduced to saying whatever Little People have, dont take that away. Those movements were crushed. Now youre reduced to begging for your citizenship because these citizenship laws are not for refugees. Theyre not for people coming during migrants. They are for people who already live here, like the nazi regime in germany, decided the nuremberg laws maintain that citizens had to give the government a set of documents that the government would then decide are you a citizen or not . So, you have people now being reduced to begging for their citizenship, the ground they stand on is not firm anymore. And of course just to bring that you wont go to jail tomorrow, and the laws that have been passed now are so the question you ask, what kind of a democracy is india . Id say that india is a one Party Democracy which is an oxymoron because the machinery including the election machinery, is compromised. So, i do not see that the crisis we are in now, the creator of the volcano that is about to erupt, is going to be soothed by any election because in the elections, the media, the machinery, the money, the data, everything belongs to one party. So, that is why i say there will be an implosion. So, we have some questions. That i would like to get. To you have kind of answered some of these so if you want to flip it however you want, please feel free to do so. There is would a recent book published by is Isabel Wilkerson called american caste. I have innovate read the book. So ill skip that one because it was about your perspectives on that. The other one was going back to gandhi and whether or not he ever changed his racistist cast yea based views. In the the doctor and the saint it traces gandhis writings right from the 1860 something to 1946, and while he is known to have campaigned against caste, he actually didnt change his views. He had a very missionary approach to it. He said he was against the idea of [loss of audio] if you look essays he wrote like the ideal the municipal street sweeper that used to clean and his job was to clean shit, and he writes how this is such a holy job and what the ideal one should do and the brohm anybody should be [inaudible] but i would say that rather than listen to me, read that book. Its complicated and scary to talk off the top of my head because that book is it really quotes the writing and quotes the sources and it deals with the complications of that debate between gandhi and so let me say just that after having written it and researched it, researched against my own indoctrination i was appalled. The other question ill move it because you already answered part of it, but is there an organized front to fight the rise of fascism in india today . No. I mean, so the political the Political Parties that are in opposition to the bjp, the parliamentary parties, whether its the congress or the left have been more or less decimated. Even the anticaste party has been decimated. So the opposition in parliament exists in the form that the bjp wishes it to exist, doing work that only has them. There was the when the huge protests sprang up against the citizenship law, they were students it was almost beginning to look like a revolution, but then coronavirus came, and it was smashed. People have been arrested like in delhi, people are killed and now hundreds of people are in jail, students, professors, activists are one called in by the police, threatened, picked off one we one. There was no lockdown for the repression. Only a lock down for people, and so right now the there isnt an organized front, although an organized front may not be even possible in a country like india because an Organization Also can be broken quite easily, but i do believe that the situation is so dire now that something new will come up because people cant live like this. The next question has to do with the reporting im assuming on the issues around kashmir and how journalists report on what is happening kashmir within india and the question is how do reporters and writers work to combat the over simplification out of the propaganda machine. Its not the problem is not oversimplification. The problem is of a kind of nationalism that eulogizes the military occupation and demonizes the people. So you have a situation where you have an internet siege in kashmir since october last year, on and off, mostly on and at that time this point imagine the world lockdown for coronavirus, we are all doing this kashmiries cant do this and for many months they couldnt even make phone calls so business collapsed, students, hospitals, courts. So it is a kind of violent mass violation of human rights that i think is unprecedented in the world, this digital siege. First you push everyone interest a digital era and then you say kashmirans dont knee the internet. This only use its for pornography and terrorism. This what the Government People say. So, then you have this 24 7 propaganda, and so that you have a lot of people, including a lot of young indians, i think, who have begun to feel the fact that to let this happen in your name is eventually corrodes you. Its not some al altruistic trac youre doing on behalf of someone else but to honor yourself and say you have something thats find acceptable. But it is very, very frightening, very frightening, because people are pick up, arrested, i mean, for me, for example, people have said, okay, she should be tied to a tank and used as a human shield. If i do a book launch, then theyll come and smash up the stage or whatever but these things have to be said and it is ultimately i said it long ago and i say it again that india needs almost more than kashmir needs from india because india is its ship is sinking and a lot of it because of this hatefueled, blind rage it cant manage to see through. And sort of a final question is, how especially i think with the case of kashmir, what their possibilities for solidarity, not just within india but i think internationally with the kashmiry cause because i believe its something that i could admit ignorance on. I see it peripherally in a lot of kind of advocacy work and movement work, but i think in this moment in time especially with the George Floyd Protests and the current pandemic, that there are possibilities for solidarity and what does that look like . That is obviously i think first before any kind of solidarity can be embarked upon one needs to understand what is going on limit would say the solidarity can begin with reading and theres an organization in kashmir called the jkccs. The coalition for civil society. It has a website, its recently brought out a really brilliant report on the internet siege. It should be available online. And i think it is something that people need to read and understand what is being done to people. Hundreds of people its apart from thousands of people being killed. People being blinded by and not put under the siege which is absolutely inhuman. One last question. What are you currently reading. My goodness. Just finished reading i mean, for two days i could hardly see because the type was so small and its 2,000 page biography of hitler by ian kershaw. But, yeah, thats what i was currently reading. Just finished it like a couple of days ago. And then started reading quite a beautiful book by the chinese writer. I think its called china in ten words. Very lovely. Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. I have a lot more questions but sadly i have to when we meet. When we meet. Yes. Its been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And this point im coming in at least audibly to thank both nick and arun hadty. She said one thing to do is read, and to read per work to read nicks work. I will say because of a particular agency that doctrine of saint is available as its own Free Standing book and contained within my seditious heart so thats install there to read and to understand the nuance because there is so much complication and nuance when we try to do things quickly. Another little comment ill just make because nick in his role was not he was asking about International Work and solidarity and he has been doing a lot of work with palestine and that for a the work he comes from near north america, theres a lot learning and reporting there, so that is an example since we didnt get into a pacific one but nick has done that. I dont know how people will go to bed on this. Its nighttime, nicky he is and where we are im not used do having this much to go into a day with in terms of what i feel full of and i think others here have are going to take from this and thats true of all of north america. So much and to continue in the two of you can be in the same place together and continue and it will be even deeper. Elliott bay bookshop, were coming there. We will good wherever. And i left out in of the infomercial part which is to order books and buy books because we have copies of on publication tonight. Theres been little anthony has been putting links, and with nicks book, our history is the future and standing with standing rock, the anthology and we have other books, the novels and my seditious heart. So on that note, as were still so much to say and for all of us to carry, heart felt thanks from to us all those who have been part of this to anthony and sean and john of hay market, to shaheena and rita and rushny and all my colleagues at Elliott Bay Book company, and certainly most fully to arundhati and nick. We have a lot of two, do part of the reading and then all the rest and these two people are doing so much to make this a more just and better place, better world. So with that, for everyone involved we thank you and bid you good night, good morning, good day. And take care and thank you. Thats what gives us the confidence to sit sneer here and describe the first ten second offed the universe like we were there. All started with the big bang. Is there a song in there . I wouldnt give a reporter an interview unless they read one of the best first. Hey had to rate the book. They had to read the book. For 20 years boosts in depth hosted the top nonfiction authors authors to an in depth conversation with cspan 2 viewer on and sunday at noon, joan it four the live 20th 20th anniversary special, more talk with author your phone calls, fantastic comments and texts and feets and a look bam to memorable in depth movements. The picture of the back. Remember those days. No. Conceivably. Whats in the book . Well, the book is an examination of life at yale. Watch in depth sunday, live at noon eastern on booktv on cspan2. 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