Book Review: Azadi — Arundhati Roy
“Citizenship is the right to have rights”.
Arundhati Roy’s Azadi discusses India's brutal occupation of Kashmir as well as how the country has created an “internal enemy” of its Muslim population.
In addition to the interpersonal Islamophobia Muslims are subjected to on the ground, the chapter Intimations of Ending highlights the insidious way Law is utilised, from the top down, to dehumanise, exclude, and ghettoise the country’s Muslims. India’s particularly violent manifestation of Islamophobia in the form of street lynchings and pogroms is facilitated because institutions not only turn a blind eye but state structures normalise, facilitate and perpetuate anti muslim sentiment, as highlighted within the book.
“Will we ever get rid of the kala daag (stigma) of being foreigners?"
The book also highlights the cruelty of the military occupation of Kashmir. Kashmir is a land of forced disappearances, Orwellian surveillance, digital siege and the fight for self determination from the grips of a brutal occupying force.
