Azadi - Arundhati Roy

CHAPTER EIGHT
There Is Fire in the Ducts, the System Is Failing
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eloved friends, comrades, and my fellow writers—this place where we are gathered today is only a short bus ride
away from where four days ago a fascist mob—fired up by speeches made by members of the ruling party,
backed up and actively assisted by the police, assured of round-the-clock support by a vast section of the electronic
mass media, and comforted by the belief that the courts would do nothing to come in their way—mounted an armed,
murderous attack on Muslims in the working-class colonies of northeast Delhi.
The attack had been in the air for a while, so people were somewhat prepared, and so defended themselves.
Markets, shops, homes, mosques, and vehicles have been burned out. The streets are full of stones and debris. The
hospitals are full of the wounded and dying. The morgues are full of the dead—both Muslim and Hindu, including a
policeman and a young staffer of the Intelligence Bureau. Yes, people on both sides have shown themselves capable
of horrifying brutality as well as unbelievable courage and kindness.
However, there can be no equivalence here. None of this alters the fact that the attack was begun by lumpen mobs
chanting “Jai Shri Ram!” and backed by the apparatus of this now nakedly fascist state. Notwithstanding these
slogans, this is not what people like to label a Hindu–Muslim “riot.” It is a manifestation of the ongoing battle
between fascists and anti-fascists—in which Muslims are the first among the fascists’ “enemies.” To call it a riot or
a danga , or “left” versus “right” or even “right” versus “wrong,” as many are doing, is dangerous and obfuscatory.
We have all seen the videos of the police standing by and sometimes participating in the arson. We have seen them
smashing CCTV cameras, just as they did when they vandalized the Jamia Millia Islamia University library on
December 15. We have seen them beat wounded Muslim men as they lay piled up against each other and force them
to sing the National Anthem. We know that one of those young men is dead. 1 All the dead, wounded, and
devastated, Muslim as well as Hindu, are victims of this regime headed by Narendra Modi, our nakedly fascist prime
minister who himself is no stranger to being at the helm of affairs in a state when eighteen years ago a massacre on a
much larger scale went on for weeks.
The anatomy of this particular conflagration will be studied for years to come. But the local detail will only be a
matter of historical record because the ripples, based on hateful rumors fueled on social media, have begun to eddy
outwards, and we can already smell more blood on the breeze. Although there have been no more killings in North
Delhi, yesterday (February 29) saw mobs of people in Central Delhi chanting the slogan that built up to the attacks:
Desh ke gaddaron ko, Goli maaron saalon ko! —What’s to be done with traitors of the nation? Shoot the bastards!
Only a few days ago, the Delhi High Court judge S. Muralidhar was furious with the Delhi police for having taken
no action against Kapil Mishra, the former BJP MLA candidate who had earlier in the presence of the police issued
a blatant threat to protestors peacefully sitting on the road in Jafarabad. On the night of February 26, the judge was
given midnight orders to take up his new assignment in the Punjab High Court. Kapil Mishra is back on the streets
with his supporters who are once again chanting Desh ke gaddaron ko, Goli maaron saalon ko! That slogan can now
be used until further notice. Fun and games with judges isn’t new. We know the story about Justice Loya. 2 We may
have forgotten the story of Babu Bajrangi, convicted of participating in the killing of ninety-seven Muslims in
Naroda Patiya, in Gujarat in 2002. You can listen to him in a YouTube video. 3 He’ll tell you how “Narendra bhai”
got him out of jail by “setting” the judges.
We have learned to expect massacres such as this one before elections—they have become a sort of barbaric
election campaign to polarize votes and build constituencies. But the Delhi massacre happened just days after an
election, after the BJP-RSS suffered a humiliating defeat. It is a punishment for Delhi and an announcement for the
coming elections in Bihar.
Everything is on record. Everything is available for everyone to see and hear—the provocative speeches of Kapil
Mishra, Parvesh Verma, Union Minister Anurag Thakur, Chief Minister of UP Yogi Adityanath, Home Minister
Amit Shah, and even the prime minister himself. And yet everything has been turned upside down—it’s being made
to appear as though all of India is a victim of the absolutely peaceful, mostly female, mostly—but not only—Muslim
protesters who have been out on the streets for almost seventy-five days, in their tens of thousands, to protest against
the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The CAA, which offers a fast-track route to citizenship for non-Muslim minorities, is blatantly unconstitutional
and blatantly anti-Muslim. Coupled with the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens, it is
meant to delegitimize, destabilize, and criminalize not just Muslims but hundreds of millions of Indians who do not