Book Review/Heather Seggel

Truth, Fiction, and Freedom

I approached “Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.” (Haymarket Books), a collection of lectures, essays, and opinion pieces by Arundhati Roy, with some trepidation. It was unclear whether this nonfiction work, much of it a blistering discussion of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu Nationalist movement, would make sense without having read Roy’s novels first. The intricacies of that fight for freedom being waged by Indians who reject the persecution (and much worse) of Indian Muslims was a topic I had the merest grasp on. John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” feature on Modi offered a quick and dirty overview and primer on the crisis and its many acronyms (BJP and RSS crop up most often), which then freed me up to appreciate Roy’s incisive commentary. This is a powerful collection.

At just under 200 pages, “Azadi” is not a long read, but a deep one. Because it combines lectures and essays created between 2018 and 2020, the tone can range from conversational to urgent, and then from imperative back to reflective. While virtually every piece here vibrates with the call to witness Modi’s heinous rhetoric and the murderous actions of his followers, they frequently make that point via a discussion of fiction writing, or the perceived conflict between writing fiction and nonfiction. Roy notes with some amusement that fans of either half of her repertoire like to suggest she should focus on that half exclusively. But her work benefits from multiple strands of style and influence, including her original work as a screenwriter. She can build an argument with data and logic, then describe an illustrative example in a scene so tightly framed it’s impossible to look away.

And we need to look, especially those of us reading in the US at a time when we are far from united and experiencing a taste of fascism as well. The book is already drawing heat, with one anonymous website review accusing Roy of Communism and capitulation to “the Pakistani agenda,” a sideswipe at Muslims (one of the Hindu nationalist chants that recurs throughout the book suggests “the graveyard or Pakistan” as the two appropriate homes for India’s Muslims). Her accounts of massacres committed by Modi’s followers, where citizens are slain in the street and then burned, are chilling to read, doubly so when the insult of involuntary “cremation” is forced on people whose religious tradition is to bury their dead.

Fiction offers a way to look at brutal reality that might awaken people numbed by trauma. Roy describes western audiences complimenting her novels for their use of magic realism, but points out that the scenes they refer to were drawn from her own life, not flights of fancy at all. Perhaps learning to look directly at the ugliest parts of human nature expands one’s capacity to observe and report its beauties as well.

“Azadi,” the word, is Urdu for “freedom.” It was a chant in the Kashmir struggle for freedom that has been adopted by India’s movement, a somewhat bitter irony since it was originally a demand being made of India. The questions of what we learn from history and how we respond weigh heavy on the mind while reading, especially as Modi’s reelection has slowed progress for the foreseeable future. The shell game being played with citizenship (that openly seeks to simply redefine Muslims as non-citizens) has people clutching waterproof slipcased documents at all times; this image is shocking, but no longer feels like something we in the US can wish away with a declaration that “it can’t happen here.”

Much as it has exacerbated problems in the US, the coronavirus is also destabilizing India. Several of Modi’s cabinet members have tested positive and the world press has derided his performance, though they qualify it as being less awful than Trump’s. Roy writes, “(I)n the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.” How we choose to fill the pause may well determine our future.

That urgency forces hard questions on us all. As authoritarianism spreads around the globe, is writing fiction an act of rebellion or a form of self-indulgence? For an author it can be a space to tend with care, in hopes of connecting with others. Roy writes, “A novel, to me, is freedom with responsibility. Real, unfettered azadi—freedom.” This collection makes a strong case for the power of fiction to wake us up and move us to action, individually and in connecting streams. It will leave you gutted, but also hungry for stories.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2020

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