Arundhati Roy - No Welcome Mat For Bush In India

(The Nation) This column was written by Arundhati Roy.

On his triumphalist tour of India and Pakistan, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush has an itinerary that's getting curiouser and curiouser.

For Bush's March 2 pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have him address our parliament. A not-inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was to have Bush address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort, where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare. So now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.

Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort?

Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings, who in India go under the category of "eminent persons." They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.

SNIP

Oh, and on March 2, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet himself.) But when Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

FULL ARTICLE AT http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/28/opinion/main1354173.shtml

Arundhati is the PRIDE of India. I love her so! And yes, the spirit of Gandhiji will never forgive the present crop of polishitians for allowing the homicidal monkey access to his memorial.

She is brilliant, and gorgeous!:loveya:

in shame.

our apologies to the spirit of Ghandi.

Her qualitative research is top notch. ;)

We'll roll up the welcome mat too.

Anyone who has not heard or read her words may want to check the links in my sig below. I haven't come across her writings recently, and thank you for that. And as for that visit to the memorial site, Gandhi would certainly have preferred to see it smeared with cow dung, which at least has some social value and is a part of the cycle of life, and does not stand for greed, murder, torture, and destruction.

I just adore her. She's one of the most amazing, incisive, beautiful, articulate, and conscientious human beings to grace the surface of this poor globe in many decades.

"But when Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

We really would prefer that he didn't."




I loved listening to her speech from the Riverside Church in 2003! Someone handed it to me on a cassett while I was walking down the street. He was a stranger and said ... "listen to this", so I did.

I read "The God of Small Things" twice. She is so amazing!

street!

I love her!

Inside, outside, and all around...just beautiful. Courageous and beautiful; as if they were distinct in her case...but anyway. I should stop gushing.