NEW DELHI (AP) – Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy has joined the growing number of writers, filmmakers, scientists and historians voicing alarm over what they describe as a climate of religious intolerance and violence in India.
Roy, most famous for her 1997 novel “The God of Small Things,” said in a sharply worded editorial published Thursday in The Indian Express newspaper that millions of minority people including Muslims, Christians and members of low-caste or tribal communities “are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.”
Already dozens of writers have returned awards to the country’s top literary institution, the Sahitya Academi, over disappointment that it has not condemned the recent killings of atheist activists who campaigned against religious superstition or Muslims rumored to have slaughtered cows or eaten cow meat.
Among India’s majority Hindu population, cows are considered to be sacred.
Roy said she was “so ashamed of what is going on in this country” and was pleased to return her 1989 national screenplay award and “to be a part of the political movement.”