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'The richest, most powerful countries in the western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza', wrote Arundhati Roy wrote earlier this year, in a column widely read around the world. Now Arundhati Roy is being persecuted by Modi's India and is going to be prosecuted under anti-terrorist law (!) for a comment she made in 2010 about Kashmir. 14 years ago, in a panel discussion, Arundhati Roy appeared to have disputed the nationalistic BJP line about Kashmir, and was heavily criticized for it. Now Indian politics is a huge and complex subject, but some things can be said with certainty: Kashmir is 97% Muslim, and India has been terrorizing it for decades. In 2019 Modi revoked the special autonomy status Kashmir had had since 1954, and sent great military forces into the region, tightening its oppressive measures, including a major push for censorship. The disgusting open hatred of Muslims spread by BJP has been making people around the world uneasy: it is racist propaganda of the vilest we've ever seen. - Modi's ties with Netanyahu are also well-known and documented, as well as the oppression tactics shared by the two countries against Muslim populations. Prosecuting one of India's most prominent intellectuals, though, marks a new stage in India's descent into despotism. We don't know if it has anything to do with her activism for Palestine, but there's only so much coincidence in this world. Israel's genocide and the West's brazen and unlimited complicity in it, and the censorial momentum it's set in motion around the world are creating a toxic environment for free speech and open discussion around the world. Islamophobia (alongside Russophobia), now celebrated with the thinnest of veils in the West, spreads and corrupts the ability of Western countries for effective self-governance, but still, no pushback is seen or allowed to form. And when India is going after a globally-renounced writer, the West can say nothing about it with any credibility, and probably won't even try. And to think that just a generation ago all of Western (read: CIA) media made a huge, huge deal of another Indian author, Salman Rushdie (the most famous writer no one ever read) supposedly having to hide for safety, with even a hefty mention on Seinfeld. - It is sad that India has chosen this path of stupidity and self-destruction. Instead of leading the global decolonial movement, it's placed itself as a clownish servant of white supremacy.