Arundhati Roy declares solidarity with Iran, shames India Govt servility to US

While speaking about her book Mother Mary Comes To Me at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium on March 9, writer Arundhati Roy lambasted the US–Israel alliance for its unilateral, unprovoked and illegal bombing of Iran and the assassination of its supreme leader, declaring solidarity with Iran while expressing shame at the Indian government’s servility to the US and its role in stripping Indians of pride, dignity and courage.

Invoking the matriarchal ghost of her late mother, Mary Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author transformed a literary retrospective into a blistering geopolitical manifesto, weaving the personal threads of her memoir into a tapestry of global insurrection.

She articulated a harrowing vision of a world teetering on the precipice of nuclear calamity, characterising the strikes on the ancient citadels of Tehran and Isfahan not as isolated military incursions, but as a rapacious continuation of the Gazan genocide.

Roy denounced the "genocidaires" for their penchant for carpet-bombing civilian populations under the mendacious guise of victimhood, while simultaneously warning that Iran—unlike the besieged enclave of Gaza—possesses the capacity to ignite a conflagration that could consume the entire planet.

Turning her vitriol toward the domestic sphere, Roy excoriated the Indian establishment as a "running dog of imperialism," lamenting the transformation of a once-dignified nation into a spineless sycophant that barters its farmers' livelihoods for hollow American trade deals.

She drew a caustic contrast between the "vacuous" laughter of the Indian leadership and the harrowing reality of Indian labourers abandoned in Israeli bunkers, suggesting that the nation's courage has been entirely outsourced to the "over-muscled" and "shit-for-brains" caricatures of its toxic cinema.

Roy’s oration served as a profound rejection of the "bloated, lying, cheating" imperial powers that seek to bully the world into submission, insisting that genuine regime change must sprout from the collective will of the people rather than the ordnance of resource-grabbing hegemons.

Through this lens, her mother's legacy of "candour and impoliteness" became a radical tool for truth-telling, challenging a cowering citizenry to reclaim the pride and dignity lost in the shadow of global hegemony.

She also expressed indignation over India’s diplomatic gestures towards Israel and its trade arrangements with the United States, contending that these developments symbolised an erosion of sovereignty and self-respect, while she lamented that the country appeared increasingly willing to accept humiliation on the global stage rather than assert an independent moral position.