Arundhati Roy to return National Award
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New Delhi: Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy has announced her decision to return her National Award for Best Screenplay, to protest recent "horrific murders" that are "only a symptom of a deeper malaise".
Arundhati Roy, the author of The God of Small Things, won the National Award for Best Screenplay in 1989 for the film "In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones."
Roy, in a column in Indian Express newspaper, said that 'intolerance' is the wrong word to use in the prevailing climate where a respected academic was killed and two people have been murdered over suspicions they had beef.
"First of all, 'intolerance' is the wrong word to use for the lynching, shooting, burning and mass murder of fellow human beings," she writes.
"Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come," Roy adds.