How Zionism and Hindu Nationalism ‘Work TOGETHER’

Quick Overview

Arundhati Roy discusses her memoir, "Mother Mary Comes to Me," focusing on her complex relationship with her activist mother, Mary Roy, whose inspirational yet dark nature shaped Roy's identity as a writer and dissident, leading her to consistently challenge majoritarian nationalism in India and draw parallels between India's current trajectory and events in Gaza and the US.

Key Points: Arundhati Roy wrote her first memoir, "Mother Mary Comes to Me," mourning her mother, Mary Roy, as "her most enthralling subject" due to her extraordinary inspirational side (winning a Supreme Court case for equal inheritance rights for Christian women) and her very dark side, which Roy and her brother absorbed. Roy describes her mother's contradictory influence: "She taught me how to think then raged against my thought. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became." Roy states she could not have written the book while her mother was alive because any critical conversation would trigger severe asthma attacks, making the memoir "that conversation" about matters of the heart, not an "indictment." Roy links her mother's ability to stand alone against the establishment (like overturning a ban on her students performing 'Jesus Christ Superstar') to her own willingness to take isolated political stands, noting that in majoritarian India, "it's okay to be alone." Roy asserts that Hindu nationalism and Zionism "work together very very easily" because both ideologies view themselves as the "chosen people" and share "common enemies in the Muslims," explaining India's shift from being pro-Palestinian to a key ally of Israel under Modi. Roy observes uncanny parallels between the Modi playbook in India and the rise of Trumpism in the US, citing attacks on universities, citizenship, speech, and the self-aggrandizement of leaders who act as divinely sent entities. Roy critiques the live stream of the conflict in Gaza as a "live stream genocide" where the West is being forced to watch, stating that the carcass of western liberal democracy lies under the rubble, echoing the impunity seen after the Iraq War.