In a country like India, the British were only able to rule the country because it had completely co-opted the elite of the country, who did their work for them.
Arundhati RoyIn India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties.
Arundhati RoyNationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.
Arundhati RoyIf you look at Indian society, it's a society made up of minorities. There's nobody who's not a minority, whether it's ethnicity, caste or religion. But the whole effort now is to confect a political constituency - an ethnic or a religious constituency that can coalesce into a political majority in order to deal with this model of representative democracy. That process has been a hundred years in the making in this part of the world.
Arundhati RoyAnd there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.
Arundhati RoyIt's very easy for me to begin to believe the publicity about myself, whether for or against. It can give you an absurd idea of yourself. I know that there's a fine balance between accepting your own power with grace and misusing it. And I don't ever want to portray myself as a representative of the voiceless. I'm scared of that.
Arundhati Roy