Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness โ and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones weโre being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling โ their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Arundhati RoyIn the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost.
Arundhati RoyIt is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used.
Arundhati RoyThere's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.
Arundhati RoyNGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs.
Arundhati Roy