Speaking to Al Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan, author and political activist Arundhati Roy said that it has become impossible to live in India without feeling terrified from the propaganda on television channels and hate groups on WhatsApp.
She said, "Its impossible to live here (India) and have to watch the propaganda night and day from television channels and hate groups on WhatsApp without feeling terrified."
Reiterating her previous comment that the situation in India is approaching genocide, Roy said that genocide isn't something which happens on a Sunday morning. "There's a huge cultural preparation that takes place, where a whole community is dehumanized, is profiled," she added.
Roy said that Home Minister Amit Shah referred to Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants as termites when he was bringing in the contentious "anti-Muslim" Citizenship Amendment Bill. She added, "Citizenship Amendment Law has already been passed, detention centres are build, it suggests that there will be hierarchical citizenship where some people have more rights than others."
"Muslims are in danger on the streets, Muslim vegetable vendors, Muslims just walking on the road getting lynched," Roy said.
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Earlier, speaking with Germany’s DW, Arundhati Roy said that the Modi government was ‘exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims’.
She said, “I think what has happened is COVID-19 has exposed things about India that all of us knew. This crisis of hatred against Muslims," she continued, "comes on the back of a massacre in Delhi, which was the result of people protesting against the anti-Muslim citizenship law. Under the cover of COVID-19 the government is moving to arrest young students, to fight cases against lawyers, against senior editors, against activists and intellectuals. Some of them have recently been put in jail."
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