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India Quotes by Arundhati Roy

40 India quotes by Arundhati Roy

All India quotes Arundhati Roy’s page

Every night I watch a road gang of emaciated laborers digging a trench for fiber‑optic cables. She notes that India's poverty is so vast the state cannot control it, even if it can beat people. Roy also observes that the government has twisted non‑violent resistance into a form of non‑violent governance.

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India is still flinching from a cultural insult, still looking for its identity.

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India lives in several centuries at the same time.

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“Ammu's tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.”

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In a country like India, the British were only able to rule the country because it had completely co-opted the elite of…

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In India, whichever language you write in, the possibility of people not understanding irony or not understanding [remains there]. This as a…

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In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the…

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Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing…

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India's a very interesting place... there's no formal opposition, but there's genuine on-the-ground opposition.

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Dams are the temples of secular India and almost worshipped. They are huge, wet cement flags that wave in our minds. They're…

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Three-quarters of India lives on the edge of the market economy. You can't tell them that only those who can afford water…

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As a woman who grew up in a village in India, I've spent my whole life fighting tradition. There's no way that…

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India lives in several centuries at the same time. Every night outside my house I pass a road gang of emaciated laborers…

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I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in…

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“At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million…

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In India the new government - the members of the radical Hindu Right who want India to be a 'Hindu Nation' -…

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I feel ashamed that the new, nuclear, neo-liberal India thinks of itself as a 'natural ally' of Israel. Ever since India began…

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Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst…

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Everybody can't have the life of a normal, average American person in India - they can't. So, it's about egalitarianism. It's about…

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The Indian government has managed to turn the concept of nonviolence on its head. Nonviolent resistance and nonviolent governance. Unlike, say, China…

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“In India we're fighting to retain a wilderness that we have. Whereas in the west, it's gone. Every person that's walking down…

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Anyway, what is a country? When people say, "Tell me about India," I say, "Which India?… The land of poetry and mad…

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We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once…

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Because of the caste system, because of the fact that there is no social link between those who make the decisions and…

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The religious rightwingism is directly linked to globalization and to privatization. When India is talking about selling its entire power sector to…

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In the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are…

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So far as we are concerned, there is not one word in the statements that I have made in this council which…

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The Congress has historically played covert communal politics in order to create what in India we call vote banks where you pit…

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I sometimes think I was perhaps the only girl in India whose mother said, "Whatever you do, don't get married". For me,…

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When I'm outside the cities I do feel optimistic. There is such grandeur in India and so much beauty.

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“Bog je zamenjen Marksom, Satana buržoazijom, raj besklasnim društvom, a crkva partijom, dok su vrsta i cilj putovanja ostali slični. Trka s…

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“Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that…

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Just a few years ago India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were one country. Actually, we were many countries if you count the princely…

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I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the…

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In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual…

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India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are…

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In India, we have a right wing that is so vicious and so openly wicked, which is the Baratiya Janata party (BJP),…

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I am an artist and a writer, and I do think that one always places oneself in the picture to see where…

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Because of who I am and what place I have now in India, I'm petitioned all the time to get involved. It's…

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I know that a world in which countries are stockpiling nuclear weapons and using them in the ways that India and Pakistan…

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When you think of how much violence, how much blood... how much has been destroyed to create the great nations, America, Australia,…

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In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can…

Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is…

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they…

I've never been that person who thought that because I've written one novel, I should write another and another. It's only when there was…

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used.

I think one of the saddest things that's happening to literature is that it's getting over-simplified by this diet of simple political ideas.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there…

Truly, there's no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defence against it, really…

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to…

“stilts, the ground floors given over to parking. It’s a good idea in this car-maddened city,”

“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that…