Arundhati Roy: 'Cockroach Rebellion' Has Stripped Bare Modi's Manufactured Image

Booker Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy says ongoing protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government — led largely by the satirical Cockroach People's Party (CJP) — have stripped bare the "carefully manufactured image" of the Hindu nationalist leader, propped up by corporate-owned news channels and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) control of social media.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, the 64-year-old writer discussed a range of issues, including Gen Z-led protests against the government and allegations of electoral fraud against Modi's administration. She expressed hope that the political atmosphere in the world's most populous democracy is about to change.

"I really feel something is simmering just beneath the surface. Something is about to happen," she said. "The emperor has been exposed, and he has lost his power."

Below is the transcript of Roy's interview with Al Jazeera TV, edited for brevity.

Arundhati Roy, thank you for talking to Al Jazeera. Your debut novel won the prestigious Booker Prize. Since then, you have written acclaimed novels, fierce polemics and essay collections. How do you describe yourself: novelist, writer or political activist? Or do you not really think about those boundaries?

Roy: Actually, I avoid describing myself. I leave that to others, because why should we describe ourselves? And categorize ourselves? That is other people's business.

One of the things that connects the different facets of you is the idea of satire. You are not primarily a satirist, but in "The God of Small Things" and "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness", you have used satire to devastating effect. But it always seems tied to politics. Is that a deliberate choice?

Roy: I don't think so. In a sense, it depends on how you define politics. To me, even a fairy tale is political in some way, but not in a "hit-you-over-the-head" kind of politics or a manifesto-displaying politics. From my books and the way I grew up, perhaps the answer to your question is that there is no difference between the personal and the public space.

Let's talk about India and its political atmosphere. You have written about the CJP movement. It is a grassroots movement driven by young people, who took an insult — being called cockroaches — and made it their own. You open your essay with the image of when hope seemed to have died, young cockroaches appearing in the rain. What drew you to this particular movement?

Roy: Ironically, just as we are speaking, a major crisis is brewing, and the cockroaches have returned, saying they will protest across the country in the coming days over a scandal exposed by a newspaper showing that India's elections have been entirely delegitimized — something we have known and written about for years. But now there is concrete evidence. What drew me in was this movement of young people, full of joy and unusual humour — the fresh way of conveying messages through Instagram reels. It has stripped bare the very carefully manufactured image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Is this a miscalculation on his part? Not understanding social media, not understanding how young people use technology? And will it have an impact on India?

Roy: No, I don't think it is a misunderstanding. He and the BJP were the first to engage with social media, so they were there before everyone else. But I think too much has been happening, one after another. And somehow this movement erupted. It was the last straw. It began with the fact that in the 2024 election, Modi did not win an absolute majority... There were scandals around the elections. There were scandals around leaked exam papers. Severe unemployment. All of it converged into this explosion that is both unserious and serious.

India publicly says it is an economic success story, a climate leader. But what is modern India to you?

Roy: Modern India is a very rich country with very, very many extremely poor people. I don't think there are many countries in the world where people live in such deep poverty and such humiliating conditions. It is shameful to boast that this is an economic superpower, because as I keep saying, it is a super-poor country. Of course there are extremely rich people, industrial capitalists who control everything, but very little of it trickles down to the poor. It is a disgrace to call India a superpower or an economic force when its people have been stripped of all power.

But many of these problems are often blamed on British colonialism. Do you have any sympathy for that argument?

Roy: Not anymore. There was a time when that was true. But now we are seeing a government that makes everything much worse, including the idea of freedom. Yesterday I spoke to some young people and said that what Gandhi, Ambedkar, Maulana Azad and Nehru and many others said and wrote during British colonial rule, no one could say today because they would be jailed. There are many people, many students, many activists, lawyers constantly going in and out of prison. We are threatened with anti-terror laws. On Independence Day this year, from the Red Fort rampart, Modi said the most dangerous people are "dimaghi Naxal", meaning intellectual Maoists, which of course includes all of us. And that we must be isolated. So I think that is a dead horse still being flogged.

I am glad you mention the Maoists. Earlier this year, India declared that the six-decade Maoist insurgency had effectively ended. But all the issues the Naxalites fought for remain, don't they?

Roy: Yes, exactly. Who are the Naxalites? What did they fight for? The fact is they keep declaring it over, but then it resurfaces somewhere, somehow, because you cannot suppress so many people and destroy their lives. Some people will rise up on their own and take up the issue. We are used to such declarations.

Under Congress rule, around 2012 or 2013, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed over the homeland of indigenous people to big infrastructure companies. Many memorandums of understanding were signed. Then they announced Operation Green Hunt. They poured security forces into the forests. Village by village was burned; women were raped, villagers could not live in their homes for fear of being surrounded and burned out. And the media called these poor people "terrorists". What do you do when a thousand security personnel come to besiege your home in the middle of the forest? And they were brutally suppressed.

People who once collapsed and trembled under the Modi regime suddenly found a few vertebrae of a spine, if not an entire spine, and that is creating small openings.

Arundhati Roy, writer

You have always rejected the view that writers should be apolitical. Your stance on Kashmir, when you called it not an integral part of India, is an example. I want to talk about the personal cost of being so outspoken. How do you cope with that?

Roy: After 2019, people could not say that because it was made an integral part of India. And that part of the Indian Constitution has been read down. But honestly, I am not the one who sets the rules for writers and says whether they should or should not be political, or how they should be. I have no prescription for that. I only know that if I do not write what I truly feel compelled to write, then it is like imprisoning myself before they imprison me.

As I said in my memoir, it is like dancing on a dance floor full of landmines. People do not know when the bomb will go off. But I do what I must do, and I am not the only one. There are many people who stand up bravely and have paid a heavy price. For what? To do or say what they believe. So I do not want to make myself a martyr here.

But is there an intellectual movement in India with a strong voice that is being heard, or is it being drowned out by the shouting of politics?

Roy: Actually, that movement has always existed. It is extremely strong, although since 2014 it has been battered by 24-hour news channels owned by various corporations, which try to shout everyone down. Every time Modi wins an election, he appears and tries to demonize us.

India is still the world's largest democracy — is that something to celebrate? Or do you think it is a fake democracy?

Roy: This is exactly where the axe has fallen. The Modi government has overhauled how the election commission is chosen. He appoints a chief election commissioner. Opposition parties and the chief justice used to have a say in choosing the chief election commissioner, but no longer. There has been an absolute scandal about how elections are conducted. From the 2024 election to regional elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, West Bengal, Bihar and Goa. You see thousands of election officials, who are supposed to hold voter data, locked out, and everything controlled from New Delhi. And voters, especially minority voters or those seen as not friendly to the BJP, are simply not allowed to vote. I am talking about millions... We have always said elections are not proof of democracy. You need a constitution, you need other institutions, you need checks and balances. All of that has been hollowed out. Now even elections themselves are in doubt. And you will see in the coming months there will be major trouble in this country as we approach the 2029 election.

So where do you place yourself now? Is there hope for democracy, real democracy as you see it in India?

Roy: One of my essay collections is dedicated to those who have learned to separate hope from reason. I will always hope that something will change here. And I really feel something is simmering just beneath the surface. Something is about to happen. How it will play out, I cannot say, because we are up against a fairly ruthless set of people.

What you see in India after this "cockroach" rebellion is that people have been put on alert. All those who once collapsed and trembled under the Modi regime suddenly found a few vertebrae of a spine, if not an entire spine, and that is creating small openings. There are many protests in all kinds of places. As I said, one of the biggest things that has happened is that the emperor has been exposed, and he has lost his power. He does not even appear in public. His home minister is evasive. Neither of them appeared even once during the entire last monsoon session of parliament before the cockroach movement took place. So something is changing. And I think they are afraid. Let's see what happens. I am certainly more optimistic than I was three months ago.

Before this interview, I spoke to another writer friend living in Israel. He said one of the questions you must ask Roy is about how artificial intelligence (AI) and the weaponization of social media are driving anti-democratic movements and government authoritarianism. What do you think about that?

Roy: I think it is the apocalypse. And I think it is the privatization of human effort and civilization. The way it operates in defence, politics and personal life, along with the glossy gifts it bestows with darkness behind them, is something we need to think about. That is what I am writing about.

Is there anything about modern India, about the world, that gives you hope?

Roy: Of course there is. As I said, India is a country with a deep culture of resistance, of intellectual thinking, of unusual ways of thinking, of unusual kinds of dissent. So how can one not hope? It is a wonderful thing to witness.