The following is a speech given by Arundhati Roy, Author, Anti-Nuclear and Anti-War Activist, at an Opening Plenary somewhere…
Its a good read…
Comment: Do you agree with her at any level…
Thank you all for not leaving. I’m sure you’re hungry, so I’ll finish in a minute. Today marks one year since the time India conducted its nuclear test. So now the country that produced Mahatma Ghandi has nuclear bombs. The war against war has to be fought in many ways responsibly, irresponsibly, with reason, with unreason, collectively and individually. I’m one of the irresponsible, unreasonable people, so I don’t know whether I really have the right to be standing here, because when Cora asked me to come initially I was a little reluctant because I am a writer. You know, I don’t do speeches. But then she said, you know, that there would be people from all over the world, from all kinds of countries, but that there would be no flags.
And that interested me, because I have something against those colored bits of cloth that have insinuated themselves into our brains and serve to justify the most outrageous things.
Once each of us has a flag waving in our heads, the rest of the horror follows. It must. World wars, ethnic cleansing, genocide, nuclear war. Political scientists and military pundits tell us that human society cannot function without the nation state. Next they tell us that nuclear weapons that threaten to destroy the earth and the whole of humanity – we need those in order to preserve the nation state. So who will their subjects be one we’re all gone? Who will man the immigration counters? Cockroaches? Nuclear weapons are not weapons that countries will use against countries. They’re weapons that states will use against the people of the world. Human beings don’t need nuclear weapons. States do. Maybe the pundits are right. Maybe the nation state will never go away. But then neither will those of us who challenge its rights to govern us and force upon us this unspeakable immorality.
When I was young they used to say be realistic, ask for the impossible. Well, demand the impossible. It’s time for us to be bloody-minded, to be unreasonable. It’s the only way to win. To begin with, let’s fold up the flags in our heads. Let’s show some deep disrespect. Now, I’m going to just read portions from an essay that I wrote which came out in India last year after the nuclear tests.
May 1998. It will go down in history books, provided of course we have history books to go down in, provided of course we have a future. There’s nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear weapons. There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has over the years already been made by other people in other parts of the world, and made passionately, eloquently and knowledgeably. But I am prepared to grovel, to humiliate myself abjectly. Because in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible.
So those of you who are willing, let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad, second-hand play. But let’s not forget that the stakes we are playing for our huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. The end of our children and our children’s children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think, to fight.
Last year, I was one of the items being paraded in the media’s end of the year national pride parade. Among others, much to my mortification, were a bomb maker and an international beauty queen. Each time a beaming person stopped me on the street and said you have made India proud, referring to the prize I won, not the book I wrote, I felt a little uneasy. It frightened me then and it terrifies me now, because I know how easily that swell, that tide of emotion can turn against me. Perhaps the time for that has come. I’m going to step out from under the fairy lights and say what’s on my mind. It’s this. If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede.
I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I’m a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. My policies are simple. I’m willing to sign any nuclear non-proliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that’s going. Immigrants are welcome. My world has died and I write to mourn its passing. India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people. It is a malignant indication of a civilization turning upon itself. It represents the severing of the understanding between human beings and the planet live on. It is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is man’s challenge to God. It’s worded quite simply. We have the power to destroy everything that you have created. If you’re not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4,600 million years old. It could end in an afternoon. Thank you.
http://www.haguepeace.org/conference/speeches/opening/speech20.html
