Women Authors From India

"I still like to read poetry before starting my work. Rilke, Cavafy, Mandelstam, Brodsky...Poets go directly to what they want to get across – they don't amble around, they cut to it with a tremendous immediacy that affects one."

"So often one's writing is prophetic. When you write, you are in touch with another force, not the everyday force you employ, you retreat so deep into yourself, you don't suspect those feelings had been there."

"It is astonishing that now a whole generation has grown up reading Indian literature in English. Nothing was being read when I was a student. We read no Indian writers at all."

"...why am I constantly writing about the past? Well, I probably couldn't approach the present directly, because I was carrying all of this past with me."

"It is a great influence on one's thoughts to be always on the outside, not belonging."

"A lament, a protest, a statement. Those have to be made. I suppose that is what we write for. The human animal certainly has a need to make his statement, to retrieve something from the wreck of time. (The Massachusetts Review, 1988)"

"I think everything one reads tends to linger on in one's writing, even after one's forgotten the book one's read. (The Massachusetts Review, 1988)"

"When Salman Rushdie published Midnight's Children, it seemed to set tongues free in India in an odd way. Suddenly, younger writers realized that they didn't need to write correct and perfect English in the English tradition, but they could use Indian English and use it for any purpose whatsoever - for writing comic books, satiric books, or even for writing serious books. (Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, 1992)"

"(Would you get very angry if someone said you were the Virginia Woolf of India and you "mothered" the psychological novel in India?) Desai: No, I would be denying something which is fairly obvious. One is the influence of Virginia Woolf upon my own work, and the other is that there weren't very many women writers in India at that time writing psychological novels. (Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, 1992)"

"My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

"I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

"India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

"I do not recognise India of the present time where, under the banner of 'Hindutva,' intimidation and bigotry seek to silence writers, scholars and all who believe in secular and rational thought. (2015)"

"...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. (IV, p.159)"

"She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. (III, p110)"

"That was the way life was: it lay so quiet, so still that you put your fingers out to touch it, to stroke it. Then it leapt up and struck you full in the face so that you spun about and spun about, gasping. The flames leapt up all around, rising by inches every minute, rising in rings. (II, p78)"

""Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? There are these long still stretches - nothing happens - each day is exactly like the other - plodding, uneventful - and then suddenly there is a crash - mighty deeds take place - momentous events - even if one doesn’t know it at the time - and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood? That summer was certainly one of them - the summer of '47-"(I, p.42)"

"Although she had fled the blood-spattered scene and fled the collected crowd of identical individuals — one-legged, nosepicking, vigilant-eyed — and hurried down the street at a speed uncommon for her, a speed no one would have thought possible on those high red heels that were no longer firm but wobbled drunkenly under the weight of her thick, purpleveined legs, Lotte slowed as she neared her door. Her body seemed to thicken and clot, her actions slowed till she was nearly at a standstill. She opened the door with fumbling, ineffective movements as though she had forgotten its grammat, her fingers numb, tongue-tied as it were. Entering the room, she shut the door behind her heavily, taking great care with the locks and bolts and chains, afraid the crowd might follow her, may even now be approaching her room, preparing to shoulder its way into it. When every lock was in place, she leant against the door in the theatrical manner that came naturally to her — pressing a packet of letters to her breast as years ago she had pressed a flower against a bosom still plump and warm, flounced with white lace and spotted with red spots, singing all the while to the stage-lights, her mouth open, a tunnel of red from which might issue either a trill or a howl. Pressing the bits of paper to her now shrunken and flabby bosom, she breathed long harsh breaths that rasped her throat."

"Her first day in Bombay wilted her. If she stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel room, she drooped, her head hung, her eyes glazed, she felt faint. Once she was back in it, she fell across her bed as though she had been struck by calamity, was extinguished, and could barely bring herself to believe that she had, after all, survived. Sweating, it seemed to her that life, energy, hope were all seeping out of her, flowing down a drain, gurgling ironically."

"She makes the apparently exotic . . . seem as universal, as vital and familiar, as the food on our plates."

"Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture."

"I don’t know of any writer who has responded so ardently — mystically — to that magical scenery and then got it down with such poetic exactitude."

"Anita Desai packs worlds into pages, but keeps her eye close to the private, painful, funny humanity of her characters."

"I want to bring out in drawings what my ancestors did in sculpture in the temples of Southeast Asia."

"She lived the kind of elite Indian life that could have only taken place in the years between the two World Wars, when the highest echelons of Indian society could simultaneously keep one foot firmly planted in the country of their birth, but another just as firmly, in the broader international networks of the British empire."

"Among those who stayed on is Sanjay Tickoo who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for the Kashmiri Pandits’ Struggle). He had experienced the same threats as the Pandits who left. Yet, though admitting ‘intimidation and violence’ directed at Pandits and four massacres since 1990, he rejects as ‘propaganda’ stories of genocide or mass murder that Pandit organizations outside the Valley have circulated."

"We are unique in the world that we are enriched by so many cultures, religions. Now they want to squash us into one culture. So it is a dangerous time. We do not want to lose our richness. We do not want to lose anything...all that Islam has brought us, what Christianity has brought us, what Sikhism has brought us. Why should we lose all this? We are not all Hindus but we are all Hindustani."

"The radical Islamic outfit, Popular Front of India has been in the midst of several dangerous controversies and plots of radical terrorists... . The PFI is suspected of funding violence in the recent spate of violence during the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The Enforcement Directorate has claimed that the PFI has spent around Rs. 120 crores to fuel riots across the country. The investigation report says that the money was withdrawn a day before or on the day of the anti-CAA protests."

"After the unrelenting persecution by the Mamata Banerjee government and threats ... I have decided to move to Delhi. Staying in West Bengal under the current regime it is next to impossible to report the truth."

"I speak as the Editor of OpIndia when I say that our platform itself believes that majority media houses have lost their ethical code. We have over 300 articles filed under “Media lies”. To ask us then, to conform to the ethical standards set by the very institution we oppose is a monstrosity at myriad levels... The moment you censor thoughts, you kill the soul of a man and the spirit of the writer. I oppose any regulation that may just as easily morph into tools of censorship."

"An example of why semantics matter: Delhi Riots were decisively planned and executed by Islamists against Hindus. But guess how the Left defined it? They called it an “anti Muslim POGROM”. Not genocide. Not riot. A “POGROM”. A “POGROM” has a very distinct feature internationally. It essentially connects to genocide particularly of Jews. Left wanted to equate Islamists to Jews in order to internationalise the issue (works as they can compare Hindus to Nazis). They lied. But the lie was well thought The first step is to define our problems better. It is time that we start playing the game slightly more intelligently. Slightly more mindfully. Our civilisation is at stake. They use clever words to sell a lie. Let’s try and do the same to explain our truth, at least"

"While the Left dismisses these occurrences as a figment of the ‘right-wing imagination’, the cases are real. The dead bodies are also real and the threat is imminent... It is because of the narrow definition of a term like ‘Love Jihad’ that the Left is now attempting to twist it to allege that the term Love Jihad is simply used because ‘extremist Hindus’ are against inter-faith marriages, whereas, the phenomenon is far from being about consensual relationships. It is for these reasons that OpIndia has now decided to do away with the term ‘Love Jihad’ in its parlance and reportage. There is no ‘Love’ in Jihad and even if accept the term along with its problematic syntax, it fails to capture the severity of the Jihad that is being waged by sections of radical Muslims that specifically target non-Muslim women. We believe that the term ‘Grooming Jihad’ is far more appropriate since it encapsulates within itself all categories of crimes that keep women at the centre of this Jihad. Non-Muslim women are being groomed to accept their own subjugation at the hands of Muslim men. They are kidnapped, raped, lured, converted to Islam, punished and brainwashed. There is no ‘Love’ in these crimes against humanity. There is no ambiguity that it is a form of Jihad. It is time to call it what it is – Grooming Jihad."

"I spoke to a young girl today, who was gang raped by TMC workers. She says she was targeted because she was a Hindu woman and because she worked for BJP. She is still being hounded and threatened to take her complaint back... After a 1.5 hour conversation with her, I was left numb and nauseous. There are several like her who aren’t speaking up. Brutalised by TMC workers. She is a brave girl because she says she won’t take her complaint back even if it means death for her..."

"There are some events in the history of a people that get etched in the memory like no other. The Delhi Riots and the cycle of fake news, blatant lies, misrepresentations, fear-mongering and carnage that was unleashed against Hindus is one such. CAA was the fulfilling of a foundational promise of the Republic of India. Providing refuge to the persecuted minorities in the Islamic countries of our immediate neighbourhood was a sacred oath that was sworn by the first leaders of our Republic in the immediate years of the partition of our country. It took us decades to fulfill that promise but better late than never. Under normal circumstances, it should have been a cause for celebration, a moment of euphoria for the nation as a whole but the times we live in, while the tears of joy in the faces of the refugees was still evident, the nation could not unite to share in their moment of bliss as Radical Islam reared its ugly head. Even so, it was truly a historic moment and the relevance of it could never be exaggerated. Since December, the entire ecosystem that comprises of Islamists, the Left, India’s traditional cabal of intelligentsia and media not only vilified Hindus, but also shielded the ones who were unleashing violence against the unsuspecting victims. The cycle of carnage started when the government of India decided to ease the process of getting citizenship of India for the persecuted religious minorities of naighbouring Islamic nations."

"Further, we would also like to thank the avowed Hinduphobes. It is you who said ‘Hum Dekhenge’. It is you who said ‘Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega’, and it is because of that we realized the need to remember everything – every little slogan, every little speech that incited hate against Hindus, every stone pelted, every life claimed and every incident of violence against Hindus."

"The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is aimed to expedite citizenship to the religiously persecuted minorities of the neighboring Islamic nations that were carved out of India and failed to treat its citizens equally."

"Harsh Mander has served in the National Advisory Council (NAC), an advisory body set up by the first United Progressive Alliance government to advise the Prime Minister of India, with Sonia Gandhi as its chairperson. The body was widely regarded by Indian citizens and then opposition political parties as unconstitutional. The body comprised people from civil society organizations of questionable repute. The NAC faced the harshest criticism for its draft of the Communal Violence Bill. The Bill, officially referred to as the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, promulgated that Hindus ought to be considered the presumptive guilty party in the case of any communal riots. It assumed that only religious or linguistic minorities and people from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes could be the victims of communal violence conveniently ignoring all ground realities."

"Harsh Mander with his organization ‘Karwaan-e-Mohabbat’ published a report on the police action at the Aligarh Muslim University that absolved the students of all sins and peddled numerous lies against the Uttar Pradesh Police. Later, of course, the entire report turned out to be a massive fraud."

"Most intriguingly, Harsh Mander is the Chairman of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation’s Human Rights Initiative Advisory Board. The controversial left-wing ‘activist’ Harsh has landed himself in a spot of bother after a video where he can be seen inciting Muslim mobs against the Indian State and judiciary went viral on social media. Mander said that henceforth, decisions pertaining to matters of the state shall not be decided by the Supreme Court or the Parliament but will be made in the streets. Since then, the Supreme Court has refused to hear Harsh Mander’s petition until he clarifies his ‘justice on the streets’ speech."

"In the past, Harsh Mander has engaged in apologia for Ishrat Jahan, a female Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who was killed in an encounter along with three others by Crime Branch Officials in Gujarat during Narendra Modi’s tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was also one of the individuals who had signed a mercy petition for the 1993 Mumbai Attack Terrorist Yakub Memon, was among the 203 persons who had signed the mercy petition for Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab responsible for the Mumbai Terror Attack of 2008, and had signed the mercy petition for Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the 2001 Terror Attack on the Indian Parliament. In 2019, Harsh Mander had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking the recusal of then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi from hearing a case relating to the condition of detention camps and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam. He was also one of the forty ‘activists’ who had filed a review petition in the Court against the Ayodhya Verdict that has paved the way for a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, bringing an end to a historical dispute. He is also part of the coterie that has filed a petition against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Moreover, Harsh Mander is also a member of the Ara Pacis Initiative, an organization backed by the Italian Government and is known to work in collaboration with the Italian Secret Services."

"Sharjeel Imam’s rise to notoriety was driven by a speech he made that went viral on social media. In the said video, he had urged Muslims to cut off North East India from the rest of the country by blocking the Chicken’s Neck. The Chicken’s Neck is a narrow stretch of land of about 22 kilometers located in West Bengal, that connects the northeastern states to the rest of India, with Nepal and Bangladesh lying on either side of the corridor.. The stretch of land is extremely important for Indian national security reasons and considering Sharjeel Imam’s educational qualifications, it is plainly obvious that he was fully aware of the implications of his words. Sharjeel Imam says in the viral video, “If five lakh Muslims are organized then we can cut off the North-east from the rest of India. If we cannot do so permanently, then at least we can do it for months. Our responsibility is to cut Assam from India, only then will the Government hear our voice. If we have to help Assam then we will have to cut Assam from the rest of India.” The worldview of Sharjeel Imam was made obvious from the posts he made on Facebook and the column he penned for far-left media outlet The Wire, which is known to spread fake news."

"He has claimed that the hanging of Radical Islamic Terrorists Yakub Memon and Afzal Guru would ‘shake’ the faith of Indian Muslims in the country’s judiciary and democratic values. He also attempted to whitewash the Pulwama Terror Attack carried out by Radical Islamic Terrorists in 2019 and claimed that the USA is responsible for the tensions between India and Pakistan, ignoring the fact that Pakistan has been guilty of sponsoring terrorist attacks on Indian soil. Sharjeel Imam has also accused India, USA and Israel of Islamophobia."

"Sharjeel Imam is important in the scheme of things because it was him who masterminded the anti-CAA Shaheen Bagh protests and making the state machinery to capitulate to mob rule by blocking off streets was his brainchild as well. And as we know, it was precisely that led to the situation spiraling out of control. In another Facebook post, Sharjeel denigrates Idol-Worship and calls it ‘Shirk’. He also insults polytheism, the form of religiosity most Hindus subscribe to, by using it as an insult. He equates atheism, secularism, humanism, even nationalism, to Shirk. In Islamic theology, ‘Shirk’ is considered a sin."

"Sharjeel Imam’s plan for the future becomes evident during this part of the speech which is towards the end of it. He lays out an elaborate plan to make the state bow down to the Muslim community. He makes it clear that it is not a fight between the Congress party or the BJP but one between the Muslim community and the Indian State... He concludes his speech by saying that ‘We have the strength to bring Hindustan to a halt’."

"The PFI has a history of its members being associated with violence. Only in November 2019, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had re-arrested the out-on-bail accused and a member of PFI, KA Najeeb, in connection with a professor’s palm chopping case in Kerala. Najeeb was booked under relevant sections of the IPC, Explosive Substances Act, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for “conspiring and facilitating the lethal attack on Professor TJ Joseph at Thodupuzha, Ernakulam district in Kerala on July 4, 2010.” PFI member Asim Sharif is also suspected of involvement in the killing of RSS activist Rudresh. Rudresh, the RSS worker, was hacked to death in the Shivajinagar area of Bengaluru in October 2016. Five men including Asim Sharif were arrested in the case and a National Investigation Agency court had framed charges against them. Asim Sharif was reportedly the district president of Bengaluru PFI..."

"Prashant Bhushan has been at the forefront of these violent protests, part of the coterie of high-profile activists that he is. There were legal teams working to help protesters avoid the consequences for their actions, some of them were headed by advocate Prashant Bhushan himself. The 'advocate' also spread numerous canards against the CAA and NRC during the run-up to February, calling it an attempt to snatch away citizenship from the "poor, Dalits and Muslims"."

"Prashant Bhushan has also declared that CAA and the NRC was the “first concrete step” to establish a Hindu Rashtra in India. An article [396] he co-authored in January said, “Though agitation in the country has been sparked off by the passing of the communal and discriminatory CAA, a far more serious malaise lies behind the NRIC and the NPR. This exercise has however, finally lit the spark of a massive people’s movement against this inhuman and communal regime. The government is trying to suppress the protests by brutal police action in BJP ruled states.”.. During this period, he also had a run-in with the Judiciary. At a press conference in January [397] , he called Uttar Pradesh Police the “largest organised gang of communal criminals in the country.” At the same press conference, he said, “Ironically, the High Court and Supreme Court kept mum over the anarchy in the state. Such a situation was not even seen during the Emergency period.""

"Prashant Bhushan, who has been a vocal critic of the Modi Government, is associated with the foreign-funded NGO CommonCause. CommonCause has a history of making legal interventions, often pertaining to very critical matters of the state. Leaving aside matters of law, it is indeed a cause for grave concern for the Indian State that foreign funded organizations are intervening in crucial matters of the state. They could very well be pushing forward foreign interests to undermine India’s own."

"Amnesty International has been extremely vocal in its opposition towards the CAA and the NRC."

"Thus, quite clearly, Amnesty was engaging in crass fear-mongering and demonizing the law and order establishment as they attempted to rein in the chaos that had unleashed and bring the perpetrators to justice. Thus, it is important for us to understand the possible factors that might have prompted Amnesty India to engage in such propaganda and for that, it is necessary to look into their background... The rank and file of Amnesty India appears to be overflowing with people with mala fide intentions."