Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

In this collection of political essays, Arundhati Roy examines the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the state’s hardening stance toward dissent and minority rights. She details the legislative shifts of the ruling BJP government, specifically focusing on the implementation of the National Register of Citizens and the revocation of semi-autonomous status in Jammu and Kashmir. Roy argues that language and fiction provide the necessary tools to resist authoritarianism and state-sponsored communal violence. The text tracks the convergence of digital surveillance, the 2020 pandemic, and the erosion of secular democratic institutions across the subcontinent.

Readers of contemporary political theory and post-colonial studies will find a direct critique of global fascism and its specific manifestation in South Asian politics. Those seeking to understand the relationship between a novelist's craft and social activism gain a framework for using narrative as a form of political defiance. The reader exits with a specific chronological understanding of India’s recent shift toward majoritarian rule and an analysis of how literary expression survives under censorship. It serves as a study of current events and a defense of linguistic diversity against monolithic nationalist rhetoric.