MD Mesha

NEW DELHI (TSAT) - A prominent Indian author and booker prize winner Arundhati Roy criticized the BJP-led government for its anti-minorities policies and said Modi is flying India like a plane which moving in reverse. 

Speaking at the book launching ceremony on Wednesday, she added that the Modi party is distributing five kilograms of rice and one kilogram of salt and asking to give him a vote. 

“Recently, I asked a pilot friend of mine, 'Can you fly a plane backwards?'. He laughed out loud. And I said this is exactly what is happening here where the leaders of this country are flying the plane in reverse, everything is falling,and we are headed for a crash," said the author of bestselling novels "The God of Small Things" and "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”,” the Economic Times quoted her as saying.

She accused Modi to divided the Indian society in cast, class, gender and ethnicity.

"What are we doing here today? We are meeting to talk about a professor who is paralysed 90 per cent and has been in jail for seven years. That is what we are doing. That is enough. We do not have to speak anymore. That is enough to tell you what kind of country we are living in. What shame is this?," she added.

The book, titled "Why do you fear my way so much??", written by jailed human rights activist G N Saibaba, was released by the CPI general secretary D Raja at Jawahar Bhawan.

The ceremony was also attended by a huge number of writers and poets. 

Saibaba 90, was a professor at Delhi University, who was arrested by the Modi government in 2017 and accused of alleged links with Maoist.

Later he was terminated from service and a local court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

He was a critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist government's anti-minorities policies. 

"The government of the day thinks by labelling some people as 'urban maoists', 'urban naxalites' , 'anti-nationals', 'terrorists' or putting them in prison or torturing them in prison, they can succeed. I warn them they can never succeed. A communist can be killed, but a communist can never be defeated, Mr Modi,"D Raja said.