Arundhati Roy accuses TV channels for fuelling attack

Roy accuses Indian TV channels of whipping up protests against her over comments she made about Kashmir.

NEW DEHLI: Award-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy has accused Indian TV channels of whipping up protests against her after her house in New Delhi was attacked over comments she made about Kashmir.

About 100 female protesters from a Hindu nationalist party surrounded her residence on Sunday to demonstrate against a speech last month in which she said the disputed Muslim-majority region had "never been an integral part of India."

Roy said at least three television broadcasting vans were in place before the crowd arrived. The protesters "broke through the gate and vandalised property" as they chanted slogans against her, she said.

"Some TV channels and newspapers are in the process of brazenly inciting mob anger against me," she said in a statement late Sunday.

Roy, winner of the 1997 Booker prize for her novel "The God of Small Things", is a fierce critic of India's tactics in Kashmir, where protests against New Delhi have claimed more than 100 lives since June. Her speech led to demands that she should be arrested for sedition, but police declined to press charges.

Kashmir has been beset by anti-India violence, curfews and strikes since early June, when a 17-year-old student was killed by a police tear-gas shell. Since then, a total of 111 protesters and bystanders have died.

A poll published last month showed that a majority in Indian Kashmir favoured independence for their region. Political discontent has simmered in Kashmir since the partition of the subcontinent on 1947, when a Hindu ruler took his mostly Muslim subjects into India rather than Pakistan. The agreement of accession to India gave Kashmir autonomy in many areas, but much of this has been eroded since then.