March 9, 2026 – “I have something to say because I’m my mother’s daughter and because I need to straighten my shoulders and say this. It’s a little statement about the war that is about to consume the world.
I know we are here today to talk about Mother Mary Comes To Me. But how can we end the day without talking about those beautiful cities—Tehran, Isfahan and Beirut that are up in flames? In keeping with my Mother Mary’s spirit of candour and impoliteness I would like to use this platform to say something about the unprovoked and illegal attack by the United States and Israel on Iran. It is of course, a continuation of the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. It’s the same old genocidaires using the same old playbook. Murdering women and children. Bombing hospitals. Carpet bombing cities. And then playing the victim.
But Iran in not Gaza. The theatre of this new war could expand to consume the whole world. We are on the brink of nuclear calamity and economic collapse. The same country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be readying itself to bomb one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. There will be other occasions to speak of this in detail, so here, let me simply say that I stand with Iran. Unequivocally. Any regimes that need changing, including the U.S., Israel and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission.
Iran is standing up to them, while India cowers. I am ashamed of how gutless, how spineless our government has been. Long ago we were a poor country of very poor people. But we had pride. We had dignity. Today we are a rich country with very poor, unemployed people who are fed on a diet of hatred, poison and falsehoods instead of real food. We have lost pride. We have lost dignity. We have lost courage. Except in our movies.
What sort of people are we whose elected government cannot stand up and condemn the U.S. when it kidnaps and assassinates Heads of State of other countries? Would we like that done to us? For our Prime Minister to have traveled to Israel and embraced Benyamin Netanyahu just days before he attacked Iran—what does it mean? For our government to sign a groveling trade deal with the U.S. that literally sells our farmers and textile industry down the river, only days before the U.S. Supreme court declared Trump’s tariffs illegal—what does it mean? For us to now be given ‘permission’ to buy oil from Russia—what does it mean? What else do we need permission for? To go to the bathroom? To take a day off work? To visit our mothers?
Every day U.S. politicians including Donald Trump mock and demean us publicly. And our Prime Minister laughs his famous, vacuous laugh. And hugs on. At the height of the genocide in Gaza, the government of India sent thousands of poor Indian workers to Israel to replace expelled Palestinian workers. Today, while Israelis take shelter in bunkers, it is being reported that those Indian workers are not allowed into those shelters. What the hell does all this mean? Who has put us into this absolutely humiliating, shameless, disgusting place in the world?
Some of you will remember how we used to joke about that florid, overblown Chinese communist term, “Running Dog of Imperialism.” But right now, I’d say, it describes us well. Except of course, in our twisted, toxic movies in which our celluloid heroes strut on, winning phantom war after war, dumb and over-muscled. Fueling our insatiable bloodlust with their gratuitous violence and their shit for brains.”
It was not random that writer Arundhati Roy started her statement with “…because I am my mother’s daughter…”, coming as it did at the conclusion of an evening spent talking about her book Mother Mary Comes To Me, released late last year by Penguin Random House. At Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium on March 9, she was in conversation with author and columnist Nilanjana Roy. Like the book, the evening spanned Arundhati’s rollercoaster relationship with her firebrand, pathbreaking, terrifying mother Mary Roy, her very brief encounters with her absent, alcoholic father, her time at the School of Planning and Architecture, and her making as a writer.
Because Nilanjana’s questions and Arundhati’s answers covered not just this book—which Arundhati is uncomfortable calling a memoir, unless you call it a “novelist’s memoir”—but the breadth of Arundhati’s work and engagements, her final statement about Iran was not the only political moment in the evening. She spoke of AI, how “artificial intelligence” was slowly eroding “actual intelligence” as five white men used up more resources—both natural resources and centuries of human resources—than we thought possible. In response to a question from the audience about the saffronisation of India’s universities, she spoke of how not only the education system but all the institutions Indians could once be proud of had become a cause for shame. A foreigner friend she had last met in 2017-18 asked her recently whether things had changed in India since then. “Then,” she said, “we were fighting a fascist government. Now, we are fighting a fascist society.” When speaking of success, and why Arundhati does not feel joy in celebrations of “empty success”, she described how the themes she writes about—corporate globalisation, war, dams, displacement, imperialism—make it difficult to see herself as truly successful.
Large parts of the evening, of course, were spent talking about Mary Roy and the relationship she had with her children, Arundhati and her brother LKC. As a mother, Mary Roy was often brutal; as an educator and a woman who fought for equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women, she was kind, inspiring, revolutionary. Mother Mary Comes To Me is an ode to all parts of her, and a daughter’s attempt to paint a picture of a complex woman for the world. It is made clear both in the book and in Arundhati’s words about it, how much this relationship has shaped her life, and perhaps that’s why, when asked if she would choose to do it again or prefer a different mother, she said “100%” she would do it again.
Hints were dropped, through the evening, that something would happen at the end worth waiting for—“a reading”, “a message I want to share”. And when she made her final statement, standing firmly with Iran and condemning an Indian government that cannot bring itself to do so, the audience got on their feet to show her they felt the same way. Responding to the standing ovation, she flashed a smile and a victory sign with her hand.
In Delhi, we always fight back.
Through the evening, she had held the audience’s attention and hearts. And as they rose in support of her statement, perhaps the audience had her heart, too.
