The official Twitter account of the citizen engagement platform of the Government of India on Saturday committed a faux pas after it was found promoting one of the books written by anti-India propagandist Arundhati Roy.
The Twitter account, which goes by the handle @MyGovIndia, posted a picture of the book ‘The God of Small Things’ written by Arundhati Roy, as a part of its 20 words book summary challenge. Along with the picture of the book, the tweet included a quote by Edmund Wilson that said: “No two persons ever read the same book”.
Post deleted after government draws flak from online users for promoting a controversial author
However, the government endorsement of a book written by an inveterate anti-India propagandist did not sit well with the social media users, who expressed their outrage and promptly called out the government for promoting an author who has a history of peddling propaganda against India.
Arundhati Roy’s book being promoted by @mygovindia
— IndianTweeter (@bhaarathvaasi) June 26, 2021
Kudos! 👏 pic.twitter.com/RibyWKL3Hh
cc: @narendramodi @PMOIndia @AmitShah @HMOIndia https://t.co/UNdG9YfXKE
— Mallikarjuna (@HariHaraBhakta) June 26, 2021
Seemingly after taking cognisance of the online outrage, the Twitter account @MyGovIndia quickly deleted the post where it was seen recommending a book written by an author with contentious antecedents.
Arundhati Roy, a career propagandist for whom lying and being deceitful is second nature
Arundhati Roy is a controversial figure in Indian politics. For years now, Roy has been accused of advancing the anti-India narrative and purveying falsehoods and misinformation under the garb of “freedom of speech”. Just recently, Roy had penned an article in The Guardian, using the cover of the pandemic to push her propaganda against the Modi government.
While being deceitful is second nature to Arundhati Roy and lying her favourite hobby, the extent of lies she peddled in The Guardian at a time when India was grappling with a ferocious second wave of COVID-19 is particularly egregious. Roy not only lied about the PM Cares Fund in her article but also spread misinformation about India’s vaccination drive and COVID-19 vaccines developed by SII and Bharat Biotech. If this did not suffice, she also peddled propaganda about the West Bengal elections in her article for the British daily.
Earlier last year, career propagandist Arundhati Roy, in her bid to continue spreading lies about India, alleged that the Modi government was using coronavirus outbreak to commit a Muslim genocide.
Not just the government, but Roy has vilified the Indian Armed Forces as well. She had been consistently referring to the anti-terror ops in Kashmir as “state-sponsored” terrorism. In her infamous speech that she made in 2002, Roy said, “In India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian government’s fascist policies which, apart from the perpetration of State terrorism in the valley of Kashmir (in the name of fighting terrorism), have also turned a blind eye to the recent state-supervised pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat. It would be absurd to think that those who criticize the Indian government are “anti-Indian”—although the government itself never hesitates to take that line.”
