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Nuke bomb is anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human: Arundhati

Internationally-acclaimed author Arundhati Roy has voiced serious resent over India's nuclear tests.

A nuclear state is anti-democratic, anti-national and anti-human, she said.

Addressing an anti-nuke meeting at the Forum of Citizens' Committee for Commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Bombay, she said there was nothing glorious about the nuclear bomb as it is of no use to the mankind. It can only be used for destruction -- and destruction of a devastating nature which may perhaps leave nothing, she said.

Roy, who won the prestigious Booker Prize for her A God of Small Things, delivered a 30-minute talk in eloquent English. She said after a nuclear attack, the earth, water, sky, wind and air will be polluted, and flora and fauna ruined.

Rivers will be contaminated with radiation, the air will be poisonous, land will be polluted and everything will be on fire. Fire-smoke will engulf the earth. And no life -- animal, vegetation, fish or even the creator of the nuclear bomb -- will escape its effects, she said.

Roy remarked that perhaps rats and cockroaches would survive. The humans who manage to live on will be bleeding, wounded, blind and bald. They would be dying instead of living.

She said a nuclear bomb knows no boundaries, no language, no religion -- only devastation. The effect of the bomb will destroy everything, building and bridges, and will wreak havoc. The temperature will rise. It will burn everything. This will be followed by a nuclear winter.

Roy criticised the government and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for conducting the tests. "On August 15, 1997 we celebrated 50 years of Independence... Next may we celebrate the first anniversary on nuclear bondage," she remarked, adding that the same political ideology was behind the Babri masjid demolition. Then too (after the demolition) people had rejoiced on the roads.

The writer said that many of the people who are rejoicing today do not know about the ill effects of the bomb. She said the people who are against the nuclear weapons are very few.

"Let us be against such things which are against the mankind," she said, adding that the anti-nuke forces have the responsibility of saving the planet.

UNI

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