Decade-old remarks by Arundhati Roy on Kashmir falsely linked to student protest
- Published on July 14, 2026 at 08:38
- 2 min read
- By Akshita KUMARI, AFP India
After award-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy visited students on hunger strike at a protest organised by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in July 2026, posts recirculated an old video of her saying Kashmir is not an integral part of India, falsely claiming she made the remarks during her visit. The video was in fact filmed at a 2010 conference when she challenged India's right to rule over the disputed Kashmir region, and Roy has denied making the said statement during the CJP protest.
"Arundhati Roy's declaration from the Cockroach Movement platform that 'Kashmir is not a part of India' and all the cockroaches are duly clapping for this," reads part of a Hindi-language X post on July 5, 2026.
The clip shows Roy speaking from a podium, telling those in attendance that she was asked by a journalist whether Kashmir was an integral part of India, to which she said it never was.
The video circulated as hundreds of students mobilised under the banner of the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in New Delhi -- a play on the name of the country's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- to demand the resignation of India's education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, for repeated failures in the education system (archived link).
Several members of the All India Students' Association, along with climate activist and educator Sonam Wangchuk, are carrying out a hunger strike alongside CJP members who have been protesting since June 20 (archived link) .
Roy -- one of India's most famous living authors and a trenchant critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government -- paid a visit to the protesters on July 4 to express solidarity (archived link) .
She has also been a vocal critic of India's presence in Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region divided between India and Pakistan (archived link).
Both claim the Himalayan territory in full.
The video, however, which spread alongside similar claims on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X was filmed in 2010 and is unrelated to the CJP protest.
2010 conference
A reverse image search on Google using the keyframes from the clip led to a longer video published on YouTube on October 30, 2010 (archived link).
The video was captioned, "Arundhati Roy at the Azaadi - The Only Way ahead conference in New Delhi 21st october."
She said in the speech that the disputed Muslim-majority region had "never been an integral part of India" (archived link).
The writer and social activist shared a stage then with hardline Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani and backed the idea of "azadi" or freedom for Kashmir.
A subsequent keyword search led to a news report from June 18, 2024, in which the Indian government granted permission for the prosecution of the Booker Prize-winning author over the comments she made (archived link).
When contacted, Roy told AFP on July 8 that she had attended the protest but did not give a speech.
"I did not speak at CJP. I just went and said hello. It's that same old video."
CJP spokesperson Saurav Das told AFP on July 9 that no such speech was given by Roy at the protest site, and that speakers had stuck to the agenda of education sector reforms.
AFP has previously debunked other false claims related to the CJP.
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