What a truly fantastic quote! Nothing reflects better the downfall of the Communists, the militant secularists, the terror enablers who are more usefully understood as Urban Naxals (terrorists with pens & PR basically for those unaware), and the ideological cabal which perpetuated all of the above, than this high-pitched whine from Arundhati.
So, let us dissect for the pure pleasure of it:
"Iran is standing up to them (USA), while India cowers". This is the sort of fantasy narrative - so extreme in its distance from reality - that people sometimes take seriously because of the level of delusion involved. "Standing up" sure, but the country is so badly damaged that and still no one knows the extent of it. And if people think this negotiated ceasefire is the end of it, they better keep reading what Arundhati has to say.
The "while India cowers" though is the most extreme part of this extreme narrative. What she is saying is that India should have "stood up" like Iran has done. What does that mean in practical terms? We have around $200 bn in trade with the Gulf countries and $10 bn approx with Iran. In other words, upset our Gulf partners, the US (with whom we have another $100 bn in trade), Israel (with whom our links are multi-dimensional) and possibly even our EU partners, to satisfy whom? Arundhati and her camp followers, with near zero electoral value - to make them feel better ideologically?
Clearly, beyond idiotic from a strategic perspective. The thing is, those she supports in India would have done exactly that - to the detriment of our national interest. They have done that in the past.
"I am ashamed of how gutless, how spineless our government has been".
When the Communists, the militant secularists, the Urban Naxals are "ashamed" - be proud, be firm and contemptuous of them, for you can be sure the government is doing the right thing; and that whatever these people are suggesting is on behalf of external ideologies and/or players.
"Long ago we were a poor country of very poor people. But we had pride. We had dignity."
Who is the "we" who had pride and dignity? Those of us begging bureaucrats for simple permits, licenses, signatures, those being kept out of the intellectual space, those pushed out of any discussion on national narrative?
Or the desperately poor, who are now coming out of absolute poverty (250 million at last count) through increased access to commerce, digital communication, loans, simple bank accounts, electricity, cooking gas, water - none of which were widely available in the 60 wasted years when she and her ilk held the reins of state? These are the ones who had dignity & pride?
No, the ones who had pride and dignity were these pretend intellectuals, second-rate at best, one-time literary wonders who, for pittances from foreign sponsors usually, wrote all sorts of nonsense aimed at turning Indians into perpetual cynics, without hope, without a sense of history and without any means to recover from a millennium of subjugation.
This evil woman was one amongst them. She is still feted, mainly, by external sponsors and fellow travellers - and there are many of those, in countries all around the world.
The ironclad rule should be that whatever she is chastising the country for is what we are doing right. Beware of the praise of such dark characters with zero integrity or authenticity.