“Cultures of Chittagong Hill Tracts and other indigenous peoples are still marginalized in Bangladesh, in mainstream cultural practices. They're made invisible. And there is a kind of appropriation too. A Chakma dance is danced by Bengali dancers.” COMMUNITY Bengali Nationalism & the Chittagong Hill Tracts Kabita Chakma “Cultures of Chittagong Hill Tracts and other indigenous peoples are still marginalized in Bangladesh, in mainstream cultural practices. They're made invisible. And there is a kind of appropriation too. A Chakma dance is danced by Bengali dancers.” Researcher Kabita Chakma in conversation with Advisory Editor Mahmud Rahman talked about her own experience writing and translating in Bangla and Chakma, as well as the longue durée history of the Chakmas and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, particularly after the formation of CHT as a district in 1860. Colonial cartographies split the Chakma population between countries, districts, and states between Tripura, Assam, Mizoram in India, Burma, Bangladesh, and their global diasporas. How robust, Mahmud Rahman asks, is the readership of Chakma texts? RECOMMENDED: "Muscular nationalism, masculinist militarism: the creation of situational motivators and opportunities for violence against the Indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh" (International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2022) by Glen Hill & Kabita Chakma ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh CHT Indigeneity Chakma Chakma History Indigenous Art Practice Indigeneous Spaces Politics of Indigeneity Language Diversity Language Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Kaptai Dam Bengali Nationalism Jumma Communities Jumma Chakma Communities Shaheen Akhtar Militarism Military Crackdown Shomari Chakma International Mother Tongue Day Intellectual History KABITA CHAKMA is an independent researcher, writer and architect. Writing in the Chakma, Bangla and English languages, Kabita’s research interests include the history, literature, art, architecture, cinema, environmental sustainability, human rights, women’s rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights. Her academic papers have appeared in university journals and edited book chapters. Her investigative articles have appeared in the Daily Star , the New Age , Himal Southasian , the publications of various cultural and educational institutes, including the online platforms Jumjournal, thotkata.com, and alalodulal.org. Her creative works include poems and short stories. Her book of poems, Jawli Na’Udhim Kittei!/ Rukhe Darabo Na Ken! was written in Chakma and Bangla languages and translated into English by Sajed Kamal. She recently translated a short story by Shaheen Akhter, Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain) , for the magazine Out Of Print . In the context of a paucity of fictional works in indigenous CHT languages, she is now working on Chakma language historical fiction. Interview Chittagong Hill Tracts 9th Dec 2020 On That Note: Chats Ep. 8 · On Migrations in Global History 4th MAY Photo Kathmandu & Public History in Nepal 25th NOV Rethinking the Library with Sister Library 21st OCT

Feminist Theorist and English Professor Fawzia Afzal-Khan, in conversation with Drama Editor Neilesh Bose. COMMUNITY Movements in Pakistani Theatre Feminist Theorist and English Professor Fawzia Afzal-Khan, in conversation with Drama Editor Neilesh Bose. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Theater 24th Sep 2020 Interview Theater Performance Art South Asian Theater Internationalist Solidarity Parallel Theatre Movement Realism Non-Realist Plays Sufism Ajoka Theatre Women Singers of Pakistan Madeeha Gauhar Women Democratic Front Shahid Nadeem Authenticity Avant-Garde Form Native Formats Nationalism Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. The work I started doing, like Sheherzade Goes West could be considered avant-garde in a certain way it did not conform to representational theatre even though I gave it a very self-ironizing subtitle—speaking out as a “Pakistani/American/wo/man, because I wanted the title itself to question certain ideas of self-representation. RECOMMENDED: A Critical State: The Role of Secular Alternative Theatre in Pakistan (Seagull Press, 2005) by Fawzia Afzal-Khan More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

COO of Fearless Collective, Tehani Ariyaratne, in conversation with Senior Editor Sabika Abbas Naqvi. COMMUNITY Public Art Projects as Feminist Reclamation COO of Fearless Collective, Tehani Ariyaratne, in conversation with Senior Editor Sabika Abbas Naqvi. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Feminist Art Practice 29th Nov 2020 Interview Feminist Art Practice Feminist Organizing Mural Public Space Art Practice Public Arts Fearless Collective Fearless Arts Residency Art Activism Fundraising Future Dream Spaces Queerness Queer Spaces Trans Politics Trans Community Wheat Pasting Sri Lanka Pakistan India Internationalist Solidarity Khwaja Siras Bubbli Malik Queer Muslim Project Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. One of our murals in Rawalpindi, is an image of a [khwaja sira], Bubbli Malik, on a bicycle, and she says "I am a creation of Allah." The mural refers not to violence or trauma, but is a radical affirmation of the [khwaja sira] community. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

In the immediate wake of the COVID-19 crisis, disaster and religion became intertwined for many Rohingya refugees in the camps of Cox's Bazaar, allowing spurious claims to sway a vulnerable population. FEATURES COVID-19 and Faith in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh In the immediate wake of the COVID-19 crisis, disaster and religion became intertwined for many Rohingya refugees in the camps of Cox's Bazaar, allowing spurious claims to sway a vulnerable population. VOL. 2 ISSUE 1 REPORTAGE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Photograph courtesy of Abu Yousuf Shazid, depicting Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) hand washing station. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Photograph courtesy of Abu Yousuf Shazid, depicting Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) hand washing station. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Reportage Cox's Bazar 27th Feb 2023 Reportage Cox's Bazar Rohingya Refugee Crisis Bangladesh COVID-19 Religion Faith Leaders Intimate Partner Violence Disaster & Faith International Law NGOs Internationalist Perspective Humanitarian Crisis Human Language Longform Literacy Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. COVID-19 IS directly impacting the most vulnerable section of society in Bangladesh—its Rohingya refugees—a community which narrowly survived genocide in their native Myanmar, now subjected to mass displacement in the region. Combined with the impact of Cyclone Amphan and Cyclone Yaas in 2020 and 2021 respectively, Bangladesh’s constant battle with the climate crisis is well-documented. The mass displacement and persecution, however, continue to impact the largely overlooked refugee population. Approximately 1.2 million Rohingya refugees have been living in the 27 camps in two sub-districts of Cox’s Bazar district since 2017. Late last year, there were state-led actions that alarmed both humanitarian and human rights groups. The Government of Bangladesh, in December 2020, began moving Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, a secluded island without adequate healthcare infrastructure or protection against extreme weather events like severe cyclones and tidal surges. So far, more than 20,000 people have been moved, out of the planned 100,000 refugees to the low-lying silt island. Grappling with the effects of double displacement, initially from their home country and now being forcibly shifted from refugee camp to camp, coupled with the uncertainties about their legal status and insecurity over their future in their host country, the plight of the Rohingyas is a humanitarian crisis that shames humanity. Faith and Health of the Rohingya Refugees In 2020, several months of lockdown measures, put in place by the Government of Bangladesh to protect against COVID-19, led to a severe loss of livelihood for many of the country’s vulnerable and poor. In Cox’s Bazar, women-headed households, persons with disability, and elderly people have resorted to strategies that affect their health and well-being. Women and children are eating less nutritious foods and fewer meals in a day, reducing the quantities they eat. These harmful dietary practices are a result of their socio-economic conditions, especially loss of livelihoods and limited food relief during the COVID-19 crisis. It speaks of people on the brink, left to their own devices, and at the mercy of their faith. The Rohingya people are predominantly Muslim. Their community leaders are usually imams and muezzins leading prayers at mosques. As witnessed the world over, several COVID-19 conspiracies were at play. This emerged as the case with both Rohingya and Bengali communities, who turned to faith in trying and testing circumstances and in the face of uncertainty and scant information. These are usually the circumstances in which people who have lost all hope resort to religion. Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar too believed that COVID-19 was a punishment and a test of their faith. Disease and health, thus, became entwined with spirituality, religion, and other spheres of life, including financial struggle. For this article, we interviewed imams, muezzins, women faith actors, and local NGOs who were instrumental in raising awareness on COVID-19 preventive strategies, surveying 100 households from both the Bangladeshi host populations and Rohingya refugees in Camps 15 and 19 in Cox’s Bazar. At the inception of the pandemic, in the throes of fear and insecurity on the ground, there were numerous conspiracies about the government in Bangladesh, just like anywhere else in the world. During Jummah prayers, religious leaders who initially supported fatalistic notions about COVID-19 virus were encouraging people to wash their hands to maintain cleanliness, and to wear masks. In the face of uncertainty and scant information in the pandemic, both Rohingya and Bengali communities turned to their faith in trying and testing circumstances. In 2020, Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) set up a health outpost in Camp 19, and provided basic health services to the people living in the camps. The health staff assisted people with COVID-19-related measures and treatments. The DAM facility had referred 26 suspected cases—22 Rohingya members and 4 villagers—to the nearest hospital, where two positive cases were found amongst the Bengali villagers. The health outpost provided screenings for COVID-19 symptoms and referred them to the hospitals, while for the non-COVID-19 cases they provided treatments. As per the data provided to us by DAM, over 400 patients were treated, consisting of both Rohingya refugees and host community members. An official from DAM mentioned the following about the caseload: "As per health data, there were 367 positive cases and 10 deaths amongst Rohingyas across 32 camps. Within Camp 19, there were five positive cases in refugees and three hospital staff tested positive. Approximately 5,000 positive cases in the host community." This must be viewed within the larger context of limited facilities for testing within the camps in Cox’s Bazar. A medical doctor noted that only 25,000 had been tested so far out of 1.2 million people as of January 2021. Specifically in Camps 15 and 19, there are no sentinel sites. Inside a Rohingya Refugee Camp (RRC) Masjid. Courtesy of Abu Yousuf Shazid Another NGO, Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK), undertook an initiative for public health messaging, generating awareness and providing timely information and discussions with around 700 Rohingya community members. They employed an interesting approach of using public speakers and microphones in the mosques, as well as door-to-door campaigns for providing information on COVID-19 preventive measures. They provided training to community and faith leaders, dispelling some of the rumours and misinformation that were rampantly spreading in these communities. With the collision of science and faith, there were interesting ways in which Rohingyas resisted and adapted to the new circumstances. From an outsider's perspective, it appeared that faith leaders were fatalistic, which percolated amongst other community members participating in our group discussions. Rohingya men and women were concerned that the elderly were susceptible because they did not remain “clean,” presumably concerning their personal hygiene. Many people shared that initially they had lots of misinformation and misbeliefs, believing COVID-19 was an act of God to punish the non-religious. Depending on who their community leaders were, such views would be either contested or encouraged, especially during prayertime. While there is a strong feeling that the pandemic is religiously ordained, a significant proportion of the people still believe it to be as a response to their sins; or nature's response to man's cruelty, or even due to a lack of belief in Islam. There were strong associations between cleanliness and the disease. Several rumours emerged about what causes COVID-19, just as it was commonly observed in countries in the Global South as well as Global North. Qualitative data indicates people received COVID-19 information through social media, public spaces like tea stalls, religious gatherings, and meetings at mosques. While there is a strong feeling that the pandemic is religiously ordained, a significant proportion of the people still believe it to be a response to their sins; or as nature's response to man's cruelty, or even due to a lack of belief in Islam . It is essential to note that these fatalist attitudes were the result of a combination of misinformation, manipulation, and inappropriate channels of information that the Rohingyas had limited access to. In the absence of large-scale humanitarian support, abandoned by their host and persecuted by their native country, the Rohingyas largely relied on their faith to tide over challenging circumstances. Hearing their stories about the painful and arduous journey from Rakhine state to Bangladesh, it is remarkable that these communities continue to thrive and survive in the face of challenging and dire circumstances. They relied on their community leaders, unelected Rohingya called “majhis,” for information and guidance to not only make this journey to Bangladesh but also manoeuvre the flailing political, administrative, and governance structures in the camps. Religious actors & women leaders With the merging of faith and public health, a key group of actors emerged as powerful and influential in changing beliefs and attitudes about COVID-19. Imams and muezzins played a crucial role in promoting healthcare in the Rohingya community, and several humanitarian NGOs relied on these religious leaders to promote preventive messages on COVID-19. Within the Bangladeshi community, the imam is a leader of the community revered for their exemplary adherence to faith. Imams in the Rohingya community play a similar role, and thus it is widely accepted that an imam’s verdict and messages about COVID-19 are sincere and trustworthy. Majhi, although originally a term used to refer to the leader who helped Rohingya refugees flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh, was also the name of the camp in-charge in Cox’s Bazar. The majhi system was initially established by the Bangladeshi authorities to manage the influx of refugees in 2017, but over the years it became an administrative position elected without participation and representation of the Rohingya communities. In effect, majhi were no longer the traditional leaders or elders of the Rohingya communities, and they neither reflected nor represented the voices, needs, and aspirations of these displaced groups. Several NGOs trained and addressed misconceptions held by the imams and muezzins and enlisted their support in delivering COVID-19 messaging during prayers. Interestingly, some imams married scientific facts with religious edicts. A Rohingya teacher said: "Lots of people live here and it is difficult to manage them. If any message and information are needed to deliver to the people, the leaders act as the main role. For NGOs and other officials, it is not possible to reach all people. The leaders also discuss different issues with the officials." Religious gatherings, especially jummah/Friday sermons called by the imam, appear to be the best source of information for the masses. A woman leader, who actively participated in the DSK NGO’s training programmes, noted that every Friday at the time of prayer, the imam discussed how we could be safe from the coronavirus. However, since women do not usually go to the mosques, those who attended the training from DSK would share what they learnt with other women near their homes. She also shared that since schools were closed due to lockdown measures in 2020, they lost out on a vital and reliable source of information. They had to pay approximately 100 takas ($1) per month for school, hence many could not afford going to school. A COVID-19 DSK awareness poster in a refugee camp. Courtesy of Abu Yousuf Shazid There were other information sources that were reported as the highly trusted and least trusted information sources for COVID-19: radios, television, posters, billboards, social media channels, and websites. People relied on social actors from both health and religious institutions, such as community health workers, majhis, imams, madrassa teachers, traditional healers, and members of the Tablighi Jamaat. Some depended on their friends, neighbours, and community health events for health-related information. Of these, community health workers and faith leaders such as majhis, imams, and madrassa teachers emerged as the top three sources of information as reported. Imams and muezzins were considered as trustworthy by the community members. The majhi system was initially established by the Bangladeshi authorities to manage the influx of refugees in 2017 but over the years it became an administrative position elected without participation and representation of the Rohingya communities. In effect, majhi were no longer the traditional leaders or elders of the Rohingya communities, and they neither reflected nor represented the voices and aspirations of these displaced groups. Rohingya members were skeptical about messages received from posters and radio as these did not explain much of the instructions they had to follow. Many times, these were in languages—English or Bengali—they were not able to read or comprehend easily. The lack of educational and literacy programmes for Rohingya refugees is pivotal to understanding Rohingya communities. Rohingya refugees are not allowed to read and write in the local Bengali language. There are no integration programmes available for refugees in Bangladesh, particularly for the Rohingyas. Although the Rohingya language, Ruáingga, has some affinity to the Chittagonian dialect spoken in Cox’s Bazar, many refugees are unable to read and write in Bengali. The refugee members have poor literacy rates due to systemic persecution and lack educational opportunities in Myanmar, and continued negligence in Bangladesh. The access to and continuation of education for Rohingya girls is very limited. Parental attitudes towards education for girls reportedly shift once girls turn ten years old as societal norms may allow girl children to be married. With limited economic means young girls are not enrolled into education programmes run by NGOs in the camps. Their educational attainment levels are well below average after having fled genocide and war in Myanmar, a symptom of the abject exclusion of the Rohingyas from education in both host and home countries. Male teachers provided a different perspective on how religion was limited in its capacity to counter the global coronavirus pandemic. One of the teachers who was interviewed clarified that there is nothing related to COVID-19 in the Quran or Hadith, although Islam asks everyone to stay clean. He went on to reflect how teachers were “trying” to unlearn misinformation that they gathered through various mediums like social media or others. The madrassa teachers also had a role to play in the COVID-19 response. Firstly, teachers from schools or madrassas are very respected people in Rohingya society, an intellectual privilege that allows them an ease in delivering their messages. Rohingya exclusion from society, education, and other opportunities has fed into cynicism over science and outsiders, and they heavily rely on local actors and leaders whom they trust rather than external social workers. While the teachers are involved in the faith-based committee, they also have access to mobile phones which means they can access updated information. Their involvement in the training and awareness programmes has helped NGOs to build trust with refugee community members. This process has been capitalized to deliver COVID-19 preventive messages to the people, through teachers who have a unique way of perceiving and explaining scientific ideas with religion to counter misinformation amongst the people. Rohingya refugees are not allowed to read and write in the local Bengali language. There are no integration programmes available for refugees in Bangladesh particularly for the Rohingyas. Although the Rohingya language, Ruáingga, has some affinity to the Chittagonian dialect spoken in Cox’s Bazar, many refugees are unable to read and write in Bengali. Despite religious leaders being male figures, there were local women leaders who actively participated in religious activities. Although women leaders have lesser authority than their traditional male counterparts, Rohingya women can reach out to women leaders easily. Imams and muezzins did not interact directly with women and children because their religious responsibilities were largely centred around the mosque. An Arabic teaching room in an RRC Masjid. Courtesy of Abu Yousuf Shazid Since women did not have access to religious and educational spaces, they were more likely to have untested misbeliefs and attitudes towards COVID-19. Some women leaders in the Rohingya communities were included in NGO training and were enlisted for house-to-house visits and providing information on COVID-19 preventive steps. However, their numbers are few—most women leaders continue to believe and share their misinformation about COVID-19. For instance, a 35-year-old female leader (name withheld) explained her understanding about the cause of COVID-19 as being an “order from God,” and that we need to keep ourselves “neat and clean” in order to prevent ourselves from being infected. They have little access to information, with limited to no educational opportunities, and are unable to voice their opinions and apprehensions in relief and awareness programmes. Such misinformation is, of course, not limited to Rohingya or Bangladeshi women. In order to stop the flow, the government, humanitarian actors, and media will have to take steps to rule out every possible rumor with scientific fact. This should be accessible and available in several languages, written and orally presented widely. This reveals the fact that women are less considered for group and organized meetings; they remain as passive receptors of information passed onto them by their husbands. This provides fertile ground for the spread of misinformation and misconceptions, often used to suppress women further in such isolating circumstances. There were physical and social barriers that determined the uptake of COVID-19 preventive messages, such as low literacy levels, cultural and linguistic differences between host and refugee communities, and no access to basic health, educational, and livelihood opportunities. Local faith and community leaders can play a vital role in addressing vaccine hesitancy and cultural biases related to vaccine uptake amongst both Bangladeshi and Rohingya communities. Since women did not have access to religious and educational spaces, they were more likely to have untested misbeliefs and attitudes towards COVID-19. Some women leaders in the Rohingya communities were included in NGO training and were enlisted for house-to-house visits and providing information on COVID-19 preventive steps. However, their numbers are few. Gender experts are also alarmed at the increased rates of domestic violence during the pandemic. There have been numerous cases of intimate partner violence against women isolated with abusive partners. Women’s responsibilities and workload were overburdened as men were barred from going out during lockdown. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on women’s rights and their access to justice. There are strict restrictions imposed on them, which became stricter during the pandemic: limited movement outside the home and adherence to follow instructions. Several rumours reported by Rohingyas were shared by a senior official from DAM NGO during a telephone interview. "Rohingya people were scared. They used to say: 'If we go to the health post, we will be sent to Bishan Char island, or we may go missing. We may even be killed.” The official interpreted these rumours as symbolic of a genuine mistrust between the health system and refugee populations. However, they reflect the harsh realities of the Rohingyas who have no one to turn to and who fear further persecution from authorities, constantly coming across government initiatives that push them further into destitution. The Future of Humanitarianism in Cox’s Bazar No country was prepared to face such a pandemic, and yet, for persecuted communities like the Rohingyas, these uncertainties and health emergencies are symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that isolates, negates, and further reproduces the injustice and unfair conflict that they have faced not only with the government authorities. Misinformation and mistrust is not a unique phenomenon to the Rohingyas but it is important to unpack why people are peddling conspiracy theories instead—lack of information, spread of disinformation campaigns on social media and the Internet, and politicians and society leaders questioning the severity of the pandemic while silencing the needs and voices of Rohingya refugees. On September 29, 2021, Mohibullah, 46, chair of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Several human rights and NGO workers have criticized this killing as not only silencing Rohingya voices, but also refusing to have a dialogue with the refugees for their safe future, either in Bangladesh or in a safe return to Myanmar. Many believe that the non-state actor Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an armed group present in the camp, is responsible for this violent and gruesome murder. With disarray in camps and limited resources from humanitarian actors, violence has become rampant, resulting in murders and abductions. It is the responsibility of government authorities to ensure the protection of people in the camps, including refugees, activists, and humanitarian workers from both the Rohingya and local community, many of whom have shared concerns about their safety. Any humanitarian effort should build on an understanding of the underlying drivers of conflict, violence, and issues affecting social cohesion within the local Bangladeshi communities in Cox’s Bazar. Social cohesion factors such as a sense of social or group identity, sense of community, and attachment to place can be important adaptation drivers when considering how populations respond to public health and other crises. These factors, together with community-based leadership, including faith-based leadership, can play an important role in the development and increasing social bonds central to Rohingya capacities when confronting COVID-19 and a range of other hazards. Mapping out power relations and structures within and beyond the Rohingya community could help meaningfully engage with the persecuted minority. The battle for citizenship and statehood for Rohingyas is long and dates to colonial history and negligence by Burmese authorities. While these groups await their uncertain future, it is the responsibility and mandate of neighbouring countries like India and Bangladesh to be proactive and participatory in their approaches to the needs of this population. While the humanitarian world debates whether Myanmar is culpable for the genocide of the Rohingyas, their day-to-day needs and lived realities can no longer be brushed under the carpet or silenced through more violence. ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. THE VERTICAL Universalism & Solidarity in a Post-Roe Landscape In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. VOL. 2 ISSUE 1 OP-ED AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Op-Ed United States 23rd Feb 2023 Op-Ed United States Roe v Wade Reproductive Rights Legacies of Slavery Human Rights Abortion Access Low-Income Workers The Right to Contraception Liberate Abortion Latin American Green Wave National Network of Abortion Funds Gender Violence South Asian SOAR Internationalist Perspective Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. ON JUNE 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortions protected under the 1973 landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade . The decision, issued in a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, has opened the doors for dozens of states to take steps to ban it outright. As I’m writing this solidarity note, at least 15 states have abortion bans in effect: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The prohibitions range from a complete ban on abortions to banning abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy. These states are among the poorest in the country, with large populations of Indigenous, Black, and immigrant communities. In the absence of safe, timely, and affordable abortion care; people are forced to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access medical care or carry pregnancies to term against their will. This is a gross violation of human rights. Abortion bans can be traced to the brutal legacies of slavery, where Black women were treated as sexual chattel. Hence, they are rooted in white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, anti-Black violence. Such racist laws deny systematically marginalized communities the right to control their bodies and futures. About 60% of people who need abortion care each year are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Against the backdrop of this country’s legacy of racism and discrimination, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas tend to face greater barriers to quality health care, childcare, and job opportunities. Oriaku Njoku, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, shares: "This [abortion] is not something where it's either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent. There are so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family." According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the 121 million pregnancies across the globe each year are unintended. Each year, over 44,000 people die from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer serious, often permanent, injuries. Restricting access to abortion drives pregnant people to use unsafe methods. For example, Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but the lack of access to abortion care makes it one of the deadliest places to get an abortion. This much is clear: abortion access saves lives. This is why reproductive justice advocates have been fighting for the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The reproductive justice framework calls for every possible effort—whether through policies, social services, and community relationships—to address intersecting oppressions, create alliances across identities, analyze power systems, and center the most marginalized among us. Reproductive justice allows us to understand access to abortion as a critical piece of economic, healthcare, and gender justice battles: the way we treat birthing people and families impacts how we build stronger and healthier communities. For example, the right to contraceptives only ensures that people can get a prescription for them. But for a low-wage worker who is uninsured, how can they afford to take a day off and pay for the contraceptives? By thinking outside of the rights framework—where we are only fighting for the right to abortion—reproductive justice acknowledges the socio-political and economic inequalities that are disproportionately faced by BIPOC communities. South Asian American communities in general and survivors in particular, live at the intersection of multiple oppressions which make the overall consequences of lack of abortion access, particularly grave. Without access to healthcare resources in the many languages spoken across South Asian diasporas, and culturally imposed shame and stigma around accessing reproductive healthcare, South Asian communities experience marginalization at multiple levels. Even apart from the lack of policies that support access to hospitals and clinics trusted by South Asian communities, there is simply no insurance for healthcare needs specific to these communities. Lack of such policies work as barriers to healthcare and reify the long-established history of racism and its many inequities. For South Asian survivors the consequences are even more grave. People in abusive relationships are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, birth control sabotage, reproductive coercion or control, and misinformation about their reproductive rights. In most cases, murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as mentioned in the SOAR Collective Statement . The Liberate Abortion—a coalition of over 150 member organizations—is currently one of the largest BIPOC-led reproductive justice and rights coalitions in the United States. Liberate Abortion was founded out of the realization that the struggle against the threat to abortion access cannot be fought by a single organization, healthcare provider, organizer, or donor. This is why the coalition focusses on community mobilization, electoral organizing, changing cultural narratives, federal outreach, and policy reform. The staff, leaders, and members coordinate with stakeholders such as movement partners in legal defense and practical service delivery spaces, cross-movement partners, funders, members of Congress, and the Biden administration on information sharing and strategy. Although the coalition solely focuses on abortion funds and clinics in the United States, frontline activists from the Latin American Green Wave movement have joined the coalition to share lessons from their campaigns to expand abortion access across the continent. In the last two years alone, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized or fully legalized abortions. The Supreme Court’s attack on the right to abortion access leaves several fundamental human rights open to contestation. These include the right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other rights intertwined with the right to liberty protected through Roe v. Wade . As access to abortion gets further criminalized by politicians and companies that sell our data to anti-abortion lawmakers and legislators, privacy activists and lawmakers need to also shift their approach. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the past 15 years have seen a shocking spike in arrests and prosecutions for crimes related to stillbirths, miscarriages, and alleged drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The legal advocacy and policy support group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, documented over 61 cases that occurred between 2000 and 2020 in which people were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly self-managing abortions or helping someone else get one. Only this year in August, Facebook gave Nebraska police access to a teen’s private messages which they used to prosecute her for getting an abortion. The fight for reproductive justice includes battles against surveillance and policing. These are the tools of the right wing to expand their control over bodily autonomy. For South Asian Americans this is a critical time to shift away from calls for increased policing to visionary organizing that is rooted in the desire to build safer communities. Some of the ways we can express solidarity are to get involved in volunteer services and mutual aid networks. Abortion fundraisers like the ARC-Southeast are coordinating funding and logistical support for people who need abortion access in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. For the South Asian & Indo-Caribbean diaspora, HEART to Grow is sustaining a reproductive justice fund for Muslims across America, while domestic violence organizations like API Chaya ally with abolitionist efforts that close youth jails across Seattle. The fight for reproductive justice must be both localized and nationalized—to aid and abet folks seeking abortion access, while electing prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives committed to the long-term strategy of ending criminalization, punishment, and harassment by the state, institutions, and individuals. Perhaps Roe was never enough to safeguard abortion rights or protect abortion access for all people. We are building a future in which abortion is liberated for all of us, no matter where we live or how much money we have, no matter our race, age, gender, or sexual orientation. We need to organize, build power, and create a country where our values are reflected in democracy. We will continue to provide life-saving care for those who need it the most, and we will continue fighting until every one of us has access to the care we need, when we need it, without stigma or fear. We need to develop networks of solidarity. ∎ RESOURCES : If you are a person who needs abortion care, reach out to a provider immediately . If you’re looking for an abortion provider, go to INeedAnA.com . Campaigns like Abortion On Our Own Terms are supporting folks with knowledge on self-managed abortions, while organizations like PlanCPills are distributing and providing information on how to access abortion pills online. We must all be vocal and support people who have abortions and providers who provide care every day. This means funding local abortion clinics to keep the clinics open, volunteering and donating to local abortion funds to ensure that people have support, funding, and access to care, telling your own abortion story, and listening deeply to the stories of people you love. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

On the evening of 20th July, Shahidul Alam communicated a dispatch from Dhaka via WhatsApp to SAAG and other media organizations, briefly getting through the internet shutdown to request that the scale of the brutal violence against student protests in Bangladesh be widely shared. Accompanying this piece was the clipped message: “Hundreds killed. It’s a massacre.” THE VERTICAL Urgent Dispatch from Dhaka I Shahidul Alam On the evening of 20th July, Shahidul Alam communicated a dispatch from Dhaka via WhatsApp to SAAG and other media organizations, briefly getting through the internet shutdown to request that the scale of the brutal violence against student protests in Bangladesh be widely shared. Accompanying this piece was the clipped message: “Hundreds killed. It’s a massacre.” EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a dispatch from Dhaka by the renowned Bangladeshi photojournalist, educator, and civil-rights activist Shahidul Alam, sent to SAAG and other media organizations via WhatsApp on July 20th, as he briefly managed to get past the internet blackout. “Massacre going on. 100s killed. Please get the story out," Alam said tersely. Bangladesh is witnessing its largest political protests—and the deadliest state repression against political dissent—in its recent history. Since early July 2024, university students across the country have organized in opposition to a Supreme Court verdict that overturned an earlier ban on the deeply divisive policy of reservations in public-sector jobs and higher education. With the decision, Bangladesh was poised to return to a system of quotas that reserved 30 percent or more of government jobs and university admissions for descendants of the 180,000 officially registered freedom fighters, a secure constituency of the ruling Awami League, which led Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation. In response, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has unleashed a systematic campaign of police violence against student activists, imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed the military, and initiated a near-total internet shutdown. The number of those killed and injured has escalated; at least 67 protesters were killed on July 19 alone. Alam’s note paints a picture of shocking violence over the last few days but also of a larger social crisis brewing in Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh. This is a world of routine torture, extrajudicial killings, social-media surveillance, gangsterization of student politics, and large-scale political corruption, all of it in rude contrast to headlines of soaring macroeconomic growth. Arrested and imprisoned for criticizing the prime minister, Alam is familiar with the state’s capacity for arbitrary violence. To preserve the urgency of his tone, the piece has been only lightly edited. —Shubhanga Pandey It would be a mistake to see this as simply a demand for more jobs. The quota movement, justified as it is, is simply the tip of the iceberg. A rampant government running roughshod over its people for so very long has led to extreme discontent. The quota issue has merely lit the fuse to this tinderbox. As citizens counted the dead and the injured, the prime minister fiddled, advising attendees at an aquaculture and seafood conference on tourism prospects in Cox’s Bazaar. The original quota had been designed shortly after independence in 1972 to be an interim arrangement to acknowledge the contribution of freedom fighters who constituted less than 0.25 percent of the population. Since a government known to be incredibly corrupt is responsible for creating the list of freedom fighters, over 50 years later, the 120-fold allocation through a 30 percent quota has become an easy backdoor for party cadres to much sought-after government employment. Confirmation came through of senior Awami Leaguers saying: “Just get through the initial screening, and we’ll get you through in the viva,” and simultaneously, that the “government jobs will only go to party people.” The resentment had resulted in protests in 2008 and 2013, but it was in 2018 that it gathered steam. When repressive measures failed to quell that unrest, the prime minister, in a moment of rage, overstepped her authority and cancelled the entire system. This had never been a demand of the protesters, who recognised the need for positive discrimination for disadvantaged communities. There are plenty of other reasons for the unrest. The price of essential goods has skyrocketed over the years, and people have their backs against the wall. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister herself publicly announces that her peon has amassed $40 million and only travels by helicopter. The peon is not the only one to travel by helicopter. Choppers were sent yesterday to rescue police trapped on a rooftop by angry protesters. 15th July 2024 It was reminiscent of 2018. The police van with water cannons and the long line of policemen standing at the Nilkhet corner on Monday made it abundantly clear that they were prepared. What were they prepared for? Certainly not the defence of unarmed students or the general public. They failed to lift a finger when the students were being attacked. The armed goons of the Chhatra League (CL, the ruling party’s student organisation) had been bussed in the previous night along with, apparently, youth gangs and leaders for hire. Their leaders had openly threatened the protesting students. CL was clearly the one the police were on standby to defend. It was CL that quota backdoors were designed to favour. As it turned out, there was little the unarmed students could do against the helmeted, armed, pro-government forces let loose. The police were content to let the mayhem continue, stepping in only when the ferocity of people’s power took the goons aback. We walked past blood and strewn sandals in the streets. People stopped us to say the injured had been taken to Dhaka Medical College Emergency Ward. CL goons took positions around the ward where some of the injured were being treated while others marched around the wards, weapons in hand, and the police conveniently stayed away. They continued to look away when CL members went inside the ward to beat up injured students. There was no need to intervene. CL was not in danger. The nation was. Democracy was. Common decency was. The public was in grave danger, but that was not their concern. The fact that the protection of the public was their primary task had never been part of the equation. Several were killed all over the country that day. “Justice will take its own course” is a common refrain of the law minister. The separation of the judiciary and the executive has never existed in Bangladesh. With this government, it has merged into one. It is used whenever the government wants to play good cop/bad cop. The court enacts government directives. The government takes credit. The blame goes to the court. The quota drama is no exception. Torture cells in public universities. Suppression of all forms of dissent. Jailing of opposition activists. The extra-judicial killings, the disappearances. India has been given huge concessions, and in return, it has helped prop up this illegal regime in many ways, all of which are causes of anger. Abrar Fahad, the bright BUET student who had critiqued Indian hegemony in social media, was bludgeoned to death on campus by party cadres. The same cadres the quotas would provide back doors for. An entire generation of Bangladeshis is growing up hating India. The Boycott India campaign is gaining steam. Hasina is getting to be a liability, even for our “friendly” neighbour. 16th July 2024 In a recent Facebook status, Abu Sayeed, the unarmed student of Begum Rokeya University whom police had pumped four rubber bullets into, had written an ode to his favourite teacher Shamsuzzoha, a chemistry teacher at Rajshahi University, who had died at the hands of the Pakistani army in 1971 while trying to save the lives of his students. “Yes, you too will die, but while you are alive, don’t be spineless. Support just causes. Come out to the streets. Be a shield for the students. It is then that you will be respected and honoured. Don’t fade away in the annals of time through your death. Stay alive forever. Stay Shamsuzzoha.” No chopper arrived, nor indeed any attempt made at rescuing the hapless student. He became Shamsuzzoha. The televised murder is an indictment of a rogue government that has long lost its right to rule. The defiant outstretched arms of the young man, a televised murder that will remain etched in public memory. His body shudders after the first bullet, yet he stands defiant. Then another bullet, and another, and yet another. All from close range. The body crouches, then crumples and folds. His outstretched arms as he had faced the police will become the Tiananmen Square moment in Bangladesh’s history. 17th July 2024 Border guards of Bangladesh, inept at protecting its citizens from becoming victims of the regular target practicing by Indian Border Security Forces, seem happy to turn their own guns towards unarmed students instead. The police were clearly lying when they claimed they had fired grenades to try and control unruly students. There were only four students at Raju Bhashkorjo. The only ones who had been able to get past the CL and police cordon. They wanted to hold a funeral for Abu Sayeed and other slain friends. When the police started shoving them away, they lay down on the ground in protest. They were surrounded by journalists. The police hurled a sound grenade which sent both the journalists and students scurrying. They then hurled further grenades at the journalists and bystanders left standing. That was when my colleague was injured. The police were the only ones conducting violence. The space was encircled by hundreds of armed police. There were armoured vehicles. Water cannon trucks and even a prison van. I wonder which country has supplied our police with the 48 mm sound grenades (NF24. NENF24BP. MFG: 2022. Bangladesh Police/ BP). The grenade was hurled directly at my colleague. It was the first time she had joined a protest. At least she got to see how brave our police force is. 18th July 2024 A group of feminists who had planned to gather at Shahbag to express solidarity with the quota protesters should not have posed a major threat. Police and government goons didn't allow them to gather, so they regrouped outside the Naripokkho office in Dhanmondi. They were attacked too. Safia Azim was injured, but did not require hospitalisation. The law minister, known for lying through his teeth, said earlier on BBC that it was the protesters who instigated the violence. Meanwhile, the state-run BTV, the National Television Station, had been set on fire. Mobile data was blocked. Things were escalating. That night Internet went down completely. Rumours spread about the military moving in, fuelled partially by sightings of a convoy of APCs in the streets. Other sightings of 15 helicopters taking off from the Prime Minister’s official residence gave fuel to the rumours that the Prime Minister was trying to make a getaway. The sound of shelling and gunfire rang throughout the night. 19th July 2024 The internet had been down, as had BTV, the national television station. Over 50 have allegedly been killed. Pro-government news outlets describe the protesting students as “miscreants.” A throwback to the term used by the Pakistani Army in 1971. There are other similarities. A flailing tyrant is lashing out to survive against an enraged public that has shaken free of its fear of a repressive regime. The attempt to disrupt the morning protest outside the Parliament Building in memory of Abu Sayeed failed. Far too many protesters had gathered. The Internet had been partially restored, but not BTV. That’s when news of attacks all across the country started pouring in. The leftist leader Zonayed Saki and other party members had been badly beaten in Purana Paltan. Police-backed vigilantes desperately tried to quell the increasingly angry protesters. A desperate government offered a deal. The court would convene on Sunday, and they were prepared to engage in dialogue. “Not over spilled blood,” the students replied. Fresh rumours emerged of the military having been given magisterial powers and asked to intervene “in aid to civil power.” Ironic. The people have spoken. The end is nigh. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 In the Land of Golden Hay (paint and digital work on canvas, 2020), Dhruba Chandra Roy. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Dispatch Dhaka Quota Movement Fascism Student Protests Bangladesh Awami League Sheikh Hasina Police Action Police Brutality Economic Crisis 1971 Liberation of Bangladesh BTV Zonayed Saki Internet Crackdowns Internet Blackouts BSF Abu Sayeed Begum Rokeya University Abrar Fahad BUET Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Mass Protests Mass Killings Torture Enforced Disappearances Extrajudicial Killings Chhatra League Bangladesh Courts Judiciary Clientelism Bengali Nationalism Dissent Student Movements National Curfew State Repression Surveillance Regimes Repression in Universities July Revolution Student-People's Uprising Authoritarianism SHAHIDUL ALAM is a Bangladeshi photographer, writer and social activist. He co-founded the photo agencies Drik and Majority World . He founded Pathshala , a photography school in Dhaka, and Chobi Mela , Asia’s first photo festival. He is the author of Nature's Fury (2007) and My Journey as a Witness (2011). His work has been featured and exhibited in MOMA , Centre Pompidou , Tate Modern , Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art , the Royal Albert Hall , among others. He was one of TIME Magazine's person's of the year in 2018. Dispatch Dhaka 20th Jul 2024 DHRUBA CHANDRA ROY is a self-taught Bangladeshi visual artist and activist. Born in Sultan-Khali in northeastern Bangladesh, he attended Shahid Syed Nazrul Islam College, Mymensingh, and Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), Sylhet. His participation in various political movements, close interaction with people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and regions, and interest in human relations with nature, and class struggle inform his practice. On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

That’s how I began my flight; full of doubt. FICTION & POETRY In the Yoma Foothills Tun Lin Soe That’s how I began my flight; full of doubt. IT WAS one of those foggy mornings. As if they were offering a wreath to a squad of soldiers off to war, a flock of birds sent me off with chirrups. That’s how I began my flight— full of doubt. My beloved parents, brothers and sisters, relatives from near and far, childhood friends who stay friends to this day, and above all, my girlfriend, my heart of hearts, for each of the teardrops they shed I was responsible. Now that I’d left them my soul got restless, my spirit drained of vigour I wept for hours. The tall trees in the jungle witnessed my creaky-creaky cries. I thanked them all, those who pushed me onto a raft upstream to drown, those who abased themselves before me, and those who, possessed with greed, lifted me higher so they could shove me off a cliff, and those who loved me back, I thanked them all. I thanked God for keeping me safe in the wilderness. He heard my prayers those nights and days in the Yoma foothills. ∎ This poem appeared in Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring: Witness Poems and Essays from Burma/Myanmar 1988-2021 , edited by Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman, and published by Gaudy Boy in North America, Balestier Press in the UK, and Ethos Books in Singapore. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 "Sleeping Mangroves" by Isma Gul Hasan. Mixed media (2021). The rapidly disappearing mangroves of Karachi viewed at night around Kemari. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Poetry Myanmar Military Coup Dissident Writers Revolution Pogroms Tatmadaw Rohingya Rohingya Refugee Crisis Trauma Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring TUN LIN SOE , a Rohingya poet, was born in 1987, in Min Gyi Ywa (Tula Toli) in Maung Daw, Rakhine State, Myanmar. He was a final year English major at Sittway University, when a pogrom against the Rakhine Muslim population broke out in Sittwe in June 2012. At the end of 2012, his name was on a list of arrest warrants for 30 people, accused of colluding with insurgent groups and international media outlets. Since 2013 he has been living in Malaysia as a refugee. Poetry Myanmar 26th Feb 2023 ISMA GUL HASAN is an illustrator from Lahore, Pakistan. She completed a Master’s in Illustration from University of the Arts London in 2020, and has worked on various storytelling and social awareness projects, including the critically acclaimed animated short, Shehr-e-Tabassum. Their personal work, which has been exhibited locally and internationally, explores otherworldly landscapes and organic forms, feminist dreams and longing, and visual manifestations of trauma and despair. hasan is currently living, teaching and creating in Karachi, Pakistan. On That Note: Skulls 4th APR Whose Footfall is Loudest? 24th FEB The Craft of Writing in Occupied Kashmir 24th JAN

Beatrice Wangui's quest to challenge Kenya’s punitive seed laws tells a larger story about the nature of indigenous knowledge and preservation, as well as that of agrarian labour, situated in a longer history of the public and private approaches to agriculture that are promulgated under the guise of modernization. THE VERTICAL Beatrice Wangui's Fight for Seed Sovereignty in Kenya Pierra Nyaruai Beatrice Wangui's quest to challenge Kenya’s punitive seed laws tells a larger story about the nature of indigenous knowledge and preservation, as well as that of agrarian labour, situated in a longer history of the public and private approaches to agriculture that are promulgated under the guise of modernization. Farming has always been a bonding point between my father and me. When I ventured into agriculture, I only understood food systems from the point of small-scale farming. As a way of learning, my father would often bring some seeds and cuttings when he went somewhere new. This was one of the ways we introduced new foods to our small farm and onto our plates. In 2012, the Kenyan government enacted a law that made seed saving and exchange illegal, thereby posing a threat to an indigenous system of seed exchange that has persisted for eons. When I arrived at Beatrice Wangui’s house she was showing farmers how to build a vertical garden. Her home is an oasis in the dry Gilgil area and a large group of farmers, local and from other countries, stood around her as she showed them how to make a blend of manure, charcoal dust, and soil to grow vegetables in. This is a regular activity on her small but well-sectioned agricultural island. One side of her farm is a thriving bunch of vertical gardens teeming with leafy greens. Corners on the ground spot herbs like mint and rosemary. There is a short spread of beds hosting at least six varieties of managu (black nightshade ) , terere (Amaranth ) , mitoo (slenderleaf) and saget (spider plant). Now 59 years old, Beatrice has been an organic farmer for many years as well as champion of seed sovereignty. Indigenous communities in Kenya have had to work around the systemic effects and hurdles in the way of corporate capture of seeds, promulgated in the form of millions of US dollars by international seed companies to monopolize the seed sectors in Africa. I wanted to dive into the world of seed saving to see how people responded to or worked around the law that criminalized these traditions. Beatrice training a group of visitors on creating vertical gardens. Photo courtesy of the author. Seed sovereignty upholds the farmer’s right to save, use, exchange, and sell his or her own seeds. Seed regulation in Kenya began in 1972, ten years after the country gained independence. The Seed and Plant Varieties Act of 1972 entered into force in 1975, was promulgated in 1991, and later amended in 1994. While Kenya joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, the country had already enacted its own unique (sui generis) law on Plant Breeders' Rights (PBRs). However, this PBR law did not take effect until 1999 after Kenya ratified the 1978 Act of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). In 2012, Kenya updated its PBR law through the Seeds and Plant Varieties (Amendment) Act . Then, in 2015, the country furthered its commitment to UPOV by ratifying the 1991 UPOV Convention, which outlines stronger protections for new plant varieties. Today, seed saving is an essential part of Kenyan livelihoods, especially in rural parts of the country. In Kenya, 70 percent of the rural population is dependent on agriculture. As a child, I remember when my parents would return from visiting new places with some form of seed propagation. They could be suckers for a new vegetable, vines, or a handful of seeds – all a means to grow the crops that caught my parents’ interest. This was how I came to know and love a vegetable called rhubarb. In many rural homes across Kenya, kitchens are not only a space to prepare food. Hanging on walls, under the traditional fire racks near the fireplace are seeds tied up in leaves along with calabashes. The warmth from the fire dries them out and the smoke makes them nearly pest-proof. Smoking is one of the most traditional modes of seed saving. In many communities, other methods such as diatomite, cow dung, soot, and ash are used. This is a tradition for most, if not all the communities in Kenya. Slenderleaf pods at Beatrice’s farm. Photo courtesy of the author. Punitive Seed Laws The Seed and Plant Varieties Act of 2012 criminalizes farmers from “selling, sharing and exchanging” unregistered or uncertified seeds. Farmers who break the law risk a prison sentence of up to two years or a fine of up to a million Kenyan shillings. Beatrice says she refused to keep silent in the face of laws that promote corporate greed over the lives and livelihoods of communities across the country. She joined other farmers and civil society organizations as a petitioner in a case against the law prohibiting seed saving. The alliance of farmers and activists has courageously spoken up against the laws, arguing for the rights of small-scale farmers to save, exchange, and use their seeds freely. Their persistence and hard work has inspired farmers across Kenya to join their cause. They hold seed exchange fairs to fight for the right to cultivate indigenously obtained and retained seeds. Apart from them, fifteen other small land-holding farmers have filed a petition to the court to amend the law. Speaking to Beatrice feels like a plunge in a well of seed preservation knowledge. On a tour of her seed-saving facility, she pointed out the strategic use of all the materials she had on hand. She explained how each element played a role in ensuring the survival of seeds for up to years in glass bottles. Even though her village has no piped water, the facility carries stacks of jerry cans filled with water. The water helps keep the temperature low which reduces heat damage. The room is also low and near the ground. Beatrice at her community seed bank. Courtesy of Gregory Onyango As custodian of the community seed bank, Beatrice is tasked with ensuring that the seeds are in tip-top shape by the time farmers come to collect them. “Farmers bring in their seeds after drying them,” she says. “And they must wait at least a season before they come to get seeds. A farmer cannot take all the seeds at the same time. There was a year we had two failed rainy seasons and only the last batch of the seeds made it.” It begins with inspecting the seeds for moisture content. If the seeds do not pass this test, the farmer is required to take them back and reduce the moisture content to the required level. The next step is to check out the seed's germination percentage. "This is done by picking about 10 seeds, placing them in a bowl, and covering them with a wet tissue. In about 5 days, we observe how many out of the ten have germinated," Beatrice explains. If three or fewer seeds germinate, it means the germination percentage is low and the seeds are not of good quality and cannot be stored. Depending on the quantity of seeds, some are stored in airtight glass bottles while others are stored in buckets. A film of ash from special trees and bushes is spread over the seeds to keep both moisture and pests off. With help from organizations such as The Seed Savers Network , Beatrice has been able to increase her knowledge and capacity for seed saving. The Seed Savers Network was registered in 2009 and to date, has helped establish more than 52 community seed banks, including one that Beatrice looks after. The Seed Savers Network, she says, taught them seed characterization which is a process they follow from when they plant a seed to when they harvest it. Beatrice Wangui in her garden. Courtesy of Gregory Onyango Beatrice is keen on passing on this knowledge to her children and grandchildren. Her granddaughter who is named after her and attends a local secondary school, is very hands-on with the project. She has grown up around her grandmother and has learned how to tell different varieties apart and how to preserve each of them. “When she is around and I have visitors, she teaches them just as well as I can. She understands how to handle seeds and crops alike,” she shares. For Beatrice and others like her, awareness of such methods and passing on their teaching is an integral part of the process without which indigenous knowledge would disappear. With help from organizations such as The Seed Savers Network, Beatrice can meet other seed savers from across Kenya and the world. As she shows me around, explaining varieties of maize, beans, tomatoes, and vegetables she hopes the indigenous knowledge, varieties, and preservation are not stifled by punitive seed laws. As she fights for indigenous seeds through the law and by practicing traditional methods, she hopes her cross-generational efforts pay off and the indigenous crop varieties stand the test. Beatrice is one of many people and organizations working to maintain the s tate of seed sovereignty . Despite the immense challenges posed by the corporate consolidation of the seed industry, the movement for seed sovereignty continues to gain momentum around the world. From seed libraries and seed swaps to on-the-ground breeding projects, countless individuals and communities are taking steps to reclaim their ancestral seed heritage and maintain biodiversity. By resisting the privatization of this vital common resource, seed savers stand as stewards of food security and biodiversity for present and future generations. Though the battle is an uphill one, the remarkable resilience and creative cross-pollination within the seed sovereignty movement offer a path toward a more regenerative, equitable, and sustainable food system. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Rise by Ian Njuguna. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Profile Kenya Climate Seed Sovereignty Agriculture Farming Beatrice Wangui Seed Saving Indigeneity Indigenous Seed Exchange Seed and Plant Varieties Act Agrarian Economy Rural Farmers Seed Savers Network Seed Banks Community Building Gilgil Nakuru County Sustainability Food Systems Organic Farming Environment Climate Change Agricultural Labor PIERRA NYARUAI is a Kenyan journalist with a focus on food systems, women empowerment, sustainable development goals and human interest, based in Nakuru, Kenya. Over the past five years, she has been looking for and telling the stories of African women in agriculture, their role in the world’s food systems and the nutritional and economic side of Africa. She has written for The Continent, Mail & Guardian and The Insider-South Sudan . Profile Kenya 22nd Apr 2024 IAN NJUGUNA is a visual artist born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where he currently resides. He works in Illustration, motion design, and graphic design. Njuguna's art style is characterized by a blend of whimsy and photorealism, often weaving together elements of fine art and cartoon styles. His practice is a commitment towards what he calls "African stories." On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

A live performance for the launch of SAAG's Volume 2, also celebrating the release of Rajna Swaminathan's new record “Apertures” at the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn. Swaminathan (mrudangam/vocals) performed as part of the Vagabonds trio with Ganavya (vocals) and Utsav Lal (piano). COMMUNITY “Apertures” with the Vagabonds Trio Rajna Swaminathan · Utsav Lal · Ganavya A live performance for the launch of SAAG's Volume 2, also celebrating the release of Rajna Swaminathan's new record “Apertures” at the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn. Swaminathan (mrudangam/vocals) performed as part of the Vagabonds trio with Ganavya (vocals) and Utsav Lal (piano). On May 12th, 2023, SAAG hosted a launch event for Vol. 2 at the Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn, for which we were delighted to present the experimental and deeply moving musical compositions of the Vagabonds Trio: Rajna Swaminathan (mrudangam/voice), Ganavya (voice), and Utsav Lal (piano) who we had the pleasure of collaborating with a second time after his opening performance for In Grief, In Solidarity . They were joined partway by Miles Okazaki (guitar). To showcase musicians with such incredible musical range, a commitment to radicalism and social justice as expressed in the lyricism and melodies, and a deep rigor and discipline with their craft, was a true honor. We hope you enjoy the recording of the live event and the improvisational way it shifted from the respective discographies of each member of the trio, shifting seamlessly from several languages, including Tamil, English, Urdu, and more. Most of all, the performance celebrates the release of Rajna Swaminathan's new album Apertures (Ropeadope, Apr 28th), available to buy or stream now . ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 A live performance by experimental Rajna Swaminathan, Ganavya & Utsav Lal. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Brooklyn Experimental Music Jazz mrudangam Rajna Swaminathan Apertures Ganavya Utsav Lal Launch Event Contemporary Music Ropeadope Miles Okazaki Event RAJNA SWAMINATHAN is an acclaimed mrudangam artist, composer, and scholar. One of only a few women who play the mrudangam professionally, Rajna has extensive experience performing in the Karnatik music, bharatanatyam, and New York's jazz music scenes, developing experimental approaches to improvising on the mrudangam, piano, and voice. Her ensemble RAJAS has been received with much critical acclaim on both Of Agency and Abstraction (Biophilia Records, 2019) and Apertures (Ropeadope, 2023). Rajna has composed for the JACK Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and played with Amir ElSaffar, Vijay Iyer, among many others. Rajna is an Assistant Professor of Music at UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts. She holds a PhD in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry from the Department of Music at Harvard. UTSAV LAL is an Indian-American pianist-composer often known as the "Raga Pianist". Hailed by numerous media outlets as a ground-breaking performer, Lal has performed solo at the Carnegie Hall, Southbank Centre, Kennedy Center, Steinway Hall, among others, and honored as a Young Steinway Artist, amongst others. He has collaborated with Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Winifred Horan, Australian Contemporary Circus Theatre CIRCA, Talvin Singh, George Brooks, Rajna Swaminathan, and has 7 solo records, including a historic world’s first album on the microtonal Fluid Piano (2016). Lal holds degrees in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory of Music, and Jazz from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. GANAVYA DORAISWAMY is a critically-acclaimed vocalist, composer, and multidisciplinary scholar at the nexus of South Indian vocal styles & jazz/contemporary music. She is a co-founder of the We Have Voice Collective . Her recent works include composition and vocals for the film this body is so impermanent... (2021, dir. Peter Sellars); a 64-hour piece titled Atlas Unlimited: Acts VII - X (2019) continuously generated from the narrative of Zakaria Almoutlak, a Syrian with refugee status; Daughter of a Temple (2019), a 56’51” composed piece that drew from Alice Coltrane-Turiyasangitananda’s Monument Eternal ; composition and vocals for Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra Chapter 7: The Goddess (2019, dir. Peter Sellars); collaborations with Wayne Shorter & Esperanza Spalding for the opera Iphigenia ; and How To Cure A Ghost: The Album , songs made from Fariha Roisin’s poetry. She holds graduate degrees in ethnomusicology from UCLA, and Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry from Harvard. Her most recent album is Sister Idea (Ropeadope, 2023) with bassist and composer Munir Hossn. Live Brooklyn 19th May 2023 On That Note: Quintet 25th APR Between Notes: An Improvisational Set 5th JUN FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" 5th DEC

An anthropologist explores Bollywood creatives to trace BJP's carrot-and-stick strategy with Bollywood creatives: both controlling and regulating Bollywood in order to create a consistent and normative film culture that perpetuates Hindutva ideology. THE VERTICAL Saffronizing Bollywood An anthropologist explores Bollywood creatives to trace BJP's carrot-and-stick strategy with Bollywood creatives: both controlling and regulating Bollywood in order to create a consistent and normative film culture that perpetuates Hindutva ideology. VOL. 2 RESEARCH AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watching You Watching Me. Oil on wood. 36″ Tondo. Shyama Golden (2023). ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watching You Watching Me. Oil on wood. 36″ Tondo. Shyama Golden (2023). SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Research Bombay 15th Apr 2024 Research Bombay BJP Bollywood Sushant Singh Rajput The Kashmir Files Films Cinema Hindutva Kashmir Shakuntala Banaji Kunal Purohit Censorship Shah Rukh Khan Rachel Dwyer Aryan Khan Samanth Subramaniam Love Jihad Box Office Commercialization Tejaswini Ganti Fascism Ethnography India Advertising Bhuj The Kerala Story Priya Joshi Article 370 Yami Gautam Ien Ang John Hartley Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. In 2022, India’s Hindi film industry was in the throes of a crisis. Bollywood, as the industry is colloquially known, was still bucking from a pandemic which had injured film industries worldwide. Multiple mainstream movies, helmed by some of the industry’s biggest stars, from Aamir Khan to Akshay Kumar to Ranveer Singh, were failing miserably at the box office. Since the tragic suicide of an actor named Sushant Singh Rajput in June 2020, a rabid social media movement in India had been calling for people to #BoycottBollywood for its alleged complicity in Rajput’s death and painted it as a hotbed of elitism, drugs, and moral bankruptcy. This was coordinated “collusive behavior”, one study suggested, to engineer a frenzy of conspiracy theories. Members affiliated with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), another study found, especially pushed the narrative of Rajput’s death being a “murder”, driving the hashtag #JusticeForSSR to receive over 65 million active interactions in just six months. Amid this political powder keg and socioeconomic crisis, one film gained unprecedented success. A film with no stars, no popular songs, and none of the typical, crowd-pleasing conventions of mainstream commercial Hindi cinema. Released on 11 March 2022, The Kashmir Files claims to depict the 1990 Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) exodus, but through crucial omissions—of the Indian army’s pervasive presence, unlawful detentions, and rapes of women across religions; well-documented cases of Kashmiri Muslims risking peril to protect Hindu friends ; and the thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who also died and fled Kashmir —creates a dangerously one-sided representation of Muslim violence against Hindus. In one scene, the menacing, kohl-eyed Muslim antagonist Bitta compels a Hindu widow to eat rice soaked in her dead husband’s blood. In yet another, he shreds open a bright saffron kurta off a Hindu woman and publicly brutalises her. The film uses shock value to incite Hindus towards collective anger, humiliation, and anti-Muslim hatred. The Kashmir Files opened to a modest figure of INR 3.55 crores. The following day, however, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally met with its makers and took a picture with them that was widely circulated on social media. “More such movies should be made,” Modi publicly said three days later, praising the film for showing “the truth which has been suppressed for years”. Other BJP leaders also endorsed the film – they organised special screenings and events, while the BJP’s information and technology cell and copious sympathetic media outlets provided incessant buzz and press coverage . The film was also given the coveted tax-free status in several exclusively BJP-ruled states. Though made with a modest budget of only INR 25 crores, with a little bit of “help”, The Kashmir Files eventually collected a whopping INR 247 crores domestically. It was a certified blockbuster. The BJP and Hindutva Founded in 1980, the BJP functions as the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva organisation active since 1925. Hindutva—the ideology of Hindu nationalism—conceives India as a Hindu nation, relegating Muslims and other minorities to second-class status. Historically, its ideologues drew inspiration from German Nazism and Italian fascism, while its closest ideological counterpart today is Israeli Zionism . The BJP has independently governed India since it won the national elections in 2014 by interlacing Hindutva with populist rhetoric under the leadership of Modi, a former RSS worker who oversaw an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. His purported victory, according to political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, ushered in a new era for the nation, characterised by weakened state institutions, a distorted electoral process, and sanctioned violence against minorities, transforming India into an authoritarian Hindu state. The Bollywood industry is ultimately highly decentralised, commercially driven, and blockbuster-oriented. Politics seems peripheral to the eternal quest for the elusive box office hit. Then how has the BJP succeeded so profoundly? The Modi government has particularly weaponised the media to fuel Islamophobia. It has widely spread misinformation, enabling what media scholar Shakuntala Banaji has called the “mainstreaming” of intolerance. In his new book H-Pop (2023), independent journalist Kunal Purohit examines how the wider Hindu Right has harnessed popular culture forms such as music, poetry and books to disseminate and entrench Hindutva in popular and mass imagination. In this vein, Bollywood is a crucial fourth frontier. As India’s most prolific and powerful media industry, it is a key source of soft power and plays a crucial role in defining dominant conceptions of nationhood, belonging, and culture. As anthropologist Tejaswini Ganti writes in Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (2013) , Bollywood is also “perhaps the least religiously segregated place in India today where Hindus and Muslims work together as well as inter-marry”. Some of its most successful stars, directors, and other key members are Muslim. Many of its biggest hits over the years have celebrated Indian secularism and interreligious harmony, according to film scholar Rachel Dwyer, from Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), to Veer-Zaara (2004), PK (2014), and Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) . Today, a slew of at least 10 brazenly Hindutva propaganda films are swamping Indian voters ahead of the upcoming national elections in May 2024. It is the outcome of many years of moulding and steadily saffronizing India’s Hindi film industry, most aggressively since the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the subject of my master’s dissertation, for which I conducted three months of fieldwork in Mumbai in the Summer of 2023, and conducted several interviews with prominent writers, directors, producers, actors, and journalists of Bollywood. All names have been anonymized in this essay. The BJP has used a carrot-and-stick strategy to control and regulate Bollywood ’s influence: a combination of bullying, along with promoting films that most brazenly perpetuate their Hindutva ideology. Yet for the most part, members of Bollywood have continued to eschew political binaries between left and right, instead seeing themselves as existing outside of the realms of politics and ideology. “The only God,” a veteran film critic and journalist told me, “is the box office.” The Bollywood industry is ultimately highly decentralised, commercially driven, and blockbuster-oriented. Politics seems peripheral to the eternal quest for the elusive box office hit. Then how has the BJP succeeded so profoundly? Fear and Censorship Alongside its elaborate army of online trolls, the BJP has not hesitated to use its hard power on Bollywood. They have incited mobs, engineered police cases, and orchestrated arbitrary arrests. When the Amazon series Tandav released in January 2021, for example, members of grassroots Hindu nationalist organisations filed police complaints against a Muslim actor Mohammed Zeeshaan Ayyub and the showrunners in four different Indian states, alleging offence to Hindu religious sentiments. The crime? A character named Shiva, played by Ayyub, uses profanity while portraying his namesake Hindu deity in a student play. When Amazon petitioned the Supreme Court to protect the showrunners from arrest while these cases were sub judice , this was denied. In another incident on 3 October 2021, inspectors of the Narcotics Control Bureau arrested Aryan Khan, the superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s then 23-year-old son, in a Mumbai port terminal. Despite lack of evidence, the agents imprisoned him for nearly a month before granting him bail, finally dropping all charges in early 2022. “Had a government agency really imprisoned Aryan Khan without proof, as pure intimidation?” questioned journalist Samanth Subramanian in The New Yorker . “The rest of Bollywood, meanwhile, absorbed the news as the most cautionary tale of all: if they could do this to the king, imagine what they could do to us.” In January 2023, the mammoth success of Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan , despite widespread calls for its boycott , not only revived Bollywood’s box office slump but was also touted as a victory over the Hindu Right . The social media boycotts, many in the industry concluded, were all bark and no bite. Subsequent consecutive successes of several Hindi films in 2023— Jawan, Animal, Gadar 2— compounded upon a palpable sense of triumph, with proclamations that “ Bollywood is back ”. But beyond boycotts and the habitually extreme ebbs and flows of the box office, the BJP has remained successful in its attempts at stoking fear and a pervading atmosphere of censorship, one that has now become naturalised in the industry. “You don't just deal with these issues when your film or your show is coming out,” one writer-director-producer said to me. “You're dealing with them while you are writing. There is a psychological aspect to it.” Many key Bollywood members I interviewed shared how their creative process now includes several additional considerations, like avoiding depicting green and saffron colours and any religious symbols and erasing any critiques of the police or politicians in the narrative. This was not the case before even 2020. A screenwriter named it the “chilling effect” – a perpetual state of cowering invoked in the face of the BJP’s “bullying tactics.” “You just have to stay in line,” he reflected, “ That builds a self-censorship inside you.” The New Blockbuster While the BJP suppresses, it also amplifies. In the case of The Kashmir Files , the party’s vigorous promotion of the film created a replicable template for a new kind of unabashedly bigoted blockbuster. In 2023, it was recreated by Sudipto Sen-directed The Kerala Story . Early promotions of the film claimed to tell a “spine-chilling, never told before true story” of 32,000 girls from Kerala who’ve been converted to Islam, manipulated into joining ISIS, and “buried in the deserts of Syria and Yemen”. This claim is demonstrably false , with the makers themselves later backtracking and saying they were showing the “true stories of three young girls from different parts of Kerala”. However, in the film, one character passionately declares to a policeman: “More than 30,000 girls are missing, sir. The unofficial number is 50,000. We all believe that, sir”. Simplistic and unsubtle, The Kerala Story cherry-picks and distorts disparate, extremely rare “true stories” and manipulates them to peddle the Hindu nationalist “Love Jihad” conspiracy theory and construct a heightened sense of fear and distrust of Muslims. In one scene, the protagonist Shalini’s (now Fatima) husband rapes her, using Islam as justification, and later slaps her for protesting as she cries. In another, a bearded Muslim man lays out the plan for love jihad: “Start giving them medicine, get close to them, make them estranged from their families, ... [and] if need be, get them pregnant”. By the end of the film, this plan results in the pregnancy, suicide, and gang rape of these Hindu girls. Like The Kashmir Files , then, The Kerala Story also uses shock value to arouse disgust and hatred towards Muslims in a Hindu audience. Similarly, the film was profusely praised by Modi and several other BJP ministers and declared tax-free in multiple states. Produced with a modest budget of INR 30 crores, it collected a whopping INR 242.2 crore in India, making it another bona fide blockbuster. Bollywood and literature scholar Priya Joshi argues in her book Bollywood’s India (2015) that since the 1950’s, blockbusters have “vitally captured dispersed anxieties and aspirations about the nation” and are a “testament to some of the public fantasies that accompanied the national project”. In essence, she writes, “Bollywood’s blockbusters have conducted a dialogue over the idea of “India””. As India’s new contemporary blockbusters, The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story reflect a nation engulfed in Islamophobia and Hindutva rhetoric. “The only trend that seems to work,” a prominent writer-director-producer admitted to me, “is an anti-Muslim trend.” According to culture studies scholars John Hartley and Ien Ang, audiences for films and any large-scale culture industries are “literally unknowable”, forming what Tejaswini Ganti calls “the ultimate site of unpredictability”. To cope with the inherent uncertainty of the business, members of Bollywood use what Ganti terms “production fictions”—“fluid and flexible discourses” made mostly in hindsight to explain commercial outcomes. Production fictions, for Ganti, primarily function to rationalise inherently random, unpredictable, and inexplicable box office events. Commercial outcome, she explains, functions as a “form of imperfect communication between audiences and filmmakers”—a dialectic of sorts. Riding the Saffron Wave The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story’s unprecedented success has created new production fictions that audiences actually want to watch more anti-Muslim, Hindutva stories, that consumer demand has simply swayed in that direction, and that such films are simply more likely to do better at the box office, not least due to possible, legitimizing promotion by the BJP. Many filmmakers, my interviewees claimed, “are riding on this whole saffron wave”, and many more, they expect, will “jump on the bandwagon” in order to achieve elusive box office triumph. It may be tempting to exceptionalize these films and view them as existing out of the scope of mainstream Hindi cinema, but this is misguided. These movies are only more extreme, brazen versions of an increasingly ubiquitous trend. From historical fiction films about Islamic invaders to cop and war films about fighting Islamic terrorism and Pakistan, Hindutva themes are dominating India’s cultural production and national consciousness. This type of cinema exists on a spectrum. There are those high on testosterone and muscular nationalism, like Uri (2019), Bhuj (2021), and recently, Gadar 2 (2023) and Fighter (2024), which involve masculinized army narratives, enforcing national borders, fighting “invaders”, espionage, violence, and the like. Then there are the rarer, more nuanced films on similar topics, like the female-centred Alia Bhatt-starrer Raazi (2018). Where there are explicitly propagandist, anti-Muslim examples of cinema like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story , there are also more subtly Islamophobic films peddling a quieter poison, like Sooryavanshi (2021), Mission Majnu (2022), and Indian Police Force (2023). Cumulatively, the hard ubiquity of these protecting-the-nation-state-narratives and the pervasive uber–Hindu-patriotism at their core reflects what scholars Edward Anderson and Arkotong Longkumer refer to as the mainstreaming of Hindu nationalism. By making Indian-ness synonymous with Hindu-ness, they normalise Islamophobia in public discourse. The BJP has evidently harnessed the uncertainty endemic to the film industry to push it to perpetuate its Hindutva ideology. They are ultimately succeeding at saffronizing Bollywood, not by turning its largely apolitical members into Hindu nationalists, but by influencing market forces to make Hindutva stories more profitable and marginalising dissenting or “deviant” voices. This new political order is increasingly being internalised, naturalised, and taken for granted by industry members, who appear, from my research, all too willing to compromise on their ideals for commercial success. In January 2019, the year of the last Indian national election, a group of Bollywood A-listers, none of whom were Muslim, were invited to meet Modi. They then posted a selfie of all of them together, which instantly went viral on social media. Later that April, Modi sat down for a sanitised, scripted, and avowedly “apolitical” interview with Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar, known for being Hindutva’s poster boy . The same year saw the release of a slew of Hindutva propaganda films, many of which were officially promoted by the BJP , from hagiographic biopics of Hindutva figures like Thackeray and PM Narendra Modi to a film denigrating the opposition Congress party like The Accidental Prime Minister , to a pro-war, ultranationalist action film like Uri . With India heading towards another round of national elections this May, there is a lineup of propaganda films that peddle Hindutva conspiracies, celebrate Hindutva figures, and glorify the BJP while vilifying all its opponents: the Congress, academic institutions, activists, and of course, Muslims. These films share similar conventions: no A-list stars, lower budgets, saffron colour text in their trailers and posters, sensationalist hashtags hinting at conspiracies, and a neo-realist style colour grade. More importantly, they all seek to recreate the template created by The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story , with the BJP and Modi’s promotion, tax-free status, and if they’re lucky, virality and box office glory. The first, Article 370 , exalts the Union Government for removing the eponymous article that conferred special status on Kashmir. Like clockwork, Modi praised the film even before its release. “I have heard that perhaps a film on Article 370 is going to be released this week,” he stated while addressing a rally in Jammu on 20 February 2024. "Good, it will be useful for people to get correct information." The film’s lead actor Yami Gautam shared a video of the speech immediately. “It is an absolute honour to watch PM @narendramodi Ji talk about #Article370Movie,” she wrote on X . Eventually released on 23 February, the film has made nearly INR 80 cr in India and is declared a super hit . More carnage is to follow. ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

While Pakistan doubles down on deporting Afghan Refugees, filmmaker Rani Wahidi covers the story of an Afghan musician, Javid Karezi, and his family, to bring to light the difficulties Afghan refugees face after migration. BOOKS & ARTS The Limits of Documentation Anmol Irfan While Pakistan doubles down on deporting Afghan Refugees, filmmaker Rani Wahidi covers the story of an Afghan musician, Javid Karezi, and his family, to bring to light the difficulties Afghan refugees face after migration. It’s late 2022 and singer Javid Karezi is sitting on stage with his harmonium surrounded by his new band. They’re at a wedding ceremony in Quetta, Pakistan. Karezi is mid-song when a middle-aged man interrupts him. Up until now, Karezi’s singing has only caused guests to leave. The man—apparently the host—asks Karezi to sing a song in Pashto. Karezi is taken aback by this request—he is being asked to sing in a language he is not fluent in. He tries to put it off, but eventually decides to ask his fellow bandmate, Waseem, to sing the requested song instead, and sits off to the side. This is a scene from documentary filmmaker Rani Wahidi ’s film, The Failed Migration , where she follows the Karezi family’s journey of deportation from Pakistan to Afghanistan. As a celebrated singer, the son of renowned Afghan singer Faiz Ahmed Karezi, and a sixth generation musician, Karezi is used to being in the spotlight. But when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, life took more turns than he could have ever imagined. In August 2021, after their successful takeover of Kabul , the Taliban banned music —leaving Karezi and his fellow musicians devoid of their livelihoods. By April 2022, Karezi, his wife, and 5 children, packed up their lives and moved to Pakistan by way of the Chaman border crossing—and they weren’t the only ones. They joined the growing community of roughly 4 million Afghan refugees . A majority of them have lived in Pakistan since the late 1970s and about 1.7 million are undocumented. If not for films like Wahidi’s The Failed Migration , the struggles experienced by generations of Afghan families in Pakistan would be largely ignored, likely due to xenophobia, political disputes, and the government’s neglect of these very issues. “Musicians have a gift and the Taliban took that from them. Anyone can open a shop, but not everyone has such a skillset, so to take that from someone is very bad,” Wahidi says, adding that while foreign media often covers such issues, “ we live our stories, we can revisit them anytime. They are close to us, we can explain them better, keeping our own contexts and lived experiences in mind, and we have a lot of time to tell our story.” Karezi had little contact with other Afghan musicians during his time in Pakistan, as he tried to focus on making a living for himself. He's proud of what he does, and is teaching his son to play the tabla as well. Wahidi’s skillset is also her talent but it’s been unable to substantively help Karezi in the struggle of being an Afghan refugee in Pakistan. As a singer of Dari and Farsi—languages not commonly spoken or understood in Quetta—he was only ever hired for a few functions. He found informal work that provided little economic, health, and food security. Even when he did book wedding ceremonies or events, the money wasn’t enough, especially after being divided amongst the larger band that he performed with. Coming home from a gig one night, as Wahidi’s film shows, Karezi asks his daughter what the doctor said about his wife’s condition since she’s been sick for a while, only to find out that she needs to be put on an oxygen supply and requires more medicine—which he can already barely afford. Like most Afghan refugees, Karezi lives on the sidelines, taking part only in the informal employment sector—but not all experiences are the same. As a development worker, Elaine Alam has worked extensively with Afghan refugee communities and divides them roughly into two categories. “On one hand, [there] are the Afghan refugees you see at Peshawar University or Quaid-e-Azam University. They’re coming from a certain background in order to pursue education, which does not negate their challenges but does give them a certain privilege because they have an understanding of how to acquire things,” she told me. “Then you have people coming from a tribal background. These refugees come from a larger population, and have no leadership, no security, and no safety. Their only point of contact is the Commissionerate for Afghan refugees, which focuses on government plans and allowances through UNHCR.” The second category are the ones most at risk for deportation and detainment, and usually live in katchi abadi (slum areas). They have no access to healthcare or education, leaving them in a cycle of odd jobs with a fear of getting caught by authorities. Elaine puts Karezi somewhere in the middle of the two since he possesses a skillset he can use. However, his informal living situation along with a disruptive climate impedes his progress, placing him much closer to the second category. Karezi may be the spotlight of Wahidi’s film, but his story speaks to a much larger journey experienced by Afghan refugees in Pakistan. After a couple of months with his family cooped up inside a small and bare apartment, Karezi decides to take his children to a park in an effort to distract them from their struggles. With no schools willing to admit them, the five children grapple with settling in, and are distraught at having lost access to education. “His two older daughters were affected the most. One is in grade 10 and the other is in grade 7, and both were denied admission to school because they were considered over age,” Wahidi says, highlighting this as one of the top most struggles Karezi faced after migration. But experiences of young Afghans across the country—even second and third generation immigrants born in Pakistan—show that this is just an excuse hiding a much larger problem. Miles away in Karachi, 19 year-old Shabana Ghulam Sakhi worries about the future of her education after not being admitted into any university in the country. Because she doesn’t have any form of Pakistani identification, Ghulam, and other refugees like her, can only attend the Afghani school—–which has very few qualified teachers. This is where she completed her intermediate exams. “My English is very weak because we study English separately as one subject, and even for that we don’t have good teachers, so we really struggle after that,” she informed me in an interview. “I feel helpless. I did a 6 month digital marketing course that the UNHCR arranged for us at our school but still haven’t received the certificate, so I can’t do anything,” she says. Between limited access to education in Pakistan and the Taliban halting girls' education in Afghanistan , Karezi was stuck. He came to Pakistan hoping to prioritize his children’s education but ended up having to go back. His daughter Sabia, who Wahidi has also centered in the film, often talks about how she misses school. Left with no choice but to journey back to Afghanistan, Karezi returned in 2023. Fully aware of the restrictions on women’s education, Sabia worries about when she’ll get the opportunity to go to school again. Several circumstances forced Karezi to leave, but others have experienced something different—deportation—following newly established policies. The second phase of Pakistan’s new policy started after Eid , when police were instructed to identify locations where undocumented Afghan refugees were living. Officials have confirmed the intention to depor t Proof of Residence or POR card holders despite negotiations with various stakeholders still underway. Shabana Ghulam Sakhi has spent much of the last year trying to get her brother out of jail after he was detained by the police—despite having a valid POR card. “They hid his card, and claimed he was illegal and detained him. It was only when we found a copy at home that they suddenly reproduced it and let him go,” she says. Throughout the conversation, she voiced her worries about the future, unable to identify a way to support herself and her family. Those who remain in Pakistan live in constant fear; they find themselves terminated from jobs, detained by police, all while struggling to get their POR cards reissued. These cards form the basis of their identity, since Afghans are not issued Computerized National Identity Cards or CNICs . Not having a CNIC was also one of the reasons Karezi was unable to find formal employment and get his daughters admitted into a school in Pakistan. The policies around deportation treat Afghans as second class citizens and have shaped Pakistani citizens’ mindsets for a long time. Many Pakistanis continue to believe that the Afghan deportations are a good thing . This is partly why Wahidi found it so difficult to make her film. “For me, the biggest challenge was that in Pakistan, making a documentary on Afghans is difficult, because we don't want them accepted as a society,” she said in an interview. “There’s been no documentary on Afghans in mainstream Pakistani media since the Taliban came to power,” she added. Still, Wahidi made huge efforts to depict the reality of the Afghan refugee crisis, but there is a long way to go in resolving the issue. “It’s important that NGOs and civil society actors continue to do whatever they can in their own capacity and power, so that they can support young Afghan refugees and children. But, until the government doesn’t sort out what the rights of these refugees are, the rights of these people living on this soil for 4-5 decades, it's hard for the other 2 entities [NGOS and civil society] to agree on something concrete,’ says Alam. The film ends with more questions than answers about Karezi, which, perhaps, best reflects his reality. When I last spoke to Wahidi, she said she could no longer get in touch with Javid. The film ends with Karezi jobless in Afghanistan, hoping to find daily wage jobs as a laborer or similar. But he wants more for his children—as does every Afghan parent—regardless of whether they choose to stay. The problem is, for now, that both situations seem equally bleak. Still, Karezi finds comfort in knowing that he and his family are home, where their identity will not inhibit their plans. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Untitled, digital embroidery on fabric. Mohammad Sabir (2024) SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Profile Quetta Afghan Refugees State Repression Afghan Deportations The Failed Migration Documentary Film Musician Taliban Undocumented Afghan Refugees Faiz Ahmed Karezi Rani Wahidi Dari Farsi Proof of Registration Card Incarceration Civil Society NGOs CNIC Afghanistan Employment Unemployment ANMOL IRFAN is a Pakistani freelance journalist and editor. She works on gender, climate, and media, with a focus on South Asia. She also runs a book club in Karachi. Profile Quetta 14th May 2024 MOHAMMAD SABIR is an Afghan artist who graduated from Kabul University and recently completed his MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London. Through his practice, Sabir investigates the ongoing discrimination towards the ethnic Hazara minority in Afghanistan. Sabir highlights this in his Genocide series (2016-present), using intricate Hazaragi embroidery motifs on human bones as well as on cut trees, clay pots, and personal objects. His works have been exhibited in Kabul, Los Angeles, Tehran and Figueres. On That Note: Climate Crimes of US Imperalism in Afghanistan 16th OCT Chats Ep. 6 · Imagery of the Baloch Movement 28th FEB Chats Ep. 1 · On A Premonition; Recollected 13th NOV

In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. THE VERTICAL Universalism & Solidarity in a Post-Roe Landscape Sharmin Hossain In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. ON JUNE 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortions protected under the 1973 landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade . The decision, issued in a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, has opened the doors for dozens of states to take steps to ban it outright. As I’m writing this solidarity note, at least 15 states have abortion bans in effect: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The prohibitions range from a complete ban on abortions to banning abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy. These states are among the poorest in the country, with large populations of Indigenous, Black, and immigrant communities. In the absence of safe, timely, and affordable abortion care; people are forced to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access medical care or carry pregnancies to term against their will. This is a gross violation of human rights. Abortion bans can be traced to the brutal legacies of slavery, where Black women were treated as sexual chattel. Hence, they are rooted in white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, anti-Black violence. Such racist laws deny systematically marginalized communities the right to control their bodies and futures. About 60% of people who need abortion care each year are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Against the backdrop of this country’s legacy of racism and discrimination, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas tend to face greater barriers to quality health care, childcare, and job opportunities. Oriaku Njoku, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, shares: "This [abortion] is not something where it's either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent. There are so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family." According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the 121 million pregnancies across the globe each year are unintended. Each year, over 44,000 people die from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer serious, often permanent, injuries. Restricting access to abortion drives pregnant people to use unsafe methods. For example, Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but the lack of access to abortion care makes it one of the deadliest places to get an abortion. This much is clear: abortion access saves lives. This is why reproductive justice advocates have been fighting for the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The reproductive justice framework calls for every possible effort—whether through policies, social services, and community relationships—to address intersecting oppressions, create alliances across identities, analyze power systems, and center the most marginalized among us. Reproductive justice allows us to understand access to abortion as a critical piece of economic, healthcare, and gender justice battles: the way we treat birthing people and families impacts how we build stronger and healthier communities. For example, the right to contraceptives only ensures that people can get a prescription for them. But for a low-wage worker who is uninsured, how can they afford to take a day off and pay for the contraceptives? By thinking outside of the rights framework—where we are only fighting for the right to abortion—reproductive justice acknowledges the socio-political and economic inequalities that are disproportionately faced by BIPOC communities. South Asian American communities in general and survivors in particular, live at the intersection of multiple oppressions which make the overall consequences of lack of abortion access, particularly grave. Without access to healthcare resources in the many languages spoken across South Asian diasporas, and culturally imposed shame and stigma around accessing reproductive healthcare, South Asian communities experience marginalization at multiple levels. Even apart from the lack of policies that support access to hospitals and clinics trusted by South Asian communities, there is simply no insurance for healthcare needs specific to these communities. Lack of such policies work as barriers to healthcare and reify the long-established history of racism and its many inequities. For South Asian survivors the consequences are even more grave. People in abusive relationships are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, birth control sabotage, reproductive coercion or control, and misinformation about their reproductive rights. In most cases, murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as mentioned in the SOAR Collective Statement . The Liberate Abortion—a coalition of over 150 member organizations—is currently one of the largest BIPOC-led reproductive justice and rights coalitions in the United States. Liberate Abortion was founded out of the realization that the struggle against the threat to abortion access cannot be fought by a single organization, healthcare provider, organizer, or donor. This is why the coalition focusses on community mobilization, electoral organizing, changing cultural narratives, federal outreach, and policy reform. The staff, leaders, and members coordinate with stakeholders such as movement partners in legal defense and practical service delivery spaces, cross-movement partners, funders, members of Congress, and the Biden administration on information sharing and strategy. Although the coalition solely focuses on abortion funds and clinics in the United States, frontline activists from the Latin American Green Wave movement have joined the coalition to share lessons from their campaigns to expand abortion access across the continent. In the last two years alone, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized or fully legalized abortions. The Supreme Court’s attack on the right to abortion access leaves several fundamental human rights open to contestation. These include the right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other rights intertwined with the right to liberty protected through Roe v. Wade . As access to abortion gets further criminalized by politicians and companies that sell our data to anti-abortion lawmakers and legislators, privacy activists and lawmakers need to also shift their approach. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the past 15 years have seen a shocking spike in arrests and prosecutions for crimes related to stillbirths, miscarriages, and alleged drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The legal advocacy and policy support group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, documented over 61 cases that occurred between 2000 and 2020 in which people were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly self-managing abortions or helping someone else get one. Only this year in August, Facebook gave Nebraska police access to a teen’s private messages which they used to prosecute her for getting an abortion. The fight for reproductive justice includes battles against surveillance and policing. These are the tools of the right wing to expand their control over bodily autonomy. For South Asian Americans this is a critical time to shift away from calls for increased policing to visionary organizing that is rooted in the desire to build safer communities. Some of the ways we can express solidarity are to get involved in volunteer services and mutual aid networks. Abortion fundraisers like the ARC-Southeast are coordinating funding and logistical support for people who need abortion access in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. For the South Asian & Indo-Caribbean diaspora, HEART to Grow is sustaining a reproductive justice fund for Muslims across America, while domestic violence organizations like API Chaya ally with abolitionist efforts that close youth jails across Seattle. The fight for reproductive justice must be both localized and nationalized—to aid and abet folks seeking abortion access, while electing prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives committed to the long-term strategy of ending criminalization, punishment, and harassment by the state, institutions, and individuals. Perhaps Roe was never enough to safeguard abortion rights or protect abortion access for all people. We are building a future in which abortion is liberated for all of us, no matter where we live or how much money we have, no matter our race, age, gender, or sexual orientation. We need to organize, build power, and create a country where our values are reflected in democracy. We will continue to provide life-saving care for those who need it the most, and we will continue fighting until every one of us has access to the care we need, when we need it, without stigma or fear. We need to develop networks of solidarity. ∎ RESOURCES : If you are a person who needs abortion care, reach out to a provider immediately . If you’re looking for an abortion provider, go to INeedAnA.com . Campaigns like Abortion On Our Own Terms are supporting folks with knowledge on self-managed abortions, while organizations like PlanCPills are distributing and providing information on how to access abortion pills online. We must all be vocal and support people who have abortions and providers who provide care every day. This means funding local abortion clinics to keep the clinics open, volunteering and donating to local abortion funds to ensure that people have support, funding, and access to care, telling your own abortion story, and listening deeply to the stories of people you love. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Op-Ed United States Roe v Wade Reproductive Rights Legacies of Slavery Human Rights Abortion Access Low-Income Workers The Right to Contraception Liberate Abortion Latin American Green Wave National Network of Abortion Funds Gender Violence South Asian SOAR Internationalist Perspective SHARMIN HOSSAIN is a Bangladeshi-American queer Muslim organizer and artist, from Queens, New York. She is the Organizing Director at 18 Million Rising , building national Asian American political power that contributes to movements for racial justice, abolition, anti-militarism, and democracy through political education, and deep base building. She was the Campaign Director of the Liberate Abortion Campaign, managing the coalition of more than 150 reproductive justice and rights organizations, groups, and abortion providers fighting for abortion access. Op-Ed United States 23rd Feb 2023 On That Note: Battles and Banishments: Gender & Heroin Addiction in Maldives 28th FEB Climate Crimes of US Imperalism in Afghanistan 16th OCT Pakistan's Feminist Wave: A Panel 27th SEP