“Food organization at Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment began as the effort of just seven students organizing the chaotic assortment on the tarp, but it quickly evolved into a network attracting several student groups, professors, community members, and even other encampments, including the NYU and City College encampments.” THE VERTICAL Food Organizing at Columbia's Gaza Encampment AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR “Food organization at Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment began as the effort of just seven students organizing the chaotic assortment on the tarp, but it quickly evolved into a network attracting several student groups, professors, community members, and even other encampments, including the NYU and City College encampments.” SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Dispatch New York Palestine Food NYPD Gaza Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampments Apartheid Divest Divestment BDS Police Action Police Butler Lawn Repression in Universities Food Organizing University Administration NYU City College Arrests Anti-Israel Protests Jewish Voice for Peace Passover Jewish Culture Kosher We the People The People’s Initiative: NYC Stuudents for Justice in Palestine SJP Columbia Daily Spectator Anti-Zionism Coalition Building Accountability Apartheid Solidarity Internationalist Solidarity Complicity of the Academy Demonstration South Lawn 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. DISPATCH Dispatch New York 24th Sep 2024 Several hours after the New York Police Department (NYPD) had arrested their friends, Myra and six other people found themselves staring at a disorganized tarp laid on Columbia University’s Butler Lawn. The tarp held items donated by community members and student supporters, ranging from granola bars to water bottles to oranges. At the second Gaza Solidarity Encampment , formed in response to the arrests, it was rapidly becoming difficult to locate anything in the large, growing collection of food resources. “We all wanted some organization, and we wanted to feel like we were actively doing something, so we started organizing the tarp,” Myra said. “It felt really good because you could see the distinct difference [between] unorganized and organized.” Myra is an organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest , a coalition of over 100 Columbia student groups advocating for the university to divest from companies supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza, and to cut ties with Israel by suspending academic programs with Israeli universities, such as the dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University. Citing disciplinary measures taken by the University against pro-Palestinian student protesters as a safety concern, Myra has requested to remain anonymous. In April, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported on David Greenwald’s admission at a recent congressional hearing that ten students were suspended after an unauthorized “Resistance 101” event on campus. Greenwald is a co-chair of the Board of Trustees at Columbia. The tarp marked the start of Myra’s work as a food organizer for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment—a position that saw her working with several other people to organize food for over 200 students at the height of the encampment. This food organizing took place over a period of several days after the encampment’s first week. Despite the widespread international coverage on student encampments , the mechanics of sustaining them have seldom been discussed. Some of this invisibility stems from fear of administrative retaliation. Fatima, another food organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, noted that even the fact that she and Myra were requesting anonymity to keep themselves safe felt disproportionate to the nature of their work. Fatima has requested to be identified solely by her first name due to concerns about how the Columbia administration would retaliate. “We are literally just feeding people but we have to take such precautions,” Fatima expressed. Though food organization at Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment began as the effort of just seven students organizing the chaotic assortment on the tarp, it quickly evolved into a network attracting several student groups, professors, community members, and even other encampments, including the New York University and City College encampments. This was partly due to the difficulties student organizers faced in getting food and other encampment resources—such as tents, hand warmers, etc.—to campus. Columbia restricted access to only university ID-card carriers the day that the encampment started, which meant only students, faculty and other essential workers could enter campus. On the first day of the encampment, public safety officers searched bags to see if students were bringing any materials—such as tents—for the encampment with them. Even groceries were not allowed through the gates on the first day of the encampment, despite the fact that some students were living in campus dormitories with kitchens. However, according to Fatima, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment had a “beautiful problem of abundance” even during its earlier days. Students would bring leftover food from the dining halls. Despite the gates, community members, students, professors, and designated “runners” would bring food from other areas of the city and pass to other students to sneak onto campus. One student called the encampment the “least food insecure” that they had ever been during their time at Columbia—a signifier of just how much food the encampment was gathering from community members. While the encampment received numerous food donations from restaurants, students, and faculty, organizers were at times compelled to prioritize locating vegan, vegetarian, halal, and kosher food due to student groups within the encampment that followed dietary restrictions. Given that the encampment was taking place during Passover, organizers also found themselves working to figure out how to get kosher and Passover food for Jewish students while simultaneously ensuring it was compliant with BDS principles. “The unfortunate fact of Jewish life is that connections with Israel are especially tied to the products you purchase, so it was definitely very difficult to find meals for people,” stated Remi, another student solely identifying by their first name due to safety concerns. Remi is an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the two groups suspended by Columbia in November 2023 for holding an “unauthorized” demonstration calling for Columbia’s divestment from Israel. Remi relates that while making and finding food for Jewish students at the encampment was difficult, it was ultimately possible due to the help of several community members. “We ended up relying on a lot of just nice Jewish families around the city who wanted to cook and donate food for different dietary needs,” Remi said. They added that due to all the support from students and community members, the encampment was able to create a “kosher table” filled only with kosher food for Jewish participants. For many non-Jewish students, the encampment was the first time that they had ever been to a Jewish cultural event. “Inviting people in through food, through the things we eat…being able to share that with people and being able to disentangle violence from our culture and being able to offer that to people, I think that was really special and meaningful,” Remi said. Serving the integral purpose of sustaining people in the encampment, food also became an avenue for students to form a community with one another during a turbulent time—and, as Fatima, Myra, and Remi each noted, this community extended well beyond Columbia’s gates. Fatima explains that when food organizers started realizing that they had an overabundance of food, they immediately started contacting mutual aid organizations such as We the People and other student encampments in New York City. The goal, Fatima said, was to redistribute the food and supplies they didn’t need, especially warm meals and other perishables. Terrell Harper, who also goes by “Relly Rebel,” co-founded the mutual aid collective We the People in 2021. Harper first met student organizers in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment while protesting outside Columbia’s gates to support students and their cause. He said that after speaking with the organizers and discussing the collective, the organizers offered to supply food and meals for We the People’s bi-weekly community food distributions. Harper estimates that the Columbia encampment provided We the People with over 800 meals in a period of approximately two weeks. Harper added that it was hearty food too—containers full of hot meals, including chicken, rice, vegetables, sandwiches, and even desserts were brought in cars to Harper’s home or We the People’s various distribution sites to hand out. The NYPD dismantled the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 30th, 2024, but Fatima, Myra, and other organizers are still continuing their work to feed their community. Along with other encampment organizers, Fatima and Myra have helped to create The People’s Initiative: NYC , a collective of students, restaurants, and mutual aid groups, including We the People and The 116th Initiative. Their initiative aims to host free community meals throughout the summer and into the school year. Just as in the encampment, the people behind The People’s Initiative: NYC continue to center Palestine in their work. “Food plays a pivotal role in Palestinian culture—it connects diasporic people from across seas and ties them together with ribbons of smoke streaming out of a taboon oven,” their website’s homepage reads, “we follow in their footsteps, using food to connect communities across the city.” “Sitting by loving, committed, and revolutionary peers with a plate of joy is the way we will keep our people strong,” the site reads, “WE KEEP US SAFE. WE KEEP US FED.” ∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Over nearly two decades, the opulence of the Jaipur Literature Festival has only grown and the prestige of attendance has attained unparalleled heights. Yet Torsa Ghosal, of Kaya Press’s imprint Kulhar Books, returned in 2025 with critical realizations about JLF’s core agenda. Reflecting not only on the nationalistic undertones celebrated but also on what was conspicuously absent, Ghosal points to the festival’s failure to meaningfully represent Muslim and Arab voices, and to a troubling insincerity in engaging with the moral crises of our time. BOOKS & ARTS Spiritually Chic AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Over nearly two decades, the opulence of the Jaipur Literature Festival has only grown and the prestige of attendance has attained unparalleled heights. Yet Torsa Ghosal, of Kaya Press’s imprint Kulhar Books, returned in 2025 with critical realizations about JLF’s core agenda. Reflecting not only on the nationalistic undertones celebrated but also on what was conspicuously absent, Ghosal points to the festival’s failure to meaningfully represent Muslim and Arab voices, and to a troubling insincerity in engaging with the moral crises of our time. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Review Jaipur Jaipur Literature Festival JLF Kumbh Mela Hindu Nationalism religious nationalism Religion Contemporary Literature Literature & Liberation Pop Spirituality Elitist elitism tokenism Representational Space representation suppression 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. DISPATCH Review Jaipur 1st Aug 2025 Since launching in 2006, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) has been repeatedly called the “Kumbh Mela” of literature festivals. Kumbh Mela is a Hindu religious event held every six to twelve years at the confluence of the three rivers: Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati, where devotees convene in numbers unmatched by any other religious gathering in the world. The Kumbh analogy signals JLF’s massive scale and popularity. Indeed, the book festival is a mela, a social spectacle, that brings anywhere between three to five hundred speakers to Jaipur, shuttles them between the venue and the various four- and five-star hotels lodging them, and swishes them off to party in the city’s gorgeous palaces and forts. 400,000 visitors and around 4000 vendors thronged the festival grounds in 2024 according to estimates. Until recently, the staunch religious underpinnings of Kumbh had no direct equivalent in a festival that branded itself as an international “literary show,” and that has hosted a diverse assortment of luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, Orhan Pamuk, Kamila Shamsie, Oprah Winfrey, and the Dalai Lama. But over the last few decades, Hindu religious identity has increasingly defined national belonging and nationalist policies in India. This year’s Maha Kumbh Mela was attended by 4 times as many people as the previous iteration of the event, blazing proof of the upthrust in religious fervour among Indians and diasporic Hindus. JLF’s programming was not immune to the pulls of religious nationalism. The festival kept the crowds sated on pageantry and celebrations which often obscured the ways in which panels and talks questioned the nationalist agenda. Supported by a SALT travel grant , I was at JLF to scout authors in my role as an acquiring editor for Kaya Press’s brand new South Asian imprint, Kulhar Books . Working with Kaya’s managing editor Neelanjana Banerjee and the rest of the Kaya team, Kulhar editors—Rajiv Mohabir, Jhani Randhawa, and I—aspire to publish stylistically and politically imaginative literature; works that unsettle formulaic expectations caging and sanitizing South Asian literary expressions in America. Courtesy of the author. My first afternoon at JLF I heard the British author Sheena Patel speak about her desire for “the now to be captured” in her writing rather than telling a “timeless story,” and in a similar vein, my intention was to get a sense of “the now” of the literary-cultural scene in South Asia, intuiting that the festival would offer some—even if narrow—opening into the ideas and themes dominating the space. Flipping through the festival program, I tried to locate sessions on literary writings from and about South Asia with a focus on contemporary translated literature and newer voices, a task that proved to be somewhat at odds with JLF’s broad-ranging, political establishment- and celebrity-friendly slate of events, a host of which staged flaccid conversations on Hindu mythology, Hindu national and political identities, excitement about the potentials of AI and digital technology, corporate and startup success, even wellness practices. The festival has a “flashy, dazzling quality,” notes Mrinalina Chakravarty in her 2014 book, In Stereotype , which examines the hackneyed tropes found in literary representations of South Asia. At this year’s edition, social media influencers, Bollywood celebrities, and politicians predictably clinched the largest platform—the front lawn. Educator-philanthropist-billionaire Sudha Murthy’s talk in the lawn was attended by her son-in-law, U.K.’s former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Sunak went viral for greeting the lawn’s audience with folded hands in a “namaste,” obeying the nudges of an elderly woman whom Indian media variously identified as his mother and aunt-in-law. A forty-five-minute session on the same stage was allocated to politician and author Shashi Tharoor unpacking the experience of living as Shashi Tharoor. Influencer Prajakta Koli blurted unprompted that her rom com novel contains “discrepancies” that she hoped readers would not pick up. JLF is often “a theatre of the absurd,” as Chakravarty observes, and the “incongruous juxtapositions of the bizarre and serious” raise questions about whether the festival coheres. JLF does not cohere— purposefully so. Vendors selling gorgeous brass jhumkas, wooden handicrafts, linen quilts and clothes form the backdrop of high-spirited debates and book launches. It is a carnival, almost in the Bakhtinian sense, a heteroglossia boasting of eclectic interests and priorities, but without the revolutionary zing Bakhtin associates with carnivalesque entertainment. JLF makes no pretence of renouncing hierarchies among speakers, vendors, volunteers, media persons, and spectators. There is a distinctly feudal quality to the “royal” warmth the green vest-wearing volunteers and interns shower on the invitees, riffing on the grand, luxurious image of Rajasthan in both the global and desi imagination. Rajasthan is after all the province where celebrities like Liz Hurley and Priyanka Chopra have hosted their weddings. Like crazy rich desi weddings, the happy hodge podge at JLF trades in stereotypes about South Asia’s mystique and splendour. JLF has a controversial history with respect to free speech, which Amitav Ghosh points out , shows how literature has become “embedded within a wider culture of public spectacles and performances…overtaking, and indeed overwhelming writing itself as the primary end of a life in letters.” As far as frenzied public spectacles in India go, none in recent times can compete with the individual and collective performances of the Hindu religious identity at the Mahakumbh, and the book festival arena is a porous zone. The five-day programming at JLF, what speakers thought permissible to say or not say, the audience questions, the popularity of sessions were all rooted within a broader cultural sphere that in 2025 was flooded with giant billboards starring the tight-lipped smiles of India’s Prime Minister alongside his brother in arms, the ascetic-politician Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Both their portraits were pasted onto scenes showing millions on the banks of a river, coloured a shade of blue so rich that I could tell it could only have been achieved after going through layers of digital filters, if the raw photograph was ever of the muddied brown Ganges I have known and swum in. The hoardings carried taglines like “Message from Kumbh, The Nation Must Unify” and “Sanatan Pride, Maha Kumbh Edition.” Courtesy of the author. Desi internet was trending Kumbh news and memes, minting new viral heartthrobs—hot Sadhus and Sadhvis—through WhatsApp forwards and Instagram reels, plus supplying shock and cringe content, that I and surely other festival attendees dutifully consumed. Young people are showing interest in scriptures, Malashri Lal remarked at a session launching mythologist Sunita Pant Bansal’s A Comprehensive Guide to Indian Scriptures . The slim book introduces Hindu sacred texts like the Puranas, Vedas, and the epics “as it is,” the author insisted, “without my opinion.” The aim is to demystify and correct beliefs about Hindu religious texts. Why, then, does the jacket say “Indian scriptures” rather than Hindu scriptures? A young audience member asked after admitting he was “nervous and worried” to raise the question. And if the book is on Hinduism, have texts from Nepal been included? The publisher Dipankar Mukherjee, who was also on stage, chivalrously swooped in to field the question, rationalizing that they were “trying to be somewhat politically correct to ensure the book reaches the right audience…Where they [the scriptures] started to become codified, recorded that’s part of current India.” He subsequently plugged the festival co-director William Dalrymple’s latest book, crediting Dalrymple for completing “half our work” tracing the influence of Indian traditions and philosophy on other cultures. Mukherjee’s blithe verbal acrobatics for swapping Hindu with India not only aligns with the religion-nation nexus the country’s government has openly adopted in the last decade but also follows the money as it were. Writing for New York Times, Anupreeta Das claims that book festivals are all the rage among India’s youth. On the surface, the hipness of literary festivals bodes well. Das notes young people “are increasingly reading literature in their native tongues alongside books written in English. For these readers, books open worlds that India’s higher education system, with its focus on time-consuming preparation for make-or-break examinations, often does not.” But what are the young people reading in these various languages? What kinds of worlds are books unlocking? The answers are not straightforward. Trapped in a long, slow-moving queue formed in front of a toilet in Amer Clarks, women were commiserating about the shortage of bathrooms at the venue. Interrupting this communal bonding, a woman in her early twenties started to hype up her novel that retells the Hindu epic Ramayana. Ramayana has become something of a foundational text in the Hindu nationalist imagination. The woman pitching her retelling to a captive, pee-holding audience explained that her book followed the love story of the Hindu demigod Lakhsman whom “feminism” has unfairly sidelined. Her pithy spiel echoed a pervasive cultural sentiment wherein Hindu culture and Hindu Gods need constant protection from the evil eyes of liberals and heretics. Another young woman asked for the book’s title to order on Amazon. Some days later, while looking up the book, I stumbled upon the author’s public Instagram grid that featured side-by-side photos of her in JLF and at Mahakumbh. Completing the spiritual chic circuit of JLF-Mahakumbh, she follows in the illustrious footsteps of others like Sudha Murty who took a holy dip at Kumbh days ahead of her JLF session. Browsing the aisles of bookstores and catalogues of Indian publishers gives an impression that pop spirituality is booming in India. OMTV, an “Indic storytelling” app, surveyed its users and found that around 80% of those consuming spiritual content are aged between 18 and 30. At the same time, The Crossword Bookstore on JLF festival grounds had eager customers crowding pretty much every corner, picking up new and old titles, not just the spirituality laced ones. And in an offline and online public sphere dominated by Maha Kumbh , JLF still managed to hold some conversations offering critical and nuanced perspectives on political Hinduism. Courtesy of the author. But among the nearly three-hundred delegates, the festival included just a handful of Indian Muslim speakers. Bollywood celebrities like the director Imtiaz Ali, Huma Qureshi, and Javed Akhtar were part of this roster. Mujibur Rehman, who used a comparative framework drawn from histories of Black resistance to talk about the political marginalization and de-Islamization of Indian Muslims in Shikwa-e-Hind (2024), was challenged by a middle-aged, ostensibly Hindu, ponytailed thought leader among the audience. “I have lots of confusion about the premise of your book…Should we continue to call Muslims minorities with twenty percent population?” the man asked. Rehman told the man his book answers the question and supplemented his response with analogies underscoring how minority identity and minority rights are not simply pegged on numbers or even the success and visibility of a select few. India’s constitution despite its secular promises is inherently majoritarian, he argued, which informs the cultural landscape where Indians clapping at America’s flag do not invite suspicion, but an Indian Muslim boy clapping at Pakistan’s flag is interpreted as sedition. Kashmiri Muslim, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi literary authors were largely absent from this edition. Some absences can be blamed on logistics—Pakistan passport holders have immense difficulty procuring Indian visas at present, unless of course they are Maha Kumbh enthusiast Hindus. Then they are handed Indian visas swiftly . State rules force compliance but even state policies cannot explain all erasures. Theatre actor and director MK Raina who comes from a Kashmiri Pandit family, spoke about owing his career to the state of Kashmir’s policy of allowing free education right from the 1940s, commented on inequities in contemporary India, and criticized the unrealistic portrayals of Kashmir in Bollywood. He left the stage when his co-panelist, the Rajasthani singer and thespian Ila Arun, started enacting a lengthy sequence from an Ibsen play she adapted and partly set in Kashmir, where a character “hurts the mother” and “hurts the motherland.” Raina’s abrupt departure was first extrapolated as resulting from his frustration about the supposed misrepresentation of Kashmir and later as following from his irritation with Ila Arun for hogging stage time. Multiple sessions addressed Israel’s war on Gaza, but the sessions recycled a small group of speakers that included the Indian American author Pankaj Mishra, Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh, Pulitzer-winning American journalist Nathan Thrall, and Israeli British historian Avi Shlaim. The number of Arab authors featured was in the low single digits. A JLF official reportedly interrupted an interview between the Press Trust of India and the Palestinian envoy to India Abed Elrazeg Abu Jazer on the grounds that the festival’s PR team hadn’t sanctioned it. JLF’s speaker lineup suffers from issues common in invite-only prestige events. The curators turn to the same authors and cultural delegates year after year, and even each year, the same names reappear across sessions. The festival seems to be battling two opposing drives: an impulse to represent a diversity of relevant ideas and a desire to wring the most out of a trusted clique of speakers, resulting in conversations that sometimes feel repetitive, sometimes tokenistic. Although the festival is held in the state of Rajasthan and makes decorative use of Rajasthan’s crafts and colours to create Instagrammable corners, Rajasthani authors and Rajasthani literature are not at the forefront. The festival is a shimmery tamasha that, like high-budget high-gloss Bollywood films, is fun to dip in, so long as one is willing to forgo critical questions. The scale of the festival remains something to marvel at. But other literature festivals that have cropped up in India after Jaipur, such as the Kerala Literature Festival and Mizoram Literature Festival , have made more emphatic attempts at grounding their events in their local cultures. JLF, on the other hand, is happy to remain the Chicken Tikka Masala of festivals, palatable to a wide-ranging, somewhat international audience, seemingly representative of South Asia, with a desi man and a Scottish one claiming credits for its origins. Courtesy of the author. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. THE VERTICAL The Ambivalent Voter AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Dispatch Sri Lanka Plantation Workers Tea Estates Ceylon Workers Congress Ranil Wickremasinghe UNP Central Province Malaiyaha Tamil Community Indentured Labor Agricultural Labor Agriculture Plantations Labor Wage Labor Wages Political Agendas Patronage Politics Clientelism Surplus Value Productivity Demands Production Planters’ Association Political Economy Loolecondera Kandy District Nuwara Eliya District Political Parties False Promises Effective Wage Stagnation 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. DISPATCH Dispatch Sri Lanka 20th Sep 2024 “Let’s say a small child of around five years old is sick,” says Subramaniam Maheswarie, a 47-year-old tea plucker from Bogawantalawa in the Nuwara Eliya district of Sri Lanka’s Central Province. “We have to look after it and give it medicine.” The sick child Maheswarie is referring to is Sri Lanka: a nation on the slow road to recovery from a devastating economic crisis that led to shortages of food and fuel, and saw costs of living soar. The doctor who nursed the child is Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president who took the reins from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from office after months of protests. Wickremesinghe is attempting to hold onto power after two years in office as the country gears up for a presidential election tomorrow, 21st September, the first since the crisis. Such conditions are ripe for the playing out of patronage politics. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the largest plantation workers’ trade union, is advocating fiercely on Wickremesinghe’s behalf. Last year, the leader of the CWC was elevated to the position of a cabinet minister by Wickremesinghe’s government, and CWC formed a seat-sharing pact with the UNP (United National Party) aiming to garner votes in the central plantation districts. Maheswarie serves as a local chairwoman for the CWC, although she also continues to work on the plantation. Here in the hill-country region, political parties double as trade unions and vice versa—simultaneously trying to win workers’ votes as well as represent their voices in negotiations with plantations. In May this year, Wickremesinghe promised plantation workers a new wage of LKR 1,700 (US$5.64), a 70% hike from their current wage of LKR 1000 (US$3.32). Plantation companies appealed the wage, and Wickremesinghe’s presidential gazette was found to be unlawful by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Wages Board has now issued a gazette mandating wages of LKR 1,350 (US$4.48) for plantation workers, with an additional productivity incentive of LKR 350 (US$1.16) that requires them to pluck extra kilos. Tea workers, most of whom are part of the Malaiyaha Tamil community—descendants of indentured labourers brought from South India to work on plantations by the British in colonial Ceylon—face a number of challenges including food insecurity, lack of access to educational opportunities, precarious housing, and poor living and working conditions. Maheswarie says the wage increase is positive, but admits that the last wage increase in 2021 led to problems for workers. She says productivity targets increased by 3 kilos at her plantation. Additionally, benefits such as medical care and food provisions were withdrawn or reduced, because the implementation of the new wage led to the collapse of the traditional collective agreement between plantation companies and trade unions. “[As part of the collective agreement], there were a lot of rules and regulations regarding what you should and shouldn’t do with workers,” Maheswarie says. “Now those rules don’t exist. Once we got rid of those rules, it was the companies who [arbitrarily] set the rules. Now that we don’t have the collective agreement, we can’t really go and argue [for more benefits].” Many workers are suspicious of the timing of the wage increase, perceiving it as a political ploy to win their votes in the election. However, Maheswarie is adamant that is not the case and accuses plantation companies of “dragging out” the process to frame the CWC as eking out a wage increase for political gain. Roshan Rajadurai, chairman of the Planters’ Association, which oversees hundreds of plantations in Sri Lanka, said targets would not increase. However, he also said productivity must be improved and that the wage increase was unsustainable. “In Sri Lanka, rationale and reason don’t, unfortunately, apply,” Rajadurai said. He questioned the announcement, saying the plantation sector was being “singled out.” He pointed out that wages for other sectors were not being increased. “We have to agree on something we can [actually] pay,” Rajadurai added. “If they [politicians] did everything they promised, Sri Lanka would be better than Singapore.” He refuted Maheswarie’s claim that benefits were being reduced for workers, saying welfare had actually been increased and that it was in the plantations’ best interests to look after their workers. According to Sri Lanka’s Tea Board, the industry contributed USD 1.26 billion to the Sri Lankan economy in 2022. However, plantation workers were severely hit by the crisis, with many struggling to afford basic necessities. “The election is coming, right? So they likely thought we’d only vote for them if they increased our salaries,” says Santhiappillai Mary, who works at the Loolecondera estate, a state-owned plantation in Kandy District, famously colonial Ceylon’s first tea estate. Mary is unmoved by Loolecondera's storied history. She shares that the plantation makes multiple deductions from workers’ salaries, including small amounts for the work cards they register their picked tea leaf kilograms on and, until recently, for their payslips. She has taken out multiple loans by now and is berated by the companies involved when she cannot pay. She often goes to work even when she is sick or it is raining heavily—simply because she cannot afford to miss a day of pay. “We have to take two meals to work, but sometimes, if I take two meals, my children don’t have enough food to eat at home,” Mary says. “So, I just take one meal and go. And sometimes I don’t take anything at all, because the children need food in the evening. I’ve done that, too.” Santhiappillai Mary, courtesy of Udara Pathum Such dire straits also affect access to free public services. In 2022, Mary’s oldest son had to drop out of school. After her family could not afford the bus fare to school, he was not permitted to advance to the next grade alongside his peers. In Agarapatana, local trade union leaders who were part of the National Union of Workers (NUW) are also not totally convinced by the wage increase. NUW has thrown its support behind presidential hopeful Sajith Premadasa, who has promised to turn estate workers into smallholders and increase their pay. “We can’t be sure we’re going to get the new wage,” said Dayalan Ravichandran, adding that he was surprised to see that he received the same salary in June even after Wickremesinghe promised a higher wage. “They say they’ve agreed to it, but it’s not definite yet. We don’t know if they’re just doing it because of the election.” One estate trade union leader said people’s votes were often won with alcohol, even within her own party. “The people in the party give alcohol to the chairmen and tell them to give it to the men,” she said, adding that the women were struggling without basic facilities. “The chairmen give alcohol to the men and tell them to vote for the party.” But perhaps the larger question is: Would a wage increase even shift the needle for tea workers? If even universal education—which Sri Lanka cites as a major source of pride in comparison to its South Asian neighbours—can seemingly be revoked for tea workers’ children for want of bus fare, can tea workers reasonably aspire to the end of generational poverty in the hill country? Tea leaves at a plantation in Kandy District, Central Province. Courtesy of Udara Pathum. Workers might be divided in their political preferences but are united on one issue. None of them believe the wage increase—of which proof will only emerge after the election when next month’s pay is given—will be definitive proof of improved conditions. Mary feels that any wage increase is unlikely to be the better prospect it’s touted to be. “If they increase the salary,” she says, “they’ll demand more kilos of tea leaves, so it’s difficult for the workers.” She adds that an increase in salary will also mean an increase in the cost of essentials. “So there’s no point in increasing the salary. However much we get, it’s not enough.” This linkage of wage increases to required increases in productivity demands is the root of tea workers’ misgivings about their financial future: indeed, a wage increase may well be thought of as an excuse for the extraction of surplus labour that exceeds the limits of bodily labour. Mahendran, 49, also a worker at Loolecondera, says his family often goes hungry for five or six days every month. He, too, believes estates will increase productivity targets in response to the wage increase, adding that workers “can’t work any more than this.” Rajadurai, the Planters’ Association chair, disagrees. “People are not willing to increase their productivity. Our productivity is the lowest in the world,” he says, comparing expectations for tea pluckers in Sri Lanka favourably to Assam, where he claims tea pluckers have to pluck far more. He argues that pluckers should be able to pluck 1 kilo in 12 minutes.“If they want to earn, they earn.” Pluckers, he says, “should not get into the mindset that 18 is an impossible target.” When informed that tea pluckers said they had a daily target of 13 kilograms before the 2021 wage increase, Rajadurai told SAAG: “What are they doing plucking 13 kilos for the whole day? It’s absurd.” If estates and plantation companies increase productivity targets with wage increases, the much-touted increase can arguably be equated not just to an effective wage stagnation but also a more significant risk to the lives and bodies of tea workers and their families. The firm productivity targets tied to the 2021 wage increase demonstrably taxed workers with less flexibility than before. Many workers say the work was harder after the wage increase. Maheswarie says that estates no longer weed the tea bushes properly. Instead, they expect workers to do so and then pluck 18 kilograms on top of that. Ramalingam Priyadharshini, 42, a tea plucker from Agarapatana, is still undecided about who to vote for. She’s been let down in the past by promises to fix the roads in her area and to build housing. Currently, her family has no toilet. Priyadharshini has to use the toilet at her mother’s house, a ten-minute walk away. At night, or in an emergency, she has to ask her neighbours if she can use theirs. “I’m wondering whether I should just not vote at all because our main problem is the road. But it’s only during election time that they come and say they’ll do everything for us,” says Ramalingam. Her mother, Palanimurthy Jeyam, is a retired tea plucker who plans to spoil her ballot after years of involvement with CWC as a local chairwoman. “The current government is only doing everything for the rich,” she says angrily. “But they’re letting the hungry people go hungry and die.” Mary also says she doesn’t feel hopeful that anything will change. Meanwhile, Priyadharshini argues that the state only really thinks of plantation workers when election campaigns are underway, a sentiment that brings to the fore the historical trend, since independence, of Sri Lankan political parties jockeying for power during election campaigns by promising welfare services like food subsidies and wage increases. Indeed, tomorrow’s election may well show the risk of taking plantation workers’ votes for granted—or their successful co-optation by trade unions.∎ Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. THE VERTICAL The Ambivalent Voter Jeevan Ravindran Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. “Let’s say a small child of around five years old is sick,” says Subramaniam Maheswarie, a 47-year-old tea plucker from Bogawantalawa in the Nuwara Eliya district of Sri Lanka’s Central Province. “We have to look after it and give it medicine.” The sick child Maheswarie is referring to is Sri Lanka: a nation on the slow road to recovery from a devastating economic crisis that led to shortages of food and fuel, and saw costs of living soar. The doctor who nursed the child is Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president who took the reins from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from office after months of protests. Wickremesinghe is attempting to hold onto power after two years in office as the country gears up for a presidential election tomorrow, 21st September, the first since the crisis. Such conditions are ripe for the playing out of patronage politics. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the largest plantation workers’ trade union, is advocating fiercely on Wickremesinghe’s behalf. Last year, the leader of the CWC was elevated to the position of a cabinet minister by Wickremesinghe’s government, and CWC formed a seat-sharing pact with the UNP (United National Party) aiming to garner votes in the central plantation districts. Maheswarie serves as a local chairwoman for the CWC, although she also continues to work on the plantation. Here in the hill-country region, political parties double as trade unions and vice versa—simultaneously trying to win workers’ votes as well as represent their voices in negotiations with plantations. In May this year, Wickremesinghe promised plantation workers a new wage of LKR 1,700 (US$5.64), a 70% hike from their current wage of LKR 1000 (US$3.32). Plantation companies appealed the wage, and Wickremesinghe’s presidential gazette was found to be unlawful by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Wages Board has now issued a gazette mandating wages of LKR 1,350 (US$4.48) for plantation workers, with an additional productivity incentive of LKR 350 (US$1.16) that requires them to pluck extra kilos. Tea workers, most of whom are part of the Malaiyaha Tamil community—descendants of indentured labourers brought from South India to work on plantations by the British in colonial Ceylon—face a number of challenges including food insecurity, lack of access to educational opportunities, precarious housing, and poor living and working conditions. Maheswarie says the wage increase is positive, but admits that the last wage increase in 2021 led to problems for workers. She says productivity targets increased by 3 kilos at her plantation. Additionally, benefits such as medical care and food provisions were withdrawn or reduced, because the implementation of the new wage led to the collapse of the traditional collective agreement between plantation companies and trade unions. “[As part of the collective agreement], there were a lot of rules and regulations regarding what you should and shouldn’t do with workers,” Maheswarie says. “Now those rules don’t exist. Once we got rid of those rules, it was the companies who [arbitrarily] set the rules. Now that we don’t have the collective agreement, we can’t really go and argue [for more benefits].” Many workers are suspicious of the timing of the wage increase, perceiving it as a political ploy to win their votes in the election. However, Maheswarie is adamant that is not the case and accuses plantation companies of “dragging out” the process to frame the CWC as eking out a wage increase for political gain. Roshan Rajadurai, chairman of the Planters’ Association, which oversees hundreds of plantations in Sri Lanka, said targets would not increase. However, he also said productivity must be improved and that the wage increase was unsustainable. “In Sri Lanka, rationale and reason don’t, unfortunately, apply,” Rajadurai said. He questioned the announcement, saying the plantation sector was being “singled out.” He pointed out that wages for other sectors were not being increased. “We have to agree on something we can [actually] pay,” Rajadurai added. “If they [politicians] did everything they promised, Sri Lanka would be better than Singapore.” He refuted Maheswarie’s claim that benefits were being reduced for workers, saying welfare had actually been increased and that it was in the plantations’ best interests to look after their workers. According to Sri Lanka’s Tea Board, the industry contributed USD 1.26 billion to the Sri Lankan economy in 2022. However, plantation workers were severely hit by the crisis, with many struggling to afford basic necessities. “The election is coming, right? So they likely thought we’d only vote for them if they increased our salaries,” says Santhiappillai Mary, who works at the Loolecondera estate, a state-owned plantation in Kandy District, famously colonial Ceylon’s first tea estate. Mary is unmoved by Loolecondera's storied history. She shares that the plantation makes multiple deductions from workers’ salaries, including small amounts for the work cards they register their picked tea leaf kilograms on and, until recently, for their payslips. She has taken out multiple loans by now and is berated by the companies involved when she cannot pay. She often goes to work even when she is sick or it is raining heavily—simply because she cannot afford to miss a day of pay. “We have to take two meals to work, but sometimes, if I take two meals, my children don’t have enough food to eat at home,” Mary says. “So, I just take one meal and go. And sometimes I don’t take anything at all, because the children need food in the evening. I’ve done that, too.” Santhiappillai Mary, courtesy of Udara Pathum Such dire straits also affect access to free public services. In 2022, Mary’s oldest son had to drop out of school. After her family could not afford the bus fare to school, he was not permitted to advance to the next grade alongside his peers. In Agarapatana, local trade union leaders who were part of the National Union of Workers (NUW) are also not totally convinced by the wage increase. NUW has thrown its support behind presidential hopeful Sajith Premadasa, who has promised to turn estate workers into smallholders and increase their pay. “We can’t be sure we’re going to get the new wage,” said Dayalan Ravichandran, adding that he was surprised to see that he received the same salary in June even after Wickremesinghe promised a higher wage. “They say they’ve agreed to it, but it’s not definite yet. We don’t know if they’re just doing it because of the election.” One estate trade union leader said people’s votes were often won with alcohol, even within her own party. “The people in the party give alcohol to the chairmen and tell them to give it to the men,” she said, adding that the women were struggling without basic facilities. “The chairmen give alcohol to the men and tell them to vote for the party.” But perhaps the larger question is: Would a wage increase even shift the needle for tea workers? If even universal education—which Sri Lanka cites as a major source of pride in comparison to its South Asian neighbours—can seemingly be revoked for tea workers’ children for want of bus fare, can tea workers reasonably aspire to the end of generational poverty in the hill country? Tea leaves at a plantation in Kandy District, Central Province. Courtesy of Udara Pathum. Workers might be divided in their political preferences but are united on one issue. None of them believe the wage increase—of which proof will only emerge after the election when next month’s pay is given—will be definitive proof of improved conditions. Mary feels that any wage increase is unlikely to be the better prospect it’s touted to be. “If they increase the salary,” she says, “they’ll demand more kilos of tea leaves, so it’s difficult for the workers.” She adds that an increase in salary will also mean an increase in the cost of essentials. “So there’s no point in increasing the salary. However much we get, it’s not enough.” This linkage of wage increases to required increases in productivity demands is the root of tea workers’ misgivings about their financial future: indeed, a wage increase may well be thought of as an excuse for the extraction of surplus labour that exceeds the limits of bodily labour. Mahendran, 49, also a worker at Loolecondera, says his family often goes hungry for five or six days every month. He, too, believes estates will increase productivity targets in response to the wage increase, adding that workers “can’t work any more than this.” Rajadurai, the Planters’ Association chair, disagrees. “People are not willing to increase their productivity. Our productivity is the lowest in the world,” he says, comparing expectations for tea pluckers in Sri Lanka favourably to Assam, where he claims tea pluckers have to pluck far more. He argues that pluckers should be able to pluck 1 kilo in 12 minutes.“If they want to earn, they earn.” Pluckers, he says, “should not get into the mindset that 18 is an impossible target.” When informed that tea pluckers said they had a daily target of 13 kilograms before the 2021 wage increase, Rajadurai told SAAG: “What are they doing plucking 13 kilos for the whole day? It’s absurd.” If estates and plantation companies increase productivity targets with wage increases, the much-touted increase can arguably be equated not just to an effective wage stagnation but also a more significant risk to the lives and bodies of tea workers and their families. The firm productivity targets tied to the 2021 wage increase demonstrably taxed workers with less flexibility than before. Many workers say the work was harder after the wage increase. Maheswarie says that estates no longer weed the tea bushes properly. Instead, they expect workers to do so and then pluck 18 kilograms on top of that. Ramalingam Priyadharshini, 42, a tea plucker from Agarapatana, is still undecided about who to vote for. She’s been let down in the past by promises to fix the roads in her area and to build housing. Currently, her family has no toilet. Priyadharshini has to use the toilet at her mother’s house, a ten-minute walk away. At night, or in an emergency, she has to ask her neighbours if she can use theirs. “I’m wondering whether I should just not vote at all because our main problem is the road. But it’s only during election time that they come and say they’ll do everything for us,” says Ramalingam. Her mother, Palanimurthy Jeyam, is a retired tea plucker who plans to spoil her ballot after years of involvement with CWC as a local chairwoman. “The current government is only doing everything for the rich,” she says angrily. “But they’re letting the hungry people go hungry and die.” Mary also says she doesn’t feel hopeful that anything will change. Meanwhile, Priyadharshini argues that the state only really thinks of plantation workers when election campaigns are underway, a sentiment that brings to the fore the historical trend, since independence, of Sri Lankan political parties jockeying for power during election campaigns by promising welfare services like food subsidies and wage increases. Indeed, tomorrow’s election may well show the risk of taking plantation workers’ votes for granted—or their successful co-optation by trade unions.∎ Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 “Into tea forest I,” 2024. Pen and tea stain on brown board, 91.4cm x 121.9cm, part of a triptych. Courtesy of Arulraj Ulaganathan. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Dispatch Sri Lanka Plantation Workers Tea Estates Ceylon Workers Congress Ranil Wickremasinghe UNP Central Province Malaiyaha Tamil Community Indentured Labor Agricultural Labor Agriculture Plantations Labor Wage Labor Wages Political Agendas Patronage Politics Clientelism Surplus Value Productivity Demands Production Planters’ Association Political Economy Loolecondera Kandy District Nuwara Eliya District Political Parties False Promises Effective Wage Stagnation JEEVAN RAVINDRAN is a multimedia journalist based in Jaffna and London, with bylines in VICE , Reuters , CNN, and more. She reports on human rights and politics. Dispatch Sri Lanka 20th Sep 2024 ARULRAJ ULAGANATHAN is a member of the Malaiyaga Tamil tea plantation worker community, and an artist. His work has previously been exhibited at the JDA Perera Gallery, the Kochi Muziris Student Biennale, and Colomboscope. His most recent solo exhibition, "A Life in Tea" at Barefoot Gallery Colombo, combines elements from the tea estates, such as name cards, tea pruning knives, and bruised feet. On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. THE VERTICAL The Ambivalent Voter Ahead of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, trade unions and political parties have promised a wage increase to tea plantation workers they hope to win over. Many workers are unconvinced, partly because wage increases are often tied to higher productivity targets that far exceed workers’ bodily capacity. Jeevan Ravindran “Let’s say a small child of around five years old is sick,” says Subramaniam Maheswarie, a 47-year-old tea plucker from Bogawantalawa in the Nuwara Eliya district of Sri Lanka’s Central Province. “We have to look after it and give it medicine.” The sick child Maheswarie is referring to is Sri Lanka: a nation on the slow road to recovery from a devastating economic crisis that led to shortages of food and fuel, and saw costs of living soar. The doctor who nursed the child is Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president who took the reins from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from office after months of protests. Wickremesinghe is attempting to hold onto power after two years in office as the country gears up for a presidential election tomorrow, 21st September, the first since the crisis. Such conditions are ripe for the playing out of patronage politics. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the largest plantation workers’ trade union, is advocating fiercely on Wickremesinghe’s behalf. Last year, the leader of the CWC was elevated to the position of a cabinet minister by Wickremesinghe’s government, and CWC formed a seat-sharing pact with the UNP (United National Party) aiming to garner votes in the central plantation districts. Maheswarie serves as a local chairwoman for the CWC, although she also continues to work on the plantation. Here in the hill-country region, political parties double as trade unions and vice versa—simultaneously trying to win workers’ votes as well as represent their voices in negotiations with plantations. In May this year, Wickremesinghe promised plantation workers a new wage of LKR 1,700 (US$5.64), a 70% hike from their current wage of LKR 1000 (US$3.32). Plantation companies appealed the wage, and Wickremesinghe’s presidential gazette was found to be unlawful by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Wages Board has now issued a gazette mandating wages of LKR 1,350 (US$4.48) for plantation workers, with an additional productivity incentive of LKR 350 (US$1.16) that requires them to pluck extra kilos. Tea workers, most of whom are part of the Malaiyaha Tamil community—descendants of indentured labourers brought from South India to work on plantations by the British in colonial Ceylon—face a number of challenges including food insecurity, lack of access to educational opportunities, precarious housing, and poor living and working conditions. Maheswarie says the wage increase is positive, but admits that the last wage increase in 2021 led to problems for workers. She says productivity targets increased by 3 kilos at her plantation. Additionally, benefits such as medical care and food provisions were withdrawn or reduced, because the implementation of the new wage led to the collapse of the traditional collective agreement between plantation companies and trade unions. “[As part of the collective agreement], there were a lot of rules and regulations regarding what you should and shouldn’t do with workers,” Maheswarie says. “Now those rules don’t exist. Once we got rid of those rules, it was the companies who [arbitrarily] set the rules. Now that we don’t have the collective agreement, we can’t really go and argue [for more benefits].” Many workers are suspicious of the timing of the wage increase, perceiving it as a political ploy to win their votes in the election. However, Maheswarie is adamant that is not the case and accuses plantation companies of “dragging out” the process to frame the CWC as eking out a wage increase for political gain. Roshan Rajadurai, chairman of the Planters’ Association, which oversees hundreds of plantations in Sri Lanka, said targets would not increase. However, he also said productivity must be improved and that the wage increase was unsustainable. “In Sri Lanka, rationale and reason don’t, unfortunately, apply,” Rajadurai said. He questioned the announcement, saying the plantation sector was being “singled out.” He pointed out that wages for other sectors were not being increased. “We have to agree on something we can [actually] pay,” Rajadurai added. “If they [politicians] did everything they promised, Sri Lanka would be better than Singapore.” He refuted Maheswarie’s claim that benefits were being reduced for workers, saying welfare had actually been increased and that it was in the plantations’ best interests to look after their workers. According to Sri Lanka’s Tea Board, the industry contributed USD 1.26 billion to the Sri Lankan economy in 2022. However, plantation workers were severely hit by the crisis, with many struggling to afford basic necessities. “The election is coming, right? So they likely thought we’d only vote for them if they increased our salaries,” says Santhiappillai Mary, who works at the Loolecondera estate, a state-owned plantation in Kandy District, famously colonial Ceylon’s first tea estate. Mary is unmoved by Loolecondera's storied history. She shares that the plantation makes multiple deductions from workers’ salaries, including small amounts for the work cards they register their picked tea leaf kilograms on and, until recently, for their payslips. She has taken out multiple loans by now and is berated by the companies involved when she cannot pay. She often goes to work even when she is sick or it is raining heavily—simply because she cannot afford to miss a day of pay. “We have to take two meals to work, but sometimes, if I take two meals, my children don’t have enough food to eat at home,” Mary says. “So, I just take one meal and go. And sometimes I don’t take anything at all, because the children need food in the evening. I’ve done that, too.” Santhiappillai Mary, courtesy of Udara Pathum Such dire straits also affect access to free public services. In 2022, Mary’s oldest son had to drop out of school. After her family could not afford the bus fare to school, he was not permitted to advance to the next grade alongside his peers. In Agarapatana, local trade union leaders who were part of the National Union of Workers (NUW) are also not totally convinced by the wage increase. NUW has thrown its support behind presidential hopeful Sajith Premadasa, who has promised to turn estate workers into smallholders and increase their pay. “We can’t be sure we’re going to get the new wage,” said Dayalan Ravichandran, adding that he was surprised to see that he received the same salary in June even after Wickremesinghe promised a higher wage. “They say they’ve agreed to it, but it’s not definite yet. We don’t know if they’re just doing it because of the election.” One estate trade union leader said people’s votes were often won with alcohol, even within her own party. “The people in the party give alcohol to the chairmen and tell them to give it to the men,” she said, adding that the women were struggling without basic facilities. “The chairmen give alcohol to the men and tell them to vote for the party.” But perhaps the larger question is: Would a wage increase even shift the needle for tea workers? If even universal education—which Sri Lanka cites as a major source of pride in comparison to its South Asian neighbours—can seemingly be revoked for tea workers’ children for want of bus fare, can tea workers reasonably aspire to the end of generational poverty in the hill country? Tea leaves at a plantation in Kandy District, Central Province. Courtesy of Udara Pathum. Workers might be divided in their political preferences but are united on one issue. None of them believe the wage increase—of which proof will only emerge after the election when next month’s pay is given—will be definitive proof of improved conditions. Mary feels that any wage increase is unlikely to be the better prospect it’s touted to be. “If they increase the salary,” she says, “they’ll demand more kilos of tea leaves, so it’s difficult for the workers.” She adds that an increase in salary will also mean an increase in the cost of essentials. “So there’s no point in increasing the salary. However much we get, it’s not enough.” This linkage of wage increases to required increases in productivity demands is the root of tea workers’ misgivings about their financial future: indeed, a wage increase may well be thought of as an excuse for the extraction of surplus labour that exceeds the limits of bodily labour. Mahendran, 49, also a worker at Loolecondera, says his family often goes hungry for five or six days every month. He, too, believes estates will increase productivity targets in response to the wage increase, adding that workers “can’t work any more than this.” Rajadurai, the Planters’ Association chair, disagrees. “People are not willing to increase their productivity. Our productivity is the lowest in the world,” he says, comparing expectations for tea pluckers in Sri Lanka favourably to Assam, where he claims tea pluckers have to pluck far more. He argues that pluckers should be able to pluck 1 kilo in 12 minutes.“If they want to earn, they earn.” Pluckers, he says, “should not get into the mindset that 18 is an impossible target.” When informed that tea pluckers said they had a daily target of 13 kilograms before the 2021 wage increase, Rajadurai told SAAG: “What are they doing plucking 13 kilos for the whole day? It’s absurd.” If estates and plantation companies increase productivity targets with wage increases, the much-touted increase can arguably be equated not just to an effective wage stagnation but also a more significant risk to the lives and bodies of tea workers and their families. The firm productivity targets tied to the 2021 wage increase demonstrably taxed workers with less flexibility than before. Many workers say the work was harder after the wage increase. Maheswarie says that estates no longer weed the tea bushes properly. Instead, they expect workers to do so and then pluck 18 kilograms on top of that. Ramalingam Priyadharshini, 42, a tea plucker from Agarapatana, is still undecided about who to vote for. She’s been let down in the past by promises to fix the roads in her area and to build housing. Currently, her family has no toilet. Priyadharshini has to use the toilet at her mother’s house, a ten-minute walk away. At night, or in an emergency, she has to ask her neighbours if she can use theirs. “I’m wondering whether I should just not vote at all because our main problem is the road. But it’s only during election time that they come and say they’ll do everything for us,” says Ramalingam. Her mother, Palanimurthy Jeyam, is a retired tea plucker who plans to spoil her ballot after years of involvement with CWC as a local chairwoman. “The current government is only doing everything for the rich,” she says angrily. “But they’re letting the hungry people go hungry and die.” Mary also says she doesn’t feel hopeful that anything will change. Meanwhile, Priyadharshini argues that the state only really thinks of plantation workers when election campaigns are underway, a sentiment that brings to the fore the historical trend, since independence, of Sri Lankan political parties jockeying for power during election campaigns by promising welfare services like food subsidies and wage increases. Indeed, tomorrow’s election may well show the risk of taking plantation workers’ votes for granted—or their successful co-optation by trade unions.∎ Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. “Let’s say a small child of around five years old is sick,” says Subramaniam Maheswarie, a 47-year-old tea plucker from Bogawantalawa in the Nuwara Eliya district of Sri Lanka’s Central Province. “We have to look after it and give it medicine.” The sick child Maheswarie is referring to is Sri Lanka: a nation on the slow road to recovery from a devastating economic crisis that led to shortages of food and fuel, and saw costs of living soar. The doctor who nursed the child is Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president who took the reins from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from office after months of protests. Wickremesinghe is attempting to hold onto power after two years in office as the country gears up for a presidential election tomorrow, 21st September, the first since the crisis. Such conditions are ripe for the playing out of patronage politics. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the largest plantation workers’ trade union, is advocating fiercely on Wickremesinghe’s behalf. Last year, the leader of the CWC was elevated to the position of a cabinet minister by Wickremesinghe’s government, and CWC formed a seat-sharing pact with the UNP (United National Party) aiming to garner votes in the central plantation districts. Maheswarie serves as a local chairwoman for the CWC, although she also continues to work on the plantation. Here in the hill-country region, political parties double as trade unions and vice versa—simultaneously trying to win workers’ votes as well as represent their voices in negotiations with plantations. In May this year, Wickremesinghe promised plantation workers a new wage of LKR 1,700 (US$5.64), a 70% hike from their current wage of LKR 1000 (US$3.32). Plantation companies appealed the wage, and Wickremesinghe’s presidential gazette was found to be unlawful by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Wages Board has now issued a gazette mandating wages of LKR 1,350 (US$4.48) for plantation workers, with an additional productivity incentive of LKR 350 (US$1.16) that requires them to pluck extra kilos. Tea workers, most of whom are part of the Malaiyaha Tamil community—descendants of indentured labourers brought from South India to work on plantations by the British in colonial Ceylon—face a number of challenges including food insecurity, lack of access to educational opportunities, precarious housing, and poor living and working conditions. Maheswarie says the wage increase is positive, but admits that the last wage increase in 2021 led to problems for workers. She says productivity targets increased by 3 kilos at her plantation. Additionally, benefits such as medical care and food provisions were withdrawn or reduced, because the implementation of the new wage led to the collapse of the traditional collective agreement between plantation companies and trade unions. “[As part of the collective agreement], there were a lot of rules and regulations regarding what you should and shouldn’t do with workers,” Maheswarie says. “Now those rules don’t exist. Once we got rid of those rules, it was the companies who [arbitrarily] set the rules. Now that we don’t have the collective agreement, we can’t really go and argue [for more benefits].” Many workers are suspicious of the timing of the wage increase, perceiving it as a political ploy to win their votes in the election. However, Maheswarie is adamant that is not the case and accuses plantation companies of “dragging out” the process to frame the CWC as eking out a wage increase for political gain. Roshan Rajadurai, chairman of the Planters’ Association, which oversees hundreds of plantations in Sri Lanka, said targets would not increase. However, he also said productivity must be improved and that the wage increase was unsustainable. “In Sri Lanka, rationale and reason don’t, unfortunately, apply,” Rajadurai said. He questioned the announcement, saying the plantation sector was being “singled out.” He pointed out that wages for other sectors were not being increased. “We have to agree on something we can [actually] pay,” Rajadurai added. “If they [politicians] did everything they promised, Sri Lanka would be better than Singapore.” He refuted Maheswarie’s claim that benefits were being reduced for workers, saying welfare had actually been increased and that it was in the plantations’ best interests to look after their workers. According to Sri Lanka’s Tea Board, the industry contributed USD 1.26 billion to the Sri Lankan economy in 2022. However, plantation workers were severely hit by the crisis, with many struggling to afford basic necessities. “The election is coming, right? So they likely thought we’d only vote for them if they increased our salaries,” says Santhiappillai Mary, who works at the Loolecondera estate, a state-owned plantation in Kandy District, famously colonial Ceylon’s first tea estate. Mary is unmoved by Loolecondera's storied history. She shares that the plantation makes multiple deductions from workers’ salaries, including small amounts for the work cards they register their picked tea leaf kilograms on and, until recently, for their payslips. She has taken out multiple loans by now and is berated by the companies involved when she cannot pay. She often goes to work even when she is sick or it is raining heavily—simply because she cannot afford to miss a day of pay. “We have to take two meals to work, but sometimes, if I take two meals, my children don’t have enough food to eat at home,” Mary says. “So, I just take one meal and go. And sometimes I don’t take anything at all, because the children need food in the evening. I’ve done that, too.” Santhiappillai Mary, courtesy of Udara Pathum Such dire straits also affect access to free public services. In 2022, Mary’s oldest son had to drop out of school. After her family could not afford the bus fare to school, he was not permitted to advance to the next grade alongside his peers. In Agarapatana, local trade union leaders who were part of the National Union of Workers (NUW) are also not totally convinced by the wage increase. NUW has thrown its support behind presidential hopeful Sajith Premadasa, who has promised to turn estate workers into smallholders and increase their pay. “We can’t be sure we’re going to get the new wage,” said Dayalan Ravichandran, adding that he was surprised to see that he received the same salary in June even after Wickremesinghe promised a higher wage. “They say they’ve agreed to it, but it’s not definite yet. We don’t know if they’re just doing it because of the election.” One estate trade union leader said people’s votes were often won with alcohol, even within her own party. “The people in the party give alcohol to the chairmen and tell them to give it to the men,” she said, adding that the women were struggling without basic facilities. “The chairmen give alcohol to the men and tell them to vote for the party.” But perhaps the larger question is: Would a wage increase even shift the needle for tea workers? If even universal education—which Sri Lanka cites as a major source of pride in comparison to its South Asian neighbours—can seemingly be revoked for tea workers’ children for want of bus fare, can tea workers reasonably aspire to the end of generational poverty in the hill country? Tea leaves at a plantation in Kandy District, Central Province. Courtesy of Udara Pathum. Workers might be divided in their political preferences but are united on one issue. None of them believe the wage increase—of which proof will only emerge after the election when next month’s pay is given—will be definitive proof of improved conditions. Mary feels that any wage increase is unlikely to be the better prospect it’s touted to be. “If they increase the salary,” she says, “they’ll demand more kilos of tea leaves, so it’s difficult for the workers.” She adds that an increase in salary will also mean an increase in the cost of essentials. “So there’s no point in increasing the salary. However much we get, it’s not enough.” This linkage of wage increases to required increases in productivity demands is the root of tea workers’ misgivings about their financial future: indeed, a wage increase may well be thought of as an excuse for the extraction of surplus labour that exceeds the limits of bodily labour. Mahendran, 49, also a worker at Loolecondera, says his family often goes hungry for five or six days every month. He, too, believes estates will increase productivity targets in response to the wage increase, adding that workers “can’t work any more than this.” Rajadurai, the Planters’ Association chair, disagrees. “People are not willing to increase their productivity. Our productivity is the lowest in the world,” he says, comparing expectations for tea pluckers in Sri Lanka favourably to Assam, where he claims tea pluckers have to pluck far more. He argues that pluckers should be able to pluck 1 kilo in 12 minutes.“If they want to earn, they earn.” Pluckers, he says, “should not get into the mindset that 18 is an impossible target.” When informed that tea pluckers said they had a daily target of 13 kilograms before the 2021 wage increase, Rajadurai told SAAG: “What are they doing plucking 13 kilos for the whole day? It’s absurd.” If estates and plantation companies increase productivity targets with wage increases, the much-touted increase can arguably be equated not just to an effective wage stagnation but also a more significant risk to the lives and bodies of tea workers and their families. The firm productivity targets tied to the 2021 wage increase demonstrably taxed workers with less flexibility than before. Many workers say the work was harder after the wage increase. Maheswarie says that estates no longer weed the tea bushes properly. Instead, they expect workers to do so and then pluck 18 kilograms on top of that. Ramalingam Priyadharshini, 42, a tea plucker from Agarapatana, is still undecided about who to vote for. She’s been let down in the past by promises to fix the roads in her area and to build housing. Currently, her family has no toilet. Priyadharshini has to use the toilet at her mother’s house, a ten-minute walk away. At night, or in an emergency, she has to ask her neighbours if she can use theirs. “I’m wondering whether I should just not vote at all because our main problem is the road. But it’s only during election time that they come and say they’ll do everything for us,” says Ramalingam. Her mother, Palanimurthy Jeyam, is a retired tea plucker who plans to spoil her ballot after years of involvement with CWC as a local chairwoman. “The current government is only doing everything for the rich,” she says angrily. “But they’re letting the hungry people go hungry and die.” Mary also says she doesn’t feel hopeful that anything will change. Meanwhile, Priyadharshini argues that the state only really thinks of plantation workers when election campaigns are underway, a sentiment that brings to the fore the historical trend, since independence, of Sri Lankan political parties jockeying for power during election campaigns by promising welfare services like food subsidies and wage increases. Indeed, tomorrow’s election may well show the risk of taking plantation workers’ votes for granted—or their successful co-optation by trade unions.∎ Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Clare Patrick (Our) Worlds and (Plant) Wisdoms Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase “Into tea forest I,” 2024. Pen and tea stain on brown board, 91.4cm x 121.9cm, part of a triptych. Courtesy of Arulraj Ulaganathan. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Dispatch Sri Lanka Plantation Workers Tea Estates Ceylon Workers Congress Ranil Wickremasinghe UNP Central Province Malaiyaha Tamil Community Indentured Labor Agricultural Labor Agriculture Plantations Labor Wage Labor Wages Political Agendas Patronage Politics Clientelism Surplus Value Productivity Demands Production Planters’ Association Political Economy Loolecondera Kandy District Nuwara Eliya District Political Parties False Promises Effective Wage Stagnation JEEVAN RAVINDRAN is a multimedia journalist based in Jaffna and London, with bylines in VICE , Reuters , CNN, and more. She reports on human rights and politics. 20 Sept 2024 Dispatch Sri Lanka 20th Sep 2024 ARULRAJ ULAGANATHAN is a member of the Malaiyaga Tamil tea plantation worker community, and an artist. His work has previously been exhibited at the JDA Perera Gallery, the Kochi Muziris Student Biennale, and Colomboscope. His most recent solo exhibition, "A Life in Tea" at Barefoot Gallery Colombo, combines elements from the tea estates, such as name cards, tea pruning knives, and bruised feet. Sinking the Body Politic Dipanjan Sinha 24th Aug The Uneasy Dreamscape of Katchatheevu Jeevan Ravindran 16th Jun Whiplash and Contradiction in Sri Lanka’s aragalaya Harshana Rambukwella 27th Feb India's Vector Capitalism Model Anumeha Yadav 5th Jun Chats Ep. 7 · Karti Dharti, Gender & India's Farmers Movement Sangeet Toor 29th Apr On That Note:

Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. | · THE VERTICAL Letter · Balochistan Letter to History (I) Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. Iman Iftikhar Mahrang (2025) Digital Illustration Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination New Voices Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur 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. 3rd Apr 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. THE VERTICAL Letter to History (I) Hazaran Rahim Dad Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Iman Iftikhar Mahrang (2025) Digital Illustration SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination New Voices Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur HAZARAN RAHIM DAD is an MPhil scholar in English Literature and a feature-story writer. Her work primarily explores the experiences of Baloch people in war, violence, and socio-political struggles in Pakistan. Letter Balochistan 3rd Apr 2025 IMAN IFTIKHAR is a political theorist, historian, and amateur oil painter and illustrator. She is an editor for Folio Books and a returning fellow at Kitab Ghar Lahore. She is based in Oxford and Lahore. On That Note: Letter to History (II) 9th APR Dissipated Self-Determination 26th MAR Who is Next? 5th MAR

Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. THE VERTICAL Letter to History (I) AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination New Voices Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur 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. DISPATCH Letter Balochistan 3rd Apr 2025 Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. THE VERTICAL Letter to History (I) Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. VOL. 2 LETTER AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Iman Iftikhar Mahrang (2025) Digital Illustration ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Iman Iftikhar Mahrang (2025) Digital Illustration SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Letter Balochistan 3rd Apr 2025 Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination New Voices Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur 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. Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ 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

Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. THE VERTICAL Letter to History (I) Pakistan continues to terrorize activists, young and old, for protesting the enforced disappearances of their brothers, sisters, and forefathers—losses the Baloch people are never truly allowed to mourn. In a letter addressed to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a public intellectual who has devoted the past 54 years of his life to the Baloch liberation struggle, a young Baloch journalist seeks reprieve from a fate that seems increasingly inevitable, hoping to transform her grief into revolutionary fervor. Hazaran Rahim Dad Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ Editor’s Note: Sammi Deen Baloch was released by Pakistani authorities on April 1, a few days after this letter was first written. Dear Ustad Talpur, Baba Jan, you have watched generations disappear into dust. You know that time is a deceiver, that history is nothing but a long repetition of grief. Baba Jan, you have poured hope into a land that devours it. And still, you stand unshaken. I am writing to you without clarity about the purpose of my words. Perhaps, in times like these—when the sky is thick with grief, when silence is louder than gunfire, when even breathing feels like an act of defiance—writing is the only rebellion left. Or maybe it’s futile, a whisper against a storm, a candle in the abyss. How do I put into words a war, as they like to call it, which is just an unbroken cycle of operations to erase our very existence? I’ve been thinking about how adulthood is merely the accumulation of grief we carry and bury. And childhood, a baptism in violence. So, I write––tracing the outlines of our pain with ink, carving our memory into words. When bullets meet our bodies, do they make the same sound as the shackles that screeched against our land when they dragged Mahrang and Sammi? The leaders who carried the weight of history on their shoulders, who held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, who turned the grief of generations into fire. Mahrang and Sammi, who taught the Baloch they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed. On March 21, 13-year-old Naimat was shot . Then a disabled man, Bebarg, was dragged from his home and disappeared. Tell me, Baba Jan, how do we live through this time, where a child’s heart is not enough to satiate the state's insatiable hunger for spilling Baloch blood? What kind of state fears a crippled man’s voice? And what is more tragic than little Kambar? A child who once held a poster of his missing father, Chairman Zahid, and now, eleven years later, in the same cursed month of March, clutches another picture. This time it is his uncle Shah Jan who has been stolen by the same hands—a state that ensures no Baloch child feels fatherly love, that makes Baloch men disposable. Tell me, Baba Jan, does history ever grow weary of itself? Or will this violence continue to carve itself into our bones? Baba Jan, Balochistan stands at a precipice again. In the past two decades, they have buried entire generations, making mourning a permanent state of our existence. And today, the storm rages once more. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The arrests. The stifling of resistance. Dr. Mahrang Baloch taken under fabricated charges. The roads are flooding with protesters, repeating the same chant once more: Tum Marogy, Hum Niklengy . Our streets heard the same words when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was martyred. When the state unleashed its bloodied military crackdown in 2009. When Karima’s voice—one of the fiercest of our time—was silenced under the most sinister of circumstances. We chanted our pain into resistance. And today, we find ourselves trapped in the same cycle, bracing for what the state has yet to unleash. This is why I write to you, Baba Jan—not just as a thinker, but as a witness to history itself. Who else but you can grasp the chaos that takes root in the minds of the Baloch when faced with such devastation? When conscious, educated youth find themselves at a crossroads, they can only turn to history for answers. But in our case, history does not reside in books—it resides with you. You who saw the flames of 2006 and 2009. You who watched as mass graves were unearthed in 2014. You who lived through the fear and silence that followed Karima’s assassination in 2020. And now, new voices have risen—heirs to those who were brutally taken from us—only to face the same violence, the same retribution. Mahrang and Sammi, whose voices once echoed through the streets, are now being held in cells. A process of erasure perfected over decades. The Baloch lose another voice. And the bloodshed continues. Mothers become wombless. Wives become widows. Fathers become ghosts. Sons search for fathers. Fathers search for sons. And now, mothers search for daughters. Tell me, Baba Jan, what is the state preparing to do next? Will it follow the same script, crushing these voices as it did with the Baloch political leadership before? What consequences will this new wave of repression bring, especially at a time when the armed struggle has only grown stronger? Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor? Can we still hope that the so-called civilized world will intervene before more of our people are swallowed by this unrelenting state brutality? Or will the detention of women be normalized too? I am worried that the state is now seeking to terrify young Baloch girls who stand firm despite the leadership’s arrest. It seems as if the state is entering a new phase of oppression, sending a message to Baloch women who dare to defy: Beware. Stand down. Who will stand with us? I am writing to you for hope. I am writing to you for answers. Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced? Signed, A young Baloch writer and journalist∎ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Clare Patrick (Our) Worlds and (Plant) Wisdoms Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Iman Iftikhar Mahrang (2025) Digital Illustration SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination New Voices Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur HAZARAN RAHIM DAD is an MPhil scholar in English Literature and a feature-story writer. Her work primarily explores the experiences of Baloch people in war, violence, and socio-political struggles in Pakistan. 3 Apr 2025 Letter Balochistan 3rd Apr 2025 IMAN IFTIKHAR is a political theorist, historian, and amateur oil painter and illustrator. She is an editor for Folio Books and a returning fellow at Kitab Ghar Lahore. She is based in Oxford and Lahore. To Posterity Paweł Wargan 30th Apr Letter to History (II) Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur 9th Apr Dissipated Self-Determination Zahra Yarali 26th Mar Who is Next? Noor Bakhsh · Qasum Faraz · Sajid Hussain 5th Mar Lima's Forsaken Jack Dodson 18th Nov On That Note:

In this letter, Ustad Mohammad Ali Talpur responds to Hazaran Baloch, tracing the moral and political stakes of remembrance and resistance in the Baloch struggle. He foregrounds the legacy of the Baloch nation, where mourning and honoring martyrs binds generations, and encourages his pupil to trust in the unflinching nature and will of the Baloch people—traits that have triumphed in the face of 77 years of injustice. | · THE VERTICAL Letter · Balochistan Letter to History (II) In this letter, Ustad Mohammad Ali Talpur responds to Hazaran Baloch, tracing the moral and political stakes of remembrance and resistance in the Baloch struggle. He foregrounds the legacy of the Baloch nation, where mourning and honoring martyrs binds generations, and encourages his pupil to trust in the unflinching nature and will of the Baloch people—traits that have triumphed in the face of 77 years of injustice. Iman Iftikhar Talpur Sahab (2025) Digital Illustration My Dearest Daughter, Hazaran, Your anguished letter made me cry tears of rage, anger, and sadness. They cut deeper into the scars that remain on my soul after witnessing the suffering of our people for over half a century. Having lost so many of my friends and former students, I wonder if these wounds will ever heal. I remember Lawang Khan , seventy years old, who died defending his village in 1973. I remember Ali Mohammad Mengal , a veteran from 1960. I remember Safar Khan Zarakzai who, when surrounded and asked to surrender, replied: This is my land; I will defend it with my life. He died fighting. Etched on my soul are the enforced disappearances of my dearest friends, Duleep Dass “Dali” and Sher Ali Marri, in the spring of 1976. Dali nursed me back to health when I lay injured in the mountains. Etched, too, is the suffering of Baloch families I witnessed living as refugees in Afghanistan—only to be identified as terrorists upon their return. So many unsung heroes, so many disappeared without a trace, so many lives uprooted. They found no peace, neither in exile, nor upon return. My spiritual association with the Baloch struggle began on 15 July 1960, when Nawab Nauroz Khan’s son, Batay Khan, along with six companions––Sabzal Khan Zehri, Bahawal Khan Musiyani, Wali Muhammad Zarakzai, Ghulam Rasool Nichari, Masti Khan Musiyani, and Jamal Khan Zehri—were executed after the state broke its promise of amnesty. Four were hanged in Hyderabad Jail. Three, including Batay Khan, in Sukkur Jail. It was my uncle, Mir Rasool Bakhsh Talpur, who claimed their bodies, performed the funeral rites, and brought them to Kalat. On 21 October 1971, I left home and joined the armed struggle in the Marri hills. I was fuelled by rage. You ask what bullets sound like when they tear through our bodies. I thought of the twenty-seven fired into Sangat Sana , the three that pierced Jalil Reki ’s heart, the one that struck Ali Sher Kurd ’s forehead. Those martyrs may not have heard them, but those sounds echo in the soul of every Baloch who loves the motherland. You mention the screeching chains as they dragged my precious Mahrang away, shamelessly calling it arrest; her sarri/سری/chador trampled by those abducting her. You ask me about the thunder that must have shaken the heavens when my dearest Sammi’s سری was snatched from her head to dehumanize and humiliate her. All this and more is forever seared into me. Let me tell you what a sarri means to the Baloch. Fights cease when our women, with sarris in hand, come in-between. The Baloch say: the sarri is sacred. Our poet Atta Shad said that in return for a bowl of water, we give a hundred years of loyalty. I wish he had also said that the desecration of the sarri is never forgiven. Not in a thousand generations. It was difficult when I first joined the struggle. Despite the pain, however, there was also the belief that eventual victory would come. I, too, closed the door of hopelessness because I knew we were sowing seeds that would one day grow into trees—providing shade and fruit to all. When Banuk Karima was taken from us, it left the nation mourning. Her death created a void which seemed impossible to fill. Then came Mahrang, Sammi, Sabiha, Beebow, and hundreds more. Karima lit a fire in the hearts of Baloch women to participate in the national struggle––she embodied the wisdom and courage I see in all of you. When asked what Banuk Karima meant to Balochistan and its struggle, I replied: Karima is the conscience and the consciousness of the Baloch Nation . You ask me about little Kambar, Zahid’s son, who has lost another father this cursed March. I cannot send him words of consolation; they would be meaningless. But I want him to know that this isn’t his injustice to bear alone. The Baloch Nation will remember. You ask me about the state’s inhumanity toward Bebarg, who lives his life as a paraplegic. Why does the state fear a person who is unable to walk? It fears his voice. That is how the state maintains control: by repressing Baloch voices. My dearest child, it is of utmost importance to understand the essence of this state. It is by nature predatory and extractive––it cannot expand without exploiting us and our words, which refuse to submit to its evil design. We should not expect humanity or compassion from political parties integral to the establishment. They work for each other and protect their own interests. All pillars of the state are complicit. And in general, the silence of society is deafening too. The state will continue repressing us. What we do in response is our responsibility. Our only avenue is resistance. If we give it up, repression will be manifold, as docile people are an easier target. You rightly stated that Mahrang and Sammi taught the Baloch that they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed—and for that, they are considered the greatest threat and have been jailed. You are rightly worried about the fact that the new voices of our movement are now in jail cells, and that the state is trying to terrify young girls from treading the path that Karima, Mahrang, and Sammi chose. I feel it is important to understand how our Baloch Nation has responded to this unending crisis. Today, on the streets of Balochistan, girls—some as young as five years old—are carrying pictures of Karima, Mahrang, and Sammi. They are not merely holding their images; they picture themselves as these icons, and that is where our hope lies. For tomorrow, there will be Karimas, Mahrangs, Sammis, Sabihas, and Beebows in the millions. No power on earth will be able to stop them. I am not waiting for that tomorrow—it has already begun. The bastions of tyranny are crumbling, and that is why repression has multiplied and spread. That is why Mahrang and Sammi have been imprisoned. And while this violence will continue, it cannot subdue our spirits. “ Pakistan Zindabad ” was knifed onto the bodies of those Baloch who were extrajudicially killed. Their eyes gouged, their bodies drilled. Did the resistance vaporize and vanish? No. During the 2013 Long March by Mama Qadeer Baloch, Farzana Majeed, and others, faces were covered to avoid recognition. Today, thousands come out fearlessly to protest. The Baloch Nation has become fearless. The only history with a limited shelf life is that of the oppressor. Our history is ineradicable and can only flourish—for victory is our destiny. You ask if writing is futile. No, my dearest daughter, writing is our weapon. And it is a weapon that terrifies the oppressor because the word of freedom is sacred—it enlightens and motivates. Why do they seize books Baloch put up at book fairs? Writing challenges their phony and misleading discourse. Keep writing. You are empowering the Baloch narrative and preserving the history of Baloch resistance—a history long subjected to suppression. Writing strikes fear into the hearts and minds of oppressors in a way that no other weapon can. While other weapons bring only death and destruction, writing gives life—and that is why they fear words so deeply. Future generations will thank you and honor you for your words. You also ask, “Who will stand with us?’ and “Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor?” My respected daughter, I believe that unity arises from two sources: either from the pain people share, or from a collective consciousness shaped by shared aspirations, history, and naturally, pain. Expecting support from those who believe in the narratives taught in Pakistan Studies is futile. And yes, do not expect the world to come to our aid—it has allowed Israel to do whatever it pleases to the Palestinians. The people may raise their voices, but governments will remain silent—because speaking up would endanger the very systems of brutality and exploitation they rely on. Merely being oppressed does not automatically give someone the consciousness to feel the pain of others or to support them. There are millions of oppressed people here, but support cannot be expected from them in the same way it can be from those who share our collective pain. To obstruct the path of collective consciousness, the state abducts students, blocks book fairs, and systematically neglects the education sector—ensuring that not many Baloch become educated. This denial of education is a key part of a calculated policy of erasure. Through their indiscriminate repression, however, they are unknowingly forging our collective consciousness. This will be the very reason for their downfall. You have talked about our mourning and grief over the years and how it continues. Yes, when there is death, there is grief and mourning—but it has not only been that. When my dearest friend Raza Jehangir was killed on 14 August 2013 by the state, we honored his death. His brave mother led the funeral and they sang a lullaby: Raza jan is little (child) and innocent, joyfully asleep in the decorated cradle. Joyfully asleep in the decorated cradle, sapient (learned men) are his forefathers. Then there is the incredible picture of the wife of Banzay Pirdadani Marri, who stands at the graves of her two sons, Mohammad Khan and Mohammad Nabi, draped in the flag that symbolizes a free Balochistan. They were killed on the same day and their bodies thrown on the roadside. I treated the two boys once, when they were very young and sick. When they grew up, I taught them at the school I managed for our refugee children in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan. How could my soul feel peace after their death? Yet I know that despite the depth of pain caused by the loss and disappearance of loved ones, the Baloch have mourned with grace and dignity. They cannot be accused of selling their grief. Those in power have offered compensation to the families of the disappeared, but these offers have always been firmly rejected. In the end, you ask, “Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced?” This storm—or the ones that came before—could not erase us, nor replace us, and neither will the ones that may come in the future. Why do I say this? Because the storm that came on 27 March 1948 could not erase us. Then came another in October 1958 , which led to the resistance of Nawab Nauroz Khan. He was promised amnesty on the oath of the Quran, yet on a single day—15 July 1960—six of his companions and one of his sons were hanged. Some believed it was the end of the resistance. But did it end? No. Babu Sher Mohammad Marri and Ali Mohammad Mengal stood their ground and kept the resistance alive. Peace was made in 1970, but provocations remained. So emerged the 1973–1977 insurgency to resist repression. In September 1974 , when some Marris in Chamaling surrendered under assault by gunships, the state claimed that the core of the resistance had been broken. But had it? No—because the fighting continued until 1977. That was not the end. The Marris who took refuge in Afghanistan did not return when the Zia regime offered them amnesty . Despite the hardships of life as refugees, they stayed. Khair Bakhsh Marri joined them in 1982. He remained there for nearly a decade. That act of defiance kept the spirit of the resistance alive back home. A period of apparent dormancy followed, from 1993 to 2000. But beneath the surface, resentment simmered and political awareness grew. Matters came to a head when Khair Bakhsh Marri was arrested on fabricated charges in 2000 and kept in jail for two years. That moment reignited the resistance. Then came a turning point: the killing of Akbar Bugti on 26 August 2006. Like the 1973–1977 insurgency, the fight spread across Balochistan—it has not ended. Since 2000, the Baloch have faced the severest repression. Every brutal tool at the state's disposal has been used. Our academics, such as Saba Dashtyari and Zahid Askani , have been killed; our political activists have been murdered or disappeared; our journalists have been silenced; our poets have been targeted; and our students have been abducted. And now, even our women have been incarcerated. Yet, the resistance lives on—it refuses to die. It survives because it is an expression of the people's most cherished dream. The Baloch are a resilient nation and do not give up what they hold dear—and what they hold dearest are dignity and freedom. It is no coincidence that the Baloch call their motherland Gul Zameen—Land of Flowers. As they say, Waye watan hushkain dar —I love my land even if it is like a withered twig. There is something vital that must be said. Something that has long been the bane of the Baloch Nation. Those soul-selling Baloch who have collaborated with the establishment, aiding in the suppression of Baloch rights and enabling crimes against their own people. There is an indigenous Native American fable: the birds complained of being killed by arrows, and the response was, “Were it not for the feathers of birds in the arrows, you would be safe.” Our suffering, too, would have been less had some Baloch not provided the feathers for those arrows. Let me tell you something: if brutal crackdowns and military operations could suppress a people's desire for national, political, social, and economic rights, then Algeria would still be a French colony. The French were ruthless and unforgiving. They picked people up, held them in custody, and tortured them for as long as they pleased. Yet in the end, they had to pack up and leave. The resistance, and the will of the people, could not be broken. It is said the French “won” the Battle of Algiers in 1957 by crushing the FLN in the city, but they lost the war in 1960 when the Algerian people rose up together, showing the futility of repression. Repression eventually breeds fearlessness. It compels people to abandon concern for their own safety. And here, they haven’t even won the Battle of Quetta—yet they have already lost Balochistan by irreversibly alienating the Baloch Nation. We can—and must—learn from the Palestinians, who, like us, have endured physical, economic, cultural, and geographic assaults—a systematic genocide since 1948. Yet they have never surrendered. Especially in Gaza, where since October 2023 , genocide has reached a brutal peak. Gaza has been flattened. Hospitals bombed, medical staff killed, famine imposed through a blockade of food and water. Over 60,000 people—seventy percent of them women and children—have been killed . And yet, the people of Gaza have not broken. Gaza may be a narrow strip of land, but despite the backing of powerful Western nations, Israel has failed to crush the spirit of the Gazans. Balochistan is vast. If Gaza has not been broken, then neither can we. In the end, my very precious child, I will say this: Tum maroge, hum niklenge —you will kill us, we will rise. This is not an empty phrase. It is how the Baloch have faced oppression for generations. If it were hollow, the resistance would not have persisted and grown stronger over the past seventy-seven years. It is true that a terrible price has been paid—in blood, in tears, in lost generations. But it is also the reason we have survived. We endure as a dignified nation, seeking a life of freedom and honor, and our will to resist not only endures—it flourishes. Today, I see you all protesting against state oppression, as bravely and wisely as Karima did, and I know this is why hopelessness is not an option for us. Hope is the fruit of the seeds Banuk Karima and other Baloch revolutionaries sowed in the soil of Balochistan. And so, with the accumulation of grief in adulthood, we also inherit seventy-seven years of the history of Baloch resistance, which, in spite of its traumatic chapters, is an inheritance of revolutionary hope for a free Balochistan. Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur Hyderabad 5 April 2025 ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Martyr Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Mahrang Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression State Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur Sarri Sacred 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. 9th Apr 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

In this letter, Ustad Mohammad Ali Talpur responds to Hazaran Baloch, tracing the moral and political stakes of remembrance and resistance in the Baloch struggle. He foregrounds the legacy of the Baloch nation, where mourning and honoring martyrs binds generations, and encourages his pupil to trust in the unflinching nature and will of the Baloch people—traits that have triumphed in the face of 77 years of injustice. THE VERTICAL Letter to History (II) Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur In this letter, Ustad Mohammad Ali Talpur responds to Hazaran Baloch, tracing the moral and political stakes of remembrance and resistance in the Baloch struggle. He foregrounds the legacy of the Baloch nation, where mourning and honoring martyrs binds generations, and encourages his pupil to trust in the unflinching nature and will of the Baloch people—traits that have triumphed in the face of 77 years of injustice. My Dearest Daughter, Hazaran, Your anguished letter made me cry tears of rage, anger, and sadness. They cut deeper into the scars that remain on my soul after witnessing the suffering of our people for over half a century. Having lost so many of my friends and former students, I wonder if these wounds will ever heal. I remember Lawang Khan , seventy years old, who died defending his village in 1973. I remember Ali Mohammad Mengal , a veteran from 1960. I remember Safar Khan Zarakzai who, when surrounded and asked to surrender, replied: This is my land; I will defend it with my life. He died fighting. Etched on my soul are the enforced disappearances of my dearest friends, Duleep Dass “Dali” and Sher Ali Marri, in the spring of 1976. Dali nursed me back to health when I lay injured in the mountains. Etched, too, is the suffering of Baloch families I witnessed living as refugees in Afghanistan—only to be identified as terrorists upon their return. So many unsung heroes, so many disappeared without a trace, so many lives uprooted. They found no peace, neither in exile, nor upon return. My spiritual association with the Baloch struggle began on 15 July 1960, when Nawab Nauroz Khan’s son, Batay Khan, along with six companions––Sabzal Khan Zehri, Bahawal Khan Musiyani, Wali Muhammad Zarakzai, Ghulam Rasool Nichari, Masti Khan Musiyani, and Jamal Khan Zehri—were executed after the state broke its promise of amnesty. Four were hanged in Hyderabad Jail. Three, including Batay Khan, in Sukkur Jail. It was my uncle, Mir Rasool Bakhsh Talpur, who claimed their bodies, performed the funeral rites, and brought them to Kalat. On 21 October 1971, I left home and joined the armed struggle in the Marri hills. I was fuelled by rage. You ask what bullets sound like when they tear through our bodies. I thought of the twenty-seven fired into Sangat Sana , the three that pierced Jalil Reki ’s heart, the one that struck Ali Sher Kurd ’s forehead. Those martyrs may not have heard them, but those sounds echo in the soul of every Baloch who loves the motherland. You mention the screeching chains as they dragged my precious Mahrang away, shamelessly calling it arrest; her sarri/سری/chador trampled by those abducting her. You ask me about the thunder that must have shaken the heavens when my dearest Sammi’s سری was snatched from her head to dehumanize and humiliate her. All this and more is forever seared into me. Let me tell you what a sarri means to the Baloch. Fights cease when our women, with sarris in hand, come in-between. The Baloch say: the sarri is sacred. Our poet Atta Shad said that in return for a bowl of water, we give a hundred years of loyalty. I wish he had also said that the desecration of the sarri is never forgiven. Not in a thousand generations. It was difficult when I first joined the struggle. Despite the pain, however, there was also the belief that eventual victory would come. I, too, closed the door of hopelessness because I knew we were sowing seeds that would one day grow into trees—providing shade and fruit to all. When Banuk Karima was taken from us, it left the nation mourning. Her death created a void which seemed impossible to fill. Then came Mahrang, Sammi, Sabiha, Beebow, and hundreds more. Karima lit a fire in the hearts of Baloch women to participate in the national struggle––she embodied the wisdom and courage I see in all of you. When asked what Banuk Karima meant to Balochistan and its struggle, I replied: Karima is the conscience and the consciousness of the Baloch Nation . You ask me about little Kambar, Zahid’s son, who has lost another father this cursed March. I cannot send him words of consolation; they would be meaningless. But I want him to know that this isn’t his injustice to bear alone. The Baloch Nation will remember. You ask me about the state’s inhumanity toward Bebarg, who lives his life as a paraplegic. Why does the state fear a person who is unable to walk? It fears his voice. That is how the state maintains control: by repressing Baloch voices. My dearest child, it is of utmost importance to understand the essence of this state. It is by nature predatory and extractive––it cannot expand without exploiting us and our words, which refuse to submit to its evil design. We should not expect humanity or compassion from political parties integral to the establishment. They work for each other and protect their own interests. All pillars of the state are complicit. And in general, the silence of society is deafening too. The state will continue repressing us. What we do in response is our responsibility. Our only avenue is resistance. If we give it up, repression will be manifold, as docile people are an easier target. You rightly stated that Mahrang and Sammi taught the Baloch that they must stop being forever mourners, forever betrayed—and for that, they are considered the greatest threat and have been jailed. You are rightly worried about the fact that the new voices of our movement are now in jail cells, and that the state is trying to terrify young girls from treading the path that Karima, Mahrang, and Sammi chose. I feel it is important to understand how our Baloch Nation has responded to this unending crisis. Today, on the streets of Balochistan, girls—some as young as five years old—are carrying pictures of Karima, Mahrang, and Sammi. They are not merely holding their images; they picture themselves as these icons, and that is where our hope lies. For tomorrow, there will be Karimas, Mahrangs, Sammis, Sabihas, and Beebows in the millions. No power on earth will be able to stop them. I am not waiting for that tomorrow—it has already begun. The bastions of tyranny are crumbling, and that is why repression has multiplied and spread. That is why Mahrang and Sammi have been imprisoned. And while this violence will continue, it cannot subdue our spirits. “ Pakistan Zindabad ” was knifed onto the bodies of those Baloch who were extrajudicially killed. Their eyes gouged, their bodies drilled. Did the resistance vaporize and vanish? No. During the 2013 Long March by Mama Qadeer Baloch, Farzana Majeed, and others, faces were covered to avoid recognition. Today, thousands come out fearlessly to protest. The Baloch Nation has become fearless. The only history with a limited shelf life is that of the oppressor. Our history is ineradicable and can only flourish—for victory is our destiny. You ask if writing is futile. No, my dearest daughter, writing is our weapon. And it is a weapon that terrifies the oppressor because the word of freedom is sacred—it enlightens and motivates. Why do they seize books Baloch put up at book fairs? Writing challenges their phony and misleading discourse. Keep writing. You are empowering the Baloch narrative and preserving the history of Baloch resistance—a history long subjected to suppression. Writing strikes fear into the hearts and minds of oppressors in a way that no other weapon can. While other weapons bring only death and destruction, writing gives life—and that is why they fear words so deeply. Future generations will thank you and honor you for your words. You also ask, “Who will stand with us?’ and “Is it possible that the other oppressed nations of this land will stand with us in defiance of a shared oppressor?” My respected daughter, I believe that unity arises from two sources: either from the pain people share, or from a collective consciousness shaped by shared aspirations, history, and naturally, pain. Expecting support from those who believe in the narratives taught in Pakistan Studies is futile. And yes, do not expect the world to come to our aid—it has allowed Israel to do whatever it pleases to the Palestinians. The people may raise their voices, but governments will remain silent—because speaking up would endanger the very systems of brutality and exploitation they rely on. Merely being oppressed does not automatically give someone the consciousness to feel the pain of others or to support them. There are millions of oppressed people here, but support cannot be expected from them in the same way it can be from those who share our collective pain. To obstruct the path of collective consciousness, the state abducts students, blocks book fairs, and systematically neglects the education sector—ensuring that not many Baloch become educated. This denial of education is a key part of a calculated policy of erasure. Through their indiscriminate repression, however, they are unknowingly forging our collective consciousness. This will be the very reason for their downfall. You have talked about our mourning and grief over the years and how it continues. Yes, when there is death, there is grief and mourning—but it has not only been that. When my dearest friend Raza Jehangir was killed on 14 August 2013 by the state, we honored his death. His brave mother led the funeral and they sang a lullaby: Raza jan is little (child) and innocent, joyfully asleep in the decorated cradle. Joyfully asleep in the decorated cradle, sapient (learned men) are his forefathers. Then there is the incredible picture of the wife of Banzay Pirdadani Marri, who stands at the graves of her two sons, Mohammad Khan and Mohammad Nabi, draped in the flag that symbolizes a free Balochistan. They were killed on the same day and their bodies thrown on the roadside. I treated the two boys once, when they were very young and sick. When they grew up, I taught them at the school I managed for our refugee children in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan. How could my soul feel peace after their death? Yet I know that despite the depth of pain caused by the loss and disappearance of loved ones, the Baloch have mourned with grace and dignity. They cannot be accused of selling their grief. Those in power have offered compensation to the families of the disappeared, but these offers have always been firmly rejected. In the end, you ask, “Tell me, Baba Jan, are we destined to be forever caught in this storm, forever erased, forever replaced?” This storm—or the ones that came before—could not erase us, nor replace us, and neither will the ones that may come in the future. Why do I say this? Because the storm that came on 27 March 1948 could not erase us. Then came another in October 1958 , which led to the resistance of Nawab Nauroz Khan. He was promised amnesty on the oath of the Quran, yet on a single day—15 July 1960—six of his companions and one of his sons were hanged. Some believed it was the end of the resistance. But did it end? No. Babu Sher Mohammad Marri and Ali Mohammad Mengal stood their ground and kept the resistance alive. Peace was made in 1970, but provocations remained. So emerged the 1973–1977 insurgency to resist repression. In September 1974 , when some Marris in Chamaling surrendered under assault by gunships, the state claimed that the core of the resistance had been broken. But had it? No—because the fighting continued until 1977. That was not the end. The Marris who took refuge in Afghanistan did not return when the Zia regime offered them amnesty . Despite the hardships of life as refugees, they stayed. Khair Bakhsh Marri joined them in 1982. He remained there for nearly a decade. That act of defiance kept the spirit of the resistance alive back home. A period of apparent dormancy followed, from 1993 to 2000. But beneath the surface, resentment simmered and political awareness grew. Matters came to a head when Khair Bakhsh Marri was arrested on fabricated charges in 2000 and kept in jail for two years. That moment reignited the resistance. Then came a turning point: the killing of Akbar Bugti on 26 August 2006. Like the 1973–1977 insurgency, the fight spread across Balochistan—it has not ended. Since 2000, the Baloch have faced the severest repression. Every brutal tool at the state's disposal has been used. Our academics, such as Saba Dashtyari and Zahid Askani , have been killed; our political activists have been murdered or disappeared; our journalists have been silenced; our poets have been targeted; and our students have been abducted. And now, even our women have been incarcerated. Yet, the resistance lives on—it refuses to die. It survives because it is an expression of the people's most cherished dream. The Baloch are a resilient nation and do not give up what they hold dear—and what they hold dearest are dignity and freedom. It is no coincidence that the Baloch call their motherland Gul Zameen—Land of Flowers. As they say, Waye watan hushkain dar —I love my land even if it is like a withered twig. There is something vital that must be said. Something that has long been the bane of the Baloch Nation. Those soul-selling Baloch who have collaborated with the establishment, aiding in the suppression of Baloch rights and enabling crimes against their own people. There is an indigenous Native American fable: the birds complained of being killed by arrows, and the response was, “Were it not for the feathers of birds in the arrows, you would be safe.” Our suffering, too, would have been less had some Baloch not provided the feathers for those arrows. Let me tell you something: if brutal crackdowns and military operations could suppress a people's desire for national, political, social, and economic rights, then Algeria would still be a French colony. The French were ruthless and unforgiving. They picked people up, held them in custody, and tortured them for as long as they pleased. Yet in the end, they had to pack up and leave. The resistance, and the will of the people, could not be broken. It is said the French “won” the Battle of Algiers in 1957 by crushing the FLN in the city, but they lost the war in 1960 when the Algerian people rose up together, showing the futility of repression. Repression eventually breeds fearlessness. It compels people to abandon concern for their own safety. And here, they haven’t even won the Battle of Quetta—yet they have already lost Balochistan by irreversibly alienating the Baloch Nation. We can—and must—learn from the Palestinians, who, like us, have endured physical, economic, cultural, and geographic assaults—a systematic genocide since 1948. Yet they have never surrendered. Especially in Gaza, where since October 2023 , genocide has reached a brutal peak. Gaza has been flattened. Hospitals bombed, medical staff killed, famine imposed through a blockade of food and water. Over 60,000 people—seventy percent of them women and children—have been killed . And yet, the people of Gaza have not broken. Gaza may be a narrow strip of land, but despite the backing of powerful Western nations, Israel has failed to crush the spirit of the Gazans. Balochistan is vast. If Gaza has not been broken, then neither can we. In the end, my very precious child, I will say this: Tum maroge, hum niklenge —you will kill us, we will rise. This is not an empty phrase. It is how the Baloch have faced oppression for generations. If it were hollow, the resistance would not have persisted and grown stronger over the past seventy-seven years. It is true that a terrible price has been paid—in blood, in tears, in lost generations. But it is also the reason we have survived. We endure as a dignified nation, seeking a life of freedom and honor, and our will to resist not only endures—it flourishes. Today, I see you all protesting against state oppression, as bravely and wisely as Karima did, and I know this is why hopelessness is not an option for us. Hope is the fruit of the seeds Banuk Karima and other Baloch revolutionaries sowed in the soil of Balochistan. And so, with the accumulation of grief in adulthood, we also inherit seventy-seven years of the history of Baloch resistance, which, in spite of its traumatic chapters, is an inheritance of revolutionary hope for a free Balochistan. Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur Hyderabad 5 April 2025 ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Iman Iftikhar Talpur Sahab (2025) Digital Illustration SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Letter Balochistan Pakistan Activism Enforced Disappearances State Violence Protests Liberation Journalism Revolution Martyr Grief Sammi Deen Baloch Mahrang Baloch Resistance History Violence Writing After Loss Dissidence Disappearance Baloch Yakjehti Committee Dr Mahrang Baloch Arrests Tum Marogy Hum Niklengy Militarism Leadership Mass Graves Assassination Imprisonment Armed Struggle Repression State Repression Oppression Defiance Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur Sarri Sacred MIR MOHAMMAD ALI TALPUR is a political organiser with the Baloch struggle, a public intellectual, and writer on Balochistan. He joined the Baloch national struggle in 1971, was with the movement from 1973 to the 1977 insurgency, and escaped with them to Afghanistan as a refugee until 1991. He spent three years in the Marri Hills, three years underground in Sindh, and 13 years in Afghanistan, where he was responsible for camps delivering educational and health services to 8000 Baloch refugees in Zabul and Helmand (near Lashkargah). In 2014, he joined a 3000-kilometer-long march to demand the return of disappeared Baloch. He is the author of dozens of articles on the Baloch movement. Letter Balochistan 9th Apr 2025 IMAN IFTIKHAR is a political theorist, historian, and amateur oil painter and illustrator. She is an editor for Folio Books and a returning fellow at Kitab Ghar Lahore. She is based in Oxford and Lahore. On That Note: Letter to History (I) 3rd APR Who is Next? 5th MAR Chats Ep. 6 · Imagery of the Baloch Movement 28th FEB