ARTIST, FILMMAKER Vinay Ghodgeri VINAY GHODGERI is a visual artist based in Goa, India, who works across painting, photography, and film mediums. His artwork has been shown at group exhibitions in Auroville, Pune, and Goa, and his illustrations have been published in Kyoorius Design Magazine ’11. He is currently working on his directorial debut, a Marathi language feature film, A Shadow Rising . ARTIST, FILMMAKER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

In 'Daha Rupaychi Note', Hamid Dalwai tells the story of Kareem, a poor clerk journeying from Mumbai to his Konkan village for Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi. Amidst nostalgia and hardship, Kareem witnesses his village’s stark poverty, confronting the harsh realities of his people’s suffering. Through his act of charity and the symbolism of the titular ten-rupee note, Dalwai blends personal, literary, and political ideologies, exploring themes of communal harmony, economic reform, and the complex interplay of religion and identity within the socio-political landscape of post-independence India. · FICTION & POETRY Translation · Maharashtra In 'Daha Rupaychi Note', Hamid Dalwai tells the story of Kareem, a poor clerk journeying from Mumbai to his Konkan village for Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi. Amidst nostalgia and hardship, Kareem witnesses his village’s stark poverty, confronting the harsh realities of his people’s suffering. Through his act of charity and the symbolism of the titular ten-rupee note, Dalwai blends personal, literary, and political ideologies, exploring themes of communal harmony, economic reform, and the complex interplay of religion and identity within the socio-political landscape of post-independence India. Vinay Ghodgeri, The Two Pontificators (2022). Ink, digital painting. Ten Rupee Note The story begins and ends with a bus ride. Kareem, an impoverished clerk living in Mumbai, decides to visit his village in the Konkan to celebrate both Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi. While his journey there is filled with both nostalgia and anticipation, his return is marked by a different set of emotions. As his aunt remarks, “everything is upside down in the village,” where everyone is impoverished and unemployed, and the starving can do nothing “except sit and wait hopefully for next year’s harvest.” Confronted with this catastrophic state of affairs, he gives away his scant savings in a “pathetic charity session” until he is left only with the titular ten rupee note. “Daha Rupaychi Note” was my first encounter with the Marathi Muslim journalist, writer, and reformer Hamid Dalwai . Written when Dalwai was just twenty years old and printed in the Marathi-language “Dhanurdhara” magazine on November 8, 1952, the story was his first published work. In a recent documentary directed by Jyoti Subhash and featuring Naseeruddin Shah, Husain Dalwai—Hamid’s brother and Congress politician—reminisced on its publication, recalling that the entire family had gathered under the dim light of a streetlamp to read it together. Despite his young age, his earliest work rings with the earnest idealism, unambiguous moral clarity, and straightforward, laconic prose that would characterize much of his later writing, fiction and non-fiction alike. Brusque and unambiguous in its endorsement of communal harmony, economic reform, and village uplift, “Daha Rupaychi Note” reads propagandistically at times, blurring the borders between literature, praxis, and even autobiography. Through this hybrid form, the interplay between Dalwai’s personal life, creative instinct, and political commitments is laid bare. Like his protagonist, Dalwai was born and raised in a working-class Ratnagiri family before moving to Mumbai in search of work. This migration story is a familiar one: my grandfather, also a Kokani Muslim, came to Mumbai in the 1940s as an officer in the merchant navy. Like Dalwai, he was of a literary bent, writing and translating between Marathi, Urdu, and English. He, too, was charming and mercurial, his disarmingly light eyes quick to anger and quicker to laughter and brandished his acerbic wit with a typical Konkan sting. If they ever met, I imagine Dalwai would have quickly adapted my grandfather’s sardonic catchphrase, “ naseebach gandu tar konashi bhandu. ” But whereas my grandfather spent those heady decades of independence hopping between port cities in Japan, Thailand, and the Soviet Union, Dalwai hopped between political organizations, from the Rashtra Seva Dal to the Samyukta Socialist Party. Frustrated by their timid stances on communalism, he eventually carved out his own political spaces by establishing the Indian Secular Society (1968) and the Muslim Satyashodak Samaj (1970); the latter modeled after Jyotirao Phule’s anti-caste reform society. Through his organizing and writing, his ultimate goal was to modernize Indian Muslim society by, in his own words, “creating a small class…of liberal and secular Muslims.” Dalwai is difficult to categorize and perhaps for that reason, he has been largely forgotten by historians, literary critics, and the public. On the one hand, he was, indisputably, a Marathi thinker. The landscape and rituals of the Konkan coast—its “distant green hillocks” and its “auspicious sounds of cymbals and mridanga”—were firmly imprinted in his literary and political consciousness. Influenced by his Marathi-medium education in Chiplun, he wrote exclusively in Marathi and encouraged Indian Muslims to embrace their regional languages rather than chasing after Urdu, Persian, or Arabic; when interrogated about his linguistic preferences, he quipped that his own Marathi-inflected Urdu, adulterated by Mumbai slang, would cause a “proper” Urdu speaker from Lucknow to collapse on the spot. His Maharashtrian contemporaries, from the humorist and performer P.L. Deshpande to the playwright Vijay Tendulkar, praised his tenacity and courage, with the former naming Dalwai as “one of the greatest enlighteners in that series from Jyotirao Phule to B.R. Ambedkar,” and, with characteristic fulsomeness, remarking that “when I say that Hamid was my friend, I feel it might come across as self-promotion: that was the extent of his greatness.” Yet, Dalwai is near impossible to locate in contemporary histories of Maharashtra, which, depending on their ideological predilections, have long sought to portray the state as the great bastion of resistance to Islamic rule, the progenitor of polemical politicians from Tilak to Ambedkar, or the financial center of independent India. In a historiography dominated by analyses of Marathas, Hindutva, and, increasingly, at long last, anti-caste mobilization, the history of Maharashtra's Muslims remains peripheral. On the other hand, Dalwai both identified with and critiqued a different lineage: that of Muslim reformers from Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In Muslim Politics in Secular India , a collection of his essays translated by Dilip Chitre in 1968, Dalwai compared the trajectory of Hinduism and Islam. Whereas the trajectory of Hindu modernism, he argued, progressed from Raja Rammohan Roy to Jawaharlal Nehru, the “process of Muslim modernization was arrested” when Iqbal and Jinnah’s embrace of “Islamism ultimately led to anti-Hinduism.” For Dalwai, these reformers fell short on several counts: they promoted an “obsession with [the Muslim community’s] minority status,” encouraged a “tribal…collectivist loyalty,” and ignored the unique plight of Muslim women. Indeed, Dalwai is perhaps most well-known for his attempts to remedy this third issue; on April 18, 1966, he led a group of seven women in India’s first march against triple talaq and polygamy, and in favor of a uniform civil code (UCC). Here, we may note that nearly sixty years after his march, from the controversial Shah Bano case to the BJP’s inclusion of a UCC in its 2024 manifesto, many of these issues remain deeply contested. Yet, unlike Sir Syed, Iqbal, or Jinnah, Dalwai’s idea of modernization demanded militant and uncompromising secularization. Clean-shaven on principle—at a speech in Solapur, he joked, “if I were in power, I would compel all Muslims to shave off their beards”—and adamant that he be cremated rather than buried, Dalwai was branded a kafir by his orthodox contemporaries. His dedication to Muslim reform was borne more from an accident of birth rather than any deep religious commitment: “I don’t pray, neither do I fast. I believe the Quran was not made by God, but rather by Muhammad,” he declared in an interview. “I am a Muslim by birth and a Hindu by tradition.” In “Daha Rupaychi Note,” we catch an early glimpse of this iconoclastic brand of Islamic secularism. The twin celebrations of Ganesh Chaturthi and Eid dictate the story’s pacing: they precipitate Kareem’s arrival in the village; they prompt his existential reckoning, and they frame the central tension of the narrative. Dalwai’s reclamation of Hindu tradition is also, perhaps, revealed through Kareem’s references to the Ramayana. By drawing parallels between Sriram, his closest friend who “embodied Gandhi’s call to ‘go to the village’,” and the Rama of legend, Dalwai intimates familiarity with Hindu mythology and suggests at least some amount of faith in its teachings. Here, we must underscore the complex, multivalent nature of Dalwai’s religious and regional identities: as a Marathi Muslim, his perspectives on secularism, socialism, and language politics were shaped by his negotiation of the two strands of thought I have traced above. His marginalization, then, constitutes multiple, overlapping disappearances: of Muslim thought from Maharashtrian history, of Marathi thought from Indian Muslim history, and of the Islamic secular from discourses of religion, nationalism, and modernity. As Kareem sets off from Chiplun, he is overwhelmed by emotions, his heart “darkened with despair.” Caught between the financial allure of Mumbai and the moral imperative to remain in the village, negotiating between the festivals of his birth and his tradition, he chooses to remain hopeful for the future of the Konkan. How many times did Dalwai make this same journey, his thoughts consumed by these same anxieties? How many times did my grandfather? I’ve never set foot on the red soil of his native land, never peered out into the Arabian Sea from that lush coastline dotted with jackfruit and cashew trees and since his passing more than two decades ago, any tether binding me to the region has unraveled. In any case, the Konkan of his—and Dalwai’s—time is long gone. Perhaps it is a fitting tribute to both men that his son, in the spirit of “Daha Rupaychi Note,” would go on to marry a Hindu woman and raise a family where, like Kareem and Sriram, we celebrate both Ganesh Chaturthi and Eid. Ten Rupee Note by Hamid Dalwai Translated by Ria Modak After spending a year in the noisy chaos of Mumbai, my mind drifts to my village in the Konkan. I remember the uninhibited, idyllic days of my childhood, and feel the temptation to meet old friends and relatives. Every summer, I take a week or two off to visit the village, setting foot on the boat from Ferry Wharf to Dabhol. This year, however, I was too consumed by work to make the journey. A few months later, though, I managed to negotiate a vacation; my aunt had sent a message telling me to come home for Eid. Besides, it had been many years since I’d been back to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi. I decided that I would go, and booked an S.T. bus. At the Chiplun motor stand, a couple hours from Ratnagiri, some friends came to greet me. We traveled the rest of the way together, cracking jokes and chatting about nothing in particular to pass the time. Once we arrived at the village, they drank their tea and dispersed, promising to come see me again. I made my way to my aunt’s house. She lived alone, and we were very close. Since I was a child, my visits would incite a flurry of overexcitement: what shall I cook? What shall we do? Where shall we go? Even now, nothing has changed: how long will you stay? What shall we plan for Eid? Eventually, tired of her chattering, I interrupted: “Chachi, why haven’t I seen Sriram anywhere? He didn’t even come to meet me at Chiplun.” “Arrey ho! Did I forget to tell you? He’s lost everything. The farm, the land, everything has been auctioned off. But what’s to be done?” she said. “But why doesn’t he come to Mumbai then? Why is he wasting his time in this village? ‘Social work… social work…’” Kareem scoffed. “We might die of starvation, but we must still commit ourselves to social work. I don’t understand.” She let out a sigh. “I’ve told him so many times, but he always repeats the same thing: ‘we shouldn’t only look out for ourselves, kaki.’” Tears shone in her eyes. I was taken aback. I’d run into so many acquaintances from the village in Mumbai, but none of them had told me about Sriram’s condition. It’s true that we’d stopped writing letters to each other as the months passed. As I became increasingly caught up with work, I suppose I’d taken Sriram’s situation for granted. “Look, this is everyone’s story in the village. Everything is upside down. You lot who’ve gone and built a life in Mumbai, why will you remember your home in the village? You don’t even know who’s alive and who’s dead here. You haven’t sent a penny in four months. At least you haven’t settled down yet—there are some people who haven’t returned in five or ten years. Who will take care of their houses?” the old lady went on. Staying in Mumbai, my mind had become an emotionless machine. How could it be that I’d never once thought about the economic state of my village? Today my aunt had opened my eyes, and I turned inwards. The thick fog shrouding my mind evaporated. I let go of the day-to-day tedium of my clerical life, and the formality of my city sensibilities melted away. But what good could come from thinking? I’d renounced any golden dreams of idealism and ambition and was wandering in the lonely desert of pragmatism. For 120 rupees a month, I scribbled nonsense and passed it off as clerical work. I lived with a friend and ate my meals at a cheap mess. I couldn’t imagine ever having enough money to get married. The next day, I was awakened by a pair of raucous voices. At first, I didn’t pay attention, but once I heard my name, I perked up. An old woman said, “He hasn’t remembered me once in so many days. Has he returned from Africa with bags of cash or what?” Quickly, I got up and left. I didn’t see who had come. Only after my aunt explained did I begin to understand that the woman was having money problems for Eid. I felt terrible, but then my aunt prodded me: “Why are you feeling bad? This is everyone’s reality. How many people can you possibly help?” Then she took 100 rupees from me, buying what she needed for the house and paying back her debts with the rest. I felt as though she was getting even with me for not having sent money these past few months. From that day onwards, there was a line out the door. At any given moment, someone or the other came complaining of financial distress, expecting money. My tongue sat heavy and numb in my mouth. They came reluctantly, nursing their shame and hesitation, losing their courage as they asked favors. I’d only come with 200 rupees: of that, 100 had gone to my aunt. Of the rest, 90 were given here and there. Finally, I put an end to this pathetic charity session. I wanted to return to Mumbai, after all, and needed to set aside money for the return fare. Everyone I’d given money to had done me a favor at some point or the other. I was satisfied that, at the very least, those debts were paid. But my satisfaction didn’t last long. Ganesh Chaturthi came at last. In the old days, the village would ring with the auspicious sounds of cymbals and mridanga. But today, I heard nothing. Confused, I asked my aunt, who replied: “Arrey baba, how can people celebrate with nothing in their belly? The old days are gone. Two days before the Gauri Visarjan, there’ll be some dancing and that’s it, the festival will be over.” I felt like I’d been stabbed in the stomach with a sharp knife. Poverty hadn’t just made our daily life miserable: it had cast a dark shadow on our celebrations, our happiness, and our enthusiasm. I had no doubt that Eid, too, would be similarly dark. Eight days passed, but Sriram, my closest friend, still hadn’t come to see me. If anyone embodied Gandhi’s call to ‘go to the village,’ it was Sriram. Though he’d once settled in Mumbai, he had kicked aside his lucrative job in the city and instead devoted himself to uplifting the village. Finally, I went to see him the day before Gauri Visarjan. Standing in the corridor, his face lit up with joy when he saw me. At once, he enveloped me in a tight hug and cried out to his wife, “Hey, look who has come!” Coming out with a handful of ash from cleaning up, she said, “O Chakarmani! When did you come? Yesterday or what? Made it a point to come see us as early as you could manage, hm?” Ignoring the sarcasm dripping from her voice, I said, sagely: “If the mountain doesn’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain.” “Enough is enough! Please don’t bore us with the same old phrases. I’ve been telling him, ‘that friend of yours has come, go and see him,’ but he always repeats the same thing…” Catching a glimpse of her husband, she fell silent. I couldn’t wrap my head around the situation, but Sriram explained. “Don’t be flustered, my friend. I told her that Kareem has come from Mumbai. His pockets are overflowing, everyone must want a piece of him. The poor must be going to see him again and again. How could I go at such a time? He’d think that I’m just after his money, too.” Sriram laughed loudly. His laughter pierced my heart. The poverty of the village, the sheer decline of the Kokan was all revealed to me through that laugh. I said, casually: “Listen, if you’d come to ask, would it really have been so terrible?” “That’s what I told him,” his wife jumped in excitedly. “There’s always some problem in the house. I told Sriram, ‘go to Kareem bhai and bring back 10 rupees.’ At least let the kids enjoy the festival. But he refuses. ‘Forget the money,’ he says. ‘I won’t go see him until Eid is over.’” “Kay re, when I came last year the situation didn’t seem so bad,” I said. “True, for two reasons. Firstly, you used to come in the summer. Even though the harvest wasn’t so bountiful, at least people had some grain in their hands. Besides, farm work was in full swing. There might not have been much money, but people could at least find some seasonal work. Now there’s no grain and no labor, either. What else can the starving do except sit and wait hopefully for next year’s harvest? And the other reason is that this poverty has been slowly getting worse over time. Today, you’re witnessing it, all at once, in its barest form. Planting his eyes on a distant green hillock, he said in a subdued and determined voice, “All this must change Kareem. It must be changed . We must give up our narrow, selfish attitudes. Capitalism is the culmination of our social structure and the naked form of our reality; it is our legacy. This situation isn’t any one person’s fault, but at the same time, it’s not any one person’s responsibility. We must reject this futile idea that we alone can enact meaningful change. We must work for everyone, for society at large. Last year I’d said, ‘let’s store some grain from the harvest for communal use.’ Nobody listened to me. Someone would’ve benefitted by now, wouldn’t they? But nobody has any sense of community wellbeing!” And he stopped for a while. I too was eager to give him an earful. Taking his silence as my cue, I said, “Really, Sriram. Why do you insist on working in this village? Haven’t you seen what kind of people live here? Why bother struggling for them in vain?” “Nahi re!” Placing his hand on my shoulder, he continued. “This work will bear fruit one day. I have faith in it. And consider for a moment if I decided to leave everything behind. What would happen to the work I’ve started, to the hope that’s been built up? I can’t turn back now.” Then, squeezing both my hands lovingly, he asked me, “Is everything okay with you? When are you going to get married?” I replied with a wry smile, “I’m okay. I’ve been eating at a mess and sleeping at a friend’s place, but he just got married, so I’ve had to move out. An acquaintance of mine knows someone who owns a building, so with his permission I’ve been sleeping in a room under the staircase. Where could I possibly fit a wife?” Then I asked him gently, “Do you really need money?” “If you put it like that, well then yes. But why should I make your life difficult?” Taking out the last ten rupee note from my pocket, I forced it into his hands. I drank my tea, bade farewell to his wife and child, and returned home. Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi came and went, and the day of my return to Mumbai drew closer. Both festivals had fallen short of my expectations. There was no warmth in people’s celebrations. They were just going through the motions, performing rituals with an emotionless formality. I couldn’t bear to see any more, and decided to return to Mumbai as soon as possible. Suddenly, I remembered I had no money. I needed ten rupees to return to the city, but couldn’t understand how to get them. Finally, I brought up the subject with my aunt. Angered by my ill-timed munificence and diminishing funds, she said, coldly: “Where will the money come from now? You’ll have to borrow from someone and just pay them back when you return to Mumbai.” The idea didn’t sit well with me, and I gave no answer. The next morning, while I mulled over the situation, confused, Sriram came and, to my surprise, placed a ten rupee note in my hand. Without letting me say anything, he explained, “If you were in trouble, why didn’t you just tell me, baba? Yesterday, kaki came to me and everything became clear. Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?” I took the note from his hand and looked closer. It was the very note that I’d given him! There was an unmistakable stain near the watermark where I’d spilled some ink earlier. “But this money was for your celebrations! Isn’t it the same note that I’d given you?” “That’s true enough. But on the very evening you’d come to see me, I got the money I needed from someone who owed me, and I was set. What business is it of yours?” The next day when the S.T. bus to Mumbai set off from the Chiplun motor stand, my heart was darkened with despair. I couldn’t stop thinking about the grim future of my village. I thought to myself, “won’t this situation ever change?” But then again, why not? Against the depressing backdrop of poverty, hunger, and unemployment emerged Sriram’s strength, patience, and courage. Why not, indeed! Just as Sri Ram released Ahalya from her curse, transforming her from hexed stone back into a beautiful woman with a brush of his foot, this Sriram too will surely rescue our Konkan. My mind filled with happiness and hope, I landed in Mumbai that evening.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Translation Maharashtra Hamid Dalwai Muslim Marathi India Fiction Journalism Writer Reform Economy Borders Community Literature Working Class Migration Family Urdu English Political Will Anti-Caste Organizing Liberalism Secularism History Literary Criticism Regional Languages Linguistic Marathas Hindutva Maharashtra Muslim Modernization Civil Society Militant Disappearance Religion Nationalism Ten Rupee Note Mumbai Konkon Village 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. 17th Feb 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:

FICTION EDITOR Jever Kohli-Mariwala JEVER KOHLI-MARIWALA is a fiction writer based in Brooklyn. She was raised in Mumbai and is a former Chief Editor of the Yale Daily News Magazine . She has also worked at the Innocence Project . FICTION EDITOR WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

RESEARCHER Tehani Ariyaratne TEHANI ARIYARATNE is a feminist researcher with ten years of working experience in the human rights and development sectors in Sri Lanka and South Asia. Her research focus areas include women's labor and environmental justice. She is the Chief Operations Officer for Fearless Collective , a South Asia-based public art project with the aim of reclamation and self-representation for women and marginalized people around the world. RESEARCHER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

VOL. 2 .333 Jaan-e-Haseena An essay about the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—as a way to mark how grief, when dislocated from its centers, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Start Now Paul and Ondine In the Kashmir Valley, the spirit of Kashmiriyat remains resilient. Yet, the ongoing struggle for autonomy often overshadows the region’s many intersecting identities, both religious and sexual. When even the majority struggles to assert itself under New Delhi’s authority, what space remains for those at the margins to live and be who they are? Start Now I Sayed and Rasel This essay traces the afterlife of queer activist Xulhaz Mannan's words. Through the collapse of Hasina's regime, the co-option of gender rights, and the silencing of queer life, it asks: can a new Bangladesh emerge if it continues to deny the existence of those it has tried to erase? Start Now Larayb Abrar and Anamitra Bora From Assam’s National Register of Citizens offices to Lahore’s streets, trans and queer communities confront policing, displacement, and erasure while continuing to build worlds of resistance, care, and possibility.
 Start Now Zara Mannan Zara’s poem moves through the swagger, danger, and bruised glamour of urban Pakistan to show that being both woman and legend can make you a spectacle, a liability, and a survivor all at once. Start Now

PERFORMER, ACTIVIST Jaan-e-Haseena JAAN-E-HASEENA is a Lahore-based performance-activist, musician, and video-artist whose work explores the radical potential of cultural production for trans liberation in Pakistan. Her debut song “Izzat” became the official anthem of the Sindh Moorat March, catalyzing a community of resistance and chosen kinship. Drawing on her upbringing, her art emerges from a politicized consciousness shaped by sectarian violence, digital queer discovery, and grassroots organizing. PERFORMER, ACTIVIST WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER mourning in schizophrenic time Oct 27, 2025 Jaan-e-Haseena LOAD MORE

ARTIST Bibi Hajra BIBI HAJRA received her Bachelors degree in Architecture from the National College of Arts, Lahore, and received her MA in Urban Studies from an Erasmus Mundus program. An architect, teacher, and visual artist based in Lahore, she addresses themes such as urban segregation and development, consumerism, pop culture and recently religious symbolism/aesthetics and the city. She has taught urban theory and instructed at an architecture studio. ARTIST WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. THE VERTICAL Universalism & Solidarity in a Post-Roe Landscape In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. Sharmin Hossain ON JUNE 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortions protected under the 1973 landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade . The decision, issued in a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, has opened the doors for dozens of states to take steps to ban it outright. As I’m writing this solidarity note, at least 15 states have abortion bans in effect: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The prohibitions range from a complete ban on abortions to banning abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy. These states are among the poorest in the country, with large populations of Indigenous, Black, and immigrant communities. In the absence of safe, timely, and affordable abortion care; people are forced to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access medical care or carry pregnancies to term against their will. This is a gross violation of human rights. Abortion bans can be traced to the brutal legacies of slavery, where Black women were treated as sexual chattel. Hence, they are rooted in white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, anti-Black violence. Such racist laws deny systematically marginalized communities the right to control their bodies and futures. About 60% of people who need abortion care each year are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Against the backdrop of this country’s legacy of racism and discrimination, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas tend to face greater barriers to quality health care, childcare, and job opportunities. Oriaku Njoku, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, shares: "This [abortion] is not something where it's either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent. There are so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family." According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the 121 million pregnancies across the globe each year are unintended. Each year, over 44,000 people die from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer serious, often permanent, injuries. Restricting access to abortion drives pregnant people to use unsafe methods. For example, Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but the lack of access to abortion care makes it one of the deadliest places to get an abortion. This much is clear: abortion access saves lives. This is why reproductive justice advocates have been fighting for the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The reproductive justice framework calls for every possible effort—whether through policies, social services, and community relationships—to address intersecting oppressions, create alliances across identities, analyze power systems, and center the most marginalized among us. Reproductive justice allows us to understand access to abortion as a critical piece of economic, healthcare, and gender justice battles: the way we treat birthing people and families impacts how we build stronger and healthier communities. For example, the right to contraceptives only ensures that people can get a prescription for them. But for a low-wage worker who is uninsured, how can they afford to take a day off and pay for the contraceptives? By thinking outside of the rights framework—where we are only fighting for the right to abortion—reproductive justice acknowledges the socio-political and economic inequalities that are disproportionately faced by BIPOC communities. South Asian American communities in general and survivors in particular, live at the intersection of multiple oppressions which make the overall consequences of lack of abortion access, particularly grave. Without access to healthcare resources in the many languages spoken across South Asian diasporas, and culturally imposed shame and stigma around accessing reproductive healthcare, South Asian communities experience marginalization at multiple levels. Even apart from the lack of policies that support access to hospitals and clinics trusted by South Asian communities, there is simply no insurance for healthcare needs specific to these communities. Lack of such policies work as barriers to healthcare and reify the long-established history of racism and its many inequities. For South Asian survivors the consequences are even more grave. People in abusive relationships are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, birth control sabotage, reproductive coercion or control, and misinformation about their reproductive rights. In most cases, murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as mentioned in the SOAR Collective Statement . The Liberate Abortion—a coalition of over 150 member organizations—is currently one of the largest BIPOC-led reproductive justice and rights coalitions in the United States. Liberate Abortion was founded out of the realization that the struggle against the threat to abortion access cannot be fought by a single organization, healthcare provider, organizer, or donor. This is why the coalition focusses on community mobilization, electoral organizing, changing cultural narratives, federal outreach, and policy reform. The staff, leaders, and members coordinate with stakeholders such as movement partners in legal defense and practical service delivery spaces, cross-movement partners, funders, members of Congress, and the Biden administration on information sharing and strategy. Although the coalition solely focuses on abortion funds and clinics in the United States, frontline activists from the Latin American Green Wave movement have joined the coalition to share lessons from their campaigns to expand abortion access across the continent. In the last two years alone, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized or fully legalized abortions. The Supreme Court’s attack on the right to abortion access leaves several fundamental human rights open to contestation. These include the right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other rights intertwined with the right to liberty protected through Roe v. Wade . As access to abortion gets further criminalized by politicians and companies that sell our data to anti-abortion lawmakers and legislators, privacy activists and lawmakers need to also shift their approach. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the past 15 years have seen a shocking spike in arrests and prosecutions for crimes related to stillbirths, miscarriages, and alleged drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The legal advocacy and policy support group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, documented over 61 cases that occurred between 2000 and 2020 in which people were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly self-managing abortions or helping someone else get one. Only this year in August, Facebook gave Nebraska police access to a teen’s private messages which they used to prosecute her for getting an abortion. The fight for reproductive justice includes battles against surveillance and policing. These are the tools of the right wing to expand their control over bodily autonomy. For South Asian Americans this is a critical time to shift away from calls for increased policing to visionary organizing that is rooted in the desire to build safer communities. Some of the ways we can express solidarity are to get involved in volunteer services and mutual aid networks. Abortion fundraisers like the ARC-Southeast are coordinating funding and logistical support for people who need abortion access in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. For the South Asian & Indo-Caribbean diaspora, HEART to Grow is sustaining a reproductive justice fund for Muslims across America, while domestic violence organizations like API Chaya ally with abolitionist efforts that close youth jails across Seattle. The fight for reproductive justice must be both localized and nationalized—to aid and abet folks seeking abortion access, while electing prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives committed to the long-term strategy of ending criminalization, punishment, and harassment by the state, institutions, and individuals. Perhaps Roe was never enough to safeguard abortion rights or protect abortion access for all people. We are building a future in which abortion is liberated for all of us, no matter where we live or how much money we have, no matter our race, age, gender, or sexual orientation. We need to organize, build power, and create a country where our values are reflected in democracy. We will continue to provide life-saving care for those who need it the most, and we will continue fighting until every one of us has access to the care we need, when we need it, without stigma or fear. We need to develop networks of solidarity. ∎ RESOURCES : If you are a person who needs abortion care, reach out to a provider immediately . If you’re looking for an abortion provider, go to INeedAnA.com . Campaigns like Abortion On Our Own Terms are supporting folks with knowledge on self-managed abortions, while organizations like PlanCPills are distributing and providing information on how to access abortion pills online. We must all be vocal and support people who have abortions and providers who provide care every day. This means funding local abortion clinics to keep the clinics open, volunteering and donating to local abortion funds to ensure that people have support, funding, and access to care, telling your own abortion story, and listening deeply to the stories of people you love. ON JUNE 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortions protected under the 1973 landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade . The decision, issued in a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, has opened the doors for dozens of states to take steps to ban it outright. As I’m writing this solidarity note, at least 15 states have abortion bans in effect: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The prohibitions range from a complete ban on abortions to banning abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy. These states are among the poorest in the country, with large populations of Indigenous, Black, and immigrant communities. In the absence of safe, timely, and affordable abortion care; people are forced to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access medical care or carry pregnancies to term against their will. This is a gross violation of human rights. Abortion bans can be traced to the brutal legacies of slavery, where Black women were treated as sexual chattel. Hence, they are rooted in white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, anti-Black violence. Such racist laws deny systematically marginalized communities the right to control their bodies and futures. About 60% of people who need abortion care each year are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Against the backdrop of this country’s legacy of racism and discrimination, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas tend to face greater barriers to quality health care, childcare, and job opportunities. Oriaku Njoku, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, shares: "This [abortion] is not something where it's either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent. There are so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family." According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the 121 million pregnancies across the globe each year are unintended. Each year, over 44,000 people die from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer serious, often permanent, injuries. Restricting access to abortion drives pregnant people to use unsafe methods. For example, Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but the lack of access to abortion care makes it one of the deadliest places to get an abortion. This much is clear: abortion access saves lives. This is why reproductive justice advocates have been fighting for the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The reproductive justice framework calls for every possible effort—whether through policies, social services, and community relationships—to address intersecting oppressions, create alliances across identities, analyze power systems, and center the most marginalized among us. Reproductive justice allows us to understand access to abortion as a critical piece of economic, healthcare, and gender justice battles: the way we treat birthing people and families impacts how we build stronger and healthier communities. For example, the right to contraceptives only ensures that people can get a prescription for them. But for a low-wage worker who is uninsured, how can they afford to take a day off and pay for the contraceptives? By thinking outside of the rights framework—where we are only fighting for the right to abortion—reproductive justice acknowledges the socio-political and economic inequalities that are disproportionately faced by BIPOC communities. South Asian American communities in general and survivors in particular, live at the intersection of multiple oppressions which make the overall consequences of lack of abortion access, particularly grave. Without access to healthcare resources in the many languages spoken across South Asian diasporas, and culturally imposed shame and stigma around accessing reproductive healthcare, South Asian communities experience marginalization at multiple levels. Even apart from the lack of policies that support access to hospitals and clinics trusted by South Asian communities, there is simply no insurance for healthcare needs specific to these communities. Lack of such policies work as barriers to healthcare and reify the long-established history of racism and its many inequities. For South Asian survivors the consequences are even more grave. People in abusive relationships are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, birth control sabotage, reproductive coercion or control, and misinformation about their reproductive rights. In most cases, murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as mentioned in the SOAR Collective Statement . The Liberate Abortion—a coalition of over 150 member organizations—is currently one of the largest BIPOC-led reproductive justice and rights coalitions in the United States. Liberate Abortion was founded out of the realization that the struggle against the threat to abortion access cannot be fought by a single organization, healthcare provider, organizer, or donor. This is why the coalition focusses on community mobilization, electoral organizing, changing cultural narratives, federal outreach, and policy reform. The staff, leaders, and members coordinate with stakeholders such as movement partners in legal defense and practical service delivery spaces, cross-movement partners, funders, members of Congress, and the Biden administration on information sharing and strategy. Although the coalition solely focuses on abortion funds and clinics in the United States, frontline activists from the Latin American Green Wave movement have joined the coalition to share lessons from their campaigns to expand abortion access across the continent. In the last two years alone, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized or fully legalized abortions. The Supreme Court’s attack on the right to abortion access leaves several fundamental human rights open to contestation. These include the right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other rights intertwined with the right to liberty protected through Roe v. Wade . As access to abortion gets further criminalized by politicians and companies that sell our data to anti-abortion lawmakers and legislators, privacy activists and lawmakers need to also shift their approach. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the past 15 years have seen a shocking spike in arrests and prosecutions for crimes related to stillbirths, miscarriages, and alleged drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The legal advocacy and policy support group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, documented over 61 cases that occurred between 2000 and 2020 in which people were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly self-managing abortions or helping someone else get one. Only this year in August, Facebook gave Nebraska police access to a teen’s private messages which they used to prosecute her for getting an abortion. The fight for reproductive justice includes battles against surveillance and policing. These are the tools of the right wing to expand their control over bodily autonomy. For South Asian Americans this is a critical time to shift away from calls for increased policing to visionary organizing that is rooted in the desire to build safer communities. Some of the ways we can express solidarity are to get involved in volunteer services and mutual aid networks. Abortion fundraisers like the ARC-Southeast are coordinating funding and logistical support for people who need abortion access in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. For the South Asian & Indo-Caribbean diaspora, HEART to Grow is sustaining a reproductive justice fund for Muslims across America, while domestic violence organizations like API Chaya ally with abolitionist efforts that close youth jails across Seattle. The fight for reproductive justice must be both localized and nationalized—to aid and abet folks seeking abortion access, while electing prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives committed to the long-term strategy of ending criminalization, punishment, and harassment by the state, institutions, and individuals. Perhaps Roe was never enough to safeguard abortion rights or protect abortion access for all people. We are building a future in which abortion is liberated for all of us, no matter where we live or how much money we have, no matter our race, age, gender, or sexual orientation. We need to organize, build power, and create a country where our values are reflected in democracy. We will continue to provide life-saving care for those who need it the most, and we will continue fighting until every one of us has access to the care we need, when we need it, without stigma or fear. We need to develop networks of solidarity. ∎ RESOURCES : If you are a person who needs abortion care, reach out to a provider immediately . If you’re looking for an abortion provider, go to INeedAnA.com . Campaigns like Abortion On Our Own Terms are supporting folks with knowledge on self-managed abortions, while organizations like PlanCPills are distributing and providing information on how to access abortion pills online. We must all be vocal and support people who have abortions and providers who provide care every day. This means funding local abortion clinics to keep the clinics open, volunteering and donating to local abortion funds to ensure that people have support, funding, and access to care, telling your own abortion story, and listening deeply to the stories of people you love. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Clare Patrick (Our) Worlds and (Plant) Wisdoms Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Op-Ed United States Roe v Wade Reproductive Rights Legacies of Slavery Human Rights Abortion Access Low-Income Workers The Right to Contraception Liberate Abortion Latin American Green Wave National Network of Abortion Funds Gender Violence South Asian SOAR Internationalist Perspective SHARMIN HOSSAIN is a Bangladeshi-American queer Muslim organizer and artist, from Queens, New York. She is the Organizing Director at 18 Million Rising , building national Asian American political power that contributes to movements for racial justice, abolition, anti-militarism, and democracy through political education, and deep base building. She was the Campaign Director of the Liberate Abortion Campaign, managing the coalition of more than 150 reproductive justice and rights organizations, groups, and abortion providers fighting for abortion access. 23 Feb 2023 Op-Ed United States 23rd Feb 2023 Battles and Banishments: Gender & Heroin Addiction in Maldives A. R. & R. A. 28th Feb Climate Crimes of US Imperalism in Afghanistan Shah Mahmoud Hanifi 16th Oct Chats Ep. 9 · On the Essay Collection “Southbound” Anjali Enjeti 19th May Chats Ep. 8 · On Migrations in Global History Neilesh Bose 4th May Pakistan's Feminist Wave: A Panel Zoya Rehman · Amna Chaudhry · Tooba Syed 27th Sep On That Note:

“I think of works like Shona N. Jackson's Creole Indigeneity, and fleshing out the narrative of brown movement. And, importantly, doing it in a way that decenters the United States, because, with indentureship we're talking about the movement from South Asia largely to the Caribbean.” COMMUNITY Romantic Literature and Colonialism “I think of works like Shona N. Jackson's Creole Indigeneity, and fleshing out the narrative of brown movement. And, importantly, doing it in a way that decenters the United States, because, with indentureship we're talking about the movement from South Asia largely to the Caribbean.” Mani Samriti Chander I couldn't imagine devoting any more time to Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley and Byron. So I turned to Brown Romantics where I looked at how Romantic ideas, philosophies, politics, and techniques were mobilized ends towards nationalist ends by 19th century writers in India, Australia and British Guyana. RECOMMENDED: Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century (Bucknell University Press, 2017), by Manu Samriti Chander. I couldn't imagine devoting any more time to Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley and Byron. So I turned to Brown Romantics where I looked at how Romantic ideas, philosophies, politics, and techniques were mobilized ends towards nationalist ends by 19th century writers in India, Australia and British Guyana. RECOMMENDED: Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century (Bucknell University Press, 2017), by Manu Samriti Chander. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Clare Patrick (Our) Worlds and (Plant) Wisdoms Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Interview Romanticism English Postcolonialism Gayatri Spivak Postcolonial Poetry Romantic Literature & the Colonized World Colonialism Race Post-George Floyd Moment Black Solidarities Indigeneity Creole Indigenous Space Vijay Prashad Ruhel Islam Hufsa Islam Browntology Brown Left Kinship The Undercommons Diaspora Guyana Australia Subaltern Studies Intellectual History Internationalist Perspective Indigeneous Spaces Egbert Martin Henry Derozio Immigration MANU SAMRITI CHANDER is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Newark Chapter of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT. He is the author of Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century (Bucknell UP, 2017). He is currently working on The Collected Works of Egbert Martin , with the support of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant and his current project Browntology is under contract with SUNY Press. 13 Nov 2020 Interview Romanticism 13th Nov 2020 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:

Periyarism, an anti-caste ideology that originated in Tamil Nadu, is under attack in Malaysia as witnessed during the Hindutva-led disruptions of the International Youth Rational Forum. Diasporic Tamils in West Malaysia are especially losing ground in the fight against the spread of Hindutva ideology. The legacies of corrupt Malaysian politicians and the demolition of Tamil Dravidian religious sites—calling for religious homogenization—has hindered the Periyarist agenda, but they have not culled the struggle to preserve Tamil tradition and dignity. Periyarism, an anti-caste ideology that originated in Tamil Nadu, is under attack in Malaysia as witnessed during the Hindutva-led disruptions of the International Youth Rational Forum. Diasporic Tamils in West Malaysia are especially losing ground in the fight against the spread of Hindutva ideology. The legacies of corrupt Malaysian politicians and the demolition of Tamil Dravidian religious sites—calling for religious homogenization—has hindered the Periyarist agenda, but they have not culled the struggle to preserve Tamil tradition and dignity. OCTO, BLUES OF MALAYA (2024). 23.5” x 35.5”. Artist West Malaysia Miriyam Ilavenil 20 Dec 2024 th · FEATURES REPORTAGE · LOCATION Struggling for Self Respect To counter the growing influence of Hindu extremism within the West Malaysian Tamil Hindu diaspora, Karunchattai Ilaignar Padai ( Black Shirt Youth Movement ), a new Periyarist coalition in the country, organised the International Youth Rational Forum . It was meant to educate the public on the anti-fascist and rationalist principles of Periyar’s Dravidian ideology. The forum held on December 24, 2023 , welcomed several prominent Periyarist speakers including Tamil Nadu’s SM Mathivathani and Sri Lanka's Sathees Selvaraj. It was initially scheduled to be held at the MySkills Campus in Kalumpang, Selangor, but on December 18, 2023, the director, Pasupathi Sithamparam, received harassing phone calls from Hindu extremists. Fearing backlash from donors he revoked permission forcing the organisers to find a new venue within a week. The following day, 27 Hindu organizations urged the Malaysian Home Ministry to stop the forum alleging it went against Kepercayaan Kepada Tuhan (Belief in God), the first clause of the Rukun Negara (Malaysian National Principles). The clause states that citizens must submit to the power of God. While the Malaysian state claims that the Rukun Negara, constructed in 1970, was a way to reconcile with the aftermath of the 1969 race riots, prominent Malay-Chinese intellectual and former political prisoner Kua Kia Soong counters this narrative. He argues that the “race riots” were exploited by the emerging Malay capitalist class to gain political authority over the then-ruling aristocracy. According to Kua, the principles were designed to control the masses and prevent challenges to Ketuanan Melayu (Malay Supremacy), embedded in the national constitution. This is also evident in the second and third clauses, which reify citizens’ unquestioning allegiance to Malay royalty, the country, and the constitution. On December 21, 2023 , Karunchattai held a press conference refuting the allegations from the NGOs. He stated that the principles are not against the nation’s political foundations of race, religion, and royalty (the "3Rs") and Hindu extremists are targeting them for their Periyarist identity. Despite obstacles, the forum's programming was effectively executed. Photo courtesy of the author. Following the press meet—while organisers were picking up the international speakers from the airport—they were informed that the permission to host their forum at the Wisma Tun Sambanthan hall was revoked after the venue received complaints. Fortunately, that very same night, members of Karunchattai met with the management of the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall who granted them permission and declared solidarity. The next day, Nagenteran Sandrasigran, the founder of Karunchattai Ilaignar Padai, was called into the Dang Wangi police station following additional complaints. The police interrogated Nagenteran about the nature of his organisation, the forum, and Periyarism, but he was released the same day without further action. The Malaysian Immigration Department (MID) also intervened, informing the organisers that their international guest speakers had travelled under the wrong visa and needed a special one to participate in the forum. MID restricted the live streaming of the event and also implemented orders to stop and interrogate the participants as they travelled to the region. "There have been many Dravidian forums in Malaysia before, where overseas speakers were invited, but nothing this severe has ever happened before,” Nagenteran observed. Harassment and deliberate sabotage were inflicted on both organisers and speakers. On the day of the event, while the speakers were in their hotels, they received suspicious calls from people pretending to be the organisers, asking them to come down to the lobby. “I told them to stay in their rooms until I called them and not to pick up calls from unknown numbers,” Nagenteran said. The entire forum took place under the vigilant presence of the Malaysian police and immigration department. Seven police officers, including the Dang Wangi Special Branch, Bukit Aman Special Branch, and the Kuala Lumpur Contingent Headquarters, along with nine immigration officers, surveyed the forum. There were several other events organised after the main event with constant police presence throughout the day. In addition, about ten representatives from various Hindu NGOs attended the event. One representative, Rishikumar Vadivelu, vice president of the NGO Hindhudharma Maamandram , refused to stand up for the Malaysian Tamil Thai Vaazhtu (Tamil Anthem), penned by Malaysian Tamil writer Seeni Naina Mohamed . Secretary Ponvaasagam of Malaysia Dravida Kazhagam (MDK) and several other MDK members noted his behaviour and approached Rishi to firmly advise him to stand up, but he refused. Later, when a photo of Rishi’s antics went viral on social media, he declared that he didn't want to, nor should he have to, stand for a Tamil anthem written by a Muslim. He insinuated that the Tamil literary icon Seeni Naina Mohamed was a “Muslim missionary” trying to proselytise Tamil-Hindus for Islam. Hindhudharma Maamandram's President, Radhakrishnan Alagamalai, sent a letter to Deputy National Unity Minister SaraswathyKandasami reiterating that the forum was in direct opposition to the Malaysian national ideology. Saraswathy, an opportunistic caste-Hindu politician with strong ties to caste-Hindu associations, sent a letter to the home ministry emphasising the much speculated threat of atheism. She also mentioned that one of the speakers had a speech titled “Periyar from a Marxist Perspective,” fueling the anti-communist sentiment already present in the state. The ministry advised Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Adam Adli , who previously contributed to the cause and accepted the invitation to inaugurate the forum, against following through on his plans. Just a day before the event, Adli’s assistant, Mr. Amar, informed Nagenteran that the Deputy Minister would not be attending. Nagenteran expressed his disappointment, stating that moral support from the governing party could have been significant in legitimising their cause. The influence of Periyar in West Malaysia dates back to the 1930s, driven by the Tamil diaspora. During this time, Periyarists established their own Dravidian organisations in erstwhile-Malaya that engaged with the political realities of Peninsula Malaysia, alongside the self-respect movement in Tamil Nadu. Malaya’s Tamil Reform Association (TRA), founded in 1932, published Tamil Murasu , a newspaper dedicated to cultivating Dravidian ideology. The paper covered various topics, including: Tamil social reforms, Indian nationalism, Dravidian nationalism, and the conditions of indentured workers from Burma to Ceylon. Courtesy of Singaporean governmental archives. Above is a special edition of the newspaper Tamil Murasu in celebration of ponggal, which the Dravidian movement celebrated as Tamilar Thirunaal (Day of the Tamils), celebrating the secular roots of tamil society. Many successful reforms were also introduced by the MTRA revolving around marriage, specifically widow remarriages, self-respect weddings, and the endorsement of the Sharada Child Marriage Restraint Act. However, this momentum drastically diminished in postcolonial Malaysia. Nagenteran detailed how, until the late 1980s, the Malaysian Dravida Kazhagam (MDK) had been a strong community ally of MIC. During the internal power struggle for party leadership between Samy Vellu and Dr. Subramaniam Sinniah , however, MDK’s then-president KR Ramasamy threatened to contest the elections if MIC didn’t change its opportunistic ways. Samy Vellu, aiming to extinguish political rivalry and appease the opposition, lured MDK members into joining MIC, rewarding those who did exceptional work for the party. “Then, the splinter between Pandithan and Samy Vellu happened,” said Nagenteran, citing how caste politics within the party caused MG Pandithan, who belonged to the Paraiyar caste, to split from Samy Vellu, a Thevar. The former formed a new political party called the All Malaysia Indian Progressive Front ( IPF ). Paraiyars and other caste-oppressed individuals from MIC and MDK left their respective organisations to join the IPF. Due to these deviations, the influence that MDK and Dravidian ideology once had on the Tamil population greatly disintegrated. “In the 90s, we could speak about Periyar to our families, but now it has become a taboo subject,” lamented Nagenteran, describing how the political situation shifted drastically within a single generation. Wider Malaysian politics also faced the decline of progressive elements with the rise of Malay Muslim ethno-religious supremacy, who demanded that the Malaysian people come together to form a united front. “We have to embrace multicultural politics,” asserted Gausalyah Arumugam, the secretary of Karunchattai, while also criticising the existing caste pride within the Malaysian Tamil-Hindu community. “When caste prevents them from viewing members of their own ethnic group as equals, how can they form genuine political solidarity with other ethnicities?” Tamils in Malaysia In the early 19th century, European imperialism forcefully displaced many dalit and lower shudra Tamil peasantry as indentured labourers to colonial West Malaysian plantations. While the migration of the Tamil workers was controlled by debt-bondage, free Tamil merchants were able to move with ease. The hellscape system of the plantation was shaped both by European imperialism and brahminical hierarchy. By the 1940s, Tamil workers led labour unions and contributed to the anti-imperialist armed struggle of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Britain's counterinsurgency across Southeast Asia, however, made progressive movements a weak entity in Malaysia, paving the way for the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) to be endorsed as a communal party that could de-radicalize Tamil workers. Nevertheless, Nagenteran notes that since 2008 MIC’s hold on the Tamil workers has drastically deteriorated. The weakening of MIC is attributed in part to the 2000s Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) movement, inspired by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), an international branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( RSS). MIC's continued incompetence in fighting for Indian/Tamil minority rights led to a loss of support among Tamils and relegated it to the sidelines under then Prime Minister Najib Razak. Nagenteran explained that although Najib was a corrupt criminal, he successfully established strong bonds with working-class Tamils through opportunistic concessions. Instead of using MIC as a communication channel, Najib reached out directly to meet with Indian and Tamil communities, Hindu NGOs, and caste associations to protect his vote bank. He visited the Batu Caves Murugan Temple for Thaipusam , provided a grant of RM1 million for the development of the Sri Murugan Tuition Centre, and offered Indians and Tamils the opportunity to invest in the Amanah Saham unit trust funds. In post-Najib Malaysia—with the chaos of COVID-19 still fresh—leadership changes further degraded the hopes of working-class Tamils. The current government is no different in exhibiting a lack of interest in the Tamil population. “Anwar has missed two Thaipusam festivals. There are no Tamils in the cabinet. They even complained that no diaspora ministers were invited to the inauguration of the King!” exclaimed Nagenteran, who detailed the disregard faced by working-class Tamils from political parties, further contributing to their political demoralisation. Hindu Extremism and Casteist Violence in Malaysia Some Hindu temples, like the Batu Caves Murugan temple, are advertised as emblems of religious harmony in Peninsular Malaysia, while others are sites of contention. The Seafield Mariamman Temple is one such example. It was the site of a major dispute between its property owner and the public, revealing the sinister truth undergirding the dysfunctionality embedded within Malaysian society—resulting in a riot in 2018 that made national news. The recurring demolitions of Hindu temples find their roots in the destruction of the rubber plantations and subsequent displacement of Tamil workers, directly influenced by Razak’s New Economic Policy of the 70s, and then cemented by Mahathir's industrialisation throughout the 80s and 90s. In the 2000s, this complex crisis evolved into fertile ground for the emergence of a reactionary Hindu rights advocacy, which uprooted the crisis of the temple from the historical caste-labour politics of the plantation, indentureship, and caste-feudalism. Folk deity temples are among those most often demolished. They are part of Tamil Hindu heritage and are maintained by workers who are descendants of Dalit and Shudra villagers. The villagers used to worship folk deities rather than more Brahminized deities, however, Gausalyah states that, through the influence of Hindu extremism, Malaysian Tamil Hindus are abandoning their folk practices in favour of Vedic traditions. This shift in religious practices is endorsed by temple management in the nation, which is typically governed by members of a specific caste. “Casteists and Hindu extremists work in parallel to each other,” noted Gausalyah, discussing how these spaces are weaponized to assert brahminical hegemony. This, in turn, cultivates extremism under the guise of cultural preservation. Malaysia Dravidar Kalagam Ticket, Courtesy of Singaporean governmental archives. Just like the temples, Tamil government schools are disempowered, receiving very little financial or moral support, making them susceptible to political extremism. Despite schools being secular educational spaces for multi-religious Tamil children, extremism is gradually transforming them into Hindu education camps, with some schools receiving religious textbooks published by the Hindhudharma Maamandram. “It's so easy for Hindu NGOs to work with schools, but they won't let us (Periyarists) in,” stated Nagenteran. Hindu and caste dominance is propagated to children by school management, teachers, and staff of particular castes. Gausalyah notes that the hiring is predominantly caste-based to maintain control over the education system. This influence of Hindutva-led caste segregation is reaching far beyond grade school and into university clubs as well. Gausalyah speculates that extremism has been growing for the past six years, tracing the birth of the movement to a trip Rangaraj Pandey took to Malaysia. “Hindu extremism did not grow this strongly in Malaysia without receiving financial support,” she stated. Although they do not have concrete evidence of where this funding may have originated, Karunchattai is certain that a financial network has been established between groups in Malaysia and stronger Hindu extremist bodies like the RSS. Considering the rate at which Hindu extremism has developed—mirroring the RSS's fascistic language, educational and cultural programs, and political influence in Malaysian governance—the movement cannot sustain itself without substantial financial support. Karunchattai hosts reading groups and classes to support grassroots political work against Hindutva-backed caste extremism. They hope to introduce Periyar into Tamil schools and envision connecting with anti-caste organisations worldwide, fostering a strong internationalist anti-caste vanguard that can support one another in defeating the rise of Hindu fascism. As the politics of Malaysia differ greatly from those of Tamil Nadu, propagating Periyar to the Malaysian masses is a significant task set before Karunchattai, to which Nagenteran responds with determination: “Win or lose, we want to see how far we can go.”∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 MIRIYAM ILAVENIL is a journalist and a descendant of displaced Tamil Dalit indentured labourers who is interested in understanding the politics and histories of South and Southeast Asia. OCTO is a self-taught Malaysian artist from Mentakab, Pahang, whose multidisciplinary work focuses on the violent politics of the Malaysian state, creatively engaging his practice in themes of police brutality, statelessness, and urban poverty. His art has been featured in Amnesty International's We Make Our World exhibition and Patani Art Space's Kenduri Seni Patani exhibition. Features West Malaysia Malaysia Malaya Fascism Hindu Fascism Hindutva Black Shirt Youth Movement Periyar Periyarism Tamil Tamil-Nadu Tamil Diaspora Dravidian Tamil Dravidian Activism Alienation Self-Respect Movement Tamil Reform Association TRA Tamil Labor Unions Malayan Communist Party MCP Malaysian Indian Congress MIC radicalization de-radicalization Hindu Rights Action Force HINDRAF Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS HSS Corruption Anti-Caste COVID-19 Hindu Extremism temple demolition attacks on folk deities Tamil Murasu Singapore Colonialism Hindutva-based Caste extremism Caste extremism Civil Society Organizing Liberation ideology 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:

An ambitious collaboration between Dhivehi visual and performance artists, experimental and folk musicians, typographers, and people from the many atolls of the Maldives creating vital cultural spaces in Malé—one that sheds light on how Maldivian artists use unified and disparate aesthetics to reflect on class, space, and politics. | Exhibition · BOOKS & ARTS Exhibition · Maldives A Dhivehi Artists Showcase An ambitious collaboration between Dhivehi visual and performance artists, experimental and folk musicians, typographers, and people from the many atolls of the Maldives creating vital cultural spaces in Malé—one that sheds light on how Maldivian artists use unified and disparate aesthetics to reflect on class, space, and politics. Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity on 5th June 2021, we featured the most ambitious collaboration SAAG has attempted to date, with over 20 Maldivian performance artists, visual artists, musicians, typographers, artist collectives, and poets in a wide-ranging showcase on a range of Dhivehi art. Curated by Kareen Adam and Associate Editor Nazish Chunara, the showcase was meant to glimpse the art practices in an overlooked country and demonstrate the perspectives one misses as a consequence of overlooking whole communities and peoples. It is a paradigmatic problem for the international Left: Why do we so often take borders for granted in practice, even if we fervently do not wish to in principle? The showcase also provides a counterpoint to what people often associate with Maldivian: as merely an exclusionary, elite haven for tourists. The music and poetry are intentionally not subtitled, as SAAG, the magazine, shifts into multilingual presentation. We hope to strike against the expectation that population size should dictate such expectations and consider Dhivehi aesthetics and politics on their terms. Artists and collectives featured include Afzal Shaafiu, Aishath Huda, Beatz Crew, Cartman Ayya, DIONYSIAC , Eagan Badeeu, Firushana Naseem, Little Faratas N’ Monkey, Mohamed Ikram, Mariyam Omar, Mary Halym, Meyna Hassaan, Nadee Rachey, Nashiu Zahir, Nur Danya, Raya Ali a.k.a. Echnoid, Symbolic Records , and Yazan. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Exhibition Maldives Art Practice Internationalist Perspective Art Activism Indigenous Art Practice Oceans Islands Luxury Tourism Malé Painting Dhivehi Typography Fine Art Experimental Music Folk Music Music Video Performance Art Dance Repertory Dance Troupe Art Institutions Gatekeeping In Grief In Solidarity Curation Aesthetics Missing Aesthetics Hip Hop Un’dhun Urban/Rural Fuamulah Huvadu atoll Rasmadhoo Kulhudufushi Seascapes Class Struggle Environment Atolls 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. 5th Jun 2021 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:

For decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. · FEATURES Photo Essay · Kashmir For decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. Untitled (2025), photograph, courtesy of Zainab. Devotion by Design Just before the adhan , the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar falls silent. It’s a kind of alive stillness: dust caught in thin shafts of light, pigeons tracing circles above carved wooden beams, the scent of rosewater clinging to the air. A grandmother slips off her shoes, adjusts her scarf, and finds her place behind a screen. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t need to. She is present. There are corners few will notice—small, improvised spaces, where women have long made room for their faith. A balcony, a stairwell, a curtained-off alcove. Not designed officially for them, but quietly claimed. Presence is shown in the architecture: evidence in memory, use, and need. Often engulfed in enforced silence. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Now, many of those spaces are dissipating. Not with drama, but with a quiet inevitability. They are being renovated, restricted, and forgotten. As they go, much more goes with them: a sacred closeness, a map of devotion embedded into spaces that never needed to be drawn. What happens when these corners vanish—slowly, without notice? What remains, and what do we lose, when the unseen are no longer there to hold us? For generations, women in Kashmir have prayed in spaces not exactly meant for them. There are no signs pointing the way. No architectural plans name them. And yet, they have existed: a narrow balcony overlooking the men’s hall, a partitioned corner behind a curtain, a small side room warmed by years of whispered prayer. These spaces emerged out of necessity, shaped by repetition, softened by devotion. A woman stepping quietly into the same corner her mother once did. A rug folded and stored in the same place. There is a lingering scent of attar left behind after someone leaves. To call these spaces makeshift misses the point. They were not oversights or design flaws. They were formed as quiet forms of agency. Women marking sacred ground where none had been offered. Through repetitive use, these praying women carved out a spiritual geography in physical presence, even if it was never named on paper. This “soft architecture”—made of cloth, memory, and movement—held emotion, belonging, and belief. It was never grand yet it was deeply felt, and that made it sacred. “I’ve been coming here since I was a girl,” Khalida, 62, says, settling her shawl as she looks toward the old wooden veranda. “We didn’t ask where to go. We just came, Taeher hot-pot in one hand and prayer in the other.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Prayers at Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. She remembers the quiet corner where women sat, shaded and separate, behind a rug gently hung like a veil. They would whisper duas , share warmth, and provide a hot-pot of yellow rice to men and women emerging from the prayer hall. This is no duty, but an offering, as presence. “They knew we were there.” Now, she says, the rug is gone. The veranda feels emptier. “I still bring the Taeher sometimes. But fewer women join. Fewer remember. And the ones who come now… no one tells them where we used to sit.” Her voice lowers. “It’s like the prayer still wants to happen, but the place for it has been folded away.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. What Was Quietly Taken In recent years, something has quietly shifted in Kashmir’s mosques and shrines. Renovations arrive with good intentions—modern tiles, repainted walls, new security protocols. But somewhere in that process, the delicate architecture of women’s prayer has begun to disappear. Spaces that were never formally named are now unwittingly removed. A balcony closed. A staircase sealed. A corner now considered “not appropriate .” The change didn’t come from malice. Many men don’t even know what’s been lost. These spaces were inherited, almost invisible. And that’s exactly why they vanished so easily. In the name of order, safety, or religious propriety, these deeply intimate spaces and all they hold continue to slip away. This isn’t just about bricks or curtains. It’s about memory, and how softly it can be erased when decisions are made from above, by institutions that speak of faith but forget the textures of it. In Kashmir, where both men and women carry centuries of devotion, such forgetting doesn’t feel neutral. It feels like an inflicted absence. An empty silence that once held meaning. Outside the city, in the shrines of Kashmir’s valleys and hills, something still lingers. At Baba Reshi, the mood is less structured, less policed. Here, women walk freely, light lamps, tie threads to latticework, and stir food in sacred kitchens. Their presence is visible—not formal, but felt. There’s a small, designated space marked “for women,” in which they move with familiarity. Women sweep the floors, offer prayers aloud, and tend to the rituals that anchor belief. These gestures are often seen as care rather than acts of worship, but it is worship too. Unlike the city’s polished mosques, rural shrines seem to breathe with memory. The freedom they offer, however, is fragile. It survives because it is overlooked, rather than because it has been protected. Space for women’s religious practice can be claimed, precisely because it remains informal, invisible, almost domestic. The erosion is uneven. In these peripheral places, the edge holds on to what the center forgets. And yet, even here, one wonders—what happens when these quiet practices no longer go unacknowledged, but become regulated? Echoes of a time gone by. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Sadiya, 27, walks through the narrow lane leading to Jamia Masjid with ease. She has been coming here since she was a child, led by her mother’s hand. She doesn’t pray in the main courtyard, but she doesn’t mind. The women’s section—tucked to the side, with the mounted TV broadcasting the Mirwaiz’s sermon—still feels sacred to her. “It’s quiet. Sometimes too quiet,” she says with a small smile, “but when the waaz begins, something shifts. It feels like we’re part of it, even if we’re not seen.” She acknowledges that the space isn’t perfect. It’s separate. Small. Often unseen. But she doesn’t see it as absence. “We’re still here,” she says. “We still listen. We still feel.” What keeps her coming is the sense of continuity. Her mother sat here, and maybe one day, her daughter will too. “I know it could be better. But I also know it’s not lost. Not yet. And as long as we come, it won’t be.” At the Threshold of Memory I have never stepped into these rooms. Not because I wasn’t curious, but because I know I shouldn’t. My place, as a man, is not inside. Listening, watching, remembering what is said and what is not. These spaces—drawn in cloth, carved into routine—were never mine. And yet they’ve shaped the way I understand prayer, presence, and the politics of space. I have learned to read absence, to hear what disappears without announcement. In a culture where so much is held in gesture, to stand at the threshold is not passive. It’s a kind of responsibility. In the shadowed alcove of a shrine, a woman lights a stick of incense. The smoke rises slowly, curling into the dimness. Its scent—rose, ash, something older—fills the air. Behind her, a small child leans against her mother’s shoulder, half-asleep, her breath matching the rhythm of the prayer whispered beside her. Nothing is said aloud. But something sacred passes between them: tender, private, deeply alive. These are not moments most people would record. They don’t fit neatly into architectural plans or ideological doctrines. Instead they carry what no institution can replace: faith that lives in touch, in memory, in the soft persistence of presence. Even as walls are rebuilt and policies redraw the shape of sacred life, these quiet devotions continue. A rug tucked behind a staircase. A prayer whispered behind a curtain. What disappears from sight won’t always vanish. Some spaces move inward. Into memory, into gesture, into breath. Writing may be a way to resist forgetting. Because even when a room is gone, what it once held can still remain—in scent, in story, in the hush that follows prayer. I write about these corners with careful attention. To me, this means knowing the difference between witnessing and claiming. I carry these stories not as evidence, but as echoes of things fading not yet gone. In Kashmir, where so much has already been taken, documenting is more than just recording. In writing, I honour what remains, to make space for memory when physical space no longer allows it. … Every Friday, Shabir takes a break from his carpenter work—like many self-employed men in Kashmir—and drives with his wife and two daughters, Azra and Ajwa, to the Baba Reshi shrine on his scooter. It’s not just routine; it’s a rhythm of devotion, held in the quiet folds of family life. “Friday is for slowing down,” he says. “For prayer. For being together.” When they arrive, Shabir takes Azra, the younger one, with him into the shrine. “She’s still small,” he smiles. “She watches me closely, tries to copy every movement.” Ajwa, now nine, goes with her mother to the courtyard, to tie threads, to pray, to go into the small women’s prayer room when they find it open. “I’ve never gone in, and I won’t. But I know it’s a place of peace…for them.” He doesn’t speak of fairness or rights. Just presence, and memory. “My daughters will remember this. That they belonged here. That faith wasn’t something they had to find. It was already waiting for them.” ∎ Woman with a Tasbeeh , Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Shared faith, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Friday prayers, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. At Khanqah Urs, Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. A child’s whisper, Aishmuqam Shrine, Islamabad. Courtesy of Zainab. Woman praying at Chrar, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Daan Levun, Babareshi, Baramullah. Devotees perform age-old ritual of coating a stone oven with clay soil, believing that their prayers shall be fulfilled. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence II, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. The walls that stood the testament of time. Courtesy of Zainab. Walk by faith, Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Testament of a collective history, Charar-i Sharif, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Inherited resilience. Zoya with a friend, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Photo Essay Kashmir Mosque Worship Devotion Femininity Prayer Ritual Sacred Space Future Generations Generational Legacy Memory 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 Oct 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: