India’s archive of the COVID-19 pandemic is incomprehensive, and a rhetoric of ghostliness has been employed by the political class to deem insignificant the lives of migrant laborers most affected by the pandemic. Analyzing the statistics, politics, and poetics of disappearance in the case of India’s migrant crisis extracts truth from darkness; this work seeks to translate forced absentia into a historical record in its own right, relaying a clear manifestation of alienated labor amid global calamity. India’s archive of the COVID-19 pandemic is incomprehensive, and a rhetoric of ghostliness has been employed by the political class to deem insignificant the lives of migrant laborers most affected by the pandemic. Analyzing the statistics, politics, and poetics of disappearance in the case of India’s migrant crisis extracts truth from darkness; this work seeks to translate forced absentia into a historical record in its own right, relaying a clear manifestation of alienated labor amid global calamity. Thomash Changmai An indescribable journey of survival (2022) CGI (blender 3d) Artist Mumbai AUTHOR · AUTHOR · AUTHOR 15 Nov 2024 th · FEATURES REPORTAGE · LOCATION X Marks The Ghost The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mumbai, India was reported on 11th March , 2020. Thirteen days later, a nationwide lockdown was announced – bringing India to a grinding halt. Except that is not what actually happened. Those who could afford it shielded themselves within their homes, rations packed to the rafters and N-95 masks stockpiled. For the over 600 million internal migrants in India –those whose homes are in villages but who work in informal labor markets in the city–the lockdown announcement triggered a mass exodus. Droves of people fled the cities they worked in to return to their rural communities, largely on foot. With their wages coming to an abrupt standstill, they left deeply fearful of what lay ahead. Much has been written about the lack of statistics regarding this exodus. Many lives were lost to hunger, fatigue, heatstroke and, of course, disease. Yet “ there are no numbers ,” Santosh Kumar Gangwar, then Indian Minister for Labour and Employment, stated the same year when asked to enumerate the tragedy’s scale at a national level. Migrant workers have already long been considered “fringe figures” within the Indian urban social network. With the rupture caused by the pandemic, their existences have only been further invisibilized. The initial guidance provided by India’s central government was to ensure that migrants did not leave the cities. However, given the sheer volume of panicked people desperate to rush back home, this guidance was impossible to actually implement. When the stay-where-you-are orders failed, the center tried creating quarantine camps at state borders .This, too, did not prove successful. Attempts to build a database of the departing migrants were also abandoned halfway. The pandemic was already seen as an arithmetic problem : a problem of numbers where a solution could purportedly be reached by just pinning down the right formula. This notion was only compounded upon by the use of terms such as “rate of infection” and “doubling time” in the media, which made the actual lack of data and data collection efforts regarding migrant workers result in a particular kind of disenfranchisement. Despite the magnitude of the exodus, India’s national mood was to dismiss the migrants’ long march as simply an aberration. Since the event was caused by the deep distrust that migrants displayed in the state’s ability to provide them with safety nets, any acknowledgment of the tragedy’s nuances would misalign with the government’s narrative of complete control over the crisis. A Vocabulary of Ghostliness In retrospect, the lack of numbers eventually became an object of interrogation. A particular trope came into play within the media discourse surrounding the migrant exodus: a vocabulary of ghostliness. Words used to describe the state of the migrants essentialized their identities to solely their forced absence from the labor market. News reports in publications like the BBC and God Save the Points , spoke of “ghost workers” and “ ghost towns .” In a Telegraph India essay written shortly after the first lockdown, academic Manas Ray describes the migrant workers trekking to their native villages as “ghost mutineers stalking the country in search of a home.” “These lives are, of course, not entitled to the city's culture and taste, to its intellect and leisure; these are gross lives,” Ray writes further. The word “gross,” a mathematical term for excess, is specifically used here to capture the unnumbered migrants’ lives. “What seems like a relatively stable social order is constantly being modified, added, subtracted, maintained, and cleaned by the invisible labor force mostly made of migrants,” Ray continues. While terming the migrants as ghosts evokes a certain poignancy, it also dehumanizes and homogenizes a diverse, marginalized group of people. Although the tragic scale of the exodus could not accurately be enumerated at the time, it is now possible to retrospectively analyze Indian media archives and give an approximate number to the verbiage that was in play. As an intervention into this archive of absence, I formulated a dataset containing newspaper (e-paper) stories that appeared when I ran a Google Search with the following phrases as keywords: Migrant Haunting Mumbai Migrant Ghost Mumbai Covid Haunting Mumbai Covid Ghost Mumbai I delimited the database both spatially and temporally. The city of Mumbai became a stand-in for the urban, chosen for being the country’s financial capital. Temporally, I limited the selected articles to those published between 15th March, 2020 and 10th August, 2021. I downloaded the text from these news articles from relevant pages of search results as raw TXT data and eliminated the duplicate results, making sure that each webpage was represented only once in the TXT data file. This data was subsequently input into a Word document where, using the “Find” feature, I located the words “haunt” and “ghost,” highlighting the sections they appeared in. I further transferred these sections to columns to see the frequency of the words and the contexts they were phrased within. Finally, I color-coded repeated phrases, numbering each occurrence. My goal through this exercise was to locate patterns within this particular media discourse which evoked a metaphoric vocabulary of ghostliness. The data I analyzed for these patterns encompassed roughly 106,000 words in total, including headlines, by-lines, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions over the four keyword searches. It is important for me to say that by no means did I conduct a perfect academic study which incorporated all the work that has been produced relating to the migrant exodus. The formulation of the data set was restricted by resources, paywalls, and availability of time so it is meant to be indicative rather than declarative. Therefore, this is not a quantitative analysis, but a qualitative exploration of the use of a specific vocabulary and its implications for understanding a certain media archive. Why is it necessary to think about the vocabulary used to describe this, or any, tragedy? First, without numbers, we have no other way to understand the scale of the lives lost and destroyed. Secondly, understanding language allows us to understand who is permitted to be forgotten or remembered, and who media discourse renders invisible. The absence of numbers of lives can then be understood by investigating who is made a ghost–who is seen to haunt rather than live as a full human being–and how. When we cannot account, we must articulate. There is a long tradition in the social sciences of using the vocabulary of ghostliness and hauntings to explain societal relations. In a 1919 essay titled The Uncanny , Sigmund Freud describes how any change in the way society functions bring with it a sense of deep unsettlement. Karl Marx takes this even further at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto , where he terms communism itself as a specter haunting Europe, invoking ghosts to signify societal churn. More recent scholarship in anthropology has built on tradition, hypothesizing how societies often tell ghost stories as a way of integrating uncomfortable memories into the cultural fabric. In scenarios with no actual historical record or archive, hauntings and ghosts become a means to combat “ institutional forgetfulness. ” With the COVID-19 pandemic and migrant crisis in India, we can see deliberate institutional forgetfulness in action. Here, the vocabulary of ghostliness becomes a tool to grasp public sentiment. Even three years removed from the worst of the pandemic, which disproportionately ravaged the Global South , understanding its impact on human lives is to grapple with ambiguity–intellectual, pragmatic, and experiential. It is to be faced with something that is not quite historical, not quite normal, and not quite visible. It is to engage with a ghost. Gloomy Sunday, 2023, courtesy of Thomash Changmai. In the depths of the night, a lonely soul weeps, Tangled in shadows, where despair seeps. A heart, heavy with the weight of solitude's sting, A melody of sorrow, a dirge I sing. (Inspired by the song Gloomy Sunday composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and published in 1933.) Accounting, Articulating Within my data set, the word “haunt” in various conjugations (haunted, haunting, et cetera) occurred 29 times. The term was used most often to describe images of the migrant exodus and how the city folk were haunted by the visuals of it. To ascribe a numeric value: out of the 29 references, 11 referred either to “haunting images” or “haunting visuals.” As anthropologists Benjamin Smith and Richard Vokes write in their 2008 article “ Haunting Images ,” the photograph and the ghost “are never far apart.” The two can be interchangeable in their function, “standing in for relationships that cannot or can no longer be performed directly,” and share the similarity of embodying present absences . They further activate an “emotive force through their representation of absent objects, kin and places.” Images from the pandemic are rife with this emotive force as they represent moments of death and tangible devastation, evoking significant grief, and by extension of the vocabulary of haunting, horror. Through images, citizens of the city are forced to reckon with the structural collapse of urban labor networks. In my study, a second pattern emerged: the use of the word “haunting” to describe memory and recollection. There were four references to being “haunted by memories.” Comparing it to the previous pattern, where photographs produced ghosts, memory here is where the lost “normal life, or the remembrance of normality,” resides. During the pandemic, the phrase “new normal” was commonplace. In such an unprecedented time, recent memories felt historical, and indeed haunting given the sense of loss they invoked. The word “ghost” itself appeared in my study 28 times. 21 of these occurrences concerned a place, with 11 referring to “ghost towns,” nine to “ghost villages,” and one to the ghostly nature of abandoned roads. In media discourse during COVID19, the term ghost town was clearly used to describe the emptied urban centers, while ghost villages referred to the rural settings where the population had previously been sparse due to internal migration. During the pandemic, these became the sites of return for the working class who were seeking safety and familiarity. In five instances across the data set, “ghost” was an epithet transferred to the laborers themselves leaving the cityscape. Coupled with migrants already being othered and alienated, this deployment of the language of haunting only served to further exacerbate their marginalization and cement their erasure. A 2022 report from the World Health Organisation suggested that India’s real COVID toll may never be known. According to the report, more than 4.7 million people – a nearly ten times higher statistic than estimates by Indian officials – might have died from COVID-19 infection between 1st January, 2020 and 31st December, 2021. It is not a stretch to postulate that the missing numbers from India’s state statistics might be deaths that occurred in villages or at the homes of those who could not afford medical treatment. Data paucity within India is not a new phenomenon, and it is well-documented that the ones left out are often from marginalized communities . A poem written by Indian filmmaker Kireet Khurana during the lockdown turns attention to the migrant crisis with the following stanza: “Hum to pravasi hain, kya is desh ke vaasi hain? Agar nahi hain insaan to maar do abhi, de do farmaan” (We are migrants, are we (not) residents of this country? If we are not human, kill us now, Give the command) The stanza juxtaposes “ pravasi” (migrant/traveler) with “ desh ke vasi ” (residents of the country). The value of this wordplay comes from the etymology of the terms and their meanings. The root word for both pravasi and vasi is the same–“vas” meaning abode. Therefore, a vasi is one who is of the abode, so its negative suffix pra(vasi) implies one who is separate or othered from their place of abode. However, the term desh ke vasi (residents of the country) often signifies being a citizen. Citizenship and residency are therefore interchangeable in this context. The poem questions the disenfranchisement of migrants by declaring “if we are not human, kill us now,” criticizing the political leadership's unwillingness to provide migrant laborers with humane means of returning to their native communities. In his celebrated essay collection Politics of the Governed , historian Partha Chatterjee categorizes individuals afflicted by infrastructural disenfranchisement as occupying a fringe space. In this fringe or margin, they reside within the city but cannot rely on it for social safeguards. Thus, they are rendered beyond the comfort of being a vasi . This only became more explicit in India through the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite numerous assurances by the government that migrant workers would be safe within the cities , a precedent of haplessness and lost livelihoods led to large masses attempting to leave cities. For most migrant workers, the uncertainty of a treacherous journey back home was preferable to relying on the state for sustenance. The distrust created by constant erasure simply could not be erased by politicians’ promises and press broadcasts. Specters and those who witness David Torri , an anthropologist of shamanism, describes the ghost as first and foremost a story: it “needs listeners more than it needs witnesses.” As researchers charged institutionally with the creation of knowledge, the onus is upon us to bear witness to the lacunae within archives and acknowledge our failures in listening to those who fall through the chasms of documentation. India’s COVID-19 migrant exodus was a humanitarian crisis born out of rightful mistrust held by laborer populations towards urban administration. The ghosts resulting from this exodus, and further exacerbated through media discourse, are not new, but have always existed – the pandemic simply made visible the cracks within India’s neoliberal urban apparatus. Indian cities have continued to grapple with their failure to integrate migrant laborers into their social and cultural fabric in the three years since the pandemic. Despite the significant cost to human life, there has been no socio-political change aimed at remedying the gap between those seen as citizens of the city, and those essentialized as mere bodies for labor. “I felt betrayed twice: by society, because no one around me lent a hand – my landlord kicked me out – and by the state,” a construction worker from Kanpur, Ram Yadav, said in a 2022 documentary made by The Guardian . At the time of the lockdown, he vowed never to return to the city he’d left. A few months later, however, he had no choice but to head back to Delhi. By November 2020, large sections of migrant workers , much like Yadav, had returned to the cities they had left. There was no newfound love for the urban–just desperation in the face of limited job opportunities within rural communities. The disenfranchisement they continue to face is deeply institutionalized. Within most archives their experiences are secondary. The fact that there are no numbers is potent; the state does not account for the working class body, neither in life nor death. In life, they have no stability or voice in the functioning of the very urban centers that rely on their migrant labor; in death, they are merely erased. This erasure reaffirms migrant workers as Chatterjee’s term of fringe figures, or outsiders to the city’s social and cultural fabric. Devoid of agency, the migrant becomes the object of urban anxieties, rather than a subject experiencing them. The city is thus simultaneously run by migrants yet haunted by their absence, with the urban populace haunted in particular, albeit at a comfortable distance, by migrants’ trauma. In other words, the laborer is subject to the whims of the megacity and those who administer it. They become the “other,” pitied by middle-class citizenry, yet still not seen by them as human or equal. As Jacques Derrida puts it in his book Specters of Marx (1994), disjunctures in society, like pandemics, make apparent the anxieties of a place, and the “ghosts” that emerge here are testimonies to alienated labor. By reconciling these specters through scholarship, at the least, we can move forward towards marking the absences within existing records. It is an attempt to integrate significant institutional failure into cultural memory. The production of knowledge is never perfect, but the use of alternative vocabularies as interventions allows us to pinpoint deliberate erasures. Fully understanding the effect of a crisis, of course, does not encompass just metrics, even if imprecise, for its impact. Yet, it is an honest start. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 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Features Mumbai State Government Narrative Internal Migrants Migrant Laborers Ghost Workers State Erasure Vocabulary of Ghostliness Data Paucity Shamanism Complicity Cosmopolitanism Displacement Alienation Institutional Forgetfulness Precarity Refugees State Modernization Narratives Archive Pandemic Kireet Khurana Migrant Traveler Health Epidemic Town and Gown Rural Urban Media Discourse India COVID-19 Archive of Absence 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:

AUTHOR Sumana Roy SUMANA ROY is the author of How I became a Tree , Missing: A Novel , Out of Syllabus: Poems , My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories , among others. Her newest book is entitled Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries. She is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. AUTHOR WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

“Loneliest star, shining so brightly / For no one to see. / Loneliest star, tell me your secret / You shouldn't keep it.” COMMUNITY Quintet Priya Darshini · Max ZT · Shahzad Ismaily · Moto Fukushima · Chris Sholar “Loneliest star, shining so brightly / For no one to see. / Loneliest star, tell me your secret / You shouldn't keep it.” The closing set from our event on 30th March 2024, "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse," at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, New York, capped off two stimulating panels and marked the close of Volume 2 Issue 1 of SAAG. The performance by the quintet of Priya Darshini (vocals), Shahzad Ismaily (piano, drums/percussion, synth, guitar), Moto Fukushima (bass, shamisen) & Max ZT (hammered dulcimer), and Chris Sholar (electronics, ableton) ushered in new emotional registers, and another period of interpretive possibilities for SAAG, as reflected upon by Darshini. Their set showcases many of the songs from Darshini's debut album, as well as songs about hope and solidarity, and a showstopping rendition of a composition of Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers." Event Photography courtesy of Josh Steinbauer. SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER-VERSE Panel 1: What Does "Solidarity" Mean? SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER-VERSE Panel 2: On the Relationship between Form & Resistance ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Brooklyn Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse Jazz Music Classical Music Experimental Music Vocals Hammered Dulcimer Drums Guitar Electronics Composition Contemporary Music Shamisen Alternative Jazz Love in Exile On Becoming House of Waters GRAMMY Periphery Emily Dickinson Atahualpa Yupanqui Protest Song PRIYA DARSHINI is a vocalist with a fresh, imaginative and fascinating sound influenced by Carnatic and South Asian classical music, and deeply syncretic global traditions including Americana, folk, and jazz improvisation. Her debut album Periphery (Chesky Records, 2020) was nominated at the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards for Best New Age Album. Based in Brooklyn, Darshini also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network , and is a trustee of the Mumbai-based non-profit Jana Rakshita which aids underprivileged pediatric cancer patients, Adivasi children's education, amongst other initiatives. MAX ZT is a Chicago native now based in Brooklyn who had his first encounter with the hammered dulcimer at the age of two. He has been lauded as the “Jimi Hendrix of dulcimer” by NPR , and performed with musicians like Ravi Shakar, Tinariwen, and Jimmy Cliff, among others. Max ZT and Moto Fukushima together form the Brooklyn-based power duo, House of Waters. The band has released two albums, with its debut album, Rising , reaching #2 on the iTunes World Music chart, and the second album hitting #4 on the iTunes Jazz chart. Its sophomore album, On Becoming (GroundUP Music, 2023), was recently nominated at the 66th GRAMMY Awards for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. SHAHZAD ISMAILY is a largely self-taught composer and musician, having mastered a wide array of instruments. Ismaily has recorded or performed with an incredibly diverse assemblage of musicians and has also composed regularly for dance and theater. He was a two-time nominee at the recent 66th GRAMMY Awards, for both Best Alternative Jazz Album for Love in Exile (Verve Records, 2023) with Vijay Iyer & Arooj Aftab, and Best Global Music Performance for the track "Shadow Forces" from Love in Exile . Most recently, Ismaily is part of the new quartet Beings which will release its debut album There is a Garden (No Quarter) in July 2024. MOTO FUKUSHIMA is a Japanese artist currently based in NYC. He is a six-string bass player, composer, and shamisen player. Along with Max ZT, Fukushima forms the duo House of Waters. The band has released two albums, with its debut album, Rising (GroundUP Music, 2019), reaching #2 on the iTunes World Music chart, and the second album hitting #4 on the iTunes Jazz chart. House of Waters' sophomore album, On Becoming (GroundUP Music, 2023), was recently nominated at the 66th GRAMMY Awards for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. CHRIS SHOLAR is a world-renowned music producer and composer and one of the most in-demand guitarists in the world of R&B and Hip Hop music. He has worked with Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, A Tribe Called Quest, Frank Ocean, and Snoop Dogg, amongst many others, and as performed at numerous concerts, and arenas, including Carnegie Hall, the Glastonbury Festival, and the NFL Super Bowl Gala. He is a two-time GRAMMY Award winner from his collaborations with Jay-Z and Esperanza Spalding. Live Brooklyn 25th Apr 2024 JOSH STEINBAUER is an award-winning filmmaker, musical composer, and visual artist. His work has been shown in Heaven, Third Ward, No Moon, Gen Art, H. Lewis galleries, Harvard Art Museum and American Folk Art Museum , and published in Nowhere Magazine, Terrain, The Offing, Moving Poems, Scroll.in, BrooklynOnDemand , and the Times of India, amongst others. Some of his portrait drawings are currently exhibited at the Long Island City Artists' (LIC-A) newest show Drawing Beyond the Surface , curated by Jorge Posada. On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

With the rise of militant insurgencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pakistani state now finds itself in a double bind. Following brutal crackdowns on the PTM at the hands of the state, it is not state-supported groups but Ulusi Pasuns that have emerged at the vanguard of resistance against militancy. THE VERTICAL Swat Youth Vanguards AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR With the rise of militant insurgencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pakistani state now finds itself in a double bind. Following brutal crackdowns on the PTM at the hands of the state, it is not state-supported groups but Ulusi Pasuns that have emerged at the vanguard of resistance against militancy. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Reportage Swat Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan Pashtun Tahafuz Movement PTM Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen Pashtun Nationalism Kabul Chowk Swat Public Uprising Swat Ulusi Pasun Aftab Khan Yousafazai Taliban Militancy Insurgency Police Action Community Building Internet Platforms Social Media State Violence Peaceful Resistance State & Media Student Movements Student Protests 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 Reportage Swat 24th Feb 2024 On August 2, 2022, Aftab Khan Yousafazai, a young software engineer from Khwazakhela, a village in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, returned home. For the young engineer, who grew up during possibly the bloodiest recent chapter of militancy-driven conflict in northwestern Pakistan, the return could not have come at a more inauspicious time. Yousafzai had been away studying software engineering in Abbottabad, another district in the mountainous North. Having finished his degree, he planned to spend leisure time with his family and friends while awaiting his results. The retreat proved to be short-lived, however. Less than a week after his arrival, on August 9, 2022, grainy videos of an injured police officer and other people in the captivity of Taliban in the mountains of Upper Swat surfaced on the internet. The videos triggered fear and panic in the region, as well as the rest of the country, where memories of a brutal insurgency in the scenic district were still fresh. Having seen bloodshed as a child—the district descended into chaos under the Taliban’s reign of terror from 2007-2009—Yousafzai was no stranger to militancy. At its peak, the crisis displaced two million people from the district during a huge military operation to quash the insurgency. The resurgence of militants was unnerving for someone already traumatised by the horrors of Taliban rule. His family and friends were equally distressed, exchanging feverish voice notes and messages with Yousafzai regarding the best course of action. Like many of his ethnic Pashtun peers, who had come of age in the wake of the War on Terror amidst a conflict that shattered—and continues to do so—lives and livelihoods in the border region of Pakistan, Yousafzai had latched for hope onto the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in his varsity days. The PTM and its outspoken leader, Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen, represented the collective anguish of a population caught up between militant insurgencies, military operations, and their bloody aftermath. The young Pashteen took centre-stage in Pashtun nationalism and delivered a scathing critique of Pakistani state policies in the Northwest. He had an immediate, widespread appeal among the youth of the region whose sentiments found a vociferous advocate in him. The Pakistani state came down hard on the PTM, and as a result, it became a common umbrella for all those who had had enough of the state’s oppressive tactics in the name of security. Yousafzai and his friends kept their distance from the movement despite vowing support for it to avoid arrests and controversies attached to the PTM. With the resurgent Taliban threatening peace in his valley once again, however, the time for indecision ended for him. The young men felt the need to demand an immediate response to such dire circumstances. It was in this state of mind that Yousafzai shared a Facebook post calling for the public to attend a protest in Kabul Chowk against the return of the Taliban. On August 12, 2022, locals turned up at the venue in decent numbers. A few days later, Yousafzai and his friends named their nascent movement Swat Ulusi Pasun or Swat Public Uprising. “We want to have nothing to do with either the military or the militants. Only the masses are suffering in this war,” Yousafzai told me in an interview recently. What started as sporadic militant attacks in the summer of 2022, soon surged into a pattern that suggested a second militant uprising in Swat, as the district witnessed kidnapping for ransoms, murders and roadside bomb attacks throughout September. Swat Ulusi Pasun ’s largest gathering congregated on October 11, 2022, when thousands of people returned its call to protest in Nishat Chowk of Mingora, the largest city in Swat. Among those in attendance were the PTM chief Manzoor Ahmed Pashteen, as well as leaders of several mainstream political parties. Since then, the Swat Ulusi Pasun- inspired peaceful protests have been sweeping large parts of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, are carrying out attacks with renewed vigour. Motivated by the PTM’s peaceful opposition to militancy and military operations, large gatherings of tech-savvy youths have travelled across large swathes of territory in the province and its restive tribal belt. Wherever there is a major militant attack, youths take to the street in protest and, most of the time, pillory the military and its leadership for the resurgence of the Taliban with provocative slogans. “No one could fight back a peaceful public resistance,” said Yousafzai. Soon after their inception, these protests began to include individuals from institutions such as the police—they, too, were threatened by the Taliban’s activity. In January 2023, a massive suicide blast at the mosque inside the heavily-guarded compound of Peshawar Police Headquarters killed more than 80 and injured 250 others. This attack prompted members of the police force to protest as they, too, blamed the state for its failure to provide security to people. On February 1, several police personnel gathered outside the Peshawar Press Club to protest the militancy and even went to the extent of chanting slogans against the military for its alleged double dealings with the militants. Such protests have happened in the wake of terrorist attacks in Swat, Lower Dir, Bajaur, Khyber, Waziristan, and Peshawar—districts in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province—where large numbers of residents took to the streets to raise their voices against growing incidents of militancy. The rising tide of peaceful resistance in northwestern Pakistan is yet another chapter in the battle against terrorism in the region. In the initial phases of Taliban militancy, Pakistani authorities forced local elders to raise militias or lashkars to combat the onslaught of militancy in their villages and towns. One morning in October 2008, reporters in Peshawar were called to the Badaber police station in Peshawar city’s outskirts for an unusual press conference. We were made to sit inside the cramped building of the police station, waiting for the arrival of Abdul Malik, Mayor or Nazim of the Adezai Union Council. He was detained earlier in August on suspicions of having links with the Taliban after an attack on a police patrol in his village. Mr. Malik was to renounce his links with the Taliban in the press conference upon his release. The wait for Mr. Malik’s arrival took many hours as police personnel tried to reassure the anxious reporters that he was not in their custody and would be presented as soon as an intelligence agency handed him over to them. It was only around noon when Mr. Malik was brought to the police station in an unmarked car. A bulky man with a salt and pepper beard, Mr Malik briefly chatted with reporters and denied having any links with the Taliban but did not open up about his detention. The press conference ended abruptly as Mr Malik left the building surrounded by police security. A few weeks later, he set up the Adezai Aman Lashkar , or Adezai Peace Militia, to combat militancy in the area. Soon after, another lashkar was set up in Bazidkhel village by a local elder Muhammad Faheem, who was engaged in a deadly war in the Khyber agency—a tribal area bordering Afghanistan—with the militant outfit Lashkar-e-Islam . A similar pattern of arming the locals to fight militants was used across entire swathes of the tribal belt and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. However, militants’ retribution against the lashkars was harsh. Abdul Malik was killed in a suicide attack in 2009, while bullet-riddled bodies of Mr. Faheem and some of his close associates were recovered from a vehicle in June 2012 in mysterious conditions. The peace militias in other parts of the tribal belt and the rest of the province also did not fare well. Hundreds of tribal elders associated with these anti-Taliban militias were eliminated in ruthless, targeted killings, IEDs, and suicide attacks. The severity of militant rage against lashkars could be gauged from the fact that barely a month after Yousafzai and his comrades set up the Swat Ulusi Pasun, on September 12, 2022, militants killed Idrees Khan in a remote-controlled bomb blast. He was the former head of a peace committee in Swat. On September 16, another former peace committee member was shot dead in Charbagh Tehsil. This was the situation that gave rise to several avatars of Ulusi Pasuns or Public Rising. Youths like Yousafzai had not only witnessed the horrors of militancy but also seen the militants exacting brutal revenge on those who sided with the state. Besides the nonstop violence, however, they had also seen a massive public outpouring of support for PTM’s anti-war rhetoric across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This is what inspired them to pursue peaceful resistance. Amidst the state’s crackdown against the PTM, arresting its workers and leaders, and the attendant media blackout of its protests, the emergence of Ulusi Pasuns have provided alternate platforms for people to raise their voices against Talibanization. They are PTM multiplied, local platforms for disgruntled youths—armed with mobile phones and using social media for mobilisation—to rally around their resistance to oppression at the hands of militants and the state. For Yousafzai, this journey for public mobilisation has been full of twists and turns. Unlike most educated youths who try to land a government job soon after graduation, he found himself centre-stage in the biggest youth uprising against systematic violence in Pakistan. Before sending that Facebook post calling for a protest against the Taliban in his native Swat, he had applied for two government jobs, expecting calls for interviews. This seemed unlikely now. One night in August, he was detained for several hours and released after a public outcry against his detention. Soon again, he was arrested a second time, spending 16 days behind bars on charges of disturbing public peace and bailed out by a local court. Yousafzai recalls receiving threatening calls from the Taliban labelling him as a stooge of the Pakistani intelligence. “I argued with the caller on the phone saying the Ulasi Pasuns have nothing to do with intelligence and after all, we are only demanding a peaceful life, right to education and work for our children.” Yousafzai is currently heading the Swat Ulusi Pasun and coordinates activities of similar volunteer organisations, which he has helped organise at the tehsil level. He coordinates these activities through WhatsApp groups, with an eye on the direction that Taliban militancy may take. However, his political activities have also created ripples in his own family life. His father, currently in the United States, is not happy with Yousafzai’s political campaigning and wants him to give up his advocacy and return to a normal life. Despite opposition and pressure from his family to return to “normalcy,” Yousafzai remains steadfast in his commitment to finishing what he has started. ∎ 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:

REPORTER María Constanza Costa MARÍA CONSTANZA COSTA is a political scientist, journalist, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She is also a columnist for international news at Panamá Revista . REPORTER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

“Take Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Well, it's a working-class family, and it's about upward mobility, but systematic racism is preventing them from having upward mobility. I remember seeing the film first and not even realizing that it was a play. Of course, it's a story about economic apartheid, but I only later saw the resonance in the tradition when I read August Wilson, Amiri Baraka, and later, Lynn Nottage.” | Interview · COMMUNITY Interview · Bangladeshi Diapora Theatre & Bengali Harlem “Take Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Well, it's a working-class family, and it's about upward mobility, but systematic racism is preventing them from having upward mobility. I remember seeing the film first and not even realizing that it was a play. Of course, it's a story about economic apartheid, but I only later saw the resonance in the tradition when I read August Wilson, Amiri Baraka, and later, Lynn Nottage.” Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. How do you give dignity and humanity and a platform for people that are not being represented in the arts, in film, TV, and theatre? SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Bangladeshi Diapora Bangladesh South Asian Theater Working-Class Stories Bertolt Brecht August Wilson Amiri Baraka Lorraine Hansberry Avijit Roy Mel Watkins Black Solidarities 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. 11th Sep 2020 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:

Literary theorist Aneil Rallin rejects the conventions of academic, scholarly writing being didactic. Instead of kowtowing to the distrust of playfulness in academia, he brings to the fore in his research poesis that can purposely by “playful or elliptical or weird or whimsical or mixed-genre or creative.” | · COMMUNITY Interview · Radical Rhetoric Radical Rhetoric, Pedagogy & Academic Complicity Literary theorist Aneil Rallin rejects the conventions of academic, scholarly writing being didactic. Instead of kowtowing to the distrust of playfulness in academia, he brings to the fore in his research poesis that can purposely by “playful or elliptical or weird or whimsical or mixed-genre or creative.” Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. Along with scholars like Trinh T. Minh-ha and Susan Griffin, I want to reject the notion that academic scholarly writing has to be pedantic, or that it can't be playful or elliptical or weird or whimsical or mixed-genre or creative. There seems to be a distrust in academia, of playfulness and creativity, it's not seen as serious or critical or important. But, I like bringing together lots of different forms, critical writing and anecdotes and notes and analysis and snippets of conversations and fragments and juxtapositions. RECOMMENDED: Dreads and Open Mouth: Living/Teaching/Writing Queerly by Aneil Rallin. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Radical Rhetoric Politics of Citation Rhetoric Rupture Composition Queer Spaces Pedagogy June Jordan Susan Griffin Politics of Location Location Adrienne Rich Complicity Complicity of the Academy Academia Nature of Credibility Corporate Queer Identity Gloria E. Anzaldúa Eunice de Souza Women's Participation Gender Gender Studies Women and Gender Studies in India Queer Activism Nature of Radical Activism Universities Experimental Methods Trinh T. Minh-ha Whimsy Playfulness Centering the Silly Fragments Mixed-Genre Multimodal Personal History 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. 18th Jan 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:

Our live event FLUX: An Evening in Dissent began with an unplugged performance by Pakistani folk-pop musician Natasha Noorani of the unreleased title track from her upcoming album. | · INTERACTIVE Live · Lahore FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" Our live event FLUX: An Evening in Dissent began with an unplugged performance by Pakistani folk-pop musician Natasha Noorani of the unreleased title track from her upcoming album. Watch the event in full on IGTV. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent A pre-release, unplugged version of Natasha Noorani's as-yet-unreleased single "Choro." The official music video followed by a Q&A on the video's aesthetic was subsequently featured in our 2021 event "In Grief, In Solidarity." Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Live Lahore Event FLUX Pakistan Pakistani Pop Women Singers of Pakistan Pop Music Retro Music Contemporary Music Contemporary Pop Unplugged Musician Folk Progressive Rock Experimental Music Khayal Gayaki Choro Munaasib Urdu Music Urdu 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 Dec 2020 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:

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

“The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” | · INTERACTIVE Live · Delhi India's Vector Capitalism Model “The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. One woman who works in the industrial belt outside Delhi, at a Korean electronics firm. Her husband fell sick, and she lost pay for every day that she attended to him in the hospital. This is somebody who had worked at the same company for nine years, and was still treated like a temp worker. Though she's directly hired by the company, the contractor claims it helped to get her hired, refused to provide pay slips. This is a very common story for working-class workers during lockdown. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity in June 2021, senior editor Sarah Eleazar spoke to labor journalist Anumeha Yadav, then based in Delhi, about India's response to the pandemic, the labor beat within a shrinking journalistic landscape, and how "vector capitalism" can explain the Indian state's neoliberal services and broad approach towards its workers in both the formal and informal sectors. Yadav discussed her reporting regarding how the government's bizarre decisions at the height of the lockdown made life untenable for workers and the impoverished across the board. Barring the government's public pronouncement that landlords should suspend rent payments, Yadav argues that the testimony of workers and unrest, as seen in movements such as the farmers' movement or the harsh conditions of Gujarat, shows how the government engaged in mass abandonment while trying to commercialize the biometric data of over one billion people, as opposed to trying to mitigate the crisis. Data harvesting was far more critical than work and living conditions and significantly more than preventative health measures, which were carried out in the most cursory ways. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Live Delhi Event In Grief In Solidarity Aadhaar COVID-19 Lockdown Labor Precarity Standards of Living Living Conditions Biometrics Commercialization Health Workers Health Low-Income Workers Labor Movement Karnataka Literacy Consent Investigative Journalism Ethics of Journalism Labor Reporting Food Subsidies Vector Capitalism Neoliberalism Essential Workers Accountability Production The Great Pause Pandemic Agricultural Labor Alienation Scrap Workers Caste Isolation Haryana's Industrial Belt Automotive Industry Assembly Line Newsroom Farmers' Movement Gujarat 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:

In Hong Kong’s shifting political landscape, diasporic South Asian communities have emerged as key voices within a growing movement to build transnational solidarity, especially in regards to Palestine. Through reshaping activist networks and confronting racial exclusion, South Asians are building new alliances, resisting colonialism, and deepening their commitment to Palestinian liberation. In Hong Kong’s shifting political landscape, diasporic South Asian communities have emerged as key voices within a growing movement to build transnational solidarity, especially in regards to Palestine. Through reshaping activist networks and confronting racial exclusion, South Asians are building new alliances, resisting colonialism, and deepening their commitment to Palestinian liberation. "Khai Hoa" (Bloom) by Hoai Phuong. Artist · THE VERTICAL REPORTAGE · LOCATION Shifting Solidarities LOCATION AUTHOR . AUTHOR . AUTHOR . 22 May 2025 nd . Letter from our columnist . Building inclusive organizing networks is a fraught endeavor in Hong Kong. For the last five years , residents involved in demonstrations and community events have had to work around the government’s crackdown on civil liberties. For South Asians, the situation is more complex. In addition to dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 policies and the recent National Security Law ( NSL )—specifically implemented to intimidate dissenters—they also have to contend with the implicit racial biases of fellow organizers. It wasn’t until 2023, when people started protesting Israel’s genocide in Palestine, that organizing practices began shifting, with efforts to learn from South Asians’ years of work in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. While there is still plenty of room for progress, 2023 marked a promising moment of intersectional coalition building in Hong Kong’s political history. In 2019, the government proposed the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment), a bill regarding extradition that allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial to a number of countries, including the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and Macau. In the months that followed, more than a million people took to the streets to protest , citing concerns that the bill would expose people in Hong Kong to China’s judicial system. Protestors clashed with the police, and in the aftermath , faced immense repression; hundreds of activists were exiled, unions were dismantled, and residents left the territory in mass numbers. Amidst the turmoil, citizens found solace in one another, with the term “Hong Konger” becoming a unifying marker of identity for many dissenters. Despite this burgeoning camaraderie, ethno-nationalist tendencies persisted. The newfound sense of community excluded the city’s historic South Asian citizens —a group that came to the region as early as the 1800s, when the British colonized the city. Initially arriving as soldiers in the British army, South Asians eventually became central to setting up key administrative and educational institutions within the territory. However, today, Hong Kongers of South Asian descent still face institutionalized discrimination rooted in a colonial racial hierarchy, colorism, and language segregation. Adnan Muhammad is a Pakistani-Hong Konger who founded a Palestine solidarity group called United For Palestine (UFP) in 2017. Reflecting on his experience organising around Palestine in Hong Kong, he said, “We always felt like we were operating within silos [because] most of the people who came to our events were either Pakistani or Indian, or Muslim [from diverse backgrounds].” Adnan added that during the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests , South Asians and other minority communities could not partake because of the language barrier; most protest materials were in Cantonese. If they did participate, they became “easy targets” for the police due to their ethnicity, the institution's deeply rooted racist attitudes , and, notably, discriminatory “stop and search” practices. This is an observation that Alison Tan, a food designer and organizer, made , too. The Hong Kong-based designer stated, “People have a bit of a mind-your-own-business mentality in Hong Kong, especially in public, but during the demonstrations, you could see people actively looking out for each other,” adding, “Yet, when there were instances of police aggression towards South Asians, no one seemed to step up.” The organizing networks established in 2019 largely dissipated the following year when the pandemic hit. The government imposed 6pm curfews, movement tracking mobile apps, mask mandates, and restrictions on gatherings. In public, an air of self-censorship took root. Citizens felt that they couldn’t have open conversations about the ways these laws were negatively impacting them. The NSL, passed in 2020, made dissent along with community organizing even more difficult. It allowed the Hong Kong government to prosecute individuals with crimes of secession (trying to break away from China), subversion (threatening the government’s power), terrorism (acts of violence), and collusion with foreign organizations. Each of these crimes was vaguely defined—no one really seemed to know what would count as a transgression. By instituting this law, the government was effectively cracking down on civil liberties, including the freedom of speech. Despite the intensity of censorship, Hong Kong citizens did not lose their fervor for dissent. When Israel launched a genocidal attack on Palestine following the events of October 7th, organizing networks slowly began springing back into action. Citizens still didn’t have freedom of assembly, so events started out as small-scale, community-based, and non-confrontational gatherings. Nevertheless, organizers were resolute and made an effort to be intersectional. Following the cancellation of a Palestinian film screening at a community arts studio, solidarity efforts intensified. The events that were previously semi-public went completely underground. During this time, Alison remembers seeing South Asian and Middle Eastern communities taking the lead in filling a crucial gap in people’s knowledge about Palestine. “Most Chinese Hong Kongers do not care, and do not know [about Palestine]. We just don’t have an insight into the way faith, for example, plays a role in the struggle.” For Alison and Adnan, this knowledge gap exists because there has been little exchange and solidarity between movements for Hong Kong’s liberation and those located outside the region. In the past year, however, efforts by groups like United for Palestine have converged their goals with those of other organizing collectives. Under UFP leadership, people joined messaging groups made by South Asian Muslim youth that disseminated information about teach-ins and prayers being held in mosques that helped spread awareness about the history of the Palestinian cause. There were communal events, tucked away from the public eye, where people gathered to talk about grief, frustration, and their commitment to justice. Reflecting on these shifts, Adnan felt that even though their collective began operating in Hong Kong in 2017, “It was only after October 2023 that our efforts began reaching people beyond South Asian and Muslim communities, and people from other communities began to take an interest.” Vera, a Chinese Hong-Konger whose artist studio is located in a diverse neighborhood consisting of Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, and Chinese residents, shared that his studio’s support for Palestine has brought him and his colleagues closer to their South Asian neighbors. “X, a Pakistani kaifong , who often plays chess with me, visited our space and saw Palestinian flags. Since then, he’s been cooking for us, saying Palestinians are like his brothers and sisters.” This again represents a rare instance of solidarity between communities who live alongside each other but don’t always have common ground to meaningfully interact with one another—a divide that's frequently reinforced by systemic factors, including language differences. At a community mutual aid event in March 2024 that raised 48,000 HKD in donations for Palestine, South Asian students put up a stall selling keffiyehs, mehndi, and other solidarity materials alongside other Hong Kongers who sold miso soup, zines, and second-hand clothing. The event also featured a halal vegan-friendly spread of foods and learning sessions about Islam’s role in the resistance and the Palestinian struggle against colonization. The fundraiser, centered around honoring and learning about Palestinian culture, ended with a moving performance of a song, “My mouth was made for speaking,” by a Hong Kong singer, drawing powerful links between the struggle for Palestine’s liberation and Hong Kong’s own struggle against imperialism. This is not to say that there has not been pushback. Events that have taken place more publicly have been shut down and censored under the pretext of ambiguous complaints. While official reasoning remains unknown, pro-Palestine organizers speculate that the government seeks to avoid friction with pro-Zionist lobbies and maintain a politically neutral—or rather, a conflict-free—environment within the city. Of course, choosing to remain indifferent to a genocide is akin to implicitly siding with the oppressor. In August 2024, after almost a year of community-based events for Palestine, some organizers were able to host a public exhibit showcasing Palestine solidarity posters at Hong Kong’s premier Art Book Fair, “BOOKED,” at Tai Kwun Contemporary. However, two days before the fair was due to begin, the exhibition was canceled without any clear explanation from the management. Pivotally, organizers remain resilient and tactful. Within two days of the exhibition at BOOKED being canceled, they secured an alternative venue and utilized solidarity networks to gather a large number of attendees. Jason, a photographer who has been running a leftist reading club in Hong Kong for the past year, believes this was only possible because efforts related to Palestine revitalized networks of organizing that had been previously quashed. “There was a lot of energy in the city that dissipated [after 2019], and now people have a reason to come together again.” Alison, who was also at the event, said, “Palestine has really brought people from all walks of life together in a really powerful way.” It is hard to say whether these efforts make a dent in the powerful apparatus of settler-colonial regimes that seek to occupy Palestine. But within their own context, these newly formed relationships are allowing communities in Hong Kong to chip away at divisions along racial and ethnic lines.∎ 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 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. Reportage Hong Kong Civilian Solidarity Civilian Activism Activism Activist Advocacy Pakistan Free Speech Freedom Palestine Protest Mass Protests Civilian Unrest Liberation ideology Muslim Islam Organizing Ethno-nationalism Liberation Struggle Diaspora South Asia Muslim Organizing Public Space Geography Politics of Ethnic Identity Social Change Tai Kwun Contemporary National Security Law Hong Konger United For Palestine Protest Materials Cantonese Language Language Segregation China Police Action Freedom of Speech BOOKED Multi-ethnic Solidarity Networks 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:

"The People's Progressive Party in Guyana was a multiracial socialist party with very hopeful beginnings, cognizant of our history as colonized descendants of the enslaved and indentured. But it's a tragic casualty of Cold War politics. We now have two political parties that are essentially racialized." | · COMMUNITY Interview · Guyana Indentured Labor & Guyanese Politics "The People's Progressive Party in Guyana was a multiracial socialist party with very hopeful beginnings, cognizant of our history as colonized descendants of the enslaved and indentured. But it's a tragic casualty of Cold War politics. We now have two political parties that are essentially racialized." Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. The People's Progressive Party in Guyana was a multiracial socialist party with very hopeful beginnings, cognizant of our history as colonized descendants of the enslaved and indentured. But it's a tragic casualty of Cold War politics. We now have two political parties that are essentially racialized. RECOMMENDED: Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Guyana 2020 Guyanese Election People's Progressive Party Cold War Politics Black-Indian Tensions in Guyana Cheddi Jagan Black Solidarities Forbes Burnham Coolitude Fictional Essay Khal Torabully Avant-Garde Destabilizing History Irfaan Ali David Granger Ethnically Divided Politics Indentured Labor Labor Indo-Caribbean Georgetown 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. 11th Oct 2020 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: