· THE VERTICAL Reportage · Surat Expunging India's Diamond City Gujarat’s Surat was the capital of the global diamond trade before the Russia-Ukraine war, but sanctions imposed on Russia’s diamond exports since 2022 have placed a sword to the throats of diamond workers in the collapsing industry’s headquarters. Mass layoffs and obscene wage cuts have led to dozens of labourers dying by suicide, leaving hundreds of their family members to cope without support from the Indian government. Trupti Patel Indian Landscape (2019) Terracruda, 29 Earth Pigments of 29 Political States of India, New Delhi Ash, Acrylic medium and Gold Leaf on Fabriano paper. Roshan, 20, remembers his father, Ram Nagina Singh , as a hardworking man who spent decades polishing diamonds that would glitter in luxury stores across the world. But this October, Singh’s life came to a devastating halt. Based in the western Indian city of Surat, he once earned a comfortable salary of ₹60,000-₹70,000 ($800-$900) a month but was soon barely scraping by on ₹10,000-₹12,000 ($120-$150) as the city’s diamond industry buckled under immense economic pressures. The stress proved too much. Singh took his own life, hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his bedroom. Roshan is still grappling with his father’s sudden death. “My father didn’t say much, but we knew he was under immense stress,” Roshan recalled. “There was no work in the company, and he wasn’t receiving his wages or bonuses. He used to come home and talk about it, but we didn’t realise the depth of his despair until it was too late.” Singh’s story is tragically common. He is one of at least 65 diamond workers in Surat who have died by suicide in the past 16 months as financial hardships have deepened following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For decades, Surat has been the world’s epicenter for diamond polishing, employing over 600,000 workers . However, since the onset of the war, sanctions targeting Russia —one of the largest exporters of rough diamonds— have sent shockwaves through the city’s once-thriving diamond industry. Both the supply of raw materials and the demand for polished Russian diamonds have drastically decreased. The European Union and G7 nations have implemented strict bans on Russian diamonds, including those routed through intermediary countries. This has severely disrupted the flow of raw diamonds to India’s factories, leaving thousands of workers in Surat unemployed and struggling to survive. The crisis has had a ripple effect, leading to widespread layoffs , wage cuts, and—tragically—suicides. A Suicide Epidemic Like Roshan, Jayantibhai’s world fell apart three months ago when her 28-year-old son, Mikunj, took his own life after losing his job. Once a diamond polisher, Mikunj had been out of work for over three months. Unable to secure another job as Surat’s diamond industry crumbled, he grew increasingly depressed. His sudden death left a gaping void in the family. “He never said anything to us,” Jayantibhai said. “What can we do now? He was our only son.” Without Mikunj, the family is struggling. At 60, Jayantibhai is too frail to work. She has already survived two heart attacks and relied on her son’s income to support the household. Her daughter-in-law, Rupali, has also stopped working. She used to tutor children from home, earning just enough to contribute. After Mikunj’s death, she withdrew entirely. “We needed him,” Jayantibhai said, her eyes welling up. “Now we are left to fend for ourselves, praying for help.” Her plight mirrors that of dozens of other families in Surat, staring at an uncertain future. Beyond the economic toll, the ongoing crisis in the diamond industry has triggered a significant mental health crisis among workers. The stress of unemployment and an uncertain future has pushed many to their breaking point. “Yes there are thoughts in my mind about suicide,” says Gohil Vijaybhai, another struggling diamond worker. For Vijaybhai, the past two years have been a relentless search for work. Once a steady earner in Surat’s diamond industry, he now moves from one labour site to another, hoping to make ₹500-700 ($6-8) per day. His company shut down when the economic slowdown, fuelled by the Russia-Ukraine war, cut off the supply of rough diamonds. “I’ve been doing this for 11 years, but now there’s nothing,” he shared. His income, once around ₹30,000 ($360) a month, has evaporated, leaving him in debt and unable to pay for necessities like rent and his children’s school fees. His three children, ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade, are now at risk of being forced out of school. “I told the school to wait for six or seven months for the fees,” he said, though he knows the money is unlikely to come. Without stable work, his family of seven depends on sporadic daily wages, and his debt continues to mount. “What can a single labourer do?” he asked. “We take out loans just to survive.” As his financial troubles deepen, Vijaybhai admits to feeling overwhelmed by despair. “When someone is under this much tension, what would he do? Suicide, right?” he asked. He is not alone; many diamond workers in Surat find themselves caught between a failing industry and rising debts. Deepak Rajendrabhai Purani, a diamond worker for over 10 years, describes the stark reality workers like him face. “I used to earn ₹25,000-₹27,000 ($300-$350) a month, but now I’m lucky if I make ₹15,000 ($180),” he said. “Some months, there is no work at all, and I have been sitting at home for weeks without any income.” Deepak, who lives in Surat with his parents, wife, and young son, is contemplating leaving the diamond industry but does not know where to turn after working there for so long. “I don’t know anything else. But how can I continue like this? We have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and no government support.” Deepak’s father, who once sold samosas from a cycle, is now bedridden with asthma. His brother, also a diamond worker, is one of the few fortunate ones who still has steady work. But Deepak knows this could change at any moment. “The companies keep only as many workers as they need,” he explained. “If there is no work, they tell us not to come in the next day. It’s as simple as that.” “There are no bombs thrown at us directly,” he added, “but this [Russia-Ukraine] war has killed us.” A Global Crisis Turning the Tide on Surat With disruptions in the supply of rough diamonds from Russia, many factories in Surat have either shut down or significantly scaled back their operations . This has left thousands of diamond workers, many of whom have spent decades in the industry, struggling to make ends meet. India’s diamond sector plays a vital role in the global diamond supply chain, with approximately 80% of the world's rough diamonds being cut and polished in the country. Surat, in particular, is the epicenter of this labour-intensive industry. However, the glitter of diamonds hides the harsh realities many of these workers face—low wages, erratic work conditions, and almost no social safety net. While Surat’s diamond workers have borne the brunt of this crisis, the impacts of the sanctions and war have rippled across the global diamond trade. India's diamond exports have experienced a steep decline, plummeting by 28% in the fiscal year 2024, and are projected to fall further, reaching their lowest levels in a decade. Luxury markets in the U.S. and Europe, traditionally strong buyers of diamonds, have also contracted as consumer spending patterns shift in response to economic uncertainties. Rising inflation has curbed discretionary spending , with more buyers focusing on essentials rather than luxury purchases. This trend has further depressed demand for polished diamonds, exacerbating the crisis for workers in Surat who depend on robust global sales. The price of rough diamonds has also skyrocketed due to supply shortages, making it harder for manufacturers to remain profitable. Factories in Surat and other diamond hubs have had to make tough decisions—either lay off workers or shut down altogether. A Helpless Union and Government Neglect As the number of suicides among diamond workers continues to rise, the local Diamond Workers Union has launched a helpline to provide emotional and financial support. Since its inception in July, the helpline number has received around 1800 distress calls. "We have saved lives," said Zilriya Rameshbhai, the president of the union, recounting how workers on the brink of suicide reached out for help. The union also provides temporary relief to struggling workers by paying school fees, supplying food, and helping them manage debt. Unfortunately, such measures are not enough to lift Vijaybhai and others like him out of financial distress. Despite its best efforts, the union is overwhelmed by demand and constrained by limited resources. “[The] union is doing what they can,” Vijaybhai said, “but we need the government to listen.” Many workers feel abandoned by the government, which has yet to meaningfully address the crisis. The Indian government, typically focused on bolstering exports to strengthen the economy, has done little to provide immediate relief to the struggling diamond sector, according to workers. Jayantibhai, who lives in Amroli, a suburb of Surat, is frustrated by the lack of response from the authorities. “They are dead silent. [PM] Modi considers Gujarat his home, but how can he not listen to our plight?” she asked bitterly. “We have tried contacting the party’s office, but nobody listens. We are just forgotten.” Other workers share this frustration. “The government isn’t talking about the diamond industry,” said Deepak. “If they were, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Workers are roaming around without jobs, and nobody is doing anything.” Government inaction has intensified feelings of helplessness among diamond workers. Ramesh Bhai, the president of the local union, stated that they have repeatedly requested an economic relief package to support both the industry and its employees, but their appeals have gone unanswered. “There is no support from the government,” he said. “All the workers have been left on their own. Nobody cares how much we have contributed to the growth of the state and country’s economy.” He also mentioned the union's proposal to establish a special board including workers, factory owners, and government representatives to address the industry's challenges, but there has been no progress on that front either. With no relief in sight, the future of Surat’s diamond industry remains uncertain. While some workers hope for improvement, others are less optimistic. “There is no guarantee that the diamond industry will see growth again,” said Deepak. “We are all just waiting and watching, but we don’t know what will happen. The future seems bleak.” For workers like Roshan, who lost his father to the industry’s collapse, the pain is still raw. Yet, he remains determined to stay in Surat, the city he has called home for over 20 years. “Everything is here,” he said. “After what happened to my father, I just hope that things get better.”∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Reportage Surat Gujarat India Diamond Trade Russia-Ukraine Conflict War Trade Route Working Class Labour Rights Banned Raw Materials Mental Health Suicide Layoffs G7 European Union Sanctions Unemployment Epidemic Global Crisis Supply Chain Luxury Market Consumer Spending Diamond Workers Union Trade Unions Government Neglect Inaction Economic Security Narendra Modi Industrialization Health Crisis 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. 2nd Apr 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Areen AREEN is a Palestinian textile artist currently living in Dubai. She earned her bachelor's degree in Textile Design and Art in 2018. Drawing on embroidery as a tradition from the Levant region, Areen plays with technologies and multimedia to experiment with the idea of transparency and reversing the function of a material. WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

The acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani's glimpse into the history of South Asian-American feminist art and activism, particularly with the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, speaks to the labor and creative organizing of feminist artists starting in the 1990s. INTERACTIVE FLUX · Jaishri Abichandani's Guided Studio Tour The acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani's glimpse into the history of South Asian-American feminist art and activism, particularly with the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, speaks to the labor and creative organizing of feminist artists starting in the 1990s. Jaishri Abichandani FLUX: An Evening in Dissent As part of Flux: An Evening in Dissent, Abeer Hoque took a guided tour with the acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani who showed us her famous Feminist Wall, replete with its history of feminist activists and activism. She also gave us an exclusive look at the piece Kamala's Inheritance (2021 Sculpture Wire, foil, epoxy, MDF, stone and paint). Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" 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 FLUX: An Evening in Dissent As part of Flux: An Evening in Dissent, Abeer Hoque took a guided tour with the acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani who showed us her famous Feminist Wall, replete with its history of feminist activists and activism. She also gave us an exclusive look at the piece Kamala's Inheritance (2021 Sculpture Wire, foil, epoxy, MDF, stone and paint). Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" 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 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Live Brooklyn FLUX Art Practice Feminist Art Practice Sculpture Asia Pacific Arts Initiative Painting Swati Khurana South Asian Women's Creative Collective Ceramics Art Activism Art History Politics of Art Feminist Spaces Feminist Organizing Mimi Mondal Yashica Dutt Prachi Patankar Dalit Feminist Activists South Asia Solidarity Initiative SASI SAWCC Rage Kidvai Thanu Yakupitiyage Bad Brown Aunties Section 377 Menaka Guruswamy LGBTQ Movement Pramila Jayapal Nayomi Munaweera Personal History Portraits ACT UP Ismat Chughtai Mahasweta Devi Breast Stories The Quilt Lihaaf Abortion Goddess Abortion Speaking about Abortion Bodily Autonomy Indus Valley Artifacts JAISHRI ABICHANDANI has intertwined studio and social practice, art and activism in her career, founding the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) in New York (1997) and London (2004). Abichandani has exhibited internationally including at P.S.1/MoMA, the Queens Museum of Art, and Asia Society in New York, 798 Beijing Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial in China, IVAM in Valencia, Spain, and the House of World Cultures in Berlin. She served as the founding Director of Public Events and Projects from 2003-06 at the Queens Museum of Art, where she organized Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now, Queens International 2006: Everything All at Once , and curated Her Stories: Fifteen Years of SAWCC . In 2017, Abichandani engineered a collaboration between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Asia Society and the Queens Museum to organize a three-day national convening of South Asian American artists, academics and curators; along with the exhibition Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions , in which she was a co-curator and a participating artist. In 2019, Abichandani organized a trilogy of exhibitions to inaugurate the Ford Foundation Gallery: Perilous Bodies, Radical Love, and Utopian Imagination centered the visions of BIPOC artists. Abichandani’s work is in the Burger Collection, Asia Art Archive Collection, and Saatchi Collection. She has been a resident of LMCC’s Process Space residency and an honoree of the Brooklyn Arts Council and ASHA for Women. She was awarded grants by the FST Studio Projects fund and the Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2021. 5 Dec 2020 Live Brooklyn 5th Dec 2020 Bibi Hajra’s Spaces of Belonging Iman Iftikhar 3rd Jul Protest Art & the Corporate Art World Hit Man Gurung · Isma Gul Hasan · Ikroop Sandhu 5th Jun Dissident Kid Lit Saira Mir · Shelly Anand · Vashti Harrison · Simran Jeet Singh 20th Dec Public Art Projects as Feminist Reclamation Tehani Ariyaratne 29th Nov Chats Ep. 3 · On the 2020 ZHR Prize-Winning Essay Raniya Hosain 23rd Nov On That Note:

"Our priority is to meet the needs of people on this planet. Not just workers. Not workers at all." A multimedia short using video archival footage, this faux-advertisement is equal parts a history of advertising & the legacy of fossil fuel companies’ manipulation and a disturbing, singular dystopia from one aesthete's point of view. BOOKS & ARTS It's Only Human "Our priority is to meet the needs of people on this planet. Not just workers. Not workers at all." A multimedia short using video archival footage, this faux-advertisement is equal parts a history of advertising & the legacy of fossil fuel companies’ manipulation and a disturbing, singular dystopia from one aesthete's point of view. Furqan Jawed Like having the imagination to envision oblivion. And make it reality. Special Thanks to: Varshini Prakash Narration by: Jessica Flemming EDITOR'S NOTE: This multimedia piece, by graphic designer and artist Furqan Jawed, is the result of a collaborative effort, initially conceptualized as a story about the history of advertising & fossil fuel companies’ manipulation of the public across the world. It took place over a number of months, supplemented by reminiscences and stream-of-consciousness ideas by Varshini Prakash, co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, as well as exchange with editors Vishakha Darbha & Kamil Ahsan. Furqan plumbed the archives of advertising across a number of decades in India and the United States. The product was, at the time, an unanticipated, serendipitous, and surprising product of an inquisitive but seemingly-directionless collaboration. Like having the imagination to envision oblivion. And make it reality. Special Thanks to: Varshini Prakash Narration by: Jessica Flemming EDITOR'S NOTE: This multimedia piece, by graphic designer and artist Furqan Jawed, is the result of a collaborative effort, initially conceptualized as a story about the history of advertising & fossil fuel companies’ manipulation of the public across the world. It took place over a number of months, supplemented by reminiscences and stream-of-consciousness ideas by Varshini Prakash, co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, as well as exchange with editors Vishakha Darbha & Kamil Ahsan. Furqan plumbed the archives of advertising across a number of decades in India and the United States. The product was, at the time, an unanticipated, serendipitous, and surprising product of an inquisitive but seemingly-directionless collaboration. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Video Still by Furqan Jawed SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Short Film Global Climate Change Multimedia Fossil Fuel Companies Oil Oil Production Advertising Electoral Politics Multimodal Simultaneity Sunrise Movement Neoliberalism Performance Art Mimesis Anthropocene Satire Absurdity Voiceover Archival Practice Video Archives Archiving Reminiscence Archives Public History Manipulation Affect Agriculture Mega Conglomerates Apocalyptic Environmentalism Art Activism Experimental Methods Video Form Graphic Design Capitalism Class Climate Anxiety Complicity Crisis Media Media Landscape False Advertising FURQAN JAWED is a freelance artist and graphic designer based in Brooklyn. A recent MFA graduate from the Yale School of Art, his practice focuses on the circulation of images and analysing the semiotics of representation within these images in the public and the private sphere. 26 Apr 2021 Short Film Global 26th Apr 2021 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:

· INTERACTIVE Live · Kathmandu Protest Art & the Corporate Art World “Partly because of the lockdown, things were suddenly more visible. It was like a veil was lifted. There was a heightening of cases of domestic violence, for instance, which we knew about but had to deal with it. We know about power structures, but I wondered what I could do to help... Art, at a certain point, felt pointless, but I did begin to wonder what role I wanted to play. What service do I want to provide the world?” Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. As part of In Grief, In Solidarity , artist-activists Ikroop Sandhu, Isma Gul Hasan, and Hit Man Gurung discussed the various contexts in which their visual and performance artistic practice evolved with their activism in India, Pakistan, and Nepal, respectively. Working as part of collective communities and in solidarity with movements was formative for each of them. With editor Kartika Budhwar, they also discussed the “moments” (or lack thereof) that made them turn to art, and how they feel about the institutional and other problematic aspects of the rarefied art world. How does their "art" feel different from journalism and other forms of expression? How has COVID-19 affected their lives and, in turn, their practice? Each of them discussed their complex feelings about the necessity of their work—and how it felt frivolous during lockdown. At the core of the discussion was an ambivalence about the centrality of visual and performance art to activism, but also the idea that art does indeed have a specific power that other ways of engaging with the world don't. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Live Kathmandu Lahore Dharamshala Panel Art Activism Art Practice Protest Art Mass Protests Feminist Art Practice Feminist In Grief In Solidarity Internationalist Perspective Aurat March Farmers' Movement People's Movement II Jana Andolan II Performance Art Monarchy 2006 Nepalese Revolution Art Institutions Museums Galleries Corporate Power Observance Grounding Corporate Interests in the Art World The Artist as Product COVID-19 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:

· THE VERTICAL Essay · Bombay The Cost of Risk in Bombay’s Film Industry Since Manto's time, screenwriters have been battling studios that prioritise commercial interests, political imperatives, and profits over original, meaningful storytelling. SWA, the trade union for screenwriters, is at the frontlines of screenwriters chafing against the inequalities and wage theft that stifle artistic expression in Bombay's film industry. Courtesy of Tara Anand (2021) Saadat Hassan Manto, a luminary of Urdu literature, once embarked on a hunger strike. It was the early 1940s, and the writer was working for one hundred rupees a month under the Bombay-based film director and producer Nanubhai Desai . Manto asked Desai for pending wages and additional money to rent out a flat for his new bride and himself. Desai refused, and Manto resigned. In an essay on the film critic Baburao Patel, Manto wrote about the beginning of his hunger strike on the steps of Desai’s production studio. Later, with Patel’s help, he recovered a little more than half of his pending dues. The pay seemed too meagre for too little in return, with many of Manto’s scripts never even making it to production because of their radical nature. This isn’t just a story from a time when critics had enough muscle in the industry to wrestle producers into paying writers. It is also a story of precarity. It depicts the tenuous relationship between screenwriters and the screens they write for, neither of which are unique to Manto’s career nor an artefact of the past. This disempowerment is the reason why contemporary films feel ill-equipped to respond to urgent questions. Current industry conditions resemble that of the 1940s: financial backing for subversive cinematic concepts is hard to come by, especially without a major star. In a decidedly censorial political climate and hostile communal environment, writers increasingly face complicated legal and social backlash. Creativity is not incentivised. It’s a liability. The lack of creativity present in Bombay talkies during Manto’s tenure did not go unnoticed. Around the time of his hunger strike, the leading film magazine FilmIndia published a hit piece on the standardised format of Bombay cinema. It denounced “Indian screenwriters” as carrying “little originality” and producers as lacking “imagination completely.” An article edited by Baburao Patel declared that producers “imitate others too often.” For example, the “sensational success” of Pukar (1939) gave way to period dramas and historical fiction, and the popularity of Leila Majnu (1945) enabled the “rise of an epidemic of new love themes.” If a particular genre worked, the industry would churn out movies of the same cut until the fad petered out and a new concept supplanted it. Creative risks were scarce and, at best, sporadic. One could say the same of Bollywood today. With Dabangg (2010), a blockbuster peddling nationalist police propaganda, came a flurry of others like Singham (2011) and Simmba (2018). Hit sports biographical films like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) encouraged movies like Mary Kom (2014) and Dangal (2016). But what FilmIndia failed to highlight, like many other critics at the time, was the seeming inability of screenwriters to write meaningful scripts. Critics failed to connect Manto’s hunger strike to writers’ limitations in exploring their creativity. Production pressures, the absence of collective bargaining, and precarious working conditions kept writing stagnant. One organisation is gradually rebuilding collective strength despite entrenched resistance from the film industry’s top brass. The Screenwriters Association (SWA) , a formally registered trade union since 1960, represents more than 57,000 Indian screenwriters who work throughout the film industry. The union handles copyright protection, legal disputes about fair compensation, and more. Though it may not have been a vehicle for collective bargaining in the past, SWA may finally become a force to be reckoned with. Apart from its ongoing struggle for labour protections, the union has strived to become a space for mentorship. Public script labs, for instance, nurture new relationships that address inadequate diversity—especially caste—when it comes to who is allowed to write the films that make it to the floor. Anjum Rajabali, SWA’s Executive Committee Member and the renowned screenwriter of The Legend of Shaheed Bhagat Singh (2002) and Raajneeti (2010), is a major driving force for the union’s efforts. According to screenwriter Darab Farooqui, screenwriters “are all following his lead.” Rajabali is generous with his time, accepting interview requests from airports amidst ongoing health issues. His commitment to building the union is clear. The intensifying struggle for screenwriters’ protections resulted in the Minimum Basic Contract, which raised questions about whether screenwriters can be recognized as workers and the rights that should be afforded to them. Though film industries are subject to intense content regulation, they lag far behind in enforcing labour mandates. SWA’s proposed contract highlights the asymmetric dynamic between writers and production studios and pushes for major changes. In 1951, India’s first Film Enquiry Committee published a searing investigation into the conditions of cinema industries across the country. The report largely agreed with FilmIndia that “the creative activity of production” is too dependent on commercial requirements and lamented that writers end up “unknown even if they are competent.” An unnamed producer admitted to the committee that “we are trying to sell to the public something in a package.” The committee proposed separating financial investments from innovation but it was never implemented. Bombay studios continued to prioritise profit and loss, a calculation in which screenwriters had little to gain. The industry remains dominated by those who want to sell movies and those who can mobilise significant funds for its package deals. Bollywood’s highest-grossing productions released last year shored up combined investments of nearly 2,000 crore Indian rupees. Yet, a new survey has brought to light the intensity of wage depression felt by screenwriters. The 2,000 crore cake cuts only the thinnest sliver for the storytellers who bring in its base ingredients. Saiwyn Quadras, an SWA member and the writer who helmed films like the Priyanka Chopra-starring Mary Kom , shares that “non-payment of dues is a big thing. It happens to me even now.” Seasoned screenwriter and director Hitesh Kewalya says: “When you come to a city like Bombay as a young writer, you have to earn a livelihood. So, you take up two to three projects at the same time. Out of those, only one might actually happen. Even then, you might not get paid fully. It becomes a vicious cycle, and you end up exhausted.” Kewalya, with more than 25 years of industry experience and two hits to his name, including Shubh Mangal Savdhaan— one of the first explicitly queer Bollywood rom-coms—says the industry doesn’t encourage creativity. “It's like running on a treadmill, and if you're lucky enough, you might manage to pay your bills.” One key tactic deployed by studios is the percentage model. Scripts are evaluated on a per-draft basis, with pending dues for works in progress. This means huge portions of a writer’s income are dependent on producers’ approval of unfinished screenplays. As with film industries elsewhere but arguably at a larger scale, producers gauge scripts based on their perception of the content’s potential popularity and arbitrary predictions on the return on investment it would generate. It does not, however, provide any guarantee for writers’ wages. “You won’t know if a story works until you write it, and many times you don’t get to write the whole story,” Rajabali shares. How can a writer take risks with a script if their dues are tied up in its incomplete versions? If a script is rejected before completion, the writer may receive up to a third of their owed wages regardless of their efforts—which are not always translated onto the page. The work of writers is treated as disposable. Far more scripts get shelved than made. As a result, the union has demanded a minimum compensation of 12 lakh rupees for the delivery of the story, screenplay, and dialogue, along with mandatory credits for any screenwriter who has written at least a third of a script. These problems exist even in contracts with multinational corporations like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which together constitute a 35% audience share amongst OTT platforms active in the subcontinent. Quadras says that international entities, much like their domestic counterparts, view Indian writers as a “source for cheap labour.” Thus, the SWA’s call for work stoppage on American projects during the WGA strike was more than a show of solidarity. It signalled a pressing need to transform screenwriters’ relations with Indian subsidiaries of global streaming services and production studios like Lionsgate India and Disney+ Hotstar. According to Rajabali, contracts with foreign and domestic studios often come with a clause prohibiting screenwriters from consulting with or approaching the union. These clear attempts at union-busting mirror those of Hollywood’s Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The material connections between working conditions and labour resistance internationally, and the possibilities both engender for domestic cinema workers, are rife. There is little information on how WGA’s win could impact foreign subsidiaries held by AMPTP-associated companies. But the SWA believes at least a precedent has been set, and its proposed Minimum Basic Contract is geared towards leveraging this historic moment. Even the wrong colour can mean the death of a film in the current Indian context. Where some film workers believed streaming studios to be a window of freedom, recent Central regulations have pulled the blinds on that. Netflix’s cancellation of Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (2024) and the film’s removal of saffron, a colour popularly associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi, has not improved the film’s chances of being released in the country. The Tamil film Annapoorni (2023) elicited legal cases from two right-wing outfits based in Bombay for “hurting religious sentiments of Hindus” and led to its removal from Netflix’s India catalogue. The list of films officially and unofficially banned from being shown in cinema halls in different Indian states at the behest of right-wing political and vigilante outfits is even longer. There is justified fear, then, that government regulation could come to be a double-edged sword. It could work towards alleviating unfair labour practices, but it could also expand the broader pattern of state-sponsored Hindutva agendas. SWA is drawing contingency plans through the Minimum Basic Contract for these overtly political acts. Their proposal demands the removal of contract clauses that shift the responsibility away from producers and onto writers. Currently, producers are guarded against legal, political, and religious backlash, while writers are provided little to no protection from their employers. “Let’s say there’s a scene that shows a fight outside a temple. The studio’s lawyers will tell you to change it. Contractually, the writer is either obliged to change it or risk bearing the consequences on their own head. This is a clause we have to fight,” says Quadras. “And for that, we need collective negotiating power.” But most mainstream Hindi films today happily toe the government line, much as they did in another era of censorship: the Emergency. In June 1975, as a response to increasing worker agitations, internal problems in the Congress party, and legal challenges against her election, India’s two-time Prime Minister Indira Gandhi enacted a state of Emergency. State and national elections were suspended, dissidents were arrested, and trade union actions were brutally repressed. People trapped in poverty were forcibly sterilised. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Bombay cinema, amongst other industries, was unabashedly censored. Scholar Ashish Rajadhyaksha notes that conditional investments made by the Film Finance Corporation (now known as National Film Development Corporation ) during the early ‘70s petered out immediately after the Emergency. The state deepened its interests in media apparatuses and pursued a policy of highly restrictive censorship, impeding new-wave efforts like Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome . In Bombay, creative risk fell to the wayside and narratives critical of the public and private nexus vanished. The angry, young man, especially as personified by Indian actor Amitabh Bachhan, represented a specific kind of radical, working-class man, was retired from films. Instead, characters like the fantasy shape-shifting woman-cobra in Naagin (1976) and mythological warriors like those in Dharam Veer (1977) appeared in its place. Gandhi’s government bureaucratically chopped political satires or outrightly banned certain movies . Half a century later, the pattern repeats, albeit this time with a distinctly communal spin. The bulk of Hindi films released today consist primarily of majoritarian propaganda , safe’ biographical , mythological, or period movies . Creative and political risk has been rendered almost non-existent, but making choices that could be seen as either adhering to or being silent on the Hindutva narratives have not protected Bollywood from conservative calls for boycotts. Adipurush (2023), a film on the epic Ramayana , created by the self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist screenwriter Manoj Muntashir, elicited right-wing criticism and flopped upon release. Similarly, actress turned BJP politician Kangana Ranaut’s Hindi language film, Tejas, and Tamil language film, Chandramukhi 2 , did not muster enough to balance their budgets. Hindutva’s poster boy Akshay Kumar was also unable to bring supremacists to purchase tickets for Ram Setu (2022), an archaeological action film seeking to prove the existence of Ramayana , which prolific film critic Namrata Joshi has labelled as “a show of Hindu victimhood.” The race to appease Hindutva groups seems to be an unwinnable one. Still, some in the industry refuse to abandon the race. Despite the overwhelming web of financial and political struggles, screenwriters like Rajabali, Kewalya, and Quadras march on, and younger aspirants continue to join their ranks. “I am a storyteller. I don’t know how to do anything else,” says Kewalya. What can a screenwriter do? Where can their stories go? If such forces continue to helm decision-making, what becomes of creative integrity and freedom? Is the Hindi film industry doomed to creating “products” or “packages”? Can it transcend its confines? Can it deliver necessary stories—ones with substance, original voices, and honesty? The SWA might be slow-paced, but it is determined. It does not shy away from challenging the power dynamics that currently exist—on and off-screen—and it might just be the most hopeful response to the industry’s continued prioritisation of profit over people. Manto’s creative descendants have come a long way from striking at the steps of a studio. But they have an even longer way ahead of them. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Essay Bombay Screenwriters Association SWA Films Film-Making Labor Rights Trade Unions Directors Film Studios Radical Writers Saadat Hassan Manto Hindutva Minimum Wage Minimum Basic Contract The Legend of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Working Conditions Baburao Patel Nanubhai Desai FilmIndia Creative Labor Pukar Leila Majnu Genre Dabangg Singham Simmba Mary Kom Dangal Fair Compensation Copyright Protection Raajneeti Anjum Rajabali Film Enquiry Committee Bollywood Wage Depression Wage Theft Hitesh Kewalya Shubh Mangal Savdhaan Rom-Coms Police Films Action Films Sports Biographies Amazon Prime Netflix Lionsgate OTT Disney+ Saiwyn Quadras AMPTP Writers Strike WGA Monkey Man BJP Annapoorni Saffron 1975 Emergency Censorship Kangana Ranaut Tejas Ram Setu Namrata Joshi Labor Labor Movement 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 Aug 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:

In the immediate aftermath of the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, sensationalist television coverage amplified misinformation, turning a volatile border crisis into a media-fueled spectacle. As fact-checks lagged behind viral falsehoods and unverified claims of tactical victories, nationalist fervor surged on both sides of the border, eroding the credibility of journalism before the public’s eyes. THE VERTICAL Khabristan AUTHOR In the immediate aftermath of the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, sensationalist television coverage amplified misinformation, turning a volatile border crisis into a media-fueled spectacle. As fact-checks lagged behind viral falsehoods and unverified claims of tactical victories, nationalist fervor surged on both sides of the border, eroding the credibility of journalism before the public’s eyes. On the night of May 9, 2025, I closely tracked the unfolding hostilities between two nuclear-armed neighbours. I was watching a debate on the ongoing border situation on the Times Now Navbhara t news channel when the TV anchor, Sushant Sinha, abruptly paused the discussion to announce with glee that “Indian forces have entered Pakistan.” A panelist in the debate, a retired Indian Army veteran, trying to whip up jingoistic fervour, urged the Indian Navy to launch an attack on Karachi, declaring, “Set fire to Karachi Port and reduce the entire city to ashes.” While India and Pakistan’s firepower echoed on the borders, another battle was taking place inside the television studios. The latest surge in violence came in the aftermath of armed militants killing 26 tourists in the meadows of Indian Kashmir in April. India labelled these as terrorist attacks and blamed Pakistan, an allegation Pakistan denies. Following the attack on Indian tourists, some in the Indian TV media adopted an aggressive nationalistic stance . They further escalated tensions by calling for retaliation against Pakistan. Some newsrooms even openly endorsed military strikes against the country, which ignited a wave of hysteria in India. In the days that followed, I spent even more time on social media monitoring India TV broadcasts, noticing frequent bursts of misinformation. A casual scroll on X (formerly Twitter) revealed a post from an obscure account alleging that India had fired towards Pakistan. Within minutes, I searched the keywords #India and #Pakistan, and my timeline was flooded with similar claims. Indian mainstream media outlets like Aaj Tak and Times Now quickly picked up these unconfirmed posts, and within an hour, they snowballed into a full-blown conflict of speculations as early as day 1. As new events unfolded on the border on successive days, the media kept broadcasting unverified content. The onslaught of misinformation that followed was staggering: images of missile strikes, anti-air defence guns firing at targets, and armed forces downing each other's fighter jets. Editors and readers alike seemed unaware that the information was from a popular tactical shooter simulation video game, Arma 3 . Archival clips also resurfaced and were presented as proof of Pakistan’s devastation of the Indian military . Many of these images and videos were not of real-time offences but came from the Russia–Ukraine war and Israeli air raids on Gaza. As the conflict escalated on day two and three, the deluge of misinformation went into full throttle. In these moments of crisis, both the Indian and Pakistani television media ditched accuracy altogether. They deceived audiences with unverified claims , manipulated visuals, and emotionally charged distortions of the ground reality. "Across Bodies and Land" (2024), graphite on handmade paper, courtesy of Rahul Tiwari. India Today reported a breaking news story that claimed that the Karachi port had been attacked by the Indian Navy; Zee News told viewers that the capital city of Islamabad had been captured. The latter even claimed that the Prime Minister of Pakistan had surrendered . ABP and NDTV news showed exclusive visuals of India’s air defence downing Pakistan drones, even though the original video was from Israel. Besides the mainstream English and Hindi media, the regional TV media joined the bandwagon as well, amplifying the misinformation. The Karachi Port Trust posted on X, denying that an attack had occurred. However, some of the newspapers had already picked up and published this news in the following day's edition.A report from the Reuters Institute said that almost half of Indian online users receive their news from television, which makes these instances of misinformation especially egregious and impactful. One of the anchors at an Indian television station did apologise for an “error,” however, the apology came nearly 12 hours after that segment had been seen by millions of viewers in India. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the media passed off old visuals of fighter plane crashes as evidence of recent strikes on Indian fighter planes by Pakistan. Things escalated beyond newsrooms when an official X (Twitter) account of the Government of Pakistan posted footage from Arma 3 of what it claimed was real videotape of Pakistan downing India’s Rafale fighter jet. The rise of artificial intelligence played a significant role in augmenting the falsification of the conflict. AI-generated disinformation, including a deepfake video of a Pakistani military officer admitting that the country lost some of its fighter jets, was widely circulated in Indian media. Another AI-generated clip featured US President Donald Trump promising to “wipe out Pakistan,” giving fodder to Indians who believed that the United States would enter the war against Pakistan. Other AI-generated images claimed to show Pakistan’s defeat, while pictures of a Turkish pilot were falsely presented as proof that India had captured a Pakistani air force officer. A doctored version of a letter was also shared. It was falsely positioned to be from Pakistan’s government and claimed that Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, had died in judicial custody. TV media do not operate in a vacuum, these viral clips quickly find their way to social media platforms and instant messaging mobile applications like WhatsApp. Social media users on both sides consume and share misinformation at lightning speed, especially when it aligns with nationalistic sentiment. "Across Bodies and Land" (2024), graphite on handmade paper, courtesy of Rahul Tiwari. The World Economic Forum ranked India as the country most at risk for misinformation and disinformation, which is defined as incorrect information shared to purposefully obfuscate the truth. But, false reports surged in Pakistan during the crisis as well. A Pakistani politician praised —in Parliament—about the might of his country’s air force based on an AI-generated image of a British newspaper. Of course, most military crises lead to a surge in falsehoods and unverified claims. While the media is supposed to inform the public, during these delicate moments, much of the television coverage descends into a spectacle of exaggeration, rumor, and nationalistic war mongering . From fabricated airstrikes to altered footage , the focus shifts away from facts toward constructing a narrative of preemptive victory and toward manufacturing consent for potential war crimes. In today’s digital world, this misinformation is not limited to local viewers. It moves quickly, heightening tensions and fueling broader cycles of global propaganda. The long-term consequences of such wartime fallacies are deeply damaging. By amplifying rumors and unverified stories, both Indian and Pakistani television media deepened public divisions, pushing citizens into isolated, conflicting realities. A similar situation occurred in 2019, after the killing of Indian paramilitary soldiers in Kashmir. False and misleading images and videos circulating on social media were republished by mainstream media, fuelling the calls for military retaliation against rival Pakistan. This conduct erodes the ethos of journalism. Audiences start to see all media as biased or deceptive. For fact-checkers in the field, debunking these falsehoods is an enormous challenge, and by the time fact-checked content reaches the general public, truth has already become the ultimate casualty. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 "Across Bodies and Land" (2024), graphite on handmade paper, courtesy of Rahul Tiwari. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Tags Tags Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Tags Tags 23rd Oct 2010 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

ARTIST Hana Shafi HANA SHAFI is a National Magazine Award nominated artist, writer, journalist from Toronto, who illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. Both her art and writing explore themes of feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture. A graduate of Ryerson’s journalism program, she has published and been featured in Hazlitt, This Magazine, Torontoist, Huffington Post and others. Her latest book, Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty, will be out Sep 22nd, 2020, with Book Hug Press. ARTIST WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

· THE VERTICAL Profile · Lahore To Posterity Facing a crushing electoral loss and the suffocating grip of Pakistan’s military state, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party remains committed to Chungi—reclaiming revolutionary traditions, rebuilding popular power, and planting the seeds of a socialist alternative in the country’s most forsaken neighborhoods. Noormah Jamal I will never leave you (2022) Acrylic on linen In moments of quiet, comrade Sikander sang. The melody—a touch above a whisper—meandered softly, as if probing for an answer to an unasked question. Our faces were lit only by the faint fire we had made in the ceramic bowl, using styrofoam boxes as kindling. The heavy rains of the previous week had cleared the smog, and the Big Dipper now crept up over the water tank on the bare concrete rooftop. The phone signal was down. The internet was choked off. The military had imposed a total blackout. So we lit a fire—and we talked. We talked about Gilgit-Baltistan’s bustling border with Xinjiang. We talked about Fidel Castro , who had sent a medical brigade to Pakistan and, on a call before dawn, instructed his lead doctor on the strain of basmati to be fed to the cadres. We talked about the feudal lords’ grip on the people. We talked, and we reflected. In moments of quiet, comrade Sikander sang his soft, piercing song. News of the election trickled in with each teary-eyed arrival from the polling stations. Sixty-five votes at the City District High School. Seventy-four at the Government Boys High School. Twelve at the Qazi Grammar School. Seven at the Modern Public High School. By the end of the day, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) gathered only 2,174 votes. The two candidates were contesting for seats in the National Assembly and the Provincial Assembly from Chungi, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lahore. Dejection swept through the Chiragh Ghar community center, transformed in recent weeks into a bustling campaign headquarters. The night before, hopes were high and predictions were jubilant. 10,000 votes. 15,000. 30,000. On the campaign trail, where passersby met Ammar Ali Jan , the lead candidate, with song and wreath after wreath of roses, a breakthrough seemed inexorable. Now, the dim hallways and winding staircases filled with whispers of disbelief and consolation. What did we do wrong? What if our critics were right? A few of us gathered on the roof. There, by the open flame, in thickening cigarette smoke, we talked late into the night about the military state and the dizzying structures of patronage that, time and again, condemn Pakistan’s people to the deathly embrace of the past. The Poverty of Chungi Few buildings in Lahore are taller than two or three stories, so the streets and neighborhoods stretch out in all directions across the flat landscape. In Lahore’s vast Defence Housing Authority (DHA) districts, the rows of homes—or, more accurately, walled compounds, often fronted by lush tropical gardens—feel endless. The DHA is the military-run real-estate developer that operates “defense” neighborhoods across the country. Pakistan’s aspiring professional class calls them home, as does the military and political top brass. Each DHA district is bookended by armed checkpoints. How many people who live in DHA cross the stark threshold into Chungi? In this peri-urban settlement that was once a village, paved streets make way for muddied and torn-up roads. The serene, airy alleys of DHA transition to a stifling cacophony of images, smells, and sounds. Cows, goats, and stray dogs mingle with the traffic, where cars and rickshaws buzz past each other from all sides at dizzying speeds. An open canal clogged with sewage and refuse from the food markets bubbles alongside one of the neighborhood’s main roads. The water is so filthy that some seventy percent of children in Chungi suffer from dysentery. These are the material imprints of a political system in which working people have had no meaningful shot at contending power for the better part of half a century. If the Pakistani left of the 1960s had put forward ambitious proposals for pulling the country towards greater equality, by the 1980s, “the socialist alternative which once seemed imminent had become a distant memory,” the politician and intellectual Aasim Sajjad Akhtar wrote . In its place, a series of increasingly entrenched regimes adopted, he wrote, “complex and sophisticated strategies of cooptation,” removing the workers and peasants from the equations of popular power and constructing a vast “patronage machine” to take their place. Then, the Soviet Union collapsed and the left entered a long era of retreat. The Pakistani state came to reflect a complex web of competing class interests—the capitalist, the feudal, the neo-colonial—that existed in permanent contradiction. Officeholders changed often. Little changed for the Pakistani people. At the top, a powerful military bureaucratic state apparatus—an inheritance of the colonial order—operated as kingmaker. This political structure seeped into every aspect of Pakistani society, threading its way through class and ethnic divides. At the scale of their lives, the people of Chungi, too, became beholden to the same contradictions that gripped the nation: above the sewage-filled canal that runs through the district, an opulent residence houses the local kingmaker. His loyalty buys the consent of the salesmen and the elders. The salesmen will secure the consent of their markets, and the elders of their neighbors. Allegedly, ten dollars buys a vote. Here, an electoral campaign resembles a suitcase of cash. What is the strategy for building popular power in Pakistan at this juncture? “None of the mainstream parties are interested in making the working class a subject of its politics,” Ammar Ali Jan told me after the election. “None of them are willing to speak of land reforms or ending subsidies for the elites. None of them are willing to confront the IMF. None of them are willing to give genuine and consistent solidarity to oppressed nationalities against state repression.” As a student, Ali Jan went to Chungi and found it to be a microcosm of the condition of millions of people around the country. Chungi revealed the futility of mere humanitarianism—a fixed road, new water filter, or food handouts—amid the tragedy that is produced and reproduced daily by the very architecture of the state. It revealed the inability of the existing order, so mired in its class interests, to bring dignity to the deprived. The situation of the people of Chungi pointed to a singular, piercing conclusion: the need to resurrect the revolutionary socialist alternative. Chungi Stirs At the start of 2023, Ammar Ali Jan and three activists of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement (HKM)—as it was then known—began their daily walk through the streets of Chungi . They talked with the butchers, stationery salesmen, and tailors at the bazaar. They talked with the textile weavers in the workshops and factories. They talked with the unionists whose struggles traced back decades—memories that they would soon seek to resurrect through public commemorations of forgotten martyrs. They talked with the mothers who cleaned the houses of Lahore’s middle and upper classes in a nearby DHA neighborhood. The HKM had organized in the community for some time before it embarked on the path of party-building. Pakistan’s complex structures of power were on their minds. How do you dislodge a system that dominates all the political offices, all centers of decision-making power, all structures within the judiciary? How do you politicize a dormant student body, and bring it into dialogue with the peasantry and the country’s disenfranchised women? How do you activate the workers in a neighborhood like Chungi? But they also thought about Pakistan’s old left, which had become fragmented and defeated, much of it confined to a series of old comrades’ clubs. How do you bring vitality back into a movement that has lost it? “The revolutions in Cuba and China—these were the most important things that we kept in our mind when we were writing our manifesto,” Dr. Alia Haider, an organizer with the HKP, told me. In Cuba, as in China, mass movements brought together coalitions of peasants, intellectuals, women, workers, and youth, establishing political bases that could overturn the feudal, colonial, and imperialist structures that gripped both nations. It was there, among the most oppressed, that revolutionary energies stirred. “We had read Marx, we had read Mao, we had read Fidel,” Dr. Haider said. “But when we arrived in Chungi, we saw that people who had never heard these names knew Marx. They lived Marx.” For the people of Chungi, the contradictions of class were blinding. They were visible in the sewage flowing through their streets; in the oil that the street food vendors could only afford to change monthly; in summary, uncompensated dismissals from the factories. But, like the broader left, they remained disorganized, disempowered, and dejected. “The Pakistani working class does not exist as an independent political subject,” Ammar told me. It exists in a “state of non-being, unable to assert its interests.” Its subordination has become entrenched. The politics of patronage that have seeped into every crevice and pore of Pakistan’s governing order have denied political agency to those most affected by it. It became clear that simply being voted into office by them would be insufficient. External representation on its own cannot awaken working class subjectivity—it cannot reassert its protagonism in the movement of history. What is needed, Ammar told me, is the reconstruction “of the subjective factor of the revolution—the party—with all the patience, consistency and courage that this requires.” The revolutionary party occupies a central space in the socialist tradition. Karl Marx showed that class analysis provides the fundamental starting point in understanding political parties, whose configuration reflects the stages of development and respective power of different classes. The ability of working people to represent themselves depends on the existence of a party created in their image, and carrying their subjectivity. Without such a vehicle, the working class is forced to align politically with the subjectivity of its oppressors. It becomes divided. Its political horizon becomes truncated. The revolutionary party is necessary to contain, develop, and advance the aspirations of the working masses. Years ago, the HKM first mobilized the community to sweep the streets and clean the canals, seeking to address the sanitation crisis. In 2022 , the movement organized weekly health camps around Chungi, an initiative led by Dr. Alia. With time, the imperative to institutionalize became clear. “As we began to organize the first of our free medical camps, we saw that the devastation facing the working classes was beyond our capacity to help them as a movement,” Dr. Alia told me. “So we had to not only develop the infrastructure to support these people, but also cultivate a politics of solidarity.” By August 2023, the HKP opened the Khalq Clinic , a permanent site providing free testing, consultations, and medicines to people in Chungi. The Cuban Ambassador attended the opening, recalling Cuba’s own missions of medical internationalism to Pakistan. By the end of the year, the Party had five vocational schools with courses on English, computer literacy, and financial management. Students from universities came to volunteer in droves. At first, Dr. Alia told me, they struggled to connect the problems of others with their own. But the people of Chungi transformed them and opened in them a much more expansive vision of political possibility. “Until we know what the water in the sea is like, we could not know how to navigate the waves,” Dr. Alia said. By the time the election arrived in February 2024, the HKP had mobilized seven hundred people to work on its campaign. Among them were two seventeen-year-old alumni of the vocational schools, who now managed a complex voter registration process at HKP’s campaign headquarters. They checked the voter lists against records from the polling stations. They identified and corrected missing data in the voter lists. For each entry on the lists, they prepared a folder with three sheets of paper, two pens, a ruler, and two pieces of candy to help voters navigate the labyrinthine process on the day of the election. They checked the folders against numbered spreadsheets for each of the polling stations. Within months after the election, further breakthroughs arrived. When, early in 2024 , workers from the Chawla factory learned of planned closures—and proposed dismissals with minimal compensation—they organized. Led by factory worker and HKP member Maulana Shahbaz, they won what Ammar described as the “largest golden handshake since the 1970s.” The workers’ severance package increased from roughly eighty US dollars to as much as three thousand. In October, HKP members traveled to the lush countryside of Jhang, a city on the east bank of the Chenab River, to bring together thousands of peasants for a Kissan Conference. The farmers sang, chanted, and vowed to take on the state that has long subjugated them. All along, the HKP worked to ground its local organizing in an internationalist vision, protesting regularly in solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon as they faced a merciless bombardment by Western-backed Zionist forces, and mobilizing in friendship with Cuba, itself suffocated by economic warfare. If building the revolution means preparing the masses for the task of governance, then the HKP’s small first steps hold immense significance. Carried toward their logical conclusion, their political strategy aims at activating a powerful dormant force that holds singular capacity to resolve the dilemmas of Pakistan’s oppressed—substituting the landlords, capitalists, and compradors for the masses in the equations of political power. In this context, the campaign in the February election had achieved its goals, even if it failed to secure electoral gains. Many described the vote as a referendum on Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf—a rejection of foreign meddling and the brazen denial of even the most basic democratic rights. As a local party, the HKP was not part of the national calculus. As is their wont, the other parties that had come to Chungi on the day of the election—never opening the tinted windows of their jeeps—soon left. They will return for the next election, whenever it may come: in two years, or three, or five. But the HKP has established a permanent presence in Chungi. Its organizational capacities were magnified by the electoral campaign. Now, it is aiming to move further afield: to open branches in other cities across the country, building clinics, building schools, cleaning the water, and everywhere reasserting the idea that working people are the subject of history and not the object of their oppressors. In the days after the February election, the HKP put out a statement. It began with a passage from the poem To Posterity by the German communist Bertold Brecht. The poem says everything there is to say about the permanent task that lies ahead: To the cities I came in a time of disorder That was ruled by hunger. I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar And then I joined in their rebellion. That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Eart h. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Profile Lahore Haqooq-e-Khalq Party Elections Chungi Revolution Socialism Military Crackdown Community Discourse Discourses of War Storytelling News National Assembly Chiragh Ghar Campaign Ammar Ali Jan Pakistan Poverty Defence Housing Authority DHA districts Real Estate Militarism Armed Checkpoints Peri-urban settlements Village History Memory Dysentery Healthcare Inequality Aasim Sajjad Akhtar Working Class Capitalism Feudal Neo-Colonial Ethnic Division Popular Power Land Reform Subsidies Elitist Humanitarianism IMF International Monetary Fund Nationalism Repression Activism Cuba China Revolutionary Karl Marx Dehumanization Disempowerment Khalq Clinic Medical Internationalism Vocational Training Isolation Mobilization Chawla Factory Chenab River Kissan Conference Farming Farmers Agricultural Labor Solidarity Palestine Lebanon Zionism Economic Security Imran Khan Tehreek-e-Insaf Bertold Brecht 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. 30th Apr 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

· BOOKS & ARTS From the Editors · 2024 in Reading SAAG’s 2024 In Reading These reflections do not aim to present a neat list of 2024’s "best" books or "essential reads." Instead, they are fragments of what stayed with us: works that lingered and called us back. Digital Illustration by Iman Iftikhar. Reading in 2024 often felt like fumbling for grounding amidst relentless upheaval. At times, it offered escape and solace. At others, it demanded grappling, interrogation, and a necessary confrontation. Whether through poetry, history, fiction, or essays, our reading this year insisted on engagement: on seeing, feeling, and remembering to live, even when it felt unbearable. These reflections do not aim to present a neat list of 2024’s "best" books or "essential reads." Instead, they are fragments of what stayed with us: works that lingered and called us back. Our favorites include a novel set in Baltimore tracing the lives of the Palestinian diaspora, texts that provide much needed clarity on revolutionary politics, a quiet yet searing study of sound and space, some comfort reads, and much more. These books held mirrors to the year and world we lived through, compelling us to look even closer when we could not look away. Here, in the voices of those who read and felt with these works, we share not only our most loved reads of the year but the struggles they opened up for us, allowing us to see anew. #1 I have an enduring love for novels that are political yet rise above preachiness or self-absorption to deliver an actual narrative. This year, I needed something visceral to help process the anger I carried: at the personally testing situations I faced over the past year, at myself, at politics everywhere, and at the state of the world we inhabit. My mind feels oversaturated by the relentless stream of online clickbaity content, which so often tells you how to feel rather than inviting you to actually think. My two favourite novels from my year in reading are Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel . Fiction, though it might seem an escape from reality on the surface, teaches imagination and heart like nothing else. Reading about people in combat—be it dystopian televised death matches among the incarcerated or teenage girl boxers—transported me this year to worlds where I could quietly take stock of do-or-die battles: from the expansive and deadly to the taut and fleeting. — Zoya Rehman, Associate Editor #2 Although I had a thinner reading year in general, I waited quite excitedly for the release of Poor Artists , a hybrid work of fiction and non-fiction by art writing duo The White Pube (Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente). It follows a young brown artist in the UK named Quest Talukdar and includes anonymous material from real art world figures. The book is so refreshing, lucid, and plainly radical. As a young person working in the arts in the UK right now, it simultaneously felt crazy and comforting to imagine other ways of being creative under capitalism, with mutual care at the forefront. In short: I am so glad this book exists in published form. — Vamika Sinha, Senior Editor #3 How many ways are there to write histories of a language, or more specifically, histories of a script? In Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India , Prachi Deshpande outlines at least two methods, weaving a fascinating history of Modi writing, a cursive Marathi script that has, since the early 20th century, fallen into disuse. There’s a cherished dogma among some South Asians who see the subcontinental patchwork of regional linguistic blocs as somehow more organic an entity than the bloc of nation-states that we have today. The book makes one wonder how true that is. My second pick, Thomas S. Mullaney’s book on the Chinese computer , is a direct descendent of his earlier work on the Chinese typewriter (which carries one my favorite acknowledgments of any academic monographs; it begins: “What is your problem?”). This one asks how different generations of engineers, enthusiasts, eccentrics, and entrepreneurs tried to solve the fundamental problem of computing in Chinese: how does one input a language with no alphabet into a digital computer? Lastly, I chose Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals by Ronnie Grinberg , partly because it is about a bunch of people who read, wrote for, and edited longform, literary-political magazines based out of New York (much like SAAG), and were interested in engaging with the world through argument. And partly because I have a weakness for anything having to do with the midcentury, Partisan Review-Commentary-Encounter crowd. Grinberg’s book, thankfully, is a refreshing departure from the exhausted genre that is the lament for the decline of (often New York-based) public intellectuals. — Shubhanga Pandey, Senior Editor #4 This year, every book I read felt like a knock-out including: Animal by Dorothea Lasky , Yellowface by R.F. Kuang , Letters to a Writer of Color edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro , Fling Diction by Frances Canon , Riambel by Priya Hein , Dumb Luck and Other Poems by Christine Kitano , Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka , Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace , Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen , A Fish Growing Lungs by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn , and The Psychology of Supremacy by Dwight Turner , among many others. Each book I read challenged and changed my approach to creative writing craft, human psychology, how we process social trauma, and what we can learn from community, as well as demanding systemic change. One poetry collection that showed me how form could explode on the page, and how polyvocality and the acknowledgement of our ancestors could be conveyed, was JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies . The collection plays with the idea of “Master of Ceremonies” as someone who both entertains and has authority over the stage. With his stutter, Ellis has difficulty pronouncing “master” (which then becomes “aster” in his work). Throughout the collection, Ellis interrogates the notion of master, both as the figurehead who controls the lives of others, often under authoritarian or tyrannical rule, and as a symbol of accomplishment and the mastery of craft. — Rita Banerjee, Fiction Editor #5 2024 has been a difficult reading year for me because of the state of the world. I often relied on comfort reads, including contemporary romances and "romantasies," but even within these genres, I encountered books that were surprising, thoughtful, and heartbreaking. A series I became hooked on was Wolfsong by TJ Klune (Green Creek, #1), which was both difficult and troubling to read (many trigger warnings), yet its writing wore its heart on its sleeve—it was raw, unabashed, and unrestrained. That's why I appreciate love stories—they give the reader permission to feel all the uncomfortable, awkward, dramatic, and unrestrained emotions. Ali Hazelwood was my favorite go-to read in contemporary romances. Another kind of comfort came from revisiting decades-old books. I read older Kazuo Ishiguro books and re-read Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet , drawn by their effortless, soothing prose, even when the novels explored difficult situations. Two books stood out to me this year. First, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli . The novel begins in 1949, through the perspective of an Israeli soldier. As the story unfolds, small, seemingly "minor" details catch his eye, details that take on deeper meaning as the novel shifts to the perspective of a Palestinian woman in the present day. The sense of dread builds slowly but relentlessly. It is a difficult read; many trigger warnings for rape, violence, and sexual assault. I also loved The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley . This year, while leaning into lighthearted romances for a mental health break, this novel struck the perfect balance—lighthearted in moments, but deeply moving and beautifully written. The story follows a bureaucrat hired to work in a study and keep an eye on an "expat" that the government has brought from history: Graham Gore, who originally died on a doomed Arctic expedition in the 1800s. The novel broke my heart, transformed me, made me laugh, and gasp. I could not put it down. — Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, Senior Editor #6 2024 wasn’t a year for pleasure reading; it was a year for intentional reading. Scrambling to decide what to read, compounded by the weight of world events, brought into focus all the things I knew I didn’t know. This year, I actively sought out new sources of information, embracing a practical and necessary discomfort. That commitment began with the search for knowledge about a region my research focuses on: Central Asia. I happened upon one of the best reads of the year, The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road by Xin Wen . This 300-page deep dive into the history and culture of the Silk Road examines ancient trade and cultural exchanges during a distinctive age of exploration. Wen argues that diplomacy–unlike how we see or use it today–was central to fostering dialogue, trade, and mutual respect, all while navigating conflict without resorting to war. If you love history, travel, economics, or international relations, this one's for you. The idea of traversing conflict without resorting to war was also the focus of a graduate course I completed just two days ago. Another favorite read of the year, spurred by our course discussions, was Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work by Laura Robson . I kept returning to this book all throughout term; every time I opened it, there was a new thread to follow. In this 250-page work, Robson examines how capital is often prioritised over human dignity, showing how economic forces undermine individual security and lead to physical, emotional, and psychological dislocation. And what kind of reading year would it be without a novel? In The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai , I was confronted with despair, power, and the fragility of society. This atmospheric novel taught me how to confront the eerie wonders of the world while living under the looming shadow of societal collapse. — Nazish Chunara, Associate Editor #7 I loved Border and Rule by Harsha Walia . With microscopic clarity, and a postcolonial lens, Walia’s book is an indictment of the smoke-and-mirrors narratives used by states to obfuscate the horrible realities of displacement, forced migration, and statelessness. These realities, Walia argues, are hardwired into today’s capitalist and insidiously racist border control systems of Western capitals. The book further demonstrates how these practices, benefiting a few while exploiting those on the move, are being deployed by Middle Powers in the so-called Global South—such as the UAE, India, and Brazil—against the backdrop of rising populism and the widening gulf between rich and poor. — Mushfiq Mohamed, Senior Editor #8 As South Asians, we are all acutely familiar with the India-Pakistan hegemony on the intellectual discourse in the region (language, caste, class, ethnicity, and gender, of course, further complicate who from within these regions gets to speak, if at all). Particularly, as a Pakistani woman, rarely have I had an opportunity to concertedly engage with literature by Bengali, Nepalese, Tamil, or Malayali (to name a few) writers from beyond the Hindu/Urdu speaking world. In 2024, I sought to change this and read translated writing from across the South Asian diaspora. In particular, I would like to recommend Hospital by Sanya Rushdi –a short yet powerful novel exploring the psychosis experienced by a young Bangladeshi woman in a psychiatric facility in Melbourne. I also loved Ten Days of The Strike by Sandipan Chattopadhyay , with the titular essay serving as a powerful reminder of the politics of shitting. In general, a Bengali translation by Arunava Sinha , I realised, will never disappoint a reader. Honorary mentions among my SA reading list include: Password and Other Stories by Appadurai Muttulingam , and the award-winning Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshanathan . — Iman Iftikhar, Associate Editor #9 More than any other year, 2024 left me feeling like I don't know anything about my world. More often than not, I didn't have the vocabulary and, more disturbingly, the emotional-spiritual bandwidth to articulate or sit with what was/is happening in the world and how it can/could/should impact how I move through life. I learnt a lot from reading Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv, Human Acts by Han Kang , Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, and the poetry and writing Shripad Sinnakaar shared on social media. These writers gave me words, feelings and narrative clarity to sustain my engagement with the world and not shut it out in the face of incomprehension. — Esthappen S., Drama Editor #10 I’ve been reflecting a lot on sound and space this year. Live Audio Essays by Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a collection of transcribed and edited texts from the performances and films he has written and compiled. Moving through excerpt-like recounts, it situates sound through text, blending anecdote with punctuated investigations. It’s a fascinating push to think more deeply about how sound is interpreted and engaged with in different contexts, from the power of sumud to police tip offs, to studying the biological effects of noise pollution. Over the summer, I visited Autograph in London to see Ernest Cole: A Lens in Exile , curated by Mark Sealy . This remarkable exhibition presented images from Cole’s time in New York and his travels around the USA during his exile from South Africa in the 1960s. I also appreciated the catalogue-style book accompanying the exhibition, The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole , as well as Raoul Peck’s documentary, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found . While working in Paris, I attended Offprint . I had sternly instructed myself to just look and not buy more books(!), but then a small, palm-sized monotone blue book caught my eye. Hold the Sound: Notes on Auditories , edited by Justine Stella Knuchel and Jan Steinbach, is a compilation of texts by artists and researchers attempting to encapsulate descriptions of sound. The book gathers words by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, John Cage, Mosab Abu Toha, Sun Ra, and many others. On my way out I squealed embarrassingly—like an auntie remarking on how much I’ve grown—when I saw Luvuyo Nyawose’s eBhish’ . — Clare Patrick, Art Editor #11 This year, I read in the hour or so I had while our one-year-old slept and I could still keep my eyes open. Reading was both urgent, pressurized by the devastating plight of Palestinians, and a moment to breathe: a space for contemplation, and to feel. I read history, horror, and grief, grief, grief. Rarely is political analysis as exhilarating as in my first favourite read of 2024: The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad , edited by Carollee Bengelsoorf, Margaret Cerullo, and Yogesh Chandrani . From revolutionary movements to “pathologies of power,” to Palestine, the cold war, and Pakistan-India, Ahmad’s insights are crystal clear, provocative, moral, and startlingly prescient. I want to emphasize the clarity of his writing, perhaps owed to his pedagogy as a teacher. I meant to read selections but ended up reading it straight through. My second pick is The Singularity by Balsam Karam (translated by Saskia Vogel) . In an unnamed coastal city, a refugee woman searches for her daughter until, in despair, she leaps to her death, an act witnessed by another woman who narrates this aching, fragmentary testimony of grief–for children, for home. Lastly, [...] by Fady Joudah : what we read this year, we read through a genocide. Fady’s scathing poems left no brutality or complicity unnamed, while speaking with tender sorrow to the dead and wounded. If nothing else, listen to Fady read Dedication here . — Ahsan Butt, Fiction Editor #12 I would like to offer Behind You Is the Sea , a novel by Susan Muaddi Darraj. Released in January 2024, just months after the events of October 7, Darraj’s novel follows three Palestinian American families in Baltimore. Its tender, nuanced characterizations of women and men, young and old, navigating their place in a city burdened by legacies of racial, economic, and legal apartheid, offer an honest exploration of immigrant life in America. Although written before the current conflict in Gaza and Occupied Palestine, it reminds us of the generational trauma and resilience that all Palestinians in the diaspora carry with them. — Aditya Desai, Advisory Editor #13 This year, I loved Sahar Romani’s poetry chapbook, The Opening , a beautiful, tender collage of poems on family, love, and coming into yourself, and into the world. For fiction, I recommend two very different books. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is a speculative fiction novella by Hugo Award winning author Nghi Vo. It’s wildly inventive, lyrically written, menacing, beautiful, and queer. Also on the novella tip, Berlin-based Palestinian author Adania Shibli’s novel, Minor Detail , stunned me. Written in clear, marching prose, its focus on minor details, set against the backdrop of occupation, sexual violence, death, and exile, is a portrait and a protest. In nonfiction, I loved: 1) Inciting Joy , a book of essays by Ross Gay, each one luminous with generosity, perceptiveness, and yes, joy. 2) Come Together by sex researcher Emily Nagoski, about sex in long-term relationships, though my biggest takeaway came from two chapters on the gender mirage (women as givers, men as winners) and how this construct within our patriarchal society undermines and destroys heterosexual relationships. 3) Poverty by America is sociologist Matthew Desmond’s heartbreaking follow-up to his even sadder book, Eviction . I grew up middle class, and it was infuriating and eye-opening–I’d recommend it to anyone, especially if you didn’t grow up poor. 4) Sex with a Brain Injury by Annie Liontas was another revelation, giving me enormous empathy for those with acute brain injuries (more common than you know!) and all their attendant furies. 5) Last but certainly not least, I listened to All About Love by African American legend bell hooks, twice, back to back, as the American election season came to a terrifying close. In 2025, I want to internalize hooks’ commitment to love as an ethic—in the family, in friendships, in the workplace, and in politics. — Abeer Hoque, Senior Editor With love, gratitude, and in solidarity, The Editors at SAAG. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. From the Editors 2024 in Reading Fiction Chain-Gang All Stars Poor Artists Write Like a Man Yellowface Scripts of Power Aster of Ceremonies Wolfsong The Melancholy of Resistance Border & Rule Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Ten Days of The Strike Rita Bullwinkel Ernest Cole Lawrence Abu Hamdan The Singularity Fady Joudah Behind You Is the Sea When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain Sex with a Brain Injury Arts Presently Poetry Literature & Liberation The White Pube Hybrid Multimodal Prachi Deshpande Ronnie Grinberg Dorothea Lasky R.F. Kuang Taymour Soomro Deepa Anappara Frances Canon Priya Hein Christine Kitano Franz Kafka Carvell Wallace Kenzie Allen Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn Dwight Turner JJJJJerome Ellis Craft Ali Hazelwood Adania Shibli Kaliane Bradley Xin Wen Laura Robson László Krasznahorkai Harsha Walia Sanya Rushdi Bengali Literature Tamil Literature Nepalese Literature Malayali Literature Sandipan Chattopadhyay Appadurai Muttulingam V.V. Ganeshanathan Shripad Sinnakaar Han Kang Mark Sealy Luvuyo Nyawose Susan Muaddi Darraj Sahar Romani Chapbook Ross Gay Matthew Desmond Emily Nagoski Annie Liontas bell hooks 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. 25th Dec 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 VERTICAL Reportage · Arunachal Pradesh Tawang's Blessing Pills In the 2010s, local blessing pills made in the Arunachal Pradesh town of Tawang were replaced by those made on the Indian mainland. The shift in production is also a story of nationalist transformations in this borderland. Courtesy of Mihir Joshi. Spend a week traversing circuitous trails, deep gorges, and high mountain passes in Arunachal Pradesh of the recent past, and you might have come across something otherworldly. Situated atop a hill in a small town called Tawang, a region that has long been disputed between India and China, is a majestic 400-year-old monastery with intricate and colorful artwork. It is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in India. Every three years, monks and volunteers here would chant the mani dungyur mantra one hundred million times. They would do so to bless mani rilbu , red globule-size pills made from roasted barley flour, herbs, and a fermenting agent called phab gyun . “We would sun-dry these pills for weeks and chant the mani dungyur mantra round the clock seeking blessings from the deity Avalokiteshvara,” recalls Rinchin Norbu, an octogenarian who volunteered in the Tawang monastery in the 1960s. These pills, which were highly valued by Tibetan Buddhists and took weeks to make, were eventually distributed to the public because they were believed to ensure the well-being of the people. The practice continued until the 2010s when these local blessing pills were replaced by ones made on the Indian mainland. Intriguingly, this shift in production also tells the story of nationalist transformations of this borderland. In 1959, Tawang became a major asylum route for Tibetans fleeing Chinese occupation . The 14th Dalai Lama entered India via Tawang and a large number of Tibetan refugees who followed him settled here. Thus, the population of the region grew to include Indigenous Himalayan tribes who follow Tibetan Buddhism as well as ethnic Tibetan refugees. Upon settling in India, Tibetan refugees started rebuilding famous Tibetan monasteries across the country, from Himachal Pradesh in the north to Karnataka in the south west. These monasteries produced various blessing pills of their own, which started to circulate among the Himalayan Buddhists. They have become so popular since the late 1990s that they have replaced the mani rilbu made by the Tawang Monastery. Eventually, by 2010, the Tawang Monastery decided to stop making mani rilbu due to lack of demand. Thus, Tawang blessing pills, among the most prominent locally-produced Tibetan “power objects ’ in the region, disappeared. Today, Rinchin Norbu mourns the disappearance of the Tawang mani rilbu tradition. But his 37-year old son Leki Wangchu, who is an ardent supporter of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party, says he has always preferred blessing pills produced by Tibetan monasteries in mainland India over Tawang’s mani rilbu. “The pills from Dharamsala [Himachal Pradesh] are produced by doctors and monks trained in Sowa Rigpa [Tibetan medicine]. Most people these days choose these national jinden [pills] made by Sowa Rigpa experts rather than local mani rilbu. The mani rilbu produced in Tawang Monastery was only a local tradition brought over from Tibet by some monk in the nineteenth century,” Leki tells me emphasizing the ‘Indianness’ of the mani rilbu from Dharamsala in contrast to the obscure Tibetan origin of Tawang mani rilbu. Sowa Rigpa was recognized by the Indian government as an “Indian system of medicine” back in 2010. The popularity of the practice is rising across India following its government recognition. Anthropologist Steven Kloos has captured in rich ethnographic details the tussle between the Himalayan Tibetan Buddhists and the exiled Tibetan community in India over the ownership of Sowa Rigpa. He wrote in the journal Medical Anthropology Today , “While Tibetan medicine had been known and practiced for centuries in the Tibetan-influenced Indian Himalayan regions, it was only with the arrival of Tibetan refugees in India in 1959 and their subsequent institutionalization of Tibetan medicine there that this health tradition developed into a ‘medical system’ with sufficient standards, popularity, and political clout to be recognized by the Indian state.” While Leki Wangchu attributes the decline of Tawang mani rilbu to the rising popularity of standardized Sowa Rigpa medicine, the disappearance of various local, spatialized care practices is also triggered by the rise of right-wing nationalism in the region. In the last two decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS), the ruling party in India and its affiliated cultural organization that champion Hindu majoritarian religious and cultural nationalism, have made a strong ideological inroads in Arunachal Pradesh. As their vision of ‘greater India’ gains acceptance in this borderland, there is an increasing tendency among the locals to assert “Indian” identity through various means, including through purchase of commodities made in India or consumption of cultural products associated with the Indian mainland. Sowa Rigpa's increasing popularity rests to a considerable extent on its supposed “Indianness” following its recognition by the Indian government. For old-timers like Rinchin Norbu, however, the locally made mani rilbu was much more than just a medicine. It was a care practice deeply rooted in the relations humans and local deities share in this landscape and their local understandings of disease etiology. People here believe in a range of deities and spirits connected to mountains, rivers, and other geographical features of the landscape, such as yulha (land deity), tsen, and nyen (deities of the mountain). Some of these deities are like human beings with worldly emotions such as anger and jealousy. “If you contaminate the dwellings of yulha or tsen, or offend them by visiting their places in ungodly hours, they may catch you and cause illnesses such as skin disease and nerve pain,” Rinchin Norbu tells me, “If you eat mani rilbu the spirit will leave you.” Not only did mani rilbu help the local people navigate the anxieties of unpredictable encounters with local deities and spirits, but it was a traditional way of co-production of care in a specific landscape. “The production of Tawang mani rilbu itself was a localized collaborative process between monks, nuns, and lay people, as well as Avalokiteshvara, the divinity that blessed these pills,” writer Yeshe Dorje Thongchi, an acclaimed writer and novelist from Arunachal Pradesh explained to me. In contrast, Rinchin Norbu says, the blessing pills brought over from outside are “just medicines” with no relations to the landscape. “They aren’t as effective as the Tawang mani rilbu we used to make simply because these pills [and their makers] don’t know the local deities causing illnesses in our bodies.” The rise of Hindu nationalism in India has triggered new spiritual practices intended to reify a sense of homogeneous “Indianness.” They often emerge at the expense of long-standing local traditions that relate to place, community, and tradition. The replacement of Tawang mani rilbu by blessing pills made by Sowa Rigpa practitioners from the Indian mainland is just one of many such examples.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Reportage Arunachal Pradesh Tibet Hindutva Hindu Nationalism Tawang Monastery Indigeneity Buddhism Asylum Himalayas Himalayan Tribes BJP Steven Kloos Blessing Pills Medicine Health Chinese Occupation of Tibet Space Indigeneous Spaces Spatial Relations Respatialization Labor Northeast India Sister States 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. 7th Jun 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 VERTICAL Dispatch · Kerala The Stamp When a Bharatiya Janata Party stamp mistakenly appeared on an official letter from the Election Commission of India, it revealed more about the state of Indian democracy than any clerical error conceivably should. As voters head to the polls today in Kerala's State Assembly election, their votes are beholden to an institution that has long since stopped trying to earn their trust. Sonali Sonam, Journey 2 (2020). Watercolour on paper. On March 23, the Kerala state wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) posted a picture on its official X account that created a furore in Indian politics. It showed an official communication from India’s Election Commission—a constitutional body established to ensure free, impartial, and fair elections in the country—prominently displaying the BJP's Kerala Unit seal. Seen on an Election Commission of India (ECI) document that was sent out to various political parties and district collectors across Kerala, eighteen days ahead of the elections in India’s southernmost state. The caption under the image in the post needed no explanation. “Have all pretences been dropped by the BJP?” it read. “It is no secret that the same power centre appears to control both the Election Commission of India and the BJP. Even so, at least have the decency of maintaining two separate desks.” The Election Commission had the following response: “The BJP Kerala Unit had recently approached the CEO’s office seeking clarification on the 2019 guidelines regarding the publication of criminal antecedents of candidates. Along with their request, the party submitted a photocopy of the original 2019 directive. The party’s seal was present on that specific copy provided by them. Due to an oversight, the office failed to notice the party symbol on the submitted document and inadvertently redistributed it to other political parties as part of the requested clarification. The guidelines in question have undergone revisions since 2019, which have already been communicated to all political entities. The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer acknowledged the lapse as soon as it was detected.” Chief Electoral Officer Ratan U. Kelkar called it an “inexcusable error” and said that once the mistake was spotted, a withdrawal notice was issued the same day. An Assistant Section Officer handling the file was suspended pending inquiry, and a detailed probe was launched, expected to conclude within 48 hours. Recorded as simply a clerical error, immediately rectified, an officer was suspended. The case was dismissed. The document in question is not obscure. It is a standard FAQ about candidates' criminal records, something that election officials have issued dozens of times. In fact, the BJP's 2019 version of this FAQ has been in government files for seven years. It bears its stamp. The claim is that someone took this document, overlooked the stamp, and sent it out. It's possible. Then again, why would the BJP's seven-year-old stamped copy be accessible to this official? After all, these FAQs have been amended since 2019. The suggestion is that the officials both chose to share the incorrect document, and that the unrevised versions originated from a political party's submission. Thus, here we are: with an explanation that is technically plausible, but in the current political climate, one that is impossible to accept at face value. India’s opposition political party, the Indian National Congress, leader Pawan Khera did not let this irony slip by, asking whether the BJP's victories in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, 2019, and 2024 were also the result of similar “clerical errors.” Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal state Chief Minister and fierce critic of the BJP, went a step further. “Was it a clerical mistake in the design of the BJP symbol, or was it an attempt to fulfill political objectives?” she said , calling for all political parties to fight the one-sided, one-party rule over all institutional processes. The Criminal Stamp One could, with considerable straining of the imagination, try to understand the initial incident in terms of administrative carelessness. However, the subsequent crackdown subverts all such theories. The Kerala Police issued notices to 270 X handles, 200 Facebook pages, and 90 Instagram accounts, demanding that the shared image of the offending circular be removed. Facebook and Instagram, in response to police directives, took down posts containing the image. Let us be clear about what is being suppressed. It is not an edited picture. Nor is it a false or AI-generated document that could be construed as spreading disinformation. It is an image of a real letter from the Election Commission's own offices, bearing a BJP seal. Critically, the authorities had already acknowledged it as being real before explaining it away as an error. Citizen users who were sharing real, acknowledged, and official information were now being issued legal notices and had their information removed. This development has sparked many opinions in the state. Many feel that the police infrastructure is being utilised to stifle discourse rather than tackling crime. It is the irony in this instance of suppression, perhaps, that gives it the sharpest edge. Kerala Police sits under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission while the Model Code of Conduct is in place. The body, whose official document carried the ruling party's seal, is now seeking to suppress information sharing and erase evidence-based citizen reporting. The Proxy Stamp The ECI has struggled with a crisis of credibility for a decade. With this struggle, questions from opposition parties and observers of India's elections continue to increase amidst a build-up of events and silences. The opposition political party leader, Rahul Gandhi, has spent the better part of a year giving presentations on what he calls “documented evidence” of “vote chori” or the vote theft: that around 2.5 million votes were stolen in northern state of Haryana, citing that more than a hundred thousand voters had fake photographs, including that of a Brazilian model who appeared on 22 different voter registrations. During a 2024 election in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, a presiding officer was caught on CCTV in the middle of the count, appearing to deface the ballot papers. To this, the Supreme Court remarked : "This is a mockery of democracy.” Earlier this year, in the western state of Maharashtra, electronic voting machines were found in the car of an election official. The appointment mechanism for the Election Commissioners has been challenged in the Supreme Court. The speed and bias in the enforcement of the code of conduct are questioned after every election. The trust required to make the election process in a democracy credible has been breached for years. The BJP stamp did not create this crisis. But it has become a symbol for it. It is a symbol that leaves no room for ambiguity because it cannot be rationalised away, appearing as it did in a state that was three weeks away from elections. The ECI was set up to safeguard the constitution; it is the only body powerful enough to make elections meaningful. But in the minds of its citizens and democratic observers, it is now a body that confuses process with accountability. It suspends officers, issues clarifications, and holds press conferences. Most troublingly, the EC does not act in a way that could be logically perceived as an attempt to earn back the public's trust. An institution that has faith in its own integrity would not suppress accurate information. It would not serve notices to 560 social media accounts for publishing a document it has already admitted to be true. It would not invoke the powers of the Model Code of Conduct to police inconvenient evidence from the public domain. It would not view the citizens it exists to serve as a problem to be managed. The Election Commission and the entire democratic process in 2026 are so closely intertwined that observers no longer seem to be able to distinguish between them. It is not about the presence of the stamp, the suspended officer, or the midnight movements of voting machines; these institutions would prefer it to be known. It is a fateful crisis in the EC itself. Kerala votes today. Counting is on May 4. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Dispatch Kerala BJP Elections Electioneering CPI(M) Communist Party of India (Marxist) Election Commission Stamp Bureaucracy Democracy The Guise of Democracy Corruption Social Media Crackdown Crisis Public Trust Model Code of Conduct Kerala Police Police Party Politics Rahul Gandhi Ratan U. Kelkar Mamata Banerjee West Bengal Pawan Khera Congress State Power State Capture Clientelism Rajya Sabha Parliament State Legislative Assemblies Vidhan Sabha Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 9th Apr 2026 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: