· THE VERTICAL Reportage · Ladakh The Artisan Labor Crisis of Ladakh As Sino-Indian tensions rise in the new Indian Union territory of Ladakh at the Line of Actual Control, Ladakhi craftswomen like Sonam Dolma are returning to Kashmir to sell their authentic pashmina shawls. A landscape view of Ladakh. Dolma's homeland now facing the heat of the lurking dragon. Courtesy of Masroor Khan. In the upscale neighborhood of Rajbagh in Srinagar, Sonam Dolma awaits a high-stakes meeting at an eatery amidst Kashmiri portraits and vintage décor. Her Ladakhi tribe’s prized Pashmina shawls made of fine Kashmiri cashmere are sought after by Kashmir’s elite who eschew mass-produced replicas for craftsmanship. In the quiet corner of the café, away from the bustling streets, Dolma prepares to showcase her wares to discerning clients—wives of bureaucrats and businessmen—who value quality and authenticity above all else. Just miles away from this serene scene lies a neighborhood scarred by floods, where Dolma’s tribe finds refuge after their daily trade expeditions. Despite this contrast, these Ladakhi women navigate Kashmir’s high society with grace, armed with exquisite products and a commitment to purity in a world of imitations. The group’s trade trips to Kashmir have become recurrent ever since Chinese troops showed up at their homeland’s hinterland in May 2020. Oblivious to the standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Beijing has grown its military presence, the women are making their rounds of the posh localities of Srinagar with shawls in hand. This internal drive for living has come just five years after New Delhi stripped the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir. Their homeland is a new spark plug in South Asia; they live in a constant state of fear. In fact, the rise of the new front—LAC—has already proven deadly. In a military standoff, Sino-India troops have suffered casualties . But beyond these border games, Beijing has forced new orders and routines compelling the Ladakhi craftswomen to return to estranged Kashmir. These young women frequent the fraught region of the valley for sustenance. Prior to their recent visits as mobile merchants, they would mostly feel at home in Kashmir. But everything changed when New Delhi sliced Ladakh from Kashmir in a cartographic attempt to redefine the contested land in the summer of 2019. Carving a union territory out of the United Nations’ registered disputed region eventually proved costly for the government of India. It provoked China—now the ominous third party of what New Delhi calls a “bilateral issue” between India and Pakistan. However, beyond Beijing’s belligerence, the decision to make Ladakh a federal entity has far-reaching consequences for the cashmere brand and its craftspeople. With China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) occupying the winter mainstay of the Pashmina goats in Ladakh, cashmere is losing its source of thread. Ladakh’s Changthang area—the land of nomads located in the east of Leh on the Chinese border—has long been a breeding ground for the Pashmina goats. The severe temperature of the area, the experts say, makes the Pashmina thread of Changthang very thin, which in turn makes these goats the source of the finest cashmere in the world. The Chinese incursions have now made it a literal no-go zone for the nomads rearing these goats. Although China is showing no signs of retreat, the military occupation has created an existential crisis for the native animal and has raised serious concerns around the globe. The nomads are reporting increasing numbers of goat deaths. These deaths—due to the occupied winter habitat of Pashmina goats—have cast shadows on the global brand. In the main towns of Leh, the Pashmina dealers are linking the supply slump to the rise of China in Ladakh. Despite the dilemma, the cashmere craftspeople are banking on their old ties with the valley. In the larger din emanating from the LAC, their Kashmir move has become symbolic. While New Delhi has separated them from Kashmir in this territorial juggling, Beijing has reunited them . New anxieties are on the rise, however, as the processing of Pashmina may be shifted out of Kashmir to Uttar Pradesh by the Indian authorities, a move that may create an impact on the cashmere wool industry. Faced with diminishing income and mounting unpredictability, Dolma made the difficult decision to seek refuge in Kashmir. At noon when most of the citizenry works, she arrives to strike some profitable exchanges. Dolma on her way to a Srinagar neighbourhood where she sells her stuff to customers. Courtesy of Mir Seeneen. Dolma tells me how she was born into a family of weavers in a small village 260 miles from Ladakh’s capital, Leh. She learned the art of crafting Pashmina shawls from her grandmother, who in teaching her, passed down centuries-old techniques. Dolma reflects on the journey: “The foreign incursions into Ladakh forced me to confront the fragility of life, to adapt, and evolve.” But the looming specter and uncertainty brought by a massive troop build-up, cast a dark shadow over Dolma’s once-peaceful existence. “We spend months preparing the handicraft stuff before arriving in Srinagar for work," she says. For Dolma, these rendezvous in serene corners of the city held significance beyond mere transactions. She was not just selling shawls—she was preserving a legacy, a tradition that had been passed down through generations. In a market flooded with facsimiles, she was a purveyor of authenticity, valued for her discerning eye and commitment to quality. Away from Ladakh, Dolma considers Kashmir the second home for Ladakhi entrepreneurs like herself. This Himalayan region is their main economic link to the rest of the world, aside from being the preferable market for their indigenous products. During the post-Covid distressed times, they counted on Kashmir’s booming domestic tourism. “Kashmir has never disappointed us,” says Tenzin, another Pashmina seller from Ladakh. “But somewhere down the line, the region’s uncertainty reminds us of our home now. It was a peaceful land before they changed its status in the summer of 2019.” The demand for a separate entity—a union territory—was a longstanding political cry in Ladakh, mostly from the members of the ruling mainstream party. The campaign gained steam after the political party swept the regional polls. Experts feared that slicing Ladakh from Kashmir would alter the course of the disputed land. But in the run-up to August 2019, when campaigns against Article 370 became fierce, Ladakh witnessed a political wave culminating in its new territorial identity. Lately, the process in Kargil has intensified with shutdowns of demand for statehood ; even the famed climate activist Sonam Wangchuk went on a 21-day hunger strike . With the altered political reality, most of these women are now anxious about the war frenzy created by the armies in their homeland. They realize how the militarization was triggered by the summer shift—when New Delhi justified the abrogation of Article 370 as a move “to end discrimination” with Ladakh and its people. But the unilateral decision backfired when the Chinese army showed up at the LAC and clashed with Indian forces. Since then the skirmishes have stopped, but the boots remain on the ground . While the border brouhaha has given Ladakh global coverage in recent times, these girls have become weary of the hyper-media attention. Like their Kashmiri counterparts, they don’t make peace with the pugnacious news debates focusing on their homeland. The mainland television media’s so-called war bulletins have only heightened tensions. What’s further creating a false sense of alarm is New Delhi’s dithering response to the LAC situation. The region has now become a new strategic zone forcing the right-wing government to build a fair-weather highway connecting Leh with Srinagar that opened this past winter. The snowbound thoroughfare used to be cut-off for six months. But now, the Indian government’s urge to keep an unflinching eye on the PLA has put men at work during extreme conditions, including the construction of a tunnel connecting Ladakh with Kashmir. Still, these young Ladakhi women see hope in Kashmir where their products are quite popular among the urban elites. However, if the status quo isn’t restored at the LAC anytime soon, these Pashmina girls of Ladakh fear losing cashmere to Chinese aggression. In the wake of this militarized uncertainty, some of the girls believe their visits to Kashmir, this estranged part of India, might alleviate their financial situation. “Life is tough back home,” continues Tenzin, while waiting for her client inside the cafeteria, and uncertainty has only escalated after the recent border tensions between India and China. Away from Ladakh, these girls share rent, rage, and respite in Srinagar before heading back home with seasonal earnings. “Most of us belong to poor families,” Tenzin continues with a thoughtful stance. “For us, our families come first. But it’s very hard to stay focused amid the changed reality now. Be it troop build-up or frontier tensions, the sense of normalcy has taken a big hit. Regardless of everything, Kashmir is the same to us as it used to be when the people of Ladakh were part of it,” she says. “Sadly, for some of us, a sense of estrangement has come to define this relationship now. And the change is there to see.” Padma Tsering, a quintessential Ladakhi woman in her early thirties from Nyoma, has been selling Pashmina in Kashmir for the past couple of years. “We’ve cultivated our customer base in Kashmir and rely on them for our livelihood,” she says. Despite their limited political awareness, Ladakhi girls like Tsering find hope in Kashmir. “There’s a sense of security Kashmir offers despite the surrounding tensions,” says Phuntsok Wangmo, another Pashmina seller from Ladakh. “It’s our preferred market with loyal customers, even during post-Covid times.” Dolma showcases her shawls in Srinagar during a business meeting with her client. Courtesy of Mir Seeneen. Meanwhile, Dolma’s wait ends as Sadaf Khan, a young Kashmiri woman, arrives at the café. Khan expresses interest in buying shawls from the weaver. “My cousin recommended Dolma to me and vouched for the quality of the shawls,” says Khan. The café comes alive with the buzz of business, some chatter, and laughter. After bidding farewell to her client, Dolma steps out into the busy thoroughfares of the city; walking home reflectively after another successful trade. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Reportage Ladakh Srinagar Kashmir Sino-Indian Relations China India Geopolitics Indian Union Article 370 Line of Actual Control People’s Liberation Army Changthang Labor Craftsmanship Artisans Indigeneity Settler-Colonialism Displacement Statehood Military Operations Police Action Sonam Dolma Militarization Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 3rd May 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:

Today's youngest Kenyans helmed the country's recent anti-tax protests: from creating a Finance Bill GPT, to organizing on X Space, to turning smartphones back into walkie talkies, their technology savvy helped facilitate a mass mobilization with a strength that President Ruto could demonize, but not deny. Today's youngest Kenyans helmed the country's recent anti-tax protests: from creating a Finance Bill GPT, to organizing on X Space, to turning smartphones back into walkie talkies, their technology savvy helped facilitate a mass mobilization with a strength that President Ruto could demonize, but not deny. Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, Macakaya – Lamentations (2013-16). Painting on work-hardened builder's paper, sheet metal. Artist LOCATION AUTHOR · AUTHOR · AUTHOR 23 Oct 2010 rd · THE VERTICAL REPORTAGE · LOCATION Revolution X In June 2024, a video of Shadrack Kiprono getting forcefully pushed inside a white car outside an establishment in South B, Nairobi caused an uproar on the Kenyan internet. It was the first time people had visual evidence that vocal people in the #RejectFinanceBill anti-tax protests were being abducted. The abduction happened moments after Austin Omondi, a medic and a vocal X user who had been abducted at a makeshift medical space that catered to injuries from the protests, was released. These two activists were not the first to go missing. On June 22nd, an X (formerly Twitter) Space titled “Good Morning Kenya: Where is Crazy Nairobian?” ran for more than 7 hours and garnered more than 1.2 million listeners. It was held to find another outspoken protestor popular on the social media platform, Billy Simani , who had been abducted from his house in the dead of the night. It was becoming a common occurrence for young Kenyans to tweet “They have come for me,” their abductions a clear fear tactic wielded by the state to tame the burgeoning anti-tax protests. It was only midmorning on the 25th of June, but the sun was already unforgiving in Nakuru, a metropolitan city northwest of Nairobi, Kenya. However, the heat did not seem to deter the thousands of protesters who were marching along the main street, bearing placards, twigs, whistles, vuvuzelas - virtually anything that would amplify their core message: #RejectFinanceBill2024. These protests, mostly made up of people under the age of 35, were being replicated across almost all major cities in the country. The movement had snowballed to such a degree that it was being labeled "The Mother of All Protests", and it was being helped by Kenyan Gen-Z. Shikoh Kihika is the Executive Director at Tribeless Youth, a local organization that works with creatives and young activists to imagine a better future for Kenya. She notes that these protests have been different from those held in the past. “The protests are not led by any civil society [organization], political party, or [established] activist. They are people-led, they are impromptu and they happen everywhere.” These protests did not mark the first time the Kenyans have marched against harsh economic policies. A year ago in 2023, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga led anti-government protests against the 2023 Finance Bill . This year though, the movement took an interesting turn. The Root of the Protests Beginning online, in late February 2024, on platforms such as X, TikTok, and Instagram, there was a public outcry in reaction to the 2024 Finance Bill . This bill was supposed to be the first in a series of tax reforms aimed at improving the economic state of the nation. The now scrapped bill included several items, including: Introducing the Eco Levy, a tax measure that would affect a selection of imported goods that could potentially harm the environment. This included a wide range of products, from sanitary goods and diapers, to electronic devices and much more An increase in the road maintenance levy from Ksh 18 to KSh 25 per liter of fuel An introduction of a 5% or 15% withholding tax on infrastructure bonds and sales made from digital marketplaces Scrapping of the minimum Ksh 24,000 threshold for services rendered by a resident, which would mean taxing minimum wage Introducing a 16% VAT on basic goods such as cooking oil and bread Amendment of the Data Act to allow the Kenya Revenue Authority to access the financial information of any Kenyan national without a court order The goal of the bill was to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio from the current 13.5% to 20% by 2025. Aware that achieving this increased target was going to be a hard strain on their lives, citizens escalated their outcry from digital spaces to the streets. Courtesy of Gregory Ochieng. A Technolution Technology has been the heartbeat of this revolution, evident in the way social media and artificial intelligence have been used on different fronts. The first and most powerful tool has been the use of social media. Spaces and conference call features on X have been vital in mobilizing people for town hall discussions around civic education and dialogue. On this platform, the movement drew participants on a scale unlike anything seen before. Citizen-run X spaces amassed well over a million listeners. People urged President Ruto to engage with them in this digital space. When he finally hosted space , it had over 6.7 million listeners. On these X Spaces, citizens asked their leaders tough and bold questions regarding the economic state of the country, extrajudicial killings, abductions, and other issues ailing the nation. Instagrammers used graphics to spread the word about protests. TikTok users conducted their own citizen journalism to cover the nationwide protests, giving the world a first-class seat to Kenya’s impassioned streets. Once discussions filtered downstream to counties, towns, and smaller communities, WhatsApp took center stage as the preferred method of communication. Through groups and communities, people were able to organize meeting points, map out marching routes, organize water and medical supplies, and provide updates. Enter the AI Cavalry Artificial Intelligence, specifically Open AI's ChatGPT software was used by ordinary people to create the Finance Bill GPT , a resource tool that broke down the finance bill and its implications. Another GPT on tracking corruption helped Kenyans track accountability for the people in or about to be elected to power. Using the Chatbot, people could get highly technical information broken down into understandable bite-size pieces. One of the most disruptive digital tools was a communication app, Zello , that turned phones into walkie-talkies. Zello was also used to give live updates on the protests. By turning a phone into a walkie-talkie, the protesters were able to keep up live communications without the hassle of getting personal numbers, texting, or having to log in to an app. According to Patrick Kinyua, founder of Nakuru TV and an avid user of the app, within two days of its mention on X, the app saw a surge of new users tallying in the thousands. “Through Zello, people would tune in to get updates on road closures, sightings of anti-riot police, police bowsers, and to talk about their experiences.” During the second reading of the finance bill, Kenyans took to openly doxxing their respective members of parliament in a bid to get them to vote no on the bill. In a move they cheekily termed ‘salimia’ (greeting), constituents sent thousands of calls and texts to the cell phone numbers of members of parliament, urging them to ‘greet’ them. The MPs acknowledged that they were receiving these calls and texts and pleaded with the public that they had heard their concerns. However, a few days later, the bill sailed through. The situation became dire after the bill passed. Protestors hit the streets, breaching the parliament, and setting part of it ablaze. At the county level, protestors attempted to enter local state houses and county assemblies. Events turned deadly as at least 23 people across the country lost their lives. The president could not ignore the problem and was forced to act by declining to sign the bill into law. However, this was not before he issued a statement terming the protests as "treasonous events" orchestrated by "dangerous criminals." This only served to fuel the public’s anger, who had taken to the streets to demand accountability from their leaders. Leveraging technology did not stop with the street protests alone. In the aftermath, crowdfunding using a platform known as M-Changa raised over Ksh 30 million. The money was used to assist in the burials of those who had died and help those who had been injured during the protests. In addition, an online database was set up to keep track of all persons missing since the beginning of the protests. Courtesy of Gregory Ochieng. A Middle Ground? Since the June 25th protests, President Ruto has attempted to address the concerns raised during that time in various ways. Apart from not signing the bill, he held a roundtable where journalists Linus Kaikai, Erick Latiff, and Joe Ageyo had a conversation on the state of the nation with regard to the Finance Bill. However, this event became a PR crisis, as the president made several problematic statements, including doubling down on his previous claim that the protestors were treasonous. "They went straight for the armory and mausoleum, indicating they were organized criminals," Ruto said. He also attempted to do a virtual town hall on X , but Kenyans asked tough questions on abductions and extrajudicial killings that he was unable to answer satisfactorily. The grim discovery of bodies in Kware following the anti-tax protests in Kenya has intensified concerns about the use of force during demonstrations. It has sparked outrage among citizens and human rights organizations, who have been calling for thorough investigations into the circumstances surrounding the deaths. The discovery has further fueled tensions between protesters and law enforcement, raising serious questions about crowd control tactics and the protection of civil liberties during periods of civil unrest. There have been growing demands for accountability and urgent calls for a re-evaluation of how authorities respond to public demonstrations. The fervor in the streets is yet to subside, and the underlying issues that sparked the unrest remain largely unresolved. The Kenyan government faces the challenge of addressing citizens' concerns about the high cost of living and alleged corruption while also maintaining stability. The resilience and democratic spirit of the Kenyan people has been on full display, and all eyes are now on the nation's leaders and how they will respond to this clear call for change. The coming months will be crucial in determining whether the Gen Z-led revolution will result in any meaningful reforms or if the cycle of discontent will continue. One thing stands out: digital tools and technology have emerged as powerful tools for democracy, shaping Kenya’s political landscape in unexpected and deeply impactful ways. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Tags Tags 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:

Sudan’s ongoing war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has devastated the country, displacing millions and crippling public services. Civilian-led groups, particularly the Resistance Committees (RCs) and professional unions, continue to provide humanitarian aid despite severe repression, learning from the rich history of Sudanese unions active since the 20th century. Today, emergency committees and medical unions work tirelessly to support war victims, exemplifying resilience amid chaos. Their struggle highlights a stark contrast between civilian solidarity and military destruction. · THE VERTICAL Reportage · Sudan Sudan’s ongoing war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has devastated the country, displacing millions and crippling public services. Civilian-led groups, particularly the Resistance Committees (RCs) and professional unions, continue to provide humanitarian aid despite severe repression, learning from the rich history of Sudanese unions active since the 20th century. Today, emergency committees and medical unions work tirelessly to support war victims, exemplifying resilience amid chaos. Their struggle highlights a stark contrast between civilian solidarity and military destruction. Hashim Nasr, Boxed (2022). Digital photograph. Through Thick and Thin On April 15, 2023, one of Sudan's most brutal wars erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This signaled a collapse of the alliance between two-armed factions. Even before the April fallout and subsequent war, their armed alliance had brought nothing to the Sudanese people but bloodshed and death; the alliance staged the military coup in October 2021 that terminated the civilian-military power-sharing agreement known as the Transitional Government which was installed in the wake of the December Revolution in 2018 . The Transitional Government (2019-2021) was composed of both military and civilians, with a rotating presidency that started with the military. The December Revolution was primarily led by millions of youths, particularly women, called the “Resistance Committees” (RCs). Although lacking in direct organizational links with the existing civilian groups, the RCs coordinated their mass protest actions very closely with them, particularly the Sudanese Professional Association . Remnants of Sudan’s Islamist military dictatorship (1989-2019) comprised two factions that had each previously attempted to seize power in the country. Working together, on June 3rd 2019, they enacted the most heinous massacre . Hundreds of peaceful protesters were brutalized, raped, drowned, and killed. On June 30th, 2019, under the combined leadership of civilian groups, millions of Sudanese took to the streets, demanding accountability for the massacres and a full transfer of power to civilians. The military eventually relented, resulting in the civilian-military power sharing agreement in August 2019. This illegitimate and violent political transformation has led to the ongoing war which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, over 12 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and over three million refugees in neighboring countries. As the war has intensified since April 2023, the total repression of civilian activism has destroyed health, education, municipal and other civilian infrastructure, and deepened the economic crisis. In immediate response to the war, Sudan’s Resistance Committees (RCs) have morphed into Emergency Committees (ECs), while abroad, Sudanese communities collectively mobilize resources to save lives and restore livelihoods destroyed by the war. There are now numerous humanitarian, educational, and professional activities, both inside and outside Sudan seeking to help those most affected by war. Although repression inside Sudan and the lack of formal status outside Sudan limits this organizing, the collectives nevertheless strive to implement what they can. They continue to play a major role in organizing assistance and representing the Sudanese people at humanitarian and ceasefire negotiations mediated by international entities. With unwavering determination, the humanitarian aid effort by Sudan’s civilian bodies shines amidst the darkness of this horrific war. With the disintegration of the state apparatus and the collapse of public services, the RCs face highly complex challenges. Attempting to regroup and organize their membership, they continue to provide services to millions of displaced Sudanese people. Thus, a stark contrast emerges. While the military forces continue their war against each other and on the country’s resources, civil forces race to save what can be saved. These civilian forces continue amidst severe repression, killing, forced disappearances, illegal detention, torture, rape, and ethnic cleansing. The History of Trade Unions in Sudan As a central organizing force, political parties, civil society organizations, professional associations, and trade unions draw upon a long tradition of highly active political engagement that started before Sudan’s independence in 1956. Sudan has had union organizations since the early 20th century. In 1908, forest workers under British-Egyptian colonial rule, announced a strike demanding better wages and working conditions. In 1947, the first union of railway workers was established. As a result of the pressure exerted by the union movement, colonial authorities conceded the right to union organization. A labor law was issued in 1948, granting the Sudanese union movement legal status. By becoming a primary force in resisting and changing authoritarian regimes, however, the movement became a target of colonial oppression. One of the earliest decisions in subsequent military coups was the dissolution of existing unions, confiscating their properties and funds. By mobilizing their members, the unions quickly regained their strength and ability to lead. The Front of Associations (a coalition of professional, labor, and farmers' unions) led the October 1964 revolution , dominating a seat majority in the first transitional government, before being overthrown by infighting. Led by the Union Alliance, unions played a prominent role in the April 1985 uprising and the downfall of the Jaafar Nimeiri dictatorship regime. Omer Al-Bashir’s regime in 1989 resisted workers’ attempts at unionization—seeking to dismantle and control them by dismissing employees through the Public Interest Law. The labor movements, however, were ceaseless. Following the successful Sudanese Doctors Union strike of November 1989 , several professional associations organized strikes and protests in 1994 and 1996. They also continued efforts with regional and international organizations to isolate the military regime and its façade of regime-friendly unions. Therefore, during the 30 years of the Islamist military dictatorship, trade unions and associations operated through professional bodies which were strategically founded to counter the regime’s compliant civilian bodies and trade unions. In 2005, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the military dictatorship and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), Sudan witnessed a relative expansion of political space and public sector workers showed increased interest in unionization. Medical bodies inside and outside Sudan organized networking and coordination. Lawyers' organizations confronted repressive laws and defended public freedoms. Journalists exposed and documented violations, defending freedom of expression. Teachers gathered to address wage issues and demanded educational reform. The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) served as the unifying platform leading the Revolution for the downfall of the Islamist dictatorship regime, especially when the-then SPA joined political and civil society organizations to create the opposition platform called Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) . The 2019 post-revolution transitional phase represented a glimmer of hope. Institutions were being rebuilt, preparing the country for a democratic transition . Most professional bodies sought to gain legitimacy by organizing member elections. Some of them, like the Sudanese Journalists' Union (SJU) and the Sudanese Doctors Union (SDU) succeeded in completing free and fair internal elections. Many believe that the October 2021 coup was staged by SAF and RSF precisely due to the rising tide of organized and elected professional associations and trade unions. The Birth of the Sudanese Professionals Association Actual collaboration among opposing union factions began with the rise of popular resistance against the Inqaz or the NCP regime, especially after South Sudan's secession and the 2010 election and following economic collapse. Professional and other civilian groups started organizing their bases to hold democratic grassroot union elections. They also worked to establish effective union alliances to challenge the regime's policies and its monopoly over power and political decisions. This culminated in the formation of what was then known as the Sudanese Professionals Union in 2012 (later called the Sudanese Professionals Association or SPA in 2013) through joint coordination between the Teachers' Committee, the Sudanese Journalists Network, the legitimate Sudanese Doctors' Union, and the Democratic Lawyers' Association. The SPA page on Facebook , which played a crucial role in the December 2018 Revolution, was created towards the end of 2012. Starting approximately in 2016, the professional forces that eventually formed the nucleus of the SPA continued expanding their coalition as an anti-Inqaz political front. They continued to link their presence to specific labor demands, gaining more support. Simultaneously, civilian unrest and discontent with the Inqaz regime was boiling under the surface until it exploded. First, in September 2013 (heavily repressed by the Inqaz/NCP regime) and then, more successfully, between 13 December 2018 and 6 April 2019. Importantly, these peaceful mass protests started by RCs in the city of Mayirno (Sennar State) spread to the RCs in Atbara (River Nile State), Damazin (Blue Nile State), before blazing across Sudan.This rising tide of protests was mutually-synergistic between the SPA and the RCs movements. The SPA and RCs quickly adjusted their demands from merely raising the minimum wage and protesting against the rising cost of living, to instead calling for continuous marches aiming to entirely overthrow the Inqaz/NCP regime. Taking the lead in the December Revolution, the SPA and the RCs participated in developing the charter of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) on 1 January 2019 which adopted the RCs and SPA slogan of “freedom, peace, and justice.” These efforts culminated in the fall of the tyrant Omar al-Bashir on 11 April 2019 and continued throughout the transitional period that followed. Unfortunately, when the SPA’s constituent bodies began union-building processes, their lack of recent practical experience in union work and managing political conflicts, led to the disintegration of the FFC, with disruptive impacts on the SPA and other civilian bodies. The political alliances represented by the FFC began disagreeing on priorities. The RCs wanted to prioritize the creation of the Transitional Legislative Assembly; however, other political parties and professional associations did not see it as a priority. These disagreements deepened and widened, negatively impacting the civilian front. On August 30, 2022, in a historic step, Sudanese Journalist Union announced the successful election of their first post-Inqaz committee, followed by the Sudanese Dramatists Union. The Sudanese Doctors Union was reestablished in March 2023—just weeks before the war broke out mid-April 2023. The Resistance Committees: An Inspiring Experience The initiation and driving force behind the December Revolution is attributed to the most recent type of civilian body in Sudanese politics the RCs which also included the Coordination Committees of IDP camps in Darfur. RCs are unique grassroots organizations formed at the neighborhood level, which expanded to cities and different Sudanese states. They deliberately retain their horizontal nature and firmly reject hierarchical leadership, in order to avoid infiltration by the authorities or political factions. The presence of RCs has played a decisive role in keeping the flame of the revolution alive. The RCs formulated a comprehensive political vision, embodied in the “ People's Power Charter .” The Charter’s first draft was released for discussion in January 2022, underwent public discussions, and was revised in March 2022. Despite prevailing political divisions among FFC’s political forces and the military coup's control of power, the RC’s People’s Power Charter generated a significant amount of debate. The RCs played a more significant role in the political scene, surpassing the leadership of traditional civilian bodies (parties and unions), by supporting but also holding accountable the transitional government, and working within local governance structures. Undermining Inqaz/NCP supporters at the state level, RCs took on the responsibility of monitoring the flow of commodities such as flour, gasoline, diesel, and cooking gas. They contributed to resolving the transportation crisis, power outages, and other artificially created crises. This led to defeating the Inqaz regime’s black marketeers. The War: Massive Responsibilities Throughout the transition period, a widespread civil movement spread—undeterred by the October 2021 coup. Instead, professional unions and RCs regarded themselves as a primary tool of people power in the civil-military conflict. The union bodies, led by the preparatory committee of the newly formed Sudanese Doctors Union (SDU), established Emergency Rooms, communal shelters for IDPs, communal kitchens, and neighborhood mutual aid under the leadership of the RCs. These Emergency Rooms continue to provide life-saving food, water, medicine, and urgent supplies to millions of war-affected people, as well as the millions of IDPs fleeing the war. Similarly, the SPA’s constituent professional unions have intensified their efforts towards denouncing the war, calling for peace, providing basic humanitarian aid, exposing and documenting gross human rights violations and war crimes, defending activists detained in war zones, and organizing campaigns to stop the war and aid those affected, both inside and outside Sudan. Some professional unions have also begun envisioning the required reconstruction, recovery, and reform needed in their respective sectors once the war stops. Civilian Testimonies Shedding light on the experiences of workers’ unionization and the efforts of the medical and humanitarian emergency, offered here are the accounts of two prominent contributors. They reflect the significant efforts exerted by civilian forces amidst the ongoing war. Activist Moez Elzein is a project manager at the Al-Ayam Center for Cultural Studies and Development and a founding contributor to the humanitarian Emergency Rooms (ERs). Elzein is currently based in Kampala, Uganda, where he recently sought refuge from the horrors of the war in Sudan. He explained that since the outbreak of the war and collapse of public services, groups of RC members, professionals, and young men and women, began establishing ERs in war zones across Sudan. Inspired by the concept of “Nafir” (a mobilization call to humanitarian action, significant in Sudanese culture as voluntary and cooperative work during humanitarian disasters), they vowed to keep their work free of political affiliations and biases, which helped the idea to evolve and attract more volunteers. Elzein pointed out that ERs began their work with the idea of mutual aid rather than humanitarian aid. The idea started spontaneously among Sudanese through financial transfers to support those affected by the war, followed by the idea of ERs. Moez's words reveal the organizational capacities and experience these young people possess, developing a Coordination Council for Grassroots Work of ERs which is the largest indigenous civilian coordinating body operating across Sudan since the war began. This Council was formed based on the local governance system of Khartoum State, the most populous state in the country, with approximately eight million inhabitants according to the latest census projections from 2018. Initially, seven central ERs were formed for the seven localities, along with grassroots rooms for residential neighborhoods under them to ensure coordination and networking based on the administrative structure between administrative units, grassroots rooms, local ERs, and central rooms. Elzein indicated that the Council would evolve into a national council after including Sennar, Darfur, and other regions, thereby linking humanitarian intervention to grassroots work and local governance. Elzein describes how the ERs in Khartoum consist of 130 grassroots rooms in neighborhoods, in addition to seven central rooms. In Sennar, there are 15 grassroots rooms in neighborhoods and around seven central rooms, as well as one room in El-Suki. He noted that women's emergency rooms have also started to appear in eastern Sudan, as is the case in Gedaref and Kassala States, and there are 200 grassroots ERs in different Darfur states. Regarding how these rooms fund their activities, Elzein says, “the rooms initially received support from Sudanese people through bank transfers as donations, in addition to support from some international organizations. However, after the decline in capabilities due to the ongoing war and the worsening conditions of millions of Sudanese, the primary reliance now is on donors like the Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SHF).” Sudanese national organizations in turn, distribute funding to ERs, alongside other international organizations. Currently, the ERs depend entirely on funding from foreign organizations. Elzein continues, “there is a disparity in the number of participants in the rooms, depending on the population size in different areas and the level of interaction, even within Khartoum. For example, there are differences in the ability to communicate with various parties. Some rooms can communicate with SAF or RSF commanders in their areas, such as Karari in Omdurman and East Nile, to ensure safe passage of some food supplies needed for central kitchens or to secure the release of detained activists or residents of neighborhoods, while some areas lack this capability due to the hostile nature of the forces in control or due to pre-conceived aversion by grassroot activists to any coordination with neither SAF nor RSF.” For Elzein, one of the most significant challenges facing ERs is the repressive targeting and human rights violations faced by their members at the hands of both RSF and SAF. He adds, “in areas controlled by SAF and RSF, youth workers in emergency rooms have faced repeated arrests and severe human rights violations such as torture and beatings. Three weeks ago, one of the key workers in the emergency rooms in Eastern Nile State was arrested and falsely accused of killing a member of RSF.” Dr Hiba Omar was interviewed within the context of writing this article, to better understand the role of the medical ERs. Omar is the elected President of SDU’s Preparatory Committee and one of the prominent leaders of SPA. She has been repeatedly arrested and displaced. She says, “When the war broke out, the SDU was only a month old, and the Preparatory Committee was elected to perform specific tasks, including drafting a constitution, compiling a membership register, calling for a full general assembly, and holding free and fair union elections. We found ourselves faced with the daunting task of providing medical services to thousands of war victims after many hospitals shut down and were attacked by airstrikes and indiscriminate military attacks on them.” She recounts the details of the first hours after the war broke out, “I went to East Nile Hospital in the Al-Haj Youssef neighborhood in Khartoum and worked there for three consecutive days due to the severe shortage of staff. While we were working inside the hospital, it was bombed by SAF aircraft and then it was evacuated. So, I moved to the Ban Jadeed Hospital in a nearby area, but found it had closed. This situation, along with reports of many hospitals being out of service, prompted us to think about establishing medical ERs. We called on the RCs to support and assist us, and then we formed the first ER at Ban Jadeed Hospital.” She continues, “The war was very intense and was raging in the center of Khartoum State. This war violated all international humanitarian conventions and laws of war, with no regard for the neutrality of medical services and facilities nor protection of health workers. In fact, they were specifically targeted by both sides of the war. The expansion and intensity of the war and the targeting of hospitals, and the use of some health facilities as military platforms led to the loss of the ER’s capacities and the inability of patients to reach them, in addition to the killing of many medical staff and emergency room workers, the evacuation of patients, and the destruction and looting of hospitals.” Omar adds, “There were great difficulties in getting medical staff to hospitals, so most resided inside the hospitals, and we worked to fill the shortage due to the inability of some doctors to reach hospitals by training volunteers from RCs in medical services. The RCs provided oxygen and intravenous fluids in dangerous areas under shelling and bombing, as well as meals for patients and staff, and also transferred patients and the injured to other hospitals.” In her testimony as a doctor who witnessed the horrors of this war, Omar indicates the importance of the civil society organizations to the medical aid effort, “as a union, we contributed alongside Sudanese medical diaspora bodies such as SAPA (Sudanese American Physicians Associations) to securing critical information for the Sudanese Medical Council amid the shelling and battles; first transferring it to Al-Jazirah State and then after clashes broke out there, transferring the equipment containing the information to the Northern State in order to protect the interests of more than 10,000 doctors. The Council is responsible for training, certificates, and appointments of doctors and their specializations.” This major collapse caused by the war led Pmar Hiba, and her SDU colleagues, to work with other union bodies to establish the “Union Front,” and to expand it to include all workers in various fields who have been facing difficult conditions since the outbreak of the war, primarily the suspension of their salaries by the state for over a year and a half. “Addressing all these issues is almost impossible without stopping the war and, therefore, besides our work on professional issues, we continued work with other union bodies to achieve our shared struggle to stop the war, demand accountability, restore the revolution, and collectively defend workers' rights. We represent a broad sector of the Sudanese people together, and our positions express a large base that rejects the war, stands against its crimes, seeks justice, redress for the victims, the restoration of professionals' roles, and the enhancement and improvement of their conditions.” Continuous Work Despite the War After nearly a year and a half of horrific war, amidst the destruction caused by the military and militias allied with warring parties in Sudan, civil revolutionary forces are rising. These forces are working inside the country’s conflict areas as well as outside Sudan, where millions of Sudanese have sought refuge. Many are working to build bridges of communication with similar unions in host countries. Some have successfully traced their members dispersed in different countries as well. Various groups have started organizing training courses to enhance their capacities to deal with the war and its aftermath, while some unions are preparing to assess the scale of the destruction and thinking of how to reestablish a peaceful transition to democracy. Others yet, have begun documenting the violations and war crimes committed against civilians—and legally classifying them. Meanwhile, most unions are quietly working to provide as much assistance and support to their members by facilitating financial donations from Sudanese people worldwide and communicating with organizations that help and support refugees and professional advocacy groups. They are also negotiating with authorities in some asylum countries to ensure their members’ welfare and safety. In conclusion, the Sudanese civilian bodies such as the SPA, Resistance Committees and professional unions continue their decades-old tradition of democratic grassroot organization and advocacy for democratic freedoms despite the war. The collective experience they accumulated during the December Revolution continues to drive their commitment and inform their decision-making. They remain resolute that wars and military coups will never dent their resolve to create a free, peaceful and just. The December Revolution’s slogan, “Freedom, Peace and Justice” remains a beacon of hope for Sudan.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Reportage Sudan Egypt Armed Forces Resistance Movement Resistance Resistance Committees Unions Medical Union Healthcare Community Civilian Solidarity War Sudanese Armed Forces Rapid Support Forces Military Coup Power-sharing Transitional Government December Revolution of 2018 Sudanese Professional Association Islamist Massacre Protest Political Dissidents Political Violence Violence Internally Displaced Persons Refugees Repression Civilian Activism Civil Society Infrastructure Dictatorship Emergency Committees Sudanese Diaspora Mobilization Humanitarian Aid Organizing Ceasefire Negotiations Trade Union Independence Colonialism 20th Century Railway Workers Colonial Oppression Front of Associations Coalition Labor Farmer Union Alliance Jaafar Nimeiri Omer Al-Bashir Public Interest Law Sudanese Doctors Union Strike Economy Grassroots Movements Inqaz NCP Regime South Sudan Secession Democracy Teachers Journalists Lawyers Doctors Facebook Social Media Civilian Unrest Sennar State River Nile State Blue Nile State Peoples Power Charter Flow of Commodities Monitoring Civilian Testimonies Cultural Studies Census Al-Ayam Center for Cultural Studies and Development Moez Elzein Activist Human Rights Violations Human Rights Youth Workers Torture Emergency Room SDU Preparatory Committee Hiba Omar Airstrike Khartoum State Sudanese Medical Council Al-Jazirah State Hope Conflict Revolution Advocacy Freedom Peace Justice 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. 23rd Feb 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

The Aahvaan Project was founded in 2016 based on the nirgun philosophy of love and the works of sufi saints such as kabir, lal ded and lalon fakir. A folk and storytelling collective, founded by Vedi Sinha in 2016, their music is avowedly political and inclusive. INTERACTIVE The Aahvaan Project · Performance Vedi Sinha The Aahvaan Project was founded in 2016 based on the nirgun philosophy of love and the works of sufi saints such as kabir, lal ded and lalon fakir. A folk and storytelling collective, founded by Vedi Sinha in 2016, their music is avowedly political and inclusive. The Aahvaan Project was founded by Vedi Sinha in 2016 as a collective “ journey and an experience, an attempt to understand Nirgun—the mystic idea of love spoken about in various time periods by philosophers through the lived experience of saints and sufis. ” They perform across communities, educational institutions, and art spaces. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity in 2021, Vedi Sinha, who founded the folk music & storytelling collective and does not often perform alone, joined us for a beautiful performance of new songs. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Delhi Music Performance Folk Storytelling Narratives Nirgun Sufism Sufi Saints Kabir Lal Ded Lalon Fakir Community Building Contemporary Music Love Prahlad Tipaniya Compassion Pyaar National Institute of Design Ahmedabad Folk Music Rajasthan Kabir Yatra In Grief In Solidarity VEDI SINHA is a musician and performer based in Delhi. She founded The Aahvaan Project in 2016. Live Delhi 5th Jun 2021 On That Note: A Set by Discostan 5th JUN Natasha Noorani's Retro Aesthetic 5th JUN FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" 5th DEC

In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. THE VERTICAL Universalism & Solidarity in a Post-Roe Landscape In the absence of a legal foundation for abortion care, solidarity amongst communities of color requires meticulous attention to history and strategy. Vol. 2 Issue 1 FIRST TAG AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork by Hafsa Ashfaq. Digital media. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Tags Tags 23rd Oct 2010 Tags Tags Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. ON JUNE 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the constitutional right to abortions protected under the 1973 landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade . The decision, issued in a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, has opened the doors for dozens of states to take steps to ban it outright. As I’m writing this solidarity note, at least 15 states have abortion bans in effect: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The prohibitions range from a complete ban on abortions to banning abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy. These states are among the poorest in the country, with large populations of Indigenous, Black, and immigrant communities. In the absence of safe, timely, and affordable abortion care; people are forced to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access medical care or carry pregnancies to term against their will. This is a gross violation of human rights. Abortion bans can be traced to the brutal legacies of slavery, where Black women were treated as sexual chattel. Hence, they are rooted in white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, anti-Black violence. Such racist laws deny systematically marginalized communities the right to control their bodies and futures. About 60% of people who need abortion care each year are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Against the backdrop of this country’s legacy of racism and discrimination, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas tend to face greater barriers to quality health care, childcare, and job opportunities. Oriaku Njoku, Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, shares: "This [abortion] is not something where it's either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent. There are so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family." According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the 121 million pregnancies across the globe each year are unintended. Each year, over 44,000 people die from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer serious, often permanent, injuries. Restricting access to abortion drives pregnant people to use unsafe methods. For example, Pakistan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but the lack of access to abortion care makes it one of the deadliest places to get an abortion. This much is clear: abortion access saves lives. This is why reproductive justice advocates have been fighting for the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, or not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. The reproductive justice framework calls for every possible effort—whether through policies, social services, and community relationships—to address intersecting oppressions, create alliances across identities, analyze power systems, and center the most marginalized among us. Reproductive justice allows us to understand access to abortion as a critical piece of economic, healthcare, and gender justice battles: the way we treat birthing people and families impacts how we build stronger and healthier communities. For example, the right to contraceptives only ensures that people can get a prescription for them. But for a low-wage worker who is uninsured, how can they afford to take a day off and pay for the contraceptives? By thinking outside of the rights framework—where we are only fighting for the right to abortion—reproductive justice acknowledges the socio-political and economic inequalities that are disproportionately faced by BIPOC communities. South Asian American communities in general and survivors in particular, live at the intersection of multiple oppressions which make the overall consequences of lack of abortion access, particularly grave. Without access to healthcare resources in the many languages spoken across South Asian diasporas, and culturally imposed shame and stigma around accessing reproductive healthcare, South Asian communities experience marginalization at multiple levels. Even apart from the lack of policies that support access to hospitals and clinics trusted by South Asian communities, there is simply no insurance for healthcare needs specific to these communities. Lack of such policies work as barriers to healthcare and reify the long-established history of racism and its many inequities. For South Asian survivors the consequences are even more grave. People in abusive relationships are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, birth control sabotage, reproductive coercion or control, and misinformation about their reproductive rights. In most cases, murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as mentioned in the SOAR Collective Statement . The Liberate Abortion—a coalition of over 150 member organizations—is currently one of the largest BIPOC-led reproductive justice and rights coalitions in the United States. Liberate Abortion was founded out of the realization that the struggle against the threat to abortion access cannot be fought by a single organization, healthcare provider, organizer, or donor. This is why the coalition focusses on community mobilization, electoral organizing, changing cultural narratives, federal outreach, and policy reform. The staff, leaders, and members coordinate with stakeholders such as movement partners in legal defense and practical service delivery spaces, cross-movement partners, funders, members of Congress, and the Biden administration on information sharing and strategy. Although the coalition solely focuses on abortion funds and clinics in the United States, frontline activists from the Latin American Green Wave movement have joined the coalition to share lessons from their campaigns to expand abortion access across the continent. In the last two years alone, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have decriminalized or fully legalized abortions. The Supreme Court’s attack on the right to abortion access leaves several fundamental human rights open to contestation. These include the right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other rights intertwined with the right to liberty protected through Roe v. Wade . As access to abortion gets further criminalized by politicians and companies that sell our data to anti-abortion lawmakers and legislators, privacy activists and lawmakers need to also shift their approach. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the past 15 years have seen a shocking spike in arrests and prosecutions for crimes related to stillbirths, miscarriages, and alleged drug and alcohol use during pregnancy. The legal advocacy and policy support group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, documented over 61 cases that occurred between 2000 and 2020 in which people were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly self-managing abortions or helping someone else get one. Only this year in August, Facebook gave Nebraska police access to a teen’s private messages which they used to prosecute her for getting an abortion. The fight for reproductive justice includes battles against surveillance and policing. These are the tools of the right wing to expand their control over bodily autonomy. For South Asian Americans this is a critical time to shift away from calls for increased policing to visionary organizing that is rooted in the desire to build safer communities. Some of the ways we can express solidarity are to get involved in volunteer services and mutual aid networks. Abortion fundraisers like the ARC-Southeast are coordinating funding and logistical support for people who need abortion access in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. For the South Asian & Indo-Caribbean diaspora, HEART to Grow is sustaining a reproductive justice fund for Muslims across America, while domestic violence organizations like API Chaya ally with abolitionist efforts that close youth jails across Seattle. The fight for reproductive justice must be both localized and nationalized—to aid and abet folks seeking abortion access, while electing prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives committed to the long-term strategy of ending criminalization, punishment, and harassment by the state, institutions, and individuals. Perhaps Roe was never enough to safeguard abortion rights or protect abortion access for all people. We are building a future in which abortion is liberated for all of us, no matter where we live or how much money we have, no matter our race, age, gender, or sexual orientation. We need to organize, build power, and create a country where our values are reflected in democracy. We will continue to provide life-saving care for those who need it the most, and we will continue fighting until every one of us has access to the care we need, when we need it, without stigma or fear. We need to develop networks of solidarity. ∎ RESOURCES : If you are a person who needs abortion care, reach out to a provider immediately . If you’re looking for an abortion provider, go to INeedAnA.com . Campaigns like Abortion On Our Own Terms are supporting folks with knowledge on self-managed abortions, while organizations like PlanCPills are distributing and providing information on how to access abortion pills online. We must all be vocal and support people who have abortions and providers who provide care every day. This means funding local abortion clinics to keep the clinics open, volunteering and donating to local abortion funds to ensure that people have support, funding, and access to care, telling your own abortion story, and listening deeply to the stories of people you love. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Notes on the new SAAG design system: appropriating the predator-drone, aesthetic intimacy, international motifs, and other stories. BOOKS & ARTS Experiments in Radical Design & Typography AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Notes on the new SAAG design system: appropriating the predator-drone, aesthetic intimacy, international motifs, and other stories. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Presently The Editors Design Disaster Aesthetics Drone Warfare Surveillance Regimes Iconography Textiles Benedict Anderson South Asia as a Term Cartography Colophon Rabindranath Tagore Affect Web Design Design Process Typography Indian Type Foundry TypeType Dinamo Head Study Commercial Type Caslon Ionic Ionic No. 2 Akzidenz Grotesk Neue Haas Grotesk Antique No. 6 Monotype Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Presently The Editors 12th Mar 2023 How does a magazine like SAAG understand space & geography? How does it grapple with the many South Asian communities—those acknowledged as such, and those that aren't—to begin to identify the wrongs we must right from a long legacy of media that construed and continue to construe "South Asia" so narrowly? When I set out to design a whole new SAAG, these questions were on my mind. Unconsciously, material things—street signs we passed by, patterns we'd been looking at for years but noticed again for the first time—gave me some answers that buttress our current design system, allowing for a conversation within the team from many countries. These ideas came from my own subjective personal experiences, yes, but that intimacy I felt led all of us as a team to wonder: what might everyone else find intimate? How do we bring it all together? The design system is an expression of solidarity—finding commonality in what we all see or read; wear or draw—while admitting exception and difference, and also that this is, of course, an ongoing process. Disaster Timeline: Cover Artwork Our first issue allowed us to think about space on a broader level too. More specifically we asked: How does networked space see? Through the eyes of capital and the modern surveillance state—much like the seeker-head of a predator drone—the human subject has reached the zenith of abstraction. Humanity is now a set of data points, and collective struggles, in turn, simply distant blips on a radar. Visibility doesn't come easy. In an attention economy with content tethered to the whims of capital, only the profitable survive. Large-scale disasters cannibalize attention, obscuring the slow devastation occurring across regional, social, bodily, and psychic scales on a continuous loop. It’s a circular timeline. In a sense, the apparatus of surveillance defines the contour of strife: what better way to capture that present state of invisibility than to mimic how the predator drone sees the regions discussed in the issue? Thus, Mukul Chakravarthi's cover art for Issue 1 attempts to capture the cold cartographies of collective strife through the aesthetics of the modern surveillance state. The appropriation affirms our editorial commitment to deeply human narratives that emerge in the form of rigorous local reporting but also critically in the aesthetic responses of struggle and dissent, many of which you will find in the issue. The custom display face was derived from a grid system mapping the eight main cities—from Islamabad in the west to Naypyidaw in the east—that feature in the first issue. It was an exercise conceived to be just as spatial as it was typographic. The intention was to construct a display face that gave form to regions that otherwise figured in the margins of the globalist imagination. Iconography The iconography is the foundation of Volume 2. I truly hope you come to remember these icons and the content and forms of creative work they represent. The process began with my own archival, oral history and mixed-media research, which led to a great deal of conversation and more findings from the whole design team. The iconography is inspired by textiles across many South Asian countries and communities. It is a visual representation that interweaves recurring patterns across geographies and peoples. Each icon is a recurring motif in textiles from seven or more contemporary South Asian nations, and countless communities within them. SAAG's general approach to "South Asia" is pertinent here. We deliberately do not construe "South Asia" specifically in terms of geography. As our archives indicate, this is because we recognize that: 1. Diasporic communities originating in the subcontinent exist in countries as far east and as far west as any map will show. 2. "South Asia" is generally conceived of as countries within the subcontinent, but the history of its terminology is often nationalist, divisive, and problematic for many people, even within the region's most populous country. As Benedict Anderson has argued, it is also a construction to some degree of the rise of area studies; its arbitrariness can be seen in its inconveniences: some countries in what is academically considered "Southeast Asia" share more historical, cultural, and linguistic similarities with those considered "South Asian," and vice versa.* For the purposes of our iconography, we researched motifs stretching from Laos to Iran, as well as the Caribbean. Typography & Colophon Our web typography was also selected carefully. Our primary typeface, Neue Haas Grotesk by Monotype type foundry, reflects our association with the radical origins of sans typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk . It's a remarkably sturdy sans that allows us to be flexible: based on the theme of each issue, we want to use a new display font entirely. We hope it keeps you on your toes. The body text for the work we publish was previously set in Erode by Nikhil Ranganathan and Indian Type Foundry (ITF), a startlingly original, idiosyncratic, and yet almost unobtrusive typeface that we greatly admire. Currently, we use Caslon Ionic by Paul Barnes and Greg Gazdowicz at Commercial Type, based on the influential Ionic No. 2 that has been pivotal to newspaper typesetting for over a century. We pair it with Antique No. 6 , also at Commercial Type, designed initially as a bold version of Caslon Ionic . Meanwhile, each issue of Volume 2 will use a different display typeface. For Issue 1, we chose the spiky and precise TT Ricks by TypeType. For Issue 2, we chose Marist by Dinamo. Our colophon—conceived by Prithi Khalique and designed in many iterations and styles by Hafsa Ashfaq—is a nod to our print future, inspired by one of the works first cited when SAAG began: Rabindranath Tagore's painting Head Study , a work of dazzling ingenuity that provides the metaphorical architecture for our identity. Of all the decisions we made, this one came the easiest to us. A design system that coheres around our collective past feels best to embody our aspirations for the future: we cannot predict the future, but we can take stock of the conceptual frameworks our many contributors provide to us. Moving forward, the design system will move much like the issue artwork itself: fluidly adapting to best represent the radical potential of the present in its aesthetic form. Website Our new website is a complete overhaul and a sharp contrast to the original SAAG website as well. We think fondly of what we made for Volume 1: its maximalist, wild, and mysteriously glitchy exterior paired with very serious work and dialogue. But if the eternal doom scroll has taught us anything, we are inundated with maximalist content. What we wanted was care, intentionality, attention, and flexibility: an ease to the user experience that reflects the care we took to make every choice inspired by South Asian custom, movement, or labor. We hope that our new website—designed and developed by myself and Ammar Hassan Uppal, with help and feedback from editors and designers on the team alike—flows much more organically, whilst feeling both tactile and geometric. We felt that the digital space shouldn't distract from the ideas and concepts of the difficult material discussed in Issue 1 of Volume 2 as well as in the archives. It should enhance it. What you see is also a website intended to take on the spirit of the issue currently featured, adapting at each turn. At the same time, we wanted to inject a little whimsy into the experience: easter eggs sprinkled throughout the website, which we hope you'll find. We hope to evoke a more orderly and idea-focused experience of SAAG’s content and challenge the dominant sense that the "avant-garde" need be synonymous with disorderly maximalism; instead, we eschewed both maximalism and minimalism—as well as the neo-brutalist response to minimalist design—with a warmer color palette and approachable typography. In Volume 2 of SAAG, we hope to demonstrate that we take the intellectual and conceptual happenings and developments in the worlds of design, typography, web development, etc., just as seriously as anything else. Stay tuned for forthcoming content and events on the many political-aesthetic challenges contemporary designers face, as well as how they understand, learn, teach, and reckon with the histories and legacies of design. Top of mind for us throughout this process was affect and emotion: how one might feel when one logs onto the website or reads one of our pieces? We do hope you feel welcome . ∎ * Benedict Anderson, A Life Without Boundaries ( Verso , 2018) Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Time traveling from 1960s India to early modern Egypt with the acclaimed Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder and her story “Roshni ki Raftaar.” INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 4 · On Qurratulain Hyder's sci-fi story “Roshni ki Raftaar” AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Time traveling from 1960s India to early modern Egypt with the acclaimed Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder and her story “Roshni ki Raftaar.” SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Tags Tags Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Tags Tags 23rd Oct 2010 A reading and discussion of the late Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder and her short story “Roshni ki Raftaar” by editors Nur Nasreen Ibrahim and Zuneera Shah. Feat.: time travel, women in science, sci-fi traditions in Urdu compared to those in English, and much more. Must-watch: Nur and Zuneera's thoughts on the ending, speculations on whether Hyder intended for a sequel, what she might think of criticisms, how the tonal shift affects the story, and how humor functions in the story. More importantly: why do we expect or want character growth? Is there a fundamental difference with regard to character growth between the Anglophone literary tradition and the non-Anglophone one? Qurratulain Hyder is amongst the most acclaimed and influential Urdu writers of the 20th century, perhaps even the most popular alongside contemporaries like Ismat Chughtai (with whom she had a testy relationship). Best known for her magnum opus “Aag ka Durya” or “River of Fire,” Hyder was also a deeply expansive writer. Here, Nur and Zuneera discuss her use of fantasy and sci-fi framings, the manner of her world-building, and comparisons to contemporary films and TV shows in the most fun and audience-engaging SAAG Chats episode to date. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

SENIOR EDITOR Vamika Sinha VAMIKA SINHA is an arts and culture journalist based in London. She is Deputy Editor at Wasafiri. SENIOR EDITOR WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

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. THE VERTICAL The Cost of Risk in Bombay’s Film Industry AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR 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. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 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. DISPATCH Essay Bombay 5th Aug 2024 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. ∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

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

A dispatch from a church festival on a largely uninhabited island that has long been the site of a contentious border dispute between India and Sri Lanka. THE VERTICAL The Uneasy Dreamscape of Katchatheevu AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR A dispatch from a church festival on a largely uninhabited island that has long been the site of a contentious border dispute between India and Sri Lanka. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Dispatch Katchatheevu Sri Lanka Island Palk Bay Jaffna Tamil Tamil Diasporas Indian & Sri Lankan Tamil Communities Church Festival Rameswaram Border Dispute Fisherfolk Fishing Crisis Disputed Territory Pilgrimage Low-Income Workers Trawling Transnational Solidarities Internationalist Solidarity Sri Lankan Civil War Indentured Labor Labor Fishing Labor Subsistence Labor Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Dispatch Katchatheevu 16th Jun 2023 You can almost taste the excitement on the boat as it nears Katchatheevu, people craning their necks out of windows, and perching on the steps to catch their first glimpse of it. For most passengers, it seems to be their first time visiting the island—abandoned, uninhabited, and closed to civilians for all but two days each year for its annual church festival. Standing on some bags to gain height, I catch flashes of the island—a statue of the Virgin Mary encased in glass peeping out from some foliage; with trees for miles, and waves lapping the shore. The four-hour boat journey from mainland Sri Lanka to Katchatheevu is surreal. I’d never heard of Katchatheevu until November last year. From a sparsely-populated Wikipedia page, I’d learned the island was only open for visitors during its March church festival, so I resolved to go. Katchatheevu lies in the Palk Strait between southern India and northern Sri Lanka, a contentious and liminal space that has historically been contested between the two countries. Under British rule, the island belonged to India, and after Independence it became a disputed territory. In 1976, it was ceded to Sri Lanka by then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in a series of maritime boundary agreements. However, this decision has always been hotly contested by Tamil Nadu politicians ever since, who have long called for the reacquisition of Katchatheevu, ostensibly on the behest of Indian fisherfolk. In 1991, the Tamil Nadu Assembly adopted a resolution for its retrieval. In 2008, then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu argued to the Supreme Court that the agreements on Katchatheevu were unconstitutional. As recently as last year, the 1974-76 maritime boundary agreements over Katchatheevu have remained hotly contested. Katchatheevu was closely surveilled during the Sri Lankan Civil War, which ended in 2009, suspected to be a base for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant group fighting for an independent state in the country’s north, from which they smuggled weapons. Since the end of the war, the island has been controlled by the Sri Lankan navy, with Indian fishermen allowed to dry their nets on its land. But conflicts between Sri Lankan and Indian fishermen continue to rage around the space, with Indians accused of crossing the maritime boundary to poach in Sri Lankan waters. Many poor Sri Lankan fisherfolk returned to these waters after the Civil War, by which time they found a landscape dominated by Indian trawlers they could not compete with. View of the island from the boat. Courtesy of the author These unresolved disputes of land and livelihoods make the seemingly peaceable annual church festival even more intriguing, since regulations on movement to and from the island are abandoned for the festival. Pilgrims from both sides of the strait collide in a rare meeting point of communities who speak the same Tamil language but have historically met mostly under difficult conditions; the line between southern India and northern Sri Lanka became porous during the civil war as people fled Sri Lanka in droves as refugees. In centuries prior, hundreds of thousands of Indian Tamils were brought over to Sri Lanka as indentured laborers by British colonizers. Indian Tamils were denied citizenship by Sri Lanka upon independence; many were deported back to India, with others in a state of limbo for decades. Communities in both countries have thus experienced statelessness and rejection on the other’s land, making Katchatheevu a contested space, all the more significant as a fleetingly-inhabited melting pot of experiences and cultures. It becomes a rare waypoint through which the porosity of borders and violent history of the region can be seen through its visiting Tamil communities. Yet it remains a little-known and incredibly underreported place, with the specifics of its historic legacy rarely discussed in a wider context. Traveling with two friends on the boat, I try to glean as much as I can about Katchatheevu’s history. My friend and I befriend a fellow passenger. She tells us a story about how St. Anthony’s Church, the only building on the island, was built. A fisherman who almost died at sea promised God he would build a church if he was saved. After the fisherman survived, he stayed true to his word, and built the church using materials from Delft island, about two hours closer to Sri Lanka’s mainland. As we disembark onto a temporary and very shaky gangway assembled by the Sri Lankan Navy, which administers the island year-round, we spot a crowd already assembled on the shore—Indian pilgrims. For the church festival, all disputes and regulations are suspended, and pilgrims from both countries land on the island in a rare meeting point of communities otherwise totally separated by the Palk Strait. We are shepherded into four different queues for navy checks—Sri Lankan women, Sri Lankan men, Indian women, and Indian men. The Indian and Sri Lankan sides look each other up and down with bemused curiosity. On the other side of the checkpoints, Katchatheevu is wild and bare, untamed vegetation crowding the sides of a wide and sandy path. The early afternoon sun beats down heavily on us, and juice vendors have wisely set up shop to serve cold drinks to thirsty pilgrims. Families separated by gender wait for their relatives to come through the queue, and I spot an interesting exchange between two pilgrims from India and Sri Lanka that highlights how monumental the festival is as a reminder of the liminal space Katchatheevu occupies. “Where are you from, son?” asks the aunty from Bangalore, clad in a light brown sari, speaking in a dialect quite far removed from Jaffna Tamil. “Jaffna,” replies the young man sitting next to her in a collared shirt and trousers. “Where’s that? Sri Lanka?” the aunty asks. “You don’t know where Jaffna is?” he replies, looking shocked and slightly offended. “Yes, it’s in Sri Lanka. It’s world famous!” After our friend arrives, we trek towards the church to set up camp. Along the way, we spot pilgrims industriously clearing patches of vegetation to find a spot to bed down, and others who have come organized with lunch carriers and huge containers of water, because there is no drinking water available on the island. We select a spot just in front of the church, next to a trio from Colombo, and lay out the bed sheet I’ve brought from home. A few minutes later, a voice over the loudspeaker announces that the prayers will soon begin. St. Anthony, patron saint of the fisherfolk of Sri Lanka's north and India's south. Photography courtesy of the author. The nuns begin to chant repeatedly: “ Punitha Mariye, Iraivanin Thaaye, paavikalaa irukkira engalukkaaka, ippozhuthum naangal irappin velaiyilum vendikollumaame. [Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death].” The church itself is a rich cream color, with a statue of St. Anthony, patron saint of the fisherfolk of Sri Lanka’s north and India’s south, nestled in an arch just below its roof. Another statue, larger and more imposing, is positioned on a podium in front of the church. Dressed in brown robes with fair white skin and brown hair, St. Anthony holds a small child and looks out into the sea of pilgrims as they kneel on the ground and pray, many of the women covering their hair with lace veils and turning rosaries in their fingers. Indian pilgrims work their way through the crowd, distributing sesame sweets. One of the temporary stalls set up by vendors from both countries. Photograph courtesy of the author. I decide to wander through the temporary stalls set up by vendors on an otherwise abandoned patch of vegetation. Enthusiastic sellers assume I’m from India and quote me prices in Indian rupees. One salesman asks me to take his photo, and predicts that I’ll soon be headed abroad. He inspects my palm, and informs me that my first child will be a boy. I spot the tent of Silva, a pilgrim from Bangalore.His tent has both Indian and Sri Lankan flags pinned on the front. He tells me he’s been coming to Katchatheevu for the last nine years. “They’re always in brotherhood, no?” says Silva. “Nobody can divide it. They’re always binding, very lovely people,” adding that Katchatheevu inspired him to visit mainland Sri Lanka. I chat with a fisherman from Rameswaram who’s visiting for the first time with a party of four other people. He tells me Katchatheevu is well-known in his hometown, but not many people make the journey over. Soon, religious songs blaring over the loudspeaker begin to drown out our conversation, and the Walk of the Cross begins. Young boys clad in red and white robes stand at the head of the procession. A wooden cross carried on the shoulders of Reverend Fathers behind them towers overhead. Photograph courtesy of the author. As they walk, songs accompany their steps, and a huge crowd walks around the church’s perimeter as the sun sets, taking us to the beach where groups of men are bathing in the clear blue water, standing and laughing amongst themselves. Every time the cross stops, people fall to the ground behind the cross and begin to pray, and a sermon is delivered from the church’s pulpit by Indian and Sri Lankan clergy, in variously inflected accents that inform us where they might be from. Some sermons are pointedly political. They talk of the Sri Lankan Tamils forcibly disappeared during the civil war. Of mothers still looking for their children. Some mention the ongoing economic crisis Sri Lankans continue to face. Others appeal directly to the pilgrims, telling them to be more loving and accepting of others and the pain they might be facing. It’s during the Walk of the Cross that I spot the original St. Anthony’s Church, the one built by the saved fisherman. It is a sharp contrast to the new church, with a decaying facade with plaster peeling off it, but stark in its simplicity. Pilgrims stream in and out to pray to old statues of St. Anthony placed on a ledge, overlooked by a chipped wall hanging of Jesus on the cross. Others camp in front of it, chatting and watching the Walk. “We’re devotees of St. Anthony,” one man from Thoothukudi, India tells me, perched on a blanket with his friends. “We have a very famous church for him there on the seaside, and we go and stay there every Tuesday… We’d heard about Katchatheevu before but we never had the opportunity to come, so this year when we got the chance we decided we had to come.” They’ve decided to buy soap at the stalls as souvenirs for their family, and joke about how much more expensive tea is in Sri Lanka due to the economic crisis. But the conversation takes a serious turn when they ask me about conflicts between Sri Lankan and Indian fishermen, and they say Indian fishermen are really struggling and have been shot down when trying to fish near Katchatheevu, despite it previously belonging to India. “If it were ours, there would be no shooting,” one of them says. They say that India has “extended a hand in brothership” towards Sri Lanka, but it has been met with “disgraceful behavior” by the latter. However, they’re adamant that India shouldn’t try to reclaim Katchatheevu, saying it’s been “given and that’s it.” Once the Walk of the Cross is over, the mass takes place at the front of the church. I perch next to my friends on the blanket as the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary are chanted repeatedly in Tamil. I realize it’s the first time I’ve been to a mass in Tamil, and listen intently to the words, which seem to acquire a deeper meaning in my mother tongue. I find myself deeply, uncontrollably moved, tears streaming down my cheeks as the words wash over me. “Isn’t this so nice?” I say, turning to my friend after the mass finishes. It feels like she’s radiating a deep, calm, glow. Her hands are clasped in prayer. “Yes,” she replies, hugging me. “Thank you for bringing me.” Afterwards, there’s a procession of St. Anthony, with a statue carried through the crowd and around the island, flashing with green and red lights. The church is decked out in beautiful lights that lend it a Christmas feel, and there’s a festive feeling in the air as people go to light candles at a small cave-like shrine next to the church, cupping them carefully to avoid the wind extinguishing them. Throughout the day, there are also intermittent announcements of pilgrims’ prayers to St. Anthony—people asking for foreign visas to be approved, for marriages to be arranged, and for illnesses to be cured. The specifics of people’s names and locations are all divulged, and my friends and I wonder at people’s deepest wishes being revealed so publicly. We then use our meal tokens to claim food provided by the navy—a meal of rice and fish curry. Being a vegan, I’m obliged to go back to the stalls to buy myself a meal of rice and vegetables, unable to eat the food provided. After dinner, I get to chatting with a fisherman from Rameshwaram, who also talks about the lack of fish on the Indian side of the ocean, forcing them to travel into Sri Lankan waters. We exchange numbers and decide to keep in touch. We’ve been chatting on and off all day to the trio from Colombo who have camped next to us, and we end up talking to them until late in the night, exchanging life anecdotes and cackling with laughter while pilgrims snore around us. They tease me about my new friend, saying that I’m about to embark on a cross-border romance. When we finally decide to call it a night, the buzz of life still hasn’t stopped, with people walking around and talking in hushed tones, and the church lights still glowing furiously. “Pilgrims, please wake up and get ready. The mass will begin at 6 am,” a voice over the loudspeaker announces at 4:30 am the next morning. But people are slow to take notice, the mass of sleeping bodies not rousing itself awake until shortly before sunrise. Just before 6 am, the mass begins, and it feels noticeably more formal than the festivities of the previous day, with Indian officials present. Hymn sheets are handed round, and the atmosphere is solemn as people periodically stand to sing from their campsites. The morning mass at 6 am. Photograph courtesy of the author. Just before 9 am, the mass comes to a sudden end, and we’re told to claim our breakfast parcels, this time rice with dhal and soya meat curry. I only eat a little, conscious of the boat journey later, and then the announcements begin, telling us which boats are ready to leave from the island and urging pilgrims to make their way to the shore. The fisherman from Rameshwaram comes to say goodbye to me, prompting more teasing from my friends. People crowd the old and new churches for one last prayer, and I join them before we trudge back the way we came the previous day. At the harbor, the Sri Lankan side pushes and shoves to depart, and we manage to get onto the third boat after almost an hour of waiting. The boat journey this time is relatively more eventful than the first. About ten minutes in, there’s a sudden jolt and a loud bang, with a force beneath our feet that feels like the boat has just hit something. Over the next few minutes, the bangs and jolts intensify, and people begin to scream and cry. The floorboards of the boat have come up on its left side, and the seats jump up and down. I find my hands reaching out for my friends around me, both old and new, and we sit huddled in a circle, praying quietly under our breath while an elderly lady cries and calls out to St. Anthony for help a few rows behind us. I lose count of how many times I throw up on the way back—at one point we run out of bags, so I have to stand on tiptoe to vomit out of the window, sea water hitting my face as my stomach convulses. People call the boatmen to show them what’s wrong with the boat and beg them to go slower, but nothing seems to change. My friends try to contact the navy and we even get to the stage of waving my red kurti out of the window as a danger sign, but to no avail. It seems to be by sheer miracle that we make it back to Kurikkaduwan. On the bus back to Jaffna town, I chat to the fellow Katchatheevu pilgrim next to me, Baskar, his grandson perched on his lap holding a toy gun. He went to Katchatheevu the previous two years as well, when the COVID-19 pandemic meant only 50 pilgrims were allowed to attend. He tells me he made a promise to St. Anthony to visit Katchatheevu with his whole family if his daughter was cured of a serious illness that twelve doctors said she wouldn’t survive. “That’s her,” he says, pointing to the girl sitting in front of us in a green salwar kameez, holding her phone to her ear and listening to Tamil film soundtracks. “I told St. Anthony I would bring her to Katchatheevu alive. I had that belief.” Baskar, who works as a fisherman, said the economic crisis has made it difficult for him to attend the festival because of the higher boat costs, but he somehow had to make it work because of his promise to Anthony. “We believe that whatever sea we go to, he’ll save us,” Baskar says. “Because of my belief in St. Anthony, I’ve been rescued two or three times. Once I even fell into the sea unconscious after hitting my head. But because of God’s grace, I was saved.” Two years ago, Baskar says he met an Indian pilgrim who was so upset that the COVID-19 restrictions meant nobody else could come. This year, he met the pilgrim again with his family, and was so happy that everybody could come. “I told him, don’t worry, next time you can come with all your siblings and children,” Baskar says. “And this time I was so happy… Lots of people came and they were so happy… We speak happily with them. Last night, there were around 40 or 50 Indians and they were all talking and laughing with me so happily—they wouldn’t let me sleep,” he says, laughing. ∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Violent clashes along the Assam-Mizoram border have a 150-year-old history. The recent border flare-ups may appear most visibly in the superficial disputes of state parliaments, but they have, in truth, roots in both militarism and political economy—particularly the illicut trade of the areca nut—that undergird the construction of ethnic identities. FEATURES Assam, Mizoram, and the Construction of the "Other" AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Violent clashes along the Assam-Mizoram border have a 150-year-old history. The recent border flare-ups may appear most visibly in the superficial disputes of state parliaments, but they have, in truth, roots in both militarism and political economy—particularly the illicut trade of the areca nut—that undergird the construction of ethnic identities. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Reportage Assam-Mizoram Border Dispute Betel Nut Trade Northeast India Hachek Bial Kuhva Chingtu Pawl Areca Nut Northeast Democratic Alliance Amit Shah Sister States Nagaland Arunachal Pradesh Meghalaya Tripura Assam Rifles Mizoram Assam Cachar District Myanmar Burma Black Pepper Lailapur Nationalism BJP Inner Line Permit Silchar Veer Lachit Sena Ethnically Divided Politics Political Agendas Political Parties Mizo Zirlai Pawl VLS Mizo National Front Mizo English as Class Signifier Convent Education CPRF Central Reserve Police Force Forum for the Protection of Non-Mizos Seemanto-bashi Employment Guarantee Act Mizo student organizations Indian Citizenship Act Performative Nationalism Manipur Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Reportage Assam-Mizoram 25th Feb 2023 In July 2021, violent clashes along the “no-man’s land” border between Assam and Mizoram erupted, the latest in a conflict that dates back to over a century . This time, however, the clashes were accompanied by a battleground along party lines. In the lead up to India’s 75th Independence Day, Mizoram, the only remaining non-Saffronised, Congress-backed state in the northeastern region of India, seemingly became a target for India’s ruling party, the BJP, and its project to establish politically motivated “peace.” The seven sister states in the northeastern part of India are well acquainted with sporadic bouts of violence along their borders. The dispute along the border between Assam and Mizoram centers around contentious claims about where the exact border lies. Mizoram claims 509 square miles of the inner-line reserve forest under an 1875 border demarcation, a claim Assam rejects based on a demarcation in 1933. In turn, this contentious space has long become a locus for the political aspirations of both regional and central ruling parties and powerful groups. Following the violent clashes in July 2021, news reports quoted villagers in Mizoram as describing the situation as “a war between two countries.” The optics were indeed strange: two police forces of the same country—albeit different states—engaged in a violent shootout against each other. 48 hours before the first clashes, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah had met with the Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) to discuss the possibility of a border settlement. Over the next few weeks, the series of police firings that began in Kareemganj, Hailakandi, spread to the Cachar district of Assam. The renewed conflict has deeper roots: on a macroscopic level, contemporary political, cultural, and economic structures continue to bolster the active construction of enemies, within and without, for both the Assamese and the Mizo populations. What appears to be behind the violent clashes along the 165km-long fluid border—alarming in breadth and scope—in the region is a complex game of both ethnic identity politics as well as the central government’s agenda of putting an end to the Burmese supari or areca nut (often called betel nut) trade, an economy in which locals from both states are involved. The import of Burmese areca nut is now illegal in Mizoram , but continues to feature in vested economic and political interests that make up the fragile peace along the Assam-Mizo border. Assam has unresolved border disputes with all four of the largely tribal states that have been carved out of it since Independence. This past November, at the border with Meghalaya, the Assam Police killed six people . In each case many diverse communities in the hilly and forested northeastern region are imbricated, with many array of exports; in each case, the conflict is oversimplified in mainstream media narratives which ignore how identity and political economy become intertwined, and few point out the common charge placed on Assam: that much of its incursions occur without consent and punishment, and regularly trammel either already-codified or customary rights that communities have over their lands. Recently, much was made of an agreement between Assam and Mizoram in the form of a joint statement. While the statement by both the state governments to amicably resolve the matters of unrest along this border have reached the third round of talks, a high-level delegation from Mizoram expressed that "there has been huge unrest among the areca nut growers in Mizoram on account of problems being faced in the transportation of their produce to Assam and other parts of the country." The joint statement also seemed to flatten the nature of the conflict, simply stating that "economic activities such as cultivation and farming along the border areas would be allowed to continue regardless of the administrative control presently exercised by either state at such locations... subject to forest regulations and after informing the deputy commissioners concerned." The problem of the in-between in this region, however, cannot be mitigated with such generalities which highlight a kind of identity performance about border disputes that tie into political parties' agendas. This past December, the opposition in the Parliament of Assam staged a walkout , aggrieved about the perceived lack of action against Mizoram after a school in Cachar district of Assam was allegedly occupied by Mizo students. Meanwhile, the plight of local areca nut farmers goes generally unnoticed in Parliament. December 2022, six vehicles carrying areca nut into Mizoram were set ablaze , allegedly by Central Customs and Assam Rifles, which regularly prevent the export of areca nut from Mizoram and Tripura by seizing them at the border. Regardless of the party responsible, an areca nut growers' society in Mizoram, Hachhek Bial Kuhva Chingtu Pawl (HBKCP) argues that farmers are suffering because the Assam Police are unable (or unwilling) to verify if areca nuts from Mizoram are local or foreign. The Mizoram government too has come under fire for its laxity with smuggling, or care for farmers. Despite the entangled politicking and trade relations between Assam and Mizoram, however, there is a deeper history of the Mizo peoples being seen as the “other.” This has only intensified in recent years, as has the illicit trade of the areca nut. Whether borne out of an acute sense of cultural or political difference, the stereotypes that circulate in Assam deploy the Mizos’ native language, their Western convent education, or their land use, to construct notions of fundamental differences in identity. Who “they” refers to, however, as is often the case, is vague and context-dependent. The Assamese in general seem to mean the Mizos, but locals often mean politicians, police mean locals, and locals may also mean their wives, many of whom hail from villages across the border. In 2021, we visited the village of Lailapur, in the Cachar district of Assam, where residents had pelted stones at policemen from Mizoram who had previously clashed in 2020 with residents of Vairengte, a town in Mizoram’s own Kolasib district, exemplifying how any border is insufficient to explain the blurred nature of the conflict. Imtiaz Akhmed a.k.a. Ronju, was born and grew up in Lailapur. He is one of several truckers who ferry goods such as areca nut and black pepper between Assam and Mizoram (goods that are smuggled into India from Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia). He also has a Mizo wife, and claims that their son has the cutest mixture of the facial features of the two sister states, while simultaneously asserting that there are fundamental differences between the Assamese and Mizo peoples. A few locals of Lailapur who helped set up an electric pole for this shed/post of the Assam police officers wait for permission to go and have lunch at their homes on the other side of the police barricades, in Lailapur. Courtesy of Abhishek Basu. From Ronju’s perspective, the areca nut trade is at the core of the conflict on a local level: “What can we do if the betel nut is cheaper on that side? They [the Mizos and the Burmese] have been in this business for long enough to establish a monopoly. A kilo of betel nut sells for INR 128 there, while it's INR 300 here.” But despite the monopoly, working in Mizoram has its advantages for Ronju. “I have big connections with ministers [in Mizoram] who make life easier for me by way of permissions. I get supari here for the Assam State Police at times too! Currently, my truck, loaded with tatka [tight] Burmese supari, is waiting at the border because of the blockade. The Mizos themselves will help unload it on this side though,” he cackled. Ronju emphasizes difference, but his family and work hint at complex aspects of lived reality in towns along the border. Of course, the complexities are often cynically flattened by local political parties who rely on enflaming the conflict. Soon after the initial clashes last year, Assamese politicians and ministers arrived in Lailapur. The press, both local and national, flocked to them in front of a police barricade. The Organizational Secretary of the Assamese political party Veer Lachit Sena (VLS), Srinkhal Chaliha told the media, “We will not tolerate any threat. The Assamese people will give an appropriate reply!” Locals and groups most impacted by the clashes observed the spectacle. They crowded on both sides of the narrow highway that leads to Lailapur and ends at the Assam Police barricade, located 5 kilometres away from the actual border. Several witnesses shook their heads in disappointment over what they perceived to be the Assam government's cowardice: to many, not giving statements at the border itself, or not strongly condemning repeated acts of aggression from the Mizo side of the border—where many local civilians are believed to have been seen by the Assam State Police officers—seen equipped with light machine guns (LMGs) provided to them by alleged extremist groups backing the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) government. It is important to note that Mizoram is the only state among the seven sister states of Northeast India that has yet to turn saffron, or be in alliance in any way whatsoever, with the right-wing BJP (despite short-lived alliances with the BJP and MNF part of the BJP-led coalition at the Centre, in Mizoram the party has historically allied itself with Congress ). The strong response expected from the Assamese government to counter repeated jibes from the Mizos, however, never materialized. Ronju, a local businessman, explained: "One call from the Mizo Church and MZP (Mizo Zirlai Pawl, a powerful student organization with a long and antagonistic history with the Centre and a shared relationship with the ruling MNF), and you will find village after Mizo village come together in solidarity, bearing arms like LMGs (lightweight machine guns) that too! There's nothing like that here in Assam. We're too divided." He added that he was proud of having driven through the perilous Mizo terrain all the way to Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, several times. Ronju, who is a seemanto-bashi or a border resident, holds similar views as many of the locals standing along the highway leading to the barricades. They expect the Assamese government to take a strong stance in the face of perceived Mizo homogeneity and solidarity, as well as support from the Church. The juxtaposition of Mizo identity and Assamese nationalism is reflected in geographical landmarks along the border: the last Indian symbol on the Assamese side is a temple and on the Mizo side, a Church. Many locals on the Assamese side of the border as well as the second in command of the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force, India's largest Central Armed Police Force) battalion posted in Fainum, Assam, talk about Mizos as if they were a warrior tribe. They believe that Mizos kill on a whim; accentuate their cultural differences, food preferences and eating habits; and speak Mizo instead of Hindi or English. Such sentiments strengthen the perception that there are fundamental differences between the two communities, despite their obvious closeness either in proximity, occupation, or familial ties. "They believe they are Mizos first. For them, the [Indian] nation is secondary. Someone needs to sit down and reason with them," says S. Debnath, Barak Valley resident and former member of the Forum for the Protection of Non-Mizos. Debnath believes Mizos feel like this because of particular state practices: “There's the case of the Inner Line Permit mandatory for anyone wishing to enter Mizoram, which makes them [the Mizos] feel like they have a sovereign right to their land. They allow the Burmese in when it comes to the business of Burmese supari, but not people like us who are from other states of India." Mizoram also enjoys other affordances that allow Mizos to take autonomous decisions, like the Inner Line Permit (ILP), which evidently frustrates the residents of the Hindu-majority Barak Valley of Assam. Debnath, like several others, does not consider metrics such as Mizoram's literacy rate, population size, and economic growth that are used to explain their sovereign status—most of which comes from tribal autonomy guaranteed over the Lushai Hills, provided for in Schedule Six of the Indian Constitution. Mizoram has one of the country's highest literacy rates. Its Oriental High School is among the first convent schools established by the British in Silchar, an economic hub in the contested Barak Valley of Assam. The school also has residential quarters for their mostly Mizo staff and teachers who form a large part of the closely-knit Mizo community in Assam. Since the Mizo Church is reluctant to involve itself in the local politics of the region, the staff and teachers at Oriental High School have been asked not to share their political opinions and to stay entirely professional. Rati Bora, another seemanto-bashi , has two sons who work on farms on either side of the border. Her son who works on the Mizo side earns more than his brother, presumably because Mizoram’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the country. On July 26, 2021, Rati Bora heard the shots fired by policemen on both sides of the border and feared for her life. Her sons begged her to evacuate. She left home with her family members and elderly parents and headed for her sister’s house in the neighboring town of Silchar. The incident was terrifying for border residents like Rati at that time. Now, however, the local tea shops opened by a few families dwelling right beside the police check post in Dholakhal are flourishing, she says. Rati Bora overlooking her patch of green, now taken by the CRPF to establish camps and diffuse tensions between the two states of Assam and Mizoram. Singhu, Assam, India. Courtesy of Abhishek Basu. We watched as four local boys from the Cachar district of Assam struggled to set up an electric pole. The pole would serve as a post for the state police that would be stationed there at night for a few weeks. Later as the boys crossed the police barricade to eat their lunch of bhaat (rice) at their homes, we watched as onlookers stared at them with suspicion. Young men from bordering villages must always keep their aadhar ID cards on themselves, and even guests visiting their homes must carry their identification documents. The performativity of nationalism takes on a certain intensity for residents of this region. Locals like Ronju and Rati are intimately familiar with this performance, and with an eye to the cross-border trade, tend to hold a more nuanced view of the changing economy of Silchar. “[Despite the suspicion and discrimination], at least now seemanto-bashis from Lailapur and Sighua villages are getting some recognition,” says Rati. “Previously girls wouldn't ever want to get married to boys from here, like my two sons. Now at least there's a chance. It's not so remote anymore… there are so many SUVs and Boleros zipping by,” she says, referring to the many politicians she had seen in her area. Taking us away from the blame game at play in this region is the plight of the injured policemen of the Assam State Police, a few still waiting for doctors to remove pellets shot from the handmade guns of Mizo locals. Stuck in a rut because of delayed discharge papers and an inaccessible, unresponsive healthcare system, the policemen have issued multiple statements on maintaining peace and order in the region that are very similar to those of their politicians. Some policemen wrap the pellets removed from their bodies in delicate tissue paper and keep them in their pockets as a token of pride. Some of them eagerly share videos they recorded on their smartphones or shared by villagers on the Mizo side of the border. Until a time comes when the region’s employment issues are solved instead of vague assurances that the help mandated by the Employment Guarantee Act; until a time comes when roads are developed, middlemen are erased, the indigenous industry is promoted excluding the existing large tea and oil businesses; until a time comes when Assam helps itself and not its vote-banks, it will not be able to hide behind the central government’s exclusionary tactics of us and them. Like the rest of India, the northeast too may well fall into the trap of not asking the right questions to those in power, especially at a time the Indian economy is reeling from the shortages of resources in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. It comes down to the possibility of the Assamese being able to reclaim everything considered “illegal” about the Burmese areca nut trade. This involves cracking down on people like Ronju, their very own, who act like oil in these cracks. It is not enough to just roll the areca nut by placing it below your tongue, it is to recognize that cultures when living in proximity, obviously are bound to inform and resemble each other. We saw many a xorai or a casket-like plate in almost every Assamese household we went to, and were offered the traditional areca nut and paan, or betel nut palm. Such an act is a symbol of “welcoming outsiders,” they told us. This contrasts starkly with an occasion in one of our interviews with Debnath where he lowered the volume on the television upon hearing a TV anchor complaining about protests organized by Mizo student organizations against the draconian Indian Citizenship Act: the same legislation designed to kick out “outsiders” from Indian soil. For the Mizos, it is Bangladeshis who are the outsiders and indeed they often consider even the moniker of “Bangladeshi” disparaging. Meanwhile, for Debnath, it is the Mizos who are more of an “other,” more so than those who agree to live illegally in India. The dynamics between the Mizos, the Bangladeshis, the mainland Assamese, and the active construction of the “other” is at the heart of this story and the continuing clashes. To fully understand what’s going on at Lailapur, it is important to understand that this polarized strand of history is deeply etched in the memory of the Mizos of this generation. At the same time, it is undoubtedly true that there are two competing narratives—one told by the natives and the other by government officials. The first tells a tale of the oral ethnocultural history of the tribe linked to the land and forests: the narrative of many Mizos and organizations like the MZP. The second is the “official” history of state formation: the Assamese state narrative, if not that of India writ large. ∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up: