(Un)Doing

In a Facebook post on 26 June, 2017 Shubham Bose Roy argues that Faraz Arif Ansari’s short film Sisak is hardly the first silent film on queer issues in India as claimed by the media. Shubham insists – “please don’t self-aggrandize queer products in the name of novelty, because such misleading publicity erases the history of queer art and cinema that was done in far more challenging times than this”. This intervention comes a few months after another gender non-binary friend Vqueeram Aditya Sahai had lied down at the intersection near Ramjas College to stop what IIT Delhi claimed to be the “first Pride” of Delhi University. The poster that was shared in the Delhi Pride Committee’s google group by Dhrubo Jyoti had the names of Gaylaxy and Humsafar Trust as sponsors of the event. On the day of the march though, their representatives claimed that they didn’t fund it but only provided guidance. The new pamphlets still had the name of Rendezvous, IIT’s fest funded by Reliance. When Vqu...

Ranadaprasad Roy Chowdhury is former member of Awami League and was associated with the Mukti Bahini movement during Bangladesh's War of Independence. Here, I speak to him on the current crisis in India and Bangladesh w.r.t. shrinking spaces of dialogue and discussion. Q: Recently there has been a rise in the number of hate crimes against minorities in India. Do you think it’s any different in Bangladesh? Will the majority always be the oppressor? A: I think it’s human nature to assert power. But in Bangladesh the Hindus used to earlier looked down upon the Muslims. Hindus were also more educated and powerful. They were extremely conscious of pollution and purity and would never allow Muslims in the proximity of their well or drinking water. Q: So the Hindus were equally anxious of both Muslim and Dalit bodies? A: Yes. Muslims were also wary of these customs and followed them blindly. You see, Hindus controlled the economy even though there might have been more...

One of the rallying cries of Delhi University women students’ group Pinjra Tod has been “ Hum Bharat Ki Mata Nahi Banenge ” (“We Won’t Be the Mothers of India”). On February 28, when students and teachers of Delhi University and other academic institutions walked in rage and mourning through the familiar lanes of North Campus to condemn the violence perpetrated by members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (the student wing of RSS) and Delhi Police in and around Ramjas College few days earlier, many fellow protesters asked me why I was holding a banner “I won’t Mother India”, that may invite unnecessary censure. In media interviews, the Right-wing students' group had justified their hooliganism by referring to some imagined “anti-national” sloganeering during the English Literary Society seminar on ‘Cultures of Protest’ in Ramjas college. It is not clear which slogans were categorized as “anti-national” – “ABVP se   Azadi ” or non-compliance to the symbol of   Bharat Mat...

It is raining as usual in Kolkata, quite a respite from the hot dryness of the capital where I have been living since the last three years, juggling between my research work and teaching commitments. Cousins and their partners arrive one by one settling in my room that has recently been painted orange – suggestive only of my beloved fruit.  One cousin who is also a TMC party worker casually asks me – “What are these anti-national things that u have got yourself into in Delhi?”. What ensued was a fiery dialogue over the current state of affairs, that somewhat culminated in admissions like these – Male Cousin: I am a Hindu first. Me: Haha. Much nationalism. Not even Indian? Male Cousin: Being Hindu is the same as being Indian. Me: And Bengali? Husband of Another Cousin: All Bengalis are Hindus. I wasn’t surprised by the flow of this conversation, having long known that the celebrated liberal ethos of the Bengali  bhadralok   is a myth propagated b...