Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i The Caravan

THE LEDE 8 Deepa Parent is an independent journalist who covers conflict and its consequences on human rights. PERSPECTIVES 12 Viruben Nandakumar is an editor at the Tamil Guardian, focussing on Sri Lanka and human rights. 18 Vedika Inamdar is a researcher at The Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism collective, where she co-founded Watch the State, an initiative that documents and analyses state violence in India. She also writes on development-related policy and programmes in India. Pooja George is a researcher at The Polis Project and a co-founder of Watch the State. 22 Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit-American author, activist and artist. She is a co-founder and the executive director of Equality Labs. REPORTAGE AND ESSAYS 28 Aathira Konikkara is a staff writer at The Caravan. 46 M Rajshekhar is a journalist who…

On 22 August 2021, 25-year-old Taslim Ali was beaten up by Hindu vigilantes in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. A viral video of the incident showed Taslim, a bangle seller from Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district, weeping on the ground while a mob assaulted him because of his Muslim identity. Taslim managed to file a first-information report after much difficulty, and the accused were arrested. But, the next day, based on the complaint of one of the accused’s minor daughters, Taslim was arrested. He was charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code that had to do with sexual harassment, forgery and criminal intimidation, as well as sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Taslim was granted bail around three and a half months later. The Indore bench…

ONE NIGHT IN JANUARY, I found myself strolling through gardens enclosed with white picket fences, in which various objects made of plastic and fibreglass were lit up in bright colours. Coconut palms, mushrooms, deer, swans, horses, crescent moons, reindeer, giraffes, giant sunflowers and tulips, rabbits and flamingos, interspersed with LED fountains, produced a neon-lit landscape. I was at the Unity Glow Garden, which is part of the Kevadia Tourism Circuit, newly instituted by the Gujarat government around the Sardar Sarovar dam. The circuit currently comprises 35 destinations and experiences, including a number of parks and gardens, a zoo and jungle safari, a river cruise, adventure-sports facilities for rafting and cycling, shops, malls, restaurants and hotels catering to a variety of budgets. That this is more than simply a place…

“Salaam, Hello, Are you there?” “Are we meeting for the protest today?” “Where?” These were some of the messages a 25-year-old press officer for an international company woke up to on a January morning in Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth largest city in Afghanistan. She had spent the past few months in a safe house with other Afghan women, making placards and mobilising for protests against the Taliban. She wondered who had sent these messages. Puzzled and scared, she called her friends to check if they had received similar messages. Some had, others had not, but the question remained. How did the sender know they were secretly planning an indoor protest that noon? As they regroup to resist the Taliban regime, which seized power in August last year, Afghan women activists have…

I remember my first Zoom call with Prem Pariyar in the summer of 2020. Ruvani Fonseka, one of his professors at California State University, East Bay, had reached out on his behalf to Equality Labs, the Dalit civil-rights organisation that I run, to suggest we work together. Pariyar told his story while his children giggled and played behind him. He was a father, a survivor and an Ambedkarite, and he had a mission: caste abolition. That fateful meeting began a historic movement to institutionalise protections against caste discrimination at the California State University system—the largest public university system in the United States, with more than four hundred thousand students across its 23 campuses. Pariyar came to the United States in 2015, fleeing his home in Nepal after his family was…

ON THE COLD EVENING OF 23 DECEMBEr 2021, about twenty Kashmiris gathered in Srinagar’s Pratap Park for a protest. Two army trucks soon arrived at the nearby Regal Chowk, and dozens of soldiers cordoned off the park. Some were in civilian clothes—two of them confirmed to me that they were with the Indian Army. The protesters seemed unperturbed, however. This was unusual, given how the army normally interacts with protesters in the Kashmir Valley. A few minutes later, two uniformed soldiers brought a hoarding out of the truck and handed it over to two plain-clothed personnel inside the park. The billboard had three bold words, Aakhir Kab Tak—how much longer—against a background of spilt blood. Below, amid a sea of loud hashtags, including #VoiceAgainstTerrorism, #StopKilling-Kashmiris, #KashmirBadalRahaHai and #KashmirForTiranga, the banner…

A SMALL STEP IN A LONG JOURNEY Akkai Padmashali As told to Gowri Vijayakumar A memoir by the trans-rights activist, poet and writer Akkai Padmashali that recounts her battle to establish her identity, and the many challenges, solidarity, work and joy she encountered along the way. ZUBAAN, ₹495, 244 PAGES I AM ONIR AND I AM GAY Onir with Irene Dhar Malik A memoir by the filmmaker Onir (written with his sister), which recalls his childhood in Bhutan, his entrance into the Hindi film industry and his efforts to provoke conversations about identity and LGBT representation in cinema. PENGUIN VIKING, ₹599, 288 PAGES PERIOD MATTERS MENSTRUATION IN SOUTH ASIA Edited by Farah Ahamed A collection of work from across South Asia exploring menstruation and menstrual health, including essays, stories, artwork…

On 4 May, a crowd of Tamils gathered in a small tent by the roadside in Vavuniya, a city in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Behind them was a wall plastered with the photos of family members who were last seen in the custody of the Sri Lanka Army. Many held up photos of those forcibly disappeared, not only as reminders of their loved ones but in the hopes of being reunited with them. It was a sombre demonstration that garnered minimal international coverage. They had been protesting for almost two thousand days and had received little attention, and much scorn, from the Sri Lankan government. Meanwhile, on Galle Face, an oceanside urban park in Colombo, a very different protest was taking place. The sound of trumpets and drums blared into…

A TORRENT OF BODIES DRESSED IN BLACK, with indiscernible faces and flailing arms, surges towards a centre that is bruised red. Enveloped by a warm tungsten hue, the crowd pours through a narrow alley and into a large open space. Its seething movement creates a seamlessness that lends a sense of duration to an otherwise static frame. The focus of the image, and the crowd, is the undefined centre: a barely visible horse draped in a bright red cloth. The image belongs to the Pakistani photographer Nad-e-Ali’s ongoing photo series “The Other Horses,” which documents Lahore’s annual Shabih-e-Zuljinah processions. Held during the month of Muharram, the Shia mourning processions commemorate the death of Hussain ibn Ali, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, in the seventh-century Battle of Karbala. The Shia–Sunni…