In this new episode of The Polis Project Podcast Series, Francesca Recchia discusses with Dr Ammar Ali Jan the current waves of protest in Pakistan, the increased criminalization of dissent and the inadequacy of the State responses to the demands of change coming from different sections of society.
A nation needs its anthems, flags, soldiers, and statues. But, the function of the writer is something else. Writers are the ones who capture the conflict, the dissonance, and often the lies we are told over and over again. We’re living through a remarkable moment, especially for many of us in South Asia, particularly in … Read more
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the “Emergency” on 25 June 1975. This is often referred to as a “dark period” and “an aberration” in India’s recent history. What if the emergency was not an aberration, and was instead an event that grew out of existing political traditions, and historical legacies that can still be … Read more
Patterns of violence, impunity, and silence
Since December 2019 millions of Indians have protested the contentious “Citizenship Amendment Act” (CAA)– rightly called the Nuremberg laws of India. Since the protest started there as been brutal police actions against those protesting especially students in Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi. An organic people’s protest is now blooming across India. Along with protests come poetry … Read more
The sustained assaults on universities and schools in Kashmir, the long-standing discrimination against Dalits and minorities at Indian universities, and the recent armed attacks on students and faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University in India all draw attention to the way in which questions of knowledge—its production and dissemination—are … Read more
Prof Alf Gunvald Nilsen discusses the attacks on students and faculty at JNU, India
In December 2019, Twitter was awash with posts about events at the Indian Historical Congress in Kannur. The eminent historian Irfan Habib has disrupted proceedings as Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, as part of his speech to the delegates, quoted Maulana Azad in relation to the CAA/NRC controversy. Habib told the Governor that he had … Read more
In this episode Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Hassan Ghedi Santur about his new book The Youth of God, about the nature of representation and diversity in the literary world, shrinking space for literary criticism, and what it means to be a writer. The conversation meanders from archetypal figures in the literature to freedom of speech and returns … Read more
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