The Caravan June 2022

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 writes on energy, environment,…

“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 been…

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 the…

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 of…

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 brutally…

LAKSHMIBAI RIDES A HORSE into the compound of a bungalow housing officers of the East India Company, wearing a heavily embroidered green sari. “You cannot come inside without permission,” one officer tells her. “Didn’t you see the board?” “Bloody Indians,” another officer exclaims, while a third asks,“Can’t you read English?” The queen consort of the princely state of Jhansi dismounts and walks up to the visibly smug officers. “I can read English,” she says. “It’s a mere language. Just words. Words without culture have no meaning.” This is a scene from the 2019 film Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, starring, and co-directed by, Kangana Ranaut. Lakshmibai was a prominent figure in the 1857 uprising against the British and is often presented as a nationalist symbol of strength and resistance. The film’s…