The Caravan May 2022

When the queer activist Vishnu Teja was approached by Patruni Chidananda Sastry, a Hyderabad-based drag artist, for Rangula Rattnam, he realised this was the right opportunity to speak about his lived experiences of being gay. “Unfortunately, there is not much information or queer content in Telugu,” Teja, who works at the Visakhapatnam based Liberty Rebellion Organisation, which works for the rights of sexual minorities, told me. “And, being a gay man based out of Telangana, I strongly feel that there should be vocalisation about the rights of the community in the Telugu language. This podcast is something that will surely bridge the gap.” Rangula Rattnam—Colourful Carousel—is India’s first queer-centric podcast in Telugu. Each monthly episode features a queer individual and aims to explore narratives from across the queer community. In June…

“I use music as my weapon to give voice to the Adivasi community,” Tom Murmu, a 25-year-old artist from the Santal community, told me as we sat together at the Artist Block, a Ranchi cafe built to resemble a traditional Adivasi house. “Though people don’t understand Santali, through my songs they recognise my community,” he said. An artist and YouTube star, Murmu has become an icon as a representative of Santal and Adivasi youngsters. In his performances and music videos, Murmu wears a panchi—the traditional garment worn by Santal men—and a t-shirt. His attire, like his music, is a blend of traditional and modern. Murmu—whose given name is Anuranjan Murmu, though he has become famous by his chosen artistic name—has over two hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. He hails from Dumka, a…

In the final scene of SS Rajamouli’s period film RRR, Alluri Sitarama Raju—dressed as the Hindu deity Ram and played by the Telugu actor Ram Charan—asks what favour he may bestow on his fellow revolutionary Komaram Bheem, played by NT Rama Rao Jr. “Bheem, you fulfilled my goal, gave me ammunition for the cause,” he says. “What can I do for you?” Komaram replies, “Give me an education, brother.” Alluri pricks his finger with the tip of an arrow and writes “Jal, jangal, zameen”—water, forest and land—in the Devanagari script on a white flag. There is a lot to unpack in this scene. Although a disclaimer at the start of the film declares that RRR is a work of fiction that “doesn’t imitate or imply any person whether living or dead, doesn’t…

Notwithstanding the now infamous slap, the 2022 Academy Awards had many firsts. Among the catalogue of correctives to presumably make up for their decades of rewarding mostly cis-white male creatives—Troy Kotsur became the first deaf male actor to win an Oscar, while Ariana DeBose became the first openly queer woman of colour to win an acting award—there was also the first ever nomination for an Indian documentary: Writing with Fire, a film about Khabar Lahariya, a rural media outlet led by Dalit women. Following months of relentless buzz, a Sundance Award and multiple global accolades, the Oscar nomination came as no surprise to anyone who had been following the documentary since its global release. In an early conversation I had with the director couple Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh following the…

In the motion poster for Vivek Agnihotri’s upcoming film The Delhi Files, the silhouette of a Sikh boy reaches out for help within a bloodstained national emblem, as the opening verse of the Guru Granth Sahib plays in the background, followed by the sounds of jackboots, gunshots and sobs. Tentatively scheduled for release this October, the film is ostensibly based on the anti-Sikh pogroms of November 1984, though Agnihotri has said it is more generally about “how Delhi has been destroying ‘Bharat’ for so many years.” It will be the final instalment of his trilogy of historical revisionism, following The Tashkent Files, which wildly speculated about the death of the former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, and The Kashmir Files, which dealt with the “genocide” of Kashmiri Pandits. The 1984 pogroms…

Democracy just cannot survive without a free press. And certainly, a country like India, which is so diverse, can absolutely not survive without a free expression of facts and views. And because the mainstream media is now shutting its mouth, out of greed or out of fear, the role of magazines like Caravan becomes all-important. It is very important that all of us should subscribe to magazines like Caravan, so that they get an independent source of funds and can continue to be doing completely independent and fearless work.ARUN SHOURIE, Journalist and PoliticianMy favourite literary genre is long nonfiction, and no one does a better job of it than Caravan magazine in India. I recall that the very best review that I read about my book The Difficulty of Being…