I’m dreaming seditious dreams,I’m singing a seditious song!I’m loving my neighbors,don’t care where they’re from—let’s abolish all checkpoints and borders…as we sing a seditious song! I’m dreaming seditious dreams,I’m singing a seditious song!I’m praying for freedomfrom fear and from want—let’s…
Meanwhile in the capital, the CM speaks at a town hall about unemployment,the price of onions, and the danger of Hindu spies from Pakistan. He does not mention the possibilitythat torture, custodial rape, and preventative detention of citizens and politicians…
There are some who give off an evil glow,no matter what colour clothes they wear. In a state just a bus ride from here,a leader shouts promises of revenge; what he says quietly, we can only guess.I have not been…
-after Bertolt Brecht It’s simple,anyone can grasp it.It requires no forceor violence.The exploiters tell us to sell, borrow and buy it;pandits and priestsdisguise it with dogma;and tyrants call it ‘sedition’,when the wrong people say it.It is against buying, selling,debt and…
Friends, these are confusing times and everywhere I go I hear people using words in confusing ways—it’s like we’re living in some kind of twisted fever dream or a second rate postmodern language poem. In Kashmir, torture has long been…
Before the darkness, you used to laugh when your Communist friends warned you, Never forget the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules! In UP, newspapers report that police raided a madrassa and arrested 1oo young students…
-December 26, 2019 I dreamed a group of uswere kidnapped by a pair of sociopaths— they explained they were conducting an experiment:they would blind half of us in one eye and half of us in both to see how this…
-for Chandra Shekhar Azad When they finally write the history of how we won this fight, they’ll say the tide turned at Jama Masjid when Chandra Shekhar Azadheld up the constitution, and a photo of Dr. Ambedkar,before leading the charge…
-December 19, 2019 Though we had seen what they’d done to the students, something changed that day in Delhi; the police filled bus after bus with people like us who had come simply to stand for our own rights and…
—for Shaheen Bagh Yesterday, you asked me to write a poem or a song about the women of Shaheen Bagh,and I laughed and said, that’s not possible— the women of Shaheen Bagh are a poem and a song—but last night…
The police are investigating an AMU professor for a Facebook post about separation, sadness, a failed moonshot,and a cold northern region which I shall refrain from naming. Late in the night, smoke presses down on the city, and the Chowkidar’s…
This morning, when I told you that I’d dreamt the theocracy had been declared— and the internet was down and it was no longer safe to say ‘freedom’ in a song or slogan,or even on the phone— you just nodded…
I kept hearing people say the same words over and over wherever I went— sometimes in greeting or farewell,sometimes in prayer— the neighbor downstairs,the electrician in the market, the man who cleans the toilet in the park. The more it…
-November 9, 2019 My barber closes the door and says,He has everything in his hands now: the parliament, army, and courts; his wish is our command, now.
Changing the rules without consent: the true aim of development?Political gain or property grab, in the name of development? Lock up the kids before they hurl stones in protest or anger.Preventive detention: just a move in this game of development?…