Traveling along the Muzaffarnagar countryside roads in 2013 with a group of concerned citizens soon after the horrific violence in the Muzaffarnagar area, we stopped by what looked like a makeshift refugee camp a certain distance from the road. Some elders of the community came up to us and invited us to a small tent they had set up by the roadside, evidently to interact with visitors. One of them tossed sugarcane sticks to each one of us to chew on as a sign of hospitality. This was sugarcane country after all. The sugarcane was full of sweet juice as we hungrily stripped off its layers with our teeth. 

But as we realized, the natural welcome and camaraderie, despite the trauma and displacement suffered by the community, was what had overwhelmed us; that was the sweetness that filled us. 

As court cases dragged on and the indictments of the accused grew into a tortured political affair, especially after the BJP-government came into power, we heard of how entire families (some of them were witnesses in the court cases) had moved residence from Muzaffarnagar and were untraceable. 

Cut to 2019 and Muzaffarnagar, along with several other parts of UP, is in the news again for violence against its Muslim residents. At least two fact-finding reports reveal the excesses of law-enforcement in dealing with the anti-CAA protests. As one member of one of the team’s stated, “We got reports that all private hospitals in Meerut and Muzaffarnagar were strictly instructed by the police not to admit people with bullet injuries. They were admitted only in government hospitals, where families of the victims were not allowed to meet them at all.”

Another fact-finding team member narrated  “an account of a postgraduate who ‘lies in a shattered room of her grandfather Hamid Hasan’s house in Jaswantpuri, Barafkhana in Muzaffarnagar.’

‘Her forehead is bandaged, covering a deep gash caused by a steel rod. In the next bed is her 14-year-old brother, his eyes still terrified, his body bruised. Both were beaten up by the police on 20 December 2019,’” the activist said.

This is certainly very disturbing since several people, including those from the majority community, reported that some of the protests, especially in the Meenakshi Chowk area of Muzaffarnagar, were not sampradayik (communal) in nature, as reported in the Hindi daily, Dainik Hindustan. Yet, it was the Muslims who were brutally targeted. 

One knows the story of polarisation in areas of western UP, including Muzaffarnagar, as reported by many journalists, including The Hindu’s Vidya Subrahmaniam. The story of how the seeds of communal distrust were sown over a period of time between the Jats and the Muslims of the region, especially right after the 2013 riots and before the 2014 general elections. How, one by one, all of the accused in the rioting were released. How, even several years after the riots, the riot-affected, the Muslims, were left to languish in the few relief camps that remained. 

For the Mulsims of Muzaffarnagar and elsewhere in UP, especially western UP, so traumatised and demonised by the 2013 violence, the police also acting as a communal, marauding force will surely shake them to the core. As one of the victims of the police rampage in Muzaffarnagar told the fact-finding team, “every assailant was a policeman, all in uniform.”

The UP police has been communal from a very long time, specially the PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary), which was one of the forces present in Muzaffarnagar. Its repressive role during the Uttarakhand statehood struggle (Rampur Tiraha) is well known as is its role in the Hashimpura massacre.

However, the police act on orders, or they are supposed to. Trying to review the situation across UP, one cannot help but be struck by the repressive nature of the UP police in quelling the protests, often by violent means, and with loss of life and limb for Muslims. It would be difficult not to connect their actions with the mandate and mentality for “revenge,” as expressed by UP’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath. This revenge took many forms – the firing of live bullets and the terrorising of the Muslims was just one tactic. Actual damage costs being sent to supposed “rioters,” and the use of “naming and shaming,” of those it deemed as provocateurs – of course, Muslims – were other shameful techniques. 

The UP state administration’s actions, similarly, cannot be seen as unconnected to the consensus and attitude of the ruling BJP of the nature of the protests. The so-called leader of the nation, prime minister Narendra Modi spoke about the dress of the protesters as revealing their identity, making a barely-concealed and despicable accusation against Muslims. The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her clueless manner blurted that jihadists and the Maoists were behind the protests. 

If one observes such recklessness and crudity of discourse from its political leaders, how can one expect that not to translate to the language of bigotry, intimidation and violation against those they casually tar, the Muslims? 

The people who offered us sugarcanes had little left from the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots which had made them homeless. Yet, they knew the sugar-sweet language of brotherhood and common humanity. They instinctively shared what little they had left. Their generosity of spirit and their fortitude could rise above the injustice meted out to them for no fault of theirs. The Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have seen many hard knocks over the years. But like the hardy cane, till now they seem to have withstood all that has come their way. One can only hope that their sweetness never runs dry.

The author is a student of social movements. He has been involved in various struggles of the marginalized people, including Dalit and Adivasi movements and the Palestinian struggle.

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The iconic images from Ferguson (Missouri) in the US of ordinary people standing up to police (“The woman in the dress”) or in front of armored vehicles found resonance in India when some young women students faced up to police beating up a colleague of theirs at the Jamia Millia University in New Delhi, even attempting to snatch the baton from the cops. 

When fatalities from police brutality in the United States were in the center of the world’s attention, there were examples advanced of low levels of fatalities from police action in places like India. This was attributed to the low-tech nature of the Indian police force – the average Indian policeman is not armed with a gun but with a stick. “Police brutality” as an issue has not been very high on the list of civil rights excesses till now in India, unfortunately.  

That is not to say that the Indian citizens do not face police violence – far from it. In fact, mostly the poor,the marginalized and the minorities suffer from a brutal culture of police violence, when they are met with beatings, torture, rapes and executions for one flimsy reason or another. We are talking about the brutality of the “ordinary police” here, not the special forces and squads that operate in what are considered hotbeds of guerilla and separatist movements. In certain geographical areas, however, such as those with large indigenous populations, both the regular police and special police outfits terrorize the local populations. Just recently, “security forces” were indicted for killing 17 members of an indigenous tribe in central India in 2012. Such gross violations of human rights and lives is all too common in certain parts of India and indictments as the one above rare. The  demography of the accused in India’s prison system remains heavily biased towards the economically weak, the minorities, and those of lower castes. Also, importantly, the gross violations of human rights against the minorities have taken place often in areas remote from urban areas – in the habitats of the indigenous or various rural or semi-urban locations of the lower caste and Muslims. 

On Sunday Dec 15, the  police in New Delhi reacted brutally against protesting students from a state-run, central university, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI). The students had organized a peaceful protest against the recently approved Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The bill, passed in the Indian parliament on December 11, ostensibly to grant citizenship to persecuted minorities from India’s neighboring countries, is worded in exclusionary language – it allows refugees of the Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Parsi communities to seek Indian citizenship – but explicitly leaves out Muslims. 

Earlier the current Indian government, the Hindu majoritarian BJP, had given the final touches to a long-running process called the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the north-eastern state of Assam. Under that process nearly 2 million residents of the state were declared non-citizens for want of proper proof of residence. Their fate is yet undecided, though there is some recourse to appeals – failing which they would be reportedly sent to detention centers. 

On the heels of the NRC in just the state of Assam, the government had announced plans for a  nationwide NRC exercise which would determine “true citizens” and weed out the “infiltrators.” The NRC exercise in Assam had ended up primarily targeting Muslims who were alleged to have come in “illegally”  from neighboring Bangladesh. Such a double whammy where Muslims have been singled out in exclusionary ways, first by the NRC and then by the CAA, has struck fear and anxiety primarily in the hearts of Muslims, but also in several other minority groups, as all of a sudden legal residents of India too could be required to prove their citizenship credentials.

But, it was the blatantly religious nature and wording of the CAA which rattled large swathes of the country, whether Muslim or not. Though the BJP won a second term to rule India for 5 more years jin Jun 2019, it is significant to note that it garnered less than 40% of the vote. Also, while it is undeniable that the BJP has managed to increasingly woo many Indians to its Hindu majoritarian agenda, the fact remains that India has a wide range of social and religious communities and for the longest time Indians have grown up with ideas that their country believes in state secularism, a policy that accords a sort-of equal treatment to all religions. 

The students at the JMI university called for a protest on Dec 13 but the march soon saw some disruptions. Whoever was to blame for these diversions and provocations, the police decided to retaliate with disproportionate and brute force. It rained blows indiscriminately on students and bystanders with the long batons (called lathis) they normally carry. Later that evening, the police even entered the library of the university, chased the students inside and burst tear-gas shells, vandalising the library in the process. 

On the same day, a student protest in solidarity with the Jamia protest at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), another central university, located in the town of Aligarh about 150 miles east of Delhi, was met with even more brute force from the police. Several students and bystanders were injured, some of them grievously, as a fact-finding report makes clear. 

Police violence against those continuing protests against the CAA was in evidence again in subsequent days in areas of the capital, Delhi, and in several other parts of the country, like in the states of UP and Karnataka. It has continued till the writing of this piece as police have been clamping down on protests swiftly and remorselessly, striking protesters with their batons and detaining them at sites of protests, and firing live bullets and killing innocent people. 

Such cases of very public and visible violence visited upon urban university students and the social-media savvy youth in general, especially in the capital city of Delhi,  which has finally enabled a recognition of wilful police brutality. As noted above, the police have also brutally repressed dissent in Muslim-majority areas in states not far from Delhi. It is the current awareness of and outrage over the police actions in Delhi which have also enabled the urban population across India to appreciate what it means to be targeted and exposed to vicious violence. 

Hopefully, such an attention on issues of policing, and also on repressive ways of managing dissent will bring into its ambit a discussion on the larger issue of routine police violence. But more importantly, it should place the police’s role in targeting minorities and those economically disadvantaged in the limelight. For all of us who have been insulated from the brutalities of police interactions, this will be a wake-up call.

The author is a Delhi-based writer and a student of social movements. He has been involved in various struggles of the marginalized people, including anti-caste, indigenous and the Palestinian struggle.

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When I read her appeal ​for a need to attend to​ context and historicity wh​ile framing the current crisis in Kashmir, I was for a moment pleased and lo​o​ked forward to an informed ​writeup that would bring in hitherto unexamined facets from Kashmir’s history and provide a comprehensive context to the current goings-on. However, I was met with only disappointment on this count. For​,​ Barkha does not reach back into some decades-​old (or even centuries old)​ history of Kashmir to situate the current state of affairs, but only as far back as 2016, during and after the death of Burhan Wani. Barkha informs us​ that even following that event, , there was a telecommunications blackout in the valley​ – ​for nearly a 100 days, according to her.

Strangely enough, what seems to irk Barkha in the inaccurate reporting she takes issue with​,​ is the fact that each report by foreign journalists (and a few left-leaning Indian journalists, she slips in) ​on the ​current affairs characterizes the Kashmir situation as “unprecedented.” That fills Barkha with horror – for she claims she knows that the current state in Kashmir is not unprecedented and therefore not something that a) we, the audience should ​not be taken in by and be appaled; rather we should see them as something that has precedent (and so assuage our outrage​), or 2) merits a doomsday like, alarmist coverage.

The context that she puts forward that would make for a more accurate reporting is not entirely an unfamiliar one – but a little unexpected from a so-called leading journalist, who also has long experience in Kashmir to boot. She adduces the specter of terrorists, who, she claims, view Kashmir as a religious issue and who also recruit children into their ranks and encourage them to pelt stones at the the Indian army and police. Then there is the Pakistani-sponsored cross-border terrorism that she adds to the context she finds missing.

The obvious problem here is the easy acceptance of categories like terrorist, separatist, militancy etc.  Barkha conveniently plays into the nationalist narrative, which is a little surprising again given that she is often taunted by the nationalists.

To provide proper context, as Barkha urges, one would need a much deeper engagement with Kashmir’s history of conflict, political manipulation, oppression, human rights abuses and resistance – and not just from the time of Burhan Wani. And that is what, Barkha ironically, fails to do.

Israel, and many Israeli citizens think of all Palestinians as terrorists and suicide bombers. Even though many Palestinians have distanced themselves from outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, yet they are all in for collective punishment. For many Indians, Bhagat Singh, Khudiram Bose, Madan Lal Dhingra et al were freedom fighters but for the British they were terrorists. Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years for conspiring to overthrow the state. Which is not to condone acts of terror and those considered inimical by states, but all activities, including those marked as “terror” have contexts. Besides, while the involvement of youth and children is to be righly protested, children as protestors form a significant part of the Palestinian resistance – and the Israeli specifically target children, incarcerating them in droves. And if one has to dig a little deeper, children were recruited into resistance groups in the fight against the Nazis during World War II by many of the Allies. Nothing makes it right, but it certainly is good to have context and historicity.

Barka seems to trust the official line from a government official in Kashmir who basically tells her that the current complete lockdown has been implemented incorporating lessons from the 2016 incidents following Burhan Wani’s death, and that they “…decided to protect lives, [even if] some liberties may have to be compromised.” Significanly, missing in her piece are Kashmiri voices of the people – and what they think about all the context and historicity she notes.

Significantly, it is not just Barkha who comments on the divergence in the two narratives between that of the local press and that of the foreign press. Krishna Prasad, former Editor-in-Chief, ‘Outlook’ magazine, writing in The Hindu, also comments on the same issue, but he is more concerned with the capitulation of the Indian media to state narrative: “In the ‘Brave New World’ of Kashmir, the Indian state has worked out the Huxleyan circuitry of how to make the media relay a unitary message without explicitly making it appear so. Therefore, a scarcity of dissent in spite of a plethora of evidence.”

​More than context and historicity, what Barkha herself misses ​is an understanding and all-round analysis of the current situation – how the  constitutional agreements (e.g. Article 370) was abrogated in secrecy without taking the people of Kashmir into confidence, how immediately after the abrogation the state imposed its totalitarian clampdown without bothering to provide any proper explanation to the people. If, as Barkha (believingly) quotes the state official, the action was done to save lives, and in effect for the “good of the people,” do they not deserve to be told this and have their doubts quelled? None of such steps were taken. The Kashmiris have been treated as “hostiles,” to use an Americanism and unworthy of being consulted with. At least there was a overt reason for the clampdown in 2016 – the visible unrest that was claiming lives. But what was the rationale in 2019 – even though none was publicly provided? Maybe nothing with Kashmir is unprecedented: they’ve probably seen it all. Yet, each event wherein the basic rights of Kashmiris are trampled upon without as much as a by your leave has to be reported taking into account all dimensions: of injustice, of hardship and suffering, of anger, of humiliation, of confusion – and certainly with as much context and historicity as possible. This would make for better reporting.

Ananda Maitreya is a Delhi-based writer and a student of social movements. He has been involved in various struggles of the marginalized people, including Dalit and Adivasi movements and the Palestinian struggle.

Courtesy: Counter Current

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Some say the Indian public, the media and India’s opposition were caught by surprise. Which is hard to believe, given the broad and sinister way in which the government had gone about its actions. Maybe it was just Kashmir-fatigue, given that the conflict in the Indian Kashmir region has gone on for so long. Anyway, we don’t know for sure. But one thing for sure – caught by surprise or not on Aug 5, for most Indians outside of Kashmir, this did not seem like a “stop press” moment, a moment to record a stupendous injustice carried out in broad daylight, as it were; a moment when the skies darkened, the earth shook and people ran out into the streets…

We slowly started getting some opinion pieces in newspapers the next day onwards and the capital city of New Delhi saw two or three people’s protest marches over the next few days (one of them led by the left parties). But other than that, it seemed to be business as usual. Considering the enormity of what had been brought into effect in Kashmir – two legal instruments snuffed out and the entire valley put under ruthless lockdown – the rest of India seemed to just shrug its shoulders and move on. And we are not even talking about those celebrating the move. A few other cities in India too witnessed some protest marches, but by and large a visible public mobilization against what had just happened was missing.

In the backdrop of the massive demonstrations recently in tiny, David-like Hong Kong against the Goliath-like China, India saw hardly any organized and sustained effort to make known its utter revulsion for the actions in Kashmir. In terms of protests and mobilizations, another recent remarkable counterpoint was the mammoth response by Ravidasia and other Dalit groups to protest the demolition of the Ravidas temple in Tughlaqabad, Delhi. While thousands upon thousands of protestors against the temple demolition poured into Delhi from neighboring states, many making journeys of several hours in buses and trains, the issue of Kashmir saw almost no swell of support of that nature even as the days passed by and news of “all is not well” in Kashmir kept trickling in; almost no boots on the ground in the rest of India – except, ironically, in Kashmir!

It is true that comparisons are odious – and flawed – and may obscure more than they reveal. The Hong Kong demonstrations were backed by a populace which has largely been proud of its independance from China, however symbolic that has increasingly been. So the protests were the expression of a popular sentiment which has existed in the public for a while now. One can also consider the recent protest by the Sudanese people against the dictatorial regime of Omar al-Bashir which were a result of long years of suffering by the Sudanese people. And other examples abound: fresh in our memory are examples of recent loss of influence of Ahmet Erdogan in Istanbul, the resistance to confederate monuments in the United States, the tumult against long-standing, repressive governments as represented by the Arab Spring, including the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, the anti-austerity protests in southern Europe and even the occasional and dramatic acts of resistance in Russia. All of the above examples are from regions where the repression has been severe, reprisals against dissent often swift and deadly, where the people had always been cowed down by the might of powerful regimes, and individual and/or organizational resistors were dealt with severely. Yet, long-closed lids burst, limits of patience were breached, long-silenced voices spoke up again – and eventually people-power exhibited itself in one way or another to at least pose a challenge to an environment of crushing injustice – if not overthrowing the old order completely. In all the cases above it seems that an undercurrent of popular feelings and opinion coalesced in the form of popular resistance that took to the streets in acts of physical defiance and often brought about what might have seemed well-nigh impossible earlier.

In India, the incumbent government won a second term with an even greater margin that it had five years ago. So while there has always been a somewhat slender opposition to the governing ideology of the BJP, it has further being marginalized after these elections, which only served to strengthen the hold of the BJP over the minds and imaginations of the Indian populace. So one could say that there does not exist any pervasive and countrywide negative and resentful popular sentiment against the ruling party – one that would rise up in a show of protest and outrage over any of the government’s actions. As Nivedita Menon puts it[1], “Any student of mass movements anywhere in the world knows that mass movements of this scale [that is, say on a national scale, as enumerated earlier] only arise around issues where the largest sections of the people feel affected by it.”

This, in fact, is a phase of the consolidation of BJP’s popularity and support – and it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more BJP acts on its electoral promises, the greater is its following, as evidenced by the steep increase in its membership.

However, it is important to keep in mind that BJP itself received about 38% of the votes cast and the larger coalition it is part of, the NDA, received about 45% – which means that about 62%/55% of the votes went for not-BJP/not-NDA. Now there is no telling if a “not-BJP/not-NDA” vote is necessarily a vote that was cast in some sort of fundamental opposition to the policies and beliefs of the BJP or the NDA – just as all the votes cast in favor of the BJP and NDA do not mean utter fealty to the party line. But one can say in all fairness that more than half the population did not find a compelling reason to vote for the BJP or the NDA. Which is saying a lot and indicates a sizeable proportion of the population not sold on the vision that the BJP projects.

It is also important to remember that it is not as though large mobilizations and protests have not happened in the recent past in India, even under the BJP regime. Apart from the recent Ravidasia response to the demolition of the Ravidas temple in Delhi, the country also witnessed all-India strikes by trade unions, marches and sit-ins by farmers and a pan-Indian bandh by Dalit groups (against the SC/ST act). In 2016, Bengaluru saw what seemed like a sudden flash-strike by thousands of garment workers, mostly female. Besides, very significantly, mass-based movements have resisted seemingly well-funded corporations (often government backed), like the resistance to the mining project in Niyamgiri Orissa, and blocked the POSCO steel mill, again in Orissa. There are so many more examples.

In fact, given the dissatisfaction with a wide-variety of issues initiated by the present government, most notably the demonetisation program and a new regime of taxes, it was expected in the run-up to the 2019 elections that that displeasure would be manifested against the BJP. For some strange reason that did not come to pass…

What one can see from the instances of mobilizations and demonstrations which have managed to have significant support is that they have been specific-issue-based movements and demonstrations. There have been few cross-cutting issues that have drawn in the support of a wide-variety of groups. Nivedita Menon, from the same article quoted above, mentions several movements, like Singur and Nandigram, Kudankulam, India Against Corruption and the effort to scrap a SEZ in Goa, where different constituencies – from faith-based organizations to labour groups – came together to lend support to the cause. But, as she notes about such alliances, “They came together, they went their separate ways once their campaign succeeded.”

What is happening in Kashmir represents a confluence of many issues that are all entangled and bearing down on that piece of territory. Some news reports have laid the blame squarely and exclusively on the gates of BJP and the Sangh Parivar’s Hindutva ideals. That certainly seems to be preponderantly true. The religious nationalism that the Parivar holds dear and espouses, the idea of a certain geographically defined “Bharat Mata” plays a crucial role of underscoring the verity of the nation. Tied to this is the idea of “Akhand Bharat,” that of an essentially single underlying Hindu identity and roots of a landmass that stretches from Burma to Afghanistan – including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Tibet – that the RSS identifies as a “Rashtra” based on some loose and highly problematic reading of history. Now that the BJP also has made statements about “retaking” the part of Kashmir administered by Pakistan, it seems as if the step in Kashmir is towards consolidating the idea of a geographically uniform India.

Kashmir featured frequently in V.D. Savarkar’s seminal text, Hindutva, in three ways. It predictably marked the northernmost reaches of the “land of the Hindus” to denote the unity of the Hindus from north to south (and east to west), as frequent references to “From Kashmir to Rameshwar,” and “From Ceylon to Kashmir,” in the text indicate. Then, finding mention twice is the oppression of the “Brahmins of Kashmir”: “Tegbahadur, the Great Guru, who not only championed the cause of this war of Hindu liberation in Punjab but laid down his life for it, is reported to have advised the Brahmans of Kashmir, who oppressed and threatened with ‘Islam or death’ solicited his help…”

The third way in which Kashmir figures is Savarkar’s classic tex is by way of specific reference to the “Mohammedans of Kashmir” as people who cannot be counted as Hindus: “Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and other parts of India as well as the Christians in South India observe our caste rules…yet, it is clear that though their original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually understood, because, we Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization—our Hindu culture…”

So, it is undeniable that the wellsprings of this desire to “re-integrate” Kashmir as part of the land of the Hindus, settle some historical scores (oppression of Kashmiri Brahmins by Islamic invaders etc) and finally gain a measure of upper hand over the the Kashmiri Mohammedans who are outside the pale and hope of ever owning up to their “innate Hinduness.” On the one hand, we then have the juggernaut of the Hindutva project seizing control of Kashmir to exact a sort of just desserts, on the other hand there is also the issue of the political impulsions of this project that rationalise and sanitize – why, even elevate – the adopting of totalitarian ways to achieve an objective. There is arrogance that comes with power and there is a self-righteousness. Even the most dubious ends keep justifying the crudest of means. It is these portentous methods that are increasingly worrying, where the headiness of a second term gained from a resounding majority seems to increasingly justify any and all excesses.

To counter the state of affairs, as epitomized by the actions in Kashmir and also reflected in a host of other instances of majoritarian excess carried out with utter impunity, what is needed is a resistance that is strong and deep in its ranks. The resistance has to be across siloed progressive groups else the pervasiveness and sheer numbers needed to resist effectively this massive onslaught will not be achieved. What with the continual attacks on those who have been speaking up against rights abuses, the tinkering with rights-based acts and legislation like RTI and UAPA, and the continued ineffectiveness of Indian civil society organizations like the PUCL etc, there is a need for a joining of forces as far reaching as possible. Student groups and labour unions have been conspicuously absent in their mobilizations against rights violations (I guess they have their own issues to attend to). But merely depending on petitions and statements will not do – nor will any amount of outrage and bravado on social media solve anything. Any strategy has to be a combination of on-ground efforts and outreach followed by mass action and also astute interventions in the cacophonous battlefield of ideas, memes and bytes. There has to be popular resistance and all those who oppose such right-wing, divisive ideologies, all those who call themselves progressive and harbor ideas of social justice and equity have to create a stir so loud and powerful that it announces loud and clear that it is not business as usual, that all is not well in Kashmir, that no justification for oppressing an already suffering people is ever acceptable.

Reference:

[1] https://indiaresists.com/new-social-movements-new-perspectives-nivedita-menon/

Ananda Maitreya is a Delhi-based writer and a student of social movements. He has been involved in various struggles of the marginalized people, including Dalit and Adivasi movements and the Palestinian struggle.

First published on https://countercurrents.org/
 

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