Polis Project Conversation Series

In this podcast, Francesca Recchia sits down with Helidah Ogude Chambert to discuss the racism and xenophobia inherent in the United Kingdom's immigration policies, where it stems from and which communities are particularly vulnerable to it and why.

Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Elizabeth Baer about her book "The Genocidal Gaze." The first genocide of the twentieth century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904–1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated hundreds of Herero and Nama people and subjected the surviving indigenous men, women, and children to forced labor. The perception of Africans as subhuman—lacking any kind of civilization, history, or meaningful religion—and the resulting justification for the violence against them is what author Elizabeth R. Baer refers to as the “genocidal gaze,” an attitude that was later perpetuated by the Nazis. In The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich, Baer uses the metaphor of the gaze to trace linkages between the genocide of the Herero and Nama and that of the victims of the Holocaust. Significantly, Baer also considers the African gaze of resistance returned by the indigenous people and their leaders upon the German imperialists.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Darren Byler about his book Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state's enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

Twenty years after the Gujarat pogrom, Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Zahir Janmohamed about the moment, his experience on the ground and his work since. The conversation delves into the deep seated anti-Muslim sentiment in India and looks for ways to heal. The conversation was originally held as a Twitter Space session.

In this conversation, Urvi Khaitan sits down with Mytheli Sreenivas to discuss her book, "Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India'. The book explores colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic.

In this conversation, Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Arvind Narrain about his book India's Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance. They touch upon the provisions in the constitution that have been interpreted to shove India into an unofficial emergency situation, reflect on how this compares to India's emergency of the 1970s and imagine what the way forward can look like.

In this conversation with Francesca Recchia, Pakistani activist Ahmad Waqas Goraya speaks about the repercussions facing those who dare to criticize the military establishment in Pakistan, his own personal encounter with the institution and the subsequent experience of torture and exile.

Francesca Recchia speaks to Ashley Jackson about her book Negotiating Survival: Civilian–Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan. Based on over 400 interviews with Taliban and civilians, this book tells the story of how civilians have not only bargained with the Taliban for their survival, but also ultimately influenced the course of the war in Afghanistan. While the Taliban have the power of violence on their side, they nonetheless need civilians to comply with their authority. Both strategically and by necessity, civilians have leveraged this reliance on their obedience in order to influence Taliban behaviour. Challenging prevailing beliefs about civilians in wartime, Negotiating Survival presents a new model for understanding how civilian agency can shape the conduct of insurgencies.

Suchitra Vijayan sits down with author Jessica Namakkal to discuss her book "Unsettling Utopia". The book presents a new account of the history of twentieth-century French India to show how colonial projects persisted beyond formal decolonization. Through the experience of the French territories, Namakkal recasts the relationships among colonization, settlement, postcolonial sovereignty, utopianism, and liberation, considering questions of borders, exile, violence, and citizenship from the margins. She demonstrates how state-sponsored decolonization—the bureaucratic process of transferring governance from an imperial state to a postcolonial state—rarely aligned with local desires.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Prasanna S. about data privacy in India, the state's use of the Pegasus spyware to surveil voices of dissent and what it means for civil rights in the country. The discussion was originally held on Twitter Spaces.

Francesca Recchia speaks to Adrian Levy, co-author of The Forever Prisoner: The Full and Searing Account of the CIA's Most Controversial Covert Program. Based on four years of intensive reporting, on interviews with key protagonists who speak candidly for the first time, and on thousands of previously classified documents, The Forever Prisoner is a powerful chronicle of a shocking experiment that remains in the headlines twenty years after its inception, even as US government officials continue to thwart efforts to expose war crimes.

In this podcast, Francesca Recchia speaks to Hassan Javid about the decision to introduce electronic voting machines in Pakistan for the general elections to be held in 2023. Javid explores the circumstances under which the legislation was passed, the viability of the plan and its impact on electoral transparency given the history of military interference in Pakistan's democracy.

In this podcast, Francesca Recchia sits down with Abbas Nasir to discuss the rapidly deteriorating press freedoms in Pakistan. They discuss the Pakistan military's intervention into the news media industry, news outlets that provide regular platform to state propaganda and the hope for the future. Abbas Nasir is a former editor of Pakistan's English language newspaper Dawn and the former executive editor at BBC Asia Pacific Region, BBC World Service. He tweets at @abbasnasir59.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan sits down with Dinesh Narayanan to discuss the formation of the RSS, its links with the BJP, its role in violence and the distortion of history to create role models out of RSS figures like V.D Savarkar.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan sits down with Abhishek Saha to discuss the xenophobic rhetoric around issues of migration and citizenship. What does belonging to a land look like? How is the way we imagine citizenship inherently violent? And how do state negligence and ill-intent come together to deny someone their right of existence in their homes? Saha explores all these questions and more.

In this episode, Francesca Recchia is in conversation with Reem Khurshid, a political cartoonist and illustrator based in Karachi. Reem Khurshid recently collaborated with Justice Project Pakistan to illustrate their latest project "Who is the murderer?" The project is an interactive fictional story surrounding the mystery of a murder, a subsequent arrest, a confession and a death sentence, inspired by real events. Justice Project Pakistan is a non-profit organization based in Lahore that represents the most vulnerable Pakistani prisoners facing the harshest punishments, at home and abroad. JPP investigates, advocates, educates and litigates, building public and political support as well as legal precedents that will lead to systemic reform of the criminal justice system in Pakistan. The organization's work combines strategic litigation, fierce domestic and international public and policy advocacy campaigns and building the capacity of stakeholders who can improve the representation and treatment of individuals at risk of execution. A bill criminalizing torture in Pakistan, submitted by Senator Sherry Rehman and supported by the Federal Minister for Human Rights, Dr. Shireen Mazari, was unanimously approved by the Senate on 12 July 2021. If passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan, the bill could, for the very first time, outlaw torture in the country. Reem Khurshid is a journalist, illustrator and editorial cartoonist from Karachi, Pakistan. She tweets at @ReemKhurshid.

In this episode, Francesca Recchia is in conversation with Mohammad Hanif, a fiction writer and journalist based in Karachi. Mohammad Hanif, an acclaimed name in South Asian literary circles, often uses fiction to reflect upon realities oft forgotten in the privileged mainstream. In this conversation, Hanif delves into reasons that motivate him to create fictional worlds, the lens through which he views society and how fictions written by those in power end up defining the realities of the vulnerable.

In this episode, Francesca Recchia is in conversation with Fatima Zaidi, a journalist, activist and member of the Karachi Bachao Tehreek. Karachi Bachao Tehreek is a grassroots coalition of lawyers and activists who are concerned about the sustainability of the development projects in the city. They work in collaboration with community leaders in the working class localities that bear the brunt of this so-called development. In this conversation, Zaidi details the timeline of urban violence and disenfranchisement taking place in the city, how the resistance movement came about and what are their demands. Even as the State enacts explorative capitalist policies, Zaidi expresses hope in the future of a people's movement.

In this episode, Francesca Recchia is in conversation with Arif Hasan, an architect, urban historian and activist from Karachi. Looking at the recent anti-encroachment drives that have targeted vulnerable communities the city, Hasan details how Karachi changed from a bustling multi-ethnic city after Independence to one blatantly favoring upper classes. He analyzes the impact of neoliberalism and private capital in determining an urban development based on project rather than plans as well as global interests that contribute to shaping the city. Hasan unpacks the intricate nexus of collaborations and complicities between government officials, private developers, politicians, the judiciary and the Military that is the main force behind current land policies. As the Police and the State respond to the protests and mobilizations against these policies with increasing violence, Hasan sees hope in nurturing spaces to meet, build coalitions and fighting back.

In this episode, Francesca Recchia is in conversation with Sandi Hilal on her project “The Living Room.” Reflecting on her experiences with refugees in Boden, North Sweden, Dr Hilal speaks of the passivity and agency of refugee lives and cultures as they navigate the manifestly European distinctions of the public and private space. How do refugees see themselves as political subjects who are in the position to demand and transform the societies they have become a part of? What stake do they have in these conversations? How does art open new and radical forms of transformative collectivity that focus on the multiplicity of cultures that refugees have? For Hilal, hosting and the extension of hospitality to strangers create a self-representational space where refugees can practice and shape their own agency. Sandi Hilal is an architect, artist and educator, whose practice is both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. She is the Co-Director of DAAR, Decolonizing Architecture Art Research, an architectural and art collective that she co-founded in 2007 with Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman, in Beit Sahour, Palestine. She is now Lise Meitner Visiting Professor at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment in Lund University.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan is in conversation with Dr. Deana Heath about her book Colonial Terror. Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Dr. Deana Heath is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool. She writes and teaches about South Asian, imperial and colonial and global histories and their post-colonial legacies.

This is the final conversation of this four-part series. Photographer and educator Rishi Singhal reflects on teaching photography and visual practice to a new generation of artists and practitioners who are committed to producing and creating socially relevant bodies of work. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative Commons License)

This is the third conversation of a four part series. Photographer and filmmaker Laura Saunders discusses her work on the US / Mexico Borderlands, by interrogating the multifaceted histories of migration; and the colonial violence of the border as a site that produces narratives of criminality. Laura is documenting the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, an expansive fracking project that began in 2015. She has rooted this work in looking at "community resistance from the edges of Appalachia, where environmental and economical extraction has become commonplace." Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative commons license)

This is the second conversation of a four-part series. Sinthujan Varatharajah is a political geographer, essayist, and researcher based in Berlin. Their work focuses on geographies of displacement and statelessness. In this conversation, they discuss the relationship between spatial politics, geographies of power, and statelessness. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative commons license)

This is the first conversation of a four part series. Bombay-based photographer and author of The Red Cat and Other Stories Ritesh Uttamchandani and Suchitra Vijayan discuss her book Midnight’s Borders, as a continuation of their decade-long conversation about history, memory, and photography. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative Commons License)

Last year, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing had filed a lawsuit against Cisco on the grounds that a Dalit employee had been severely discriminated against by his ‘upper’ caste supervisors. While the US does not specifically have laws against caste discrimination, the California government used sections of the historic Civil Rights Act, which emerged out of the African American struggle against segregation. This case has brought widespread attention to the issue of caste and Indian American identity in the United States. What makes this lawsuit historic is that it seeks the recognition of caste-based discrimination under the American law. It is this demand—its implications and the historical context under which it has emerged—that is the focus of this epsidoe. Joining us today are John Rushing and Karthikeyan Shanmugam. John Rushing is part of the legal team which filed the amicus brief on behalf of Ambedkar International Center in this case. He began his career as a litigator at Sidley Austin LLP. ​​​​​​​ S Karthikeyan is an IT engineer, living in the silicon valley. He is one of the founding members of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, USA.

In this conversation, The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan discusses Prof. Craig Jones's recent book The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare. Over the last 20 years, the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations and spaces that generals and commanders had exclusively inhabited. These professionals, trained and hired to give legal advice on an array of military operations, have become war lawyers. The book War Lawyers examines the laws of war as applied by military lawyers to aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israel military in Gaza. Drawing on interviews with military lawyers and others, this book explains why some lawyers became integrated into the command chain. Dr. Craig Jones is a Lecturer in Political Geography in the School of Geography, Sociology, and Politics at Newcastle University. He researches the geographies of later modern warfare and is especially interested in the legal and medical materialities of war and conflict in the contemporary Middle East. He blogs at www.thewarspace.com and tweets at @thewarspace.

In 1964, Malcolm X wrote, “There is no system more corrupt than a system that represents itself as the example of freedom, the example of democracy, and can go all over this earth telling other people how to straighten out their house when you have citizens of this country who have to use bullets if they want to cast ballots.” Fifty-seven years later, these words remain true. - Guantanamo is still open; the American drone program continues to flourish, anti-black and anti-Muslim bigotry and violence remain endemic. Today we talk about the foundations of the American empire, imperialism, and its relationship to American violence. We use the recent Biden inauguration as a lens to talk about three issues— failure of political language, white supremacy as a tool of political conquest and control, and limit of representative politics. Joining us today to discuss his essay “Reflections on an imploding empire,” which appeared in the journal Africa is a country is Professor Russell Rickford, Prof Rickford is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He specializes in African-American political culture after World War II, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination, and is currently working on a book about Guyana and African American radical politics in the 1970s.” Read the essay here: https://africasacountry.com/2021/01/reflections-on-an-imploding-empire Our last episode here: https://soundcloud.com/user-256643655/politics-podcast-ep-7-conversation-with-kshama-sawant?in=user-256643655/sets/politics-podcat

Since September, thousands of farmers have been protesting the new laws that aim to deregulate Indian agriculture. They have clearly stated that these neo-liberal laws will dismantle safeguards, create greater instability, severely affect their livelihoods, and put the country's food security at risk. While simultaneously creating an opportunity for large private corporations to enter and exploit the agriculture sector. Organized by more than 31 trade unions, the protest has drawn support from nearly all Punjabi society segments. These peaceful protests have been met with tear gas, water cannons, and violence by the Indian Police. Yet, the protests continue to grow and have now spread to other Indian cities. The Indian diaspora and their allies have also taken to the street to support the farmer's protests. They are building a powerful solidarity movement globally to fight against the emergence of Hindutva, its politics, and violence. In the united states, Council Member Kshama Sawant is seen as an important ally in this fight. This month She introduced the Seattle city council resolution in solidarity with farmers' protests in India. In February this year, she also introduced the resolution that urged India to uphold the Constitution by repealing the citizenship laws and to stop the National Register of Citizens. Joining us today to discuss the recent resolution in support of the farmer's protest, why she introduced it, and understand the significance and effectiveness of these resolutions is Council Member Kshama Sawant. Sawant is an American politician and economist who has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014. A former software engineer, Sawant became an economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States from her native India. She was the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the school board in 1916. Listen to our last episode here: https://soundcloud.com/user-256643655/politics-podcast-ep-6

Madhuri Sastry, freelance writer and the Marketing Director at Guernica magazine, hosts The Polis Project’s roundtable discussion “Leaders they want; leaders of nobody". Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is the first Black woman, and the first person of Indian descent to occupy this lofty position. While it is a moment of pride for Black and Brown communities, in this roundtable we will reflect on the Biden-Harris presidency through a progressive lens. We will focus elite capture of conversations around “diversity”, “representation” and “inclusion”, Islamophobia, War on Terror and American imperialism, and Harris’ Tamil identity and her duty towards asylum seekers and immigrants. What can we expect from these newly elected representatives? How can we ensure that the demands of our communities are not narrowed or erased? The podcast is available in video and audio formats. You can listen to our last episode here: https://soundcloud.com/user-256643655/politics-podcast-ep-5

For each episode of 5 Objects, we ask a guest to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performance, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices of objects have ranged from books by Edward Said, Steve Biko, and Assata Shakur, music from Notorious BIG, art by Ermias Ekube, the radio, and becoming a refugee after the Somali war. The choices then become the basis of a free-flowing conversation that discusses our guest’s life, their personal, political, and intellectual journeys and histories. For this episode, Suchitra Vijayan talks to Dr. Anand Pandian, a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Here are his five objects: 1. The Burma Evacuee Identity Certificate that my grandfather was given when he returned to India as a refugee from Burma during the Second World War 2. The Left Hand of Darknessby Ursula K. Le Guin 3. The voice of Karupayi Amma, a landless laborer I worked with closely during my dissertation research in the Cumbum Valley of south India 4. Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations 5. An orange plastic toy paratrooper I found on a rocky shoreline in northern Chile during a weeklong expedition to study ocean plastic debris in 2017

In 2015 columnist Katie Hopkins published a piece in the British tabloid sun calling African migrants “cockroaches.” Ms. Hopkins is not alone. Speaking at election rallies in 2018, Amit Shah, India's Minister of Home Affairs, called Bangladeshi migrants “termites.” Shah’s spiteful rhetoric echoes authoritarian leaders, genocidaires, and war criminals who not only orchestrated mass violence but destroyed nations through dangerous speech for petty political ends. Dangerous speech and ideology that catalyze mass violence are strikingly similar across the world and through time. There is evidence that hate in the media leads to real-life violence. Researchers across the world have proved over and over again that hate in media leads to anti-migrant and anti-minority hate crimes. In response, social media campaigns like Stop Funding Hate have been launched to stop companies from advertising in and providing funds for certain newspapers and media platforms that use "fear and division to sell more papers." Today, joining us to discuss online hate and how making funding hate unprofitable are Richard Wilson and Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie. Richard Wilson is a writer, human rights activist, and co-founder of Stop Funding Hate. In August 2016, the campaign sought to make hate unprofitable and promote the idea of 'ethical advertising' by persuading companies to pull advertising from media that incite hatred against minority groups. Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie is an Assistant Professor and the Executive director of Foundation London Story, where her work revolves around Hate Speech and Hate crime. She looks at how the hateful narrative contributes towards dehumanizing minority and vulnerable groups. Her campaigns and research were instrumental in getting OpIndia - a right-wing web-based tabloid (comparable to Breitbart) defunded from Google AdSense. The podcast is available in video and audio formats. You can listen to our last episode here:https://thepolisproject.com/politics-podcast-ep-4/

In this podcast, Francesca Rechhia talks to Prof. Nosheen Ali, a Pakistani sociologist, author, and activist about the state of education in Gilgit-Baltistan, the threats to activism, and the influence of the military. Ali is a part of the Global Faculty in Residence at New York University's Gallatin School of Indivualized Studies. She works and writes across a wide range of themes, including feminist theories of the state, seed justice, and Muslim cultural politics. Nosheen Ali is the author of Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier(Cambridge University Press, 2019), a book that explores state-making and social change in Gilgit-Baltistan, a Shia-majority region of Sunni-dominated Pakistan and a contested border area that forms part of disputed Kashmir.

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. This week, we speak to Nidhi Prakash, a reporter for BuzzFeed News based in Washington, DC, and Mythili Sampathkumar, a freelance journalist and reporter based in  New York. The Trump presidency has put American democracy in peril. Trump has already Declined To Promise a Peaceful Transfer Of Power After Elections. And The Senate confirmed Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday, just days before Election, solidifying the conservative majority on the court. How has the Media fared as the American democracy faces a series of institutional, political, economic, and public health crises, along with a rise of white supremacy, xenophobia, and rising economic inequality? Today, we will be discussing the presidential election reporting, fake news, and the stories that never got reported. The podcast is available in video and audio formats. You can listen to our last episode with Azad Essa and Samia Assed here: https://thepolisproject.com/who-gets-to-speak-for-american-muslims-a-conversation-with-azad-essa-and-samia-assed/#.X5l0R4hKg2w

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. This week we speak to Samia Assed, an activist from New Mexico and a Democratic Party delegate, and Azad Essa, New York-based reported for Middle East Eye. Earlier this month, Middle East Eye's New York-based reporter Azad Essa published a scathing report on Emgage, a prominent US-based Advocacy organization that claims to advocate for American Muslims. It argues that "Emgage's rise to prominence in the 2020 US election is not a story of a group that advocates for Muslim communities, but rather of one that has served to mute their voices". The report raises some important and difficult questions. Who gets to speak and advocate for American Muslims? In the name of having a seat at the table, do issues that matter to Muslim Americans get delegitimized by those who claim to speak on their behalf? More importantly, how these actions affect the fight against Zionist ideologies and how they have failed to acknowledge and counter the rise of right-wing Hindutva forces and their role in American elections. You can find Essa's report here: https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/joe-biden-emgage-muslim-america-us-elections The podcast is available in video and audio formats. You can listen to our last episode with Anoa Changa here: https://thepolisproject.com/we-have-a-system-that-benefits-itself-a-conversation-with-anoa-changa/#.X49XRNBKg2w

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. The podcast is available in video and audio formats. This week we speak to Anoa J. Changa is a staff reporter leading Prism's(https://www.prismreports.org/anoa-changa) coverage of electoral justice and voting rights. Anoa is a grassroots digital organizer, and strategic advisor to several organizations. She came to Prism from the New Georgia Project, a non-partisan effort to register and civically engage Georgian voters, where she was the director of digital strategy and storytelling. Prior to that, she held the position of cities electoral manager for Democracy for America. Anoa is a movement journalist and the host of the podcast “The Way with Anoa” tackling politics and current events through a Black progressive feminist perspective. Anoa has bylines in The Independent, The Nation, Dame Magazine, Huffington Post, and Rewire. She is a speaker, trainer, and presenter in progressive spaces. This week we discuss the first Presidential debate and the specter of white nationalism; how the mainstream new room responded to black journalists covering black lives matter protest; the question of representation and accountability and what stories get told and what dont. Finally, how do we think about organizing for long-term security, not just an immediate crisis, and the ways forward in the coming weeks and months? You can listen to our first episode with Anjali Enjeti here: https://soundcloud.com/user-256643655/politicspodcast-episode1

Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Prof. Romila Thapar about her new book "Voices of Dissent" and the history of dissent in India.

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. The podcast is available in video and audio formats. We launch the first episode with award-winning journalist and activist based near Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti. She writes about voting rights, politics, immigration, culture, and is the co-founder of They See Blue Georgia, a group of South Asian Democrats, fighting to flip Georgia blue. In this episode, Enjeti argues that the fight for rights continues beyond the voting day, and how South Asians must fight white supremacy and simultaneously mount a challenge against Hindutva in the United States. She also lays out practical strategies and how to prepare for the 2020 election day. By Suchitra Vijayan 30 September 2020

In this conversation, The Polis Project's Suchitra Vijayan and Vasundhara Sirnate, discuss Prof. Ravinder Kaur's new book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India.  Prof Kaur walks us through the transformation of the Indian nation-state into a neoliberal business enterprise and theorizes the process of branding the nation-state through a rich visual archive of posters and advertising material. She articulates how those early years of 'India rising' rhetoric and aggressive push for globalization is largely responsible for the emergence of authoritarian populism under Modi. We explore the unintended political consequences of the corporatization of the state, what this means for the future.

Earlier this year, Citizens Against Hate (CAH), a Delhi based collective, published “Everyone has been Silenced”: a comprehensive report on UP violence and its aftermath. In this episode of The Polis Project Conversation Series, Suchitra Vijayan discusses the report and places the violence in the context of institutional bias against the Muslim community with Dr.Sajjad Hassan, who leads the Citizens Against Hate.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before that, he completed BAs in Philosophy and Political Science at Indiana University. His theoretical work draws liberally from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, histories of activism and activist thinkers, and the Black radical tradition. He is currently writing a book entitled Reconsidering Reparations that considers a novel philosophical argument for reparations and explores links with environmental justice. He also is committed to public engagement and is publishing articles in popular outlets with general readership (e.g. Slate, Pacific Standard) exploring intersections between climate justice and colonialism. For this episode he picked 1. Illmatic 2. Black Marxism 3. Amílcar Cabral 4. Combahee River Collective Statement 5. Ender's Game

“Consistent resistance” and the peaceful struggle for equality of the Pashtun Tahafuz-Movement by The Polis Project

On dissent, building transversal solidarity and nurturing the will of the people: A conversation with Ammar Ali Jan

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the "The Emergency" on 25 June 1975. It lasted for 21 month period from 1975 to 1977. This period is often referred to as the dark period and an aberration in India’s recent history. What if the emergency was not an aberration, instead it was an event that grew out of existing political traditions, historical legacies that can still be felt in the present. Joining us to discuss his book Emergency Chronicles on the eve of the 45th year of the Emergency is Prof. Gyan Prakash, historian of modern India and the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University.

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 constantly told over and over again. We’re all living through a remarkable moment, especially for many of us in South Asia, particularly in India. As we at The Polis Project try to make sense of what is happening today, we decided that we would use the 45th anniversary of the Emergency to take a strong look at the past and the present. We reached out to historians and journalists who covered the Emergency to think about the past. But, when it came to the present, we really wanted to reach out to the writers and the poets on what they thought of the state of the republic. The conversation you will now hear is an exchange between Suchitra Vijayan and a writer, Annie Zaidi. It’s a conversation about small mercies and many tyrannies. But, it’s also a conversation about how we think, act, and react in an age where the very act of thinking could become an act of treason.

Francesca Recchia in conversation with Francesca Mannocchi. Francesca Mannocchi is a freelance journalist who covers migration and conflicts and contributes to numerous Italian and international newspapers (L'Espresso, Stern, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, The Observer). She has produced reports in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey. She received the Premiolino award for journalism in 2016. She won the Giustolisi Prize with the Mission Impossible (LA7) investigation on migrant smuggling and Libyan prisons. In 2018 her documentary directed with the photographer Alessio Romenzi was presented at the 75th edition of the Venice International Film Festival. She is the author of Io Khaled vendo uomini e sono innocente (2019, Einaudi).

On 12 December 2019, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 - rightly referred to as India’s Nuremberg Law - was passed, leading to widespread protests across the country. Millions of Indian citizens are protesting against this fundamentally discriminatory law and many, including students, have been met with severe repression and criminalization at the hands of the Police, particularly in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP).  The brutality of State violence is most visible in the abuse of 41 minors, who have been detained and subjected to custodial torture, criminalization and post custodial coercion in UP. The report Brutalizing Innocence jointly produced by Quill Foundation, Citizens Against Hate and HAQ: Centre for Child Rights documents the police action against minors, the methods and patterns of violence inflicted, the various violations of national and international laws and the inaction of human rights institutions. Based on fact finding missions conducted across various districts in UP between 10 and 24 January, along with verified media accounts, this report records the testimonies of minor victims, witnesses, police officials and photographic evidence of the abuses as well as cases police FIR.  Joining us today to speak about the patterns of State violence, the nature of abuse suffered by the minors, the importance of documenting this evidence and holding the institutions and the State accountable are Bharti Ali and Nidhi Suresh, who were part of the team that put this report together. Bharti Ali is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights with nearly 28 years of work in the development sector, focusing on gender and child rights issues. Nidhi Suresh is a programme officer at Quill Foundation, a human rights research and advocacy organization in New Delhi. She also works as a freelance journalist, covering stories on human rights. She is a recent graduate from Utrecht University, Netherlands, with a Masters in Conflict Studies and Human Rights. Previously, for a year, she worked as a reporter in Kashmir based out of Srinagar.

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 peoples protest is now blooming across India.  Along with protests come poetry and art.  These protests are being chronicled by a new generation of artists. Joining us today are the USA-based artist Mayukh Goswami and writer and poet Meher Manda who started their “webcomic of dissent” that they call “Jamun Ka Ped”  Jamun Ka Ped', written in the 1960s, is a satire on bureaucratic red tape by Krishna Chander told through the story of a well-known poet who gets trapped under a Jamun tree in the lawns of a secretariat building after a thunderstorm.

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 fundamentally, and violently, imbricated with the project of Indian, and particularly Hindu, nationalism. The assault on public university students is part of the battle over categories such as nation, borders, autonomy, and more recently citizenship. In addition to incursions on institutions of knowledge and their patrons – which range from physical violence to efforts to delegitimise opposing views by constructing them as ‘anti-national’ – Hindutva organisations such as the RSS, as well as its networks and adherents in Western academic contexts, also aim to promote intellectual work and academic knowledge that aligns with their political ideology. This panel will discuss the role played by pedagogy and knowledge production in the Hindu nationalist project, as well as the forms of learning, knowledge, and organising that are seen as threats to it, and then met with violence. In doing so, it will place the recent and widely discussed attacks on Indian university students within the long history of India’s military occupations, and everyday violence against minorities in India, and against the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Speakers: • Mehroosh Tak, Kashmir Solidarity Movement • Akanksha Mehta, Goldsmiths, University of London • Meena Dhanda, University of Wolverhampton • Rahul Rao, SOAS, University of London Chair: Akshi Singh, Queen Mary, University of London

Prof Nilsen discusses the attacks on students and faculty at JNU in relation to the ongoing conflict and its significance to the protests that have been ongoing across India since the middle of December, against the introduction of citizenship laws that are widely – and correctly – perceived to be both anti-Muslim and a threat to the secular fabric of the Indian Constitution. The talk was organized by the Asia Network at the University of Oslo, in their "Focus" speaker-series. It was hosted by the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo.

Yesterday, 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 no right to quote Maulana Azad, and that he should quote Nathuram Godse instead. Professor Habib's intervention reflects the courageous dedication to truth and justice that has informed his scholarship since his pathbreaking work on the agrarian system of Mughal India first appeared in the early 1960s. His decision to stand up to power at the Indian History Congress is model behaviour for all public intellectuals at this perilous moment in the life of the Indian republic. In recognition of this, we are pleased to share this recording of a talk given by Irfan Habib at a seminar organized by the Joshi-Adhikari Institute of Social Sciences in December 2015. The talk is an urgent call to arms against the falsifications of Indian history that nourish the Hindu nationalist imagination. As such, it bears witness to the stature and commitment of Professor Habib, and speaks directly to the current conjuncture of struggle in India.