Category: Books

Why the Importance of ‘Nemat Khana’ in Urdu Literature Can’t Be Overstated

Khalid Jawed’s work not only expands the themes of contemporary Urdu fiction but also challenges its usual storytelling methods. 

Khalid Jawed is now one of the most singular and incisive voices in contemporary Urdu fiction. His oeuvre is characterised by an unrelenting interrogation of violence, alienation, corporeality and the grotesque, through a narrative style that is at once unsettling and introspective.

His seminal novel, Nemat Khana (The Paradise of Food), which was awarded the JCB Prize for Literature in 2022 in its English translation by Baran Farooqi, epitomises this literary vision with great depth. The novel’s thematic architecture foregrounds the entanglement of the corporeal and the existential, situating the human body as both a site of suffering and a metaphor for broader socio-historical anxieties.

‘Nemat Khana,’ the Urdu edition, Khalid Jawed, Kitabdaar, 2023.

Through a prose style that is at once visceral and allegorical, Jawed constructs a literary universe where the grotesque serves not merely as an aesthetic device. It doubles as an epistemic framework for understanding the disquieting undercurrents of contemporary existence.

One of the most striking dimensions of Nemat Khana lies in its intricate and unsettling engagement with food – not merely as a vehicle of sustenance but as a metaphor for desire, violence and existential precarity.

The narrative unfolds through the consciousness of its protagonist, a lower-middle-class Muslim man, whose lived experiences are rendered through a prism of fragmentation, grotesquerie and an overarching sense of estrangement. In this epistemic framework, food assumes an ambivalent semiotic charge: it is simultaneously a locus of solace and a vector of horror, a liminal site where the primal imperatives of survival, sensuous gratification and visceral repulsion coalesce. 

وہ اکیلا نہیں تھا،اُس کے ساتھ دو نفس اور بھی تھے ، ایک کن کٹا اور لنگڑاتا ہوا خرگوش کا سایہ جو اُس کے پیچھے پیچھے تھا اور ایک کاکروچ تھا جو اُس کی قمیض کے کالر پر تتلی کی طرح بیٹھا ہوا تھا(جاوید-38)

[He was not alone; he had two more beings with him—one was the shadow of a lop-eared and limping rabbit that followed him closely, and the other was a cockroach perched on his shirt collar like a butterfly.]

This above passage from the novel is imbued with profound complexity, and lives between the real and the phantasmagoric.

The lop-eared, limping rabbit stands for vulnerability, corporeal affliction and existential precarity. The deformity and impairment of the rabbit underscore a rupture in its autonomy, rendering it an emblem of suffering and spiritual debilitation. Yet, it is not the corporeal entity of the rabbit that assumes primacy in the narrative, but rather its shadow – an absence that signifies presence.

This spectral displacement problematises the notion of agency, gesturing towards a subjectivity haunted by the vestiges of an ineffable trauma.

The cockroach, universally associated with resilience and survival in harsh conditions, is reinterpreted through its placement on the protagonist’s collar. This contrasts sharply with the traditional symbolism of a butterfly, which represents beauty and transcendence. By replacing the butterfly with a cockroach – an insect often linked to filth and revulsion – the image creates a striking dissonance. This contrast challenges conventional meanings, blurring the lines between beauty and ugliness, truth and deception, and highlighting the struggle to endure in oppressive conditions.

The protagonist’s interactions with these liminal entities – neither wholly tangible nor entirely illusory – blur the line between reality and hallucination, creating a sense of psychological fragmentation. Their interstitial nature reinforces themes of isolation, existential alienation, and hidden trauma or guilt, which emerge as unsettling visions. This interplay between the physical and the ghostly, presence and absence, highlights the fragility of perception and the thin boundary between sanity and breakdown.

Khalid Jawed’s style eschews any banal conceptualisation of eating. Rather, alimentary acts surrounding food and consumption are tied to themes of decay, death, and corporeal limitations. The novel’s unrelenting preoccupation on the physical experience of eating places it within the grotesque literary tradition, wherein the ostensibly familiar is rendered disturbingly alien, and the mundane is imbued with an abject, almost sublime, materiality.

In Nemat Khana, violence is complex and layered, unfolding across the physical, psychological, and existential registers. The novel rejects a linear narrative, instead using a fragmented, episodic story-telling mode that reflects the protagonist’s fractured mind and struggles within an opaque and adversarial social order.

Also read: ‘The Paradise of Food’ Is a Sordid Saga of Onions and Garlic, Liver and Lungs, and Lust

This disjointed storytelling isn’t just an aesthetic device – it heightens the protagonist’s sense of disorientation and emphasises how personal suffering is deeply tied to broader social and political violence. Themes of family, community, and identity become battlegrounds where the protagonist faces oppression and marginalisation. Nemat Khana doesn’t just portray violence; it embeds it within its very form, language, and tone, forcing the reader to confront the fundamental precarity of human existence.

The book’s literary sensibility is at once bleak and profoundly poetic.

Khalid Jawed orchestrates a narrative universe where meaning is persistently deferred, survival is configured through absurdity, and the corporeal realm emerges as a site of perpetual conflict.

The novel does not merely depict alienation; rather, it enacts alienation as a formal principle. It is a singular intervention in contemporary Urdu fiction, exemplifying Jawed’s radical aesthetic vision – one that eschews facile categorisation.

Jawed’s prose is replete with intricate metaphorical constructions and disconcerting imagistic configurations. It oscillates between the registers of poetry and prose, and is thus at once hypnotic and profoundly unsettling.

By deploying a first-person narrative, he submerges the reader in an intimate yet deeply perturbing engagement with his existential crises, corporeal abjection, and metaphysical anguish. The immediacy amplifies the novel’s affective intensity.

The structural architecture of Nemat Khana constitutes a radical departure from conventional realist paradigms as well.

Jawed is thus aligned with modernist and postmodernist literary traditions, particularly in his dismantling of the illusion of narrative coherence. His prose resists syntactic and structural predictability. The novel thus unfolds not as a causally ordered sequence but as a series of encounters – each one amplifying the protagonist’s entrapment within a real and imagined world.

Critical discourse frequently positions Khalid Jawed’s oeuvre within the broader lineage of existential and avant-garde literature, drawing compelling parallels with Franz Kafka, William Burroughs, and Samuel Beckett. Much like Kafka, Jawed constructs a universe governed by an inscrutable logic, wherein the protagonist’s alienation is exacerbated by a terrain that offers neither clarity nor solace.

It is comparable to the aesthetic of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, wherein the body becomes a locus of simultaneous fascination and horror. 

Within the broader corpus of Urdu fiction, Jawed’s literary praxis moves away from the social realism of the works of Premchand, Ismat Chughtai, and Rajinder Singh Bedi. While their concerns are indispensable, Jawed’s fiction eschews direct sociopolitical critique in favour of a deeper engagement. His oeuvre extends the experimental impulses of Naiyar Masud’s narrative structures and the psychological interiority of Qurratulain Hyder’s historiographic imagination. His world is one where corporeality, semiotics, and violence coalesce into meaning and negation.

In a contemporary Urdu literary milieu oscillating between nostalgic lamentations and overt political allegories, Nemat Khana emerges as rupture. It reinvents the Urdu novel.

At its core, Nemat Khana creates a literary style that is unsettling and intellectually complex. His work not only expands the themes of contemporary Urdu fiction but also challenges its usual storytelling methods. This commitment to challenging norms and pushing intellectual boundaries makes him one of the most important literary voices of the 21st century.

Meraj Rana is an Urdu poet and critic. He teaches Urdu literature in the Department of Urdu, Halim Muslim P.G. College, Kanpur. His first collection, Panahgah was published by the Sahitya Academy, New Delhi.

Q&A: Should Climate Be a National Security Issue?

In his new book, ‘Climate Security’, Ashok Swain argues that climate issues are so important and urgent that they must be treated as national security issues

Ever since the modern state rose in the 17th century to become the principal actor in the international system, power has been measured by control over borders, economies and populations. In his thought-provoking new book, Climate Security, Ashok Swain argues that all three are now under threat.

“Globally, more than one-third of the total length of national borders is determined by rivers,” he writes, noting how climate change is shifting these boundaries by altering the hydrological cycle. This is even more extreme in regions where glaciers are receding and Arctic ice cover is vanishing.

Ashok Swain,Climate Security.

Ashok Swain,
Climate Security,
Sage publications (December 2024)

Climate-induced disasters are fundamentally reshaping economies, particularly in developing island nations, while also triggering mass migrations – both temporary and permanent – on a scale that is creating a crisis both within and between countries.

Swain’s book is concise, coming in at just over 150 pages, with another 40 devoted to references. It is sharply written and deeply researched, with a wealth of data and examples to back up his arguments. The main argument is that because climate change threatens the core functions of the state, it must be treated as a national security issue to receive the urgent attention it deserves.

As head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Swain brings more than three decades of expertise in conflict and environment studies, and is perfectly placed to join the dots. His international background – having grown up and studied in India, taught in Europe, and served as a visiting professor in the US and Malaysia – allows him to connect global perspectives with granular insights. For example, writing on the impact of climate-induced disasters, Swain notes:

Globally, between 1970 and 2019, there have been 11,778 natural hazards leading to 2 million deaths and USD 4.3 trillion in economic losses. Over 90% of all the reported deaths have been in countries with developing economies located in the Global South. On the other hand, countries in the Global North have experienced 60% of the reported economic losses from natural hazards. However, the economic losses in the Global North have been less than 0.1% of the countries’ gross domestic products (GDP), respectively. In contrast, in the least developed economies, 7% of all disasters lead to economic losses greater than 5% of their GDP.

This perfectly sums up the disproportionate suffering of poorer nations. Wealthy counties – the primary emitters of greenhouse gasses – can absorb the financial impact, while poorer countries are overwhelmed. When Hurricane Maria hit the island nation of Dominica in 2017, it “caused damages of USD 1.31 billion, equivalent to around 200% of the country’s GDP. The hurricane destroyed almost all trees and vegetation and eliminated the agricultural sector.” This was just two years after another hurricane had caused damage equivalent to 100% of Dominica’s GDP.

Dialogue Earth spoke to Ashok Swain about some of the questions raised by his book.

You mention in your book classifying climate as a national security issue may lead to a power grab by the military, so why are you advocating it?

Ashok Swain: Partially out of frustration. I initially opposed the idea, but as I demonstrate in the book, even polities like Sweden whose population says climate is important, don’t vote along those lines. Politicians who want to address the issue are often sidelined, because it is not “prime terrain”. You do not become a bigwig by tackling climate and environment, but you do if you focus on national security. Secondly, climate activists and movements still primarily focus on big corporations and problematic individuals, but it is the state that is the most powerful actor, and which needs to be the focus. Lastly, and most importantly, as I write, there has been limited action on climate issues. In fact, we have emitted more greenhouse gasses since the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change was recognised. This needs to be a priority.

Could classifying climate as a national security issue, leading to increased militarisation, backfire?

When climate change is framed as a security threat, governments – especially authoritarian ones – might use it as a justification to suppress dissent, restrict environmental activism, and curtail civil liberties. For example, they may crack down on environmental NGOs, activists, and Indigenous communities under the pretext of maintaining national stability. This approach can also lead to militarised responses to climate migration, where instead of providing humanitarian aid, states fortify borders and criminalise displaced populations. Such policies undermine human rights and could increase internal instability rather than addressing the root causes of climate insecurity​.

However, despite these risks, projecting climate change as a national security issue is essential for getting political leaders to take strategic decisions on climate mitigation and adaptation. By elevating climate change to the level of national security, governments are more likely to prioritise it in their policy agendas, allocate resources effectively, and integrate climate considerations into strategic planning​. This could help in developing long-term policies that not only address climate risks but also ensure sustainable development and stability. The challenge, therefore, is to balance securitisation in a way that strengthens climate action without undermining human rights and environmental advocacy.

One of the countries that has, arguably, made environment a high-value political issue is China, but you are speaking of democratic countries. Could you expand?

Firstly, China is an outlier among countries classified as authoritarian. Most have not made good environmental decisions, whereas China has done remarkable work in air pollution, pushing electric vehicles, and even its afforestation programmes. That said, it has not been so good beyond its borders. For example it has not built dams on the Salween within its borders, but downstream in other countries, it has. But, in a way, China shows that if environment is made a “security of the regime” issue, things can be done. In contrast, US President Joe Biden wanted to be the “Climate President” but had to scale back his ambitions and make major compromises.

Is there scope for North-South cooperation, given the different ways the countries are impacted?

Environment really became an issue after the end of the Cold War, with the Global North largely thinking of it as a problem in the Global South, and the role of developed countries was only to support poorer countries to do better. Climate change is a different dilemma. Some things will be better in the Global North. It is the end of January and there is no snow here in Uppsala. Having the very cold areas becoming temperate seems nicer, but with that come other problems such as floods, diseases, the difficulty of importing food, and even the ability of the military to operate. The Global North cannot get away by saying it is a Global South problem only. Similarly, the Global South has to stop waiting for reparations. There were none for colonialism, and there is unlikely to be any for emissions. They have to act in their own self-interest, for their own security, to take climate seriously. I believe we can have a balance, but we need to approach it cautiously. Pushing climate security to the UN Security Council, where Russia and China are on one side, and the US, UK and France are on the other, will not help. We need to build consensus, and the only way to do that is to take the problem seriously.

Do you think there is a viable path forward for developing countries to bypass Global North-led climate negotiations and build their own cooperative frameworks for climate resilience?

Developing countries face a difficult situation: while they are the most affected by climate change, they have limited influence in global climate negotiations. The book explains how the Global North has historically contributed the most to climate change but has been slow to provide the promised financial and technological support to the Global South​. However, waiting for help from the Global North is not a viable strategy. Instead, countries in the Global South must take the lead in regional and South-South cooperation for climate resilience. This could include forming regional climate alliances, sharing technology and knowledge, and developing joint adaptation projects.

Some countries have already started doing this by prioritising their own climate adaptation measures, independent of North-led initiatives. However, these efforts are often constrained by limited funding and political instability. Political will and leadership are crucial in making climate adaptation a priority, even when financial resources are scarce​. While bypassing Global North-led negotiations entirely may be difficult, strengthening regional cooperation and focusing on self-reliant adaptation measures can be a practical way forward for the Global South.

How do you see the role of transboundary water conflicts evolving as climate change intensifies?

Transboundary water conflicts are expected to become more frequent and severe as climate change alters water availability and distribution. Many existing water-sharing agreements are already under pressure due to environmental changes, and new agreements are increasingly difficult to negotiate​. Climate change is intensifying water scarcity, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, leading to heightened tensions between countries that share rivers and aquifers. The unpredictability of water flow, especially in major river basins like the Nile, Ganges, and those originating from the Himalayas, is creating disputes between upstream and downstream nations​.

Although no full-scale wars have been fought exclusively over water, conflicts over quantity, quality and control of shared resources have contributed to broader geopolitical tensions. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier,” increasing vulnerabilities in already water-stressed regions and making cooperation even more necessary but harder to achieve​.

Finally, how do you think Donald Trump’s return to the White House will impact global climate security, particularly for the Global South?

Donald Trump’s return to the White House, along with the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the suspension of all foreign aid, has already weakened global climate security, particularly for the Global South. The loss of US climate finance has severely impacted developing nations, halting crucial adaptation projects and leaving vulnerable regions – such as the Sahel and South Asia – exposed to worsening droughts, floods and food shortages​. Without this funding, climate-induced conflicts over water and land are expected to rise, driving more displacement and instability​. Climate security should be framed as a national security issue to drive strategic action, but Trump’s policies have deprioritised both domestic and global climate commitments​. With the US stepping back, countries in the Global South are now seeking alternative alliances for climate finance and cooperation. However, these efforts remain insufficient to fill the massive funding gap left by the US withdrawal​. Meanwhile, the suspension of humanitarian aid has worsened migration crises, with climate refugees facing stricter border policies. Trump’s policies have not only derailed global emissions reduction efforts but have also weakened America’s diplomatic standing, allowing its competing powers to expand their influence in climate governance. Without urgent corrective measures, the future of global climate security looks increasingly unstable.

Omair Ahmad was the South Asia managing editor at Dialogue Earth. This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth.

What We Can Read When We Read Between Languages

Courtesy of Criticism is a collection of essays on literary history, theory and criticism by Kirtinath Kurtkoti, translated from the Kannada by Kamalakar Bhat.

What does a courteous critic look like? The words critic, critical and criticism have acquired a certain combative valence to themselves, both in the literature classroom and in popular formats. In a world where fast-paced information exchange moves us to have hasty reactions, Kirtinath Kurtkoti’s Courtesy of Criticism argues for a different kind of engagement from its readers. Courtesy, for Kurtkoti, is an ethical engagement with a text for what it is. He is polemic in his call for such courtesy: “criticism should depend on literature, not the other way around,” he says, and that “problems arise when critical consciousness transforms into arrogance.”

Courtesy of Criticism is a collection of essays on literary history, theory and criticism by Kirtinath Kurtkoti, translated from the Kannada by Kamalakar Bhat. The book is unique in its position as a Kannada text that has been translated into English while also being, inherently, a multilingual text whose archive travels across different modern and pre-modern tongues. At the outset, the book is a collection of essays that places Kannada literature in the context of the Sanskrit literary cosmopolis as well as a more modern encounter between the subcontinent and the “West”. But Kurtkoti would be suspicious of such easy categorisations; for him, literature emerges out of continuous and constructive encounters between languages, communities and ways of being.

To borrow from Kurtkoti, “the role of the reader has altered alongside the birth of the critic”. This review of Kurtkoti’s work is from both perspectives with the addition of a third, scholarly, perspective. The reader, critic and scholar can be three different people, or one person, shifting hats and tools to savour a text through different senses. Courtesy of Criticism is equally appealing to these different sensibilities: to the popular reader it is an expansive, yet accessible, introduction to the Kannada literary landscape and the histories of critical thought in South Asia. To the critic, it exemplifies a situated comparative reading of text, context and intertext. To the scholar, it is a training in method that dismantles bounded categories of language, history, or even the nation-state.

Against rupture

Kirtinath Kurtkoti, ed. and tr. by Kamalakar Bhat
Courtesy of Criticism: Selected Essays of Kirtinath Kurtkoti
Penguin Random House India and Ashoka Centre for Translation, 2024

A central concern for Kurtkoti is the relationship between literature and the world. And in a multilingual world, one must understand a literature through its relationship to the many languages that constitute its world(s). In this spirit, Kurtkoti’s essays span a wide expanse of interconnected genealogies of the literary. Literary Kannada, he notes, emerges not as a vernacularised offshoot of literary Sanskrit, but in conversation with it. Through each essay, Kurtkoti is insistent on the literary as a landscape of multidirectional exchange and constant evolution. He brings attention to this through the analysis of champu kavya, a literary genre that moves, perhaps counter-intuitively, from Kannada to Sanskrit. Similarly, his reflections on emergent genres in Kannada literature in the 20th century historicises the sangama, or confluence, of Indian literary tradition with that of Europe and the introduction of a new poetics of history, realism and individual psychology in the subcontinent.

Literature, for Kurtkoti, reflects its unique yugadharma, or the spirit of its time. As reminiscent as it is of Marx’s historical materialism, yugadharma incorporates a broader moral-ethical universe of human consciousness in addition to the material realities of a time and place. Furthermore, in his discussion of desi and marga literatures, referring to folk and elite literatures, Kurtkoti resists the instinct to hierarchise their differences and points to Kannada as an example of how language preserves desi sensibilities in its marga literature and vice versa. For Kurtkoti, the Sanskritic and the Prakritic need not be in opposition to one another; neither is marga a distillation of literary perfection, nor is desi an egalitarian representation of the masses. He draws attention to the dependence of folk literature on the puranic, which draw extensively from texts like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and, in turn, how elite literature, such as that of Kalidasa, stays relevant in the popular imaginary through its desi afterlives.

Kurtkoti’s theoretical oeuvre stands out, particularly among contemporary European schools of thought, because his rendition of literary genealogy is a record of continuity and not rupture. Each yuga and its yugadharma evolves into the next, and its literary production incorporates these changes into itself. Despite palpable moments of historical animosity, Kurtkoti’s expansive archive does not slip into oppositional relationships. With each encounter, the literary corpus expands and grows, incorporating new ideas, concepts, and forms into an intricate palimpsest. Insisting on a continuity of literary tradition, and excavating such complex genealogical flows, then, allows Kurtkoti to read against the grain of historical teleology.

Translation as discourse

In the chapter “Translation and Rewriting,” Kurtkoti argues that acts of translation and rewriting are both discursive practices. A text, in its translation, encounters a new language world and becomes part of its literary-philosophical discourse. The English translation of Kurtkoti’s writings in Courtesy of Criticism, then, brings different strands of literary thought in Kannada into conversation with critical literature in English. While Kurtkoti is able to draw parallels between Moses and Bhishma, or Shakespeare and Kumaravyasa, Bhat brings Kurtkoti in conversation with Saussure and Derrida. The section on literary theory is extremely generative in its uninhibited claims and provides the scholar with the tools and inspiration to pursue concepts such as pratyabhijnana (mutual recognition) and yugadharma in comparative theory.

Kirtinath Kurtkoti.

However, Bhat’s translation also opens Kurtkoti’s work to critical scrutiny. As his concepts and ideas travel between languages, finding novel resonances and unforeseen departures, it becomes evident, too, that Kurtkoti is a writer of his time, place and social standing. The reader of his historical essays will find the glaring absence of any mention of Islam in the region, Muslim contribution to the Kannada literature, or a deep engagement with women’s literature (the short chapter on “Literature and Feminism” stands out for its lack of close reading). His discussion of the Veera Shaiva tradition, too, has only a perfunctory nod to its radical anti-caste politics and poetics. Kurtkoti’s evident adulation for the past is often silent about the violences that have been integral to its yugadharma.

Elsewhere, D.R. Nagaraj has written about the fantasies of a glorious past and the anxiety of its loss that taints Kannada nationalism; Kurtkoti’s account of Kannada literature and its historical development has traces of such a fear, of new literature being too pedestrian and new criticism concerned with trivial problematics. At various moments in the text, Kurtkoti’s critical courtesy can seem uninterested in the significant ruptures that have marked the Kannada literary and political world, such as the Busa and Bandaya movements. His critical reading of Devanoora Mahadeva’s Kusumabale, for instance, is sensitive to the particularities of language, such as a distinctive Brahmin Kannada, that the author employs in his depiction of a caste-inscribed society. However, his insistence on reading harmony and continuity misses the disruptive accomplishments of Mahadeva’s work. Kurtkoti’s work reminds us to be more careful critics and nuanced readers of literature; it is perhaps also important, then, to read alongside our own yugadharma. We do not read silences only with paranoia (or some form of contested political correctness). Reading silences, from within and outside the Kannada world, is a matter of ethics – and courtesy.

Chandana Krishnegowda is a doctoral student at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University where she studies the intersection of food, language and caste in the Kannada world.

How Women Vote: Looking Beyond Ballot Paper in Bhilwara and Sirohi Districts of Rajasthan

This is an excerpt from an edited volume titled ‘Seeking the Questions: Field Notes from Rural India’, a selection of 25 research reports by the student interns with the National Foundation of India.

Introduction

The Rajasthan Panchayat Act was enacted in 1953 and the Rajasthan Panchayat Samitis and Zila Parishads Act were enacted in 1959 to decentralise power, that is, to have a three-tier structure of local self-governing bodies at district, block and village levels. The 73rd Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1994 gave Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) constitutional status, it also mandated the reservation of one-third of seats for women in PRIs such as Gram Panchayats, Panchayat Samitis, Zila Parishads; Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Act (RPRA) of 1994 defined their functions, powers, and responsibilities. Later, Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996 were incorporated there under. The Rajasthan Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Bill, 2021, was introduced in the Rajasthan Assembly on Feb 25, 2021, amending the RPRA, 1994.

Objectives

Book cover: Seeking the Questions: Field Notes from Rural India, edited by Anuradha Raman, Bijoy Basant Patro and Biraj Patnaik. Source: NFI

  1. To understand the voting behaviour of women living in rural areas.
  2. To understand how efficiently the Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) have been running the office.
  3. The role of education, traditions and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) present in the state behind women participating and representing in such a way.

Research questions

  1. The factors considered by women behind voting for a particular party or candidate. How independent have women been while voting for a party/ candidate?
  2. The factors which helped or hindered women from representing (contesting and holding the position) in the elections at the panchayat level.
  3. The role of NGOs in assisting the women by training them so that they conduct the office at their best.

Respondents and their background

To meet the demands of the research, people from diverse professional fields specially those who work at ground level were interviewed like Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) mates, Anganwadi teachers, Ward Panch (including Upa- Sarpanch), Sarpanch, Gram Saathins, Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers, Female health worker (mahila swasthya karyakarta), Sachiv, Delegate (Panchayati Samiti), Ward Parshad, Government School Teachers and Principals, Booth Level Officers (BLOs), Block Development Officer (BDO), Pradhan, Jilla Pramukh (Zila Parishad).

The sample consists of 105 voters (both women and men) from various communities like Berva, Bhil, Brahmin, Chippa, Gameti, Gharasiya, Gurjar, Jaiswal, Jat, Kaanchi, Kataria, Kumar, Lohar, Mali, Pathan, Prajapat, Rajput, Regar, Saalvi, Sen, Sultar, Suwalka, Vaishnav, Valmiki, and Vyas. Ten Focussed Group Discussions (FGDs) at various different sites like MGNREGA sites, parents of students studying at an education centre run by Jan Chetna NGO, women at a panchayat office, working women at one of the respondent’s homes and one FGD with ASHA workers and female health officer were conducted giving insights into how things work at the ground level.

Findings and Discussion

When it comes to political participation, women and men were found to be equally interested in exercising their vote, that is, reaching the polling booth and clicking on a button on the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). The practice of voting holds large importance for these people as they go on saying, ‘‘vote dena dharam hai, vote ko ghar pe thodi rakhenge, vote dena hi hai chaahe kisi tarah ka chunav ho, bina kaam ka kyun gamaayenge, ek vote se bhi haare-jaate, vote karne se hi hum nagarik kehlate hain, vote dene se jeetne wale toh khush ho jayenge’’, etc.

Also read: What Does It Say About India’s Democracy When EVMs Overshadow Key Polls Issues?

At one of the FGDs at a MGNREGA site, respondents shared how the representatives become inactive after assuming office, a usual case about the working of elected representatives, ‘‘ek din haath joda, paanch saal hum ko jodna pad raha hai (they will fold their hands for one day asking for votes, after which we have been folding our hands for five years requesting them to work).”

“Voting is mandatory”, this sentence has been socially embedded into the minds of the people, and the old voters hardly missed the opportunity to vote. One of the reasons behind it can be the “ease of transportation” as few respondents revealed that some party people send vehicles to the localities of the voters which not only pick the voters and take them to polling booths but also drop all of them back to their respective places once they cast their vote without charging a single rupee.

Almost all of the married women voters got their voter ID after moving to sasural with the help of local Booth Level Officers (BLO) who are teachers at the nearest government school.

The right to vote is exercised in many ways by women, namely, exercising it at the individual level, that is, voting for the party/candidate the voter wishes for and secondly, exercising it at the collective level, that is, voting to the party/ candidate after discussing it with fellow voters or without participating in any kind of discussion as such and voting to the party/ candidate only because the voter was told by her spouse/ the family members at her sasural, or the following the fellow villagers, or one is obliged to vote for them because the voter comes from a particular caste/community or religion. Women have been exercising their right to vote but not on their terms. Married women following the traditional gender roles have been confined to four walls of the house and are not allowed to work (professionally) outside. During an FGD in Palra panchayat, ASHA worker Meena Sharma said “Aurat ko Lakshmi bol ke sasural le aate h, fir Bai banate hai, wo Lakshmi Bai ban jaati hai (a woman is brought to in laws house calling her as Goddess Lakshmi, then make her a maid, she turns into a Lakshmi Bai).” Since women lack exposure of the outside world unlike men who work outside, and it is unlikely that women discuss politics when they meet fellow women. It was found that women hardly attend any party campaigns.

ONE FAMILY ONE VOTE (OFOV): Most of the respondents revealed that all of the family members in their family vote for the same party/ candidate. Raipur block’s resident and two time elected (and served) male ward panch said, “there should be unity at home and members of the family should vote for the same party, otherwise outsiders will say hume bolne se pehle ghar ka chalao, sab ka same party mein vote karwao (first make your family members to vote for the same party before teaching us what to do)” and, “log bolenge ki ghar pe do alag party hai (people say his house supports 2 parties).”

When asked, who leads this unity at his home, he replied, “ghar pe badha hu toh meri hi chalni chaave (since I am the eldest in my home, the rest of the family members obey my words)”.

Looking Within the Ballot Paper

A few respondents did not disclose/hesitated to disclose their voting choice, while some disclosed with pride. When we look at the voting behaviour of women in the last elections (Vidhan Sabha 2023, Lok Sabha 2024, Panchayat elections 2019), almost all of the respondents have been voting for the same party (some for x party, some for y party, etc.) for ages now. Very few have voted for different parties and rarely people have voted for independent candidates. The people have been voting for one particular party because its party symbol resonates with their lives or simply, it is the duty of the voter to vote for it since they follow a particular religion. Many of the employed women voters vote for a particular party assuming they will provide them with better incentives, and better salaries if they come into power.

Proportion of women who disclosed their political choice

Women who disclosed/didn’t disclose their political choice (in %). Source: National Foundation for India

Looking Beyond the Ballot Paper

An Anganwadi teacher stressed the importance of being a working woman which lets her know about the outside world and informs her voting choice. Many of the women who have been voting under the influence of their family members were pressured to vote for a particular party. While some did admit it, many did not.

The one-sided political discussions at home

In most cases, the couple discuss politics with each other irrespective of the election time while some discuss only before the commencement of elections, others do not. In almost all of the cases, in the sasural, the married women are not supposed to talk in front of her sasur (father-in-law), jeth (elder brother of husband), sometimes even with her saas (mother-in-law). At one of FGDs held with 10 women, when asked about the environment at their home on the eve of the voting day, a woman shared laughingly what her husband told her “jaldi jaake line mein khade ho jao, nahi toh line lambi ho jayegi (get in the queue early, otherwise the line/ queue will become longer).”

Surprisingly, many of the women voters could not exactly name the candidate representing the political party they voted for, they were only aware of the party symbol and the party’s name. Most of the women were not aware of the option None Of The Above (NOTA) while few of them were told/educated about it by the local BLO, family members, and by fellow women. Many of them could not name more than two political parties in India.

Familiarity of respondents with NOTA in EVMs

Respondents who are familiar with NOTA option in EVMs. Source: National Foundation for India

Women understand the idea of secret ballot

Some of the women revealed that they vote for the party/ candidate they wish to despite being told or pressured by their family member(s) to vote for the different one. They went on to say, “Since it is a secret ballot and their family members will not be there to cross-check whether she was voting for the party she was asked to or not”, while another woman said, “Suno sabki, karo manki (listen to all, do what your heart says).” 

When it comes to the political participation of women, empowerment managed to bring more women into politics on paper but not their voices, or opinions. The previous panchayat election was held in 2019, followed by the years of COVID lockdown, giving the representatives less time comparatively to solve the issues of the panchayat. The panchayat office conducts at least two meetings with its ward members, preferably on the 5th and 20th of every month. They discuss the complaints given by the villagers like insufficient drinking water, poor functioning of street lights, installation of handpumps, CC road, infrastructure in government schools, etc.

Also read: Women Voters, Welfare Schemes and Star Campaigners: The Prime Factors in Sambalpur Lok Sabha Contest

The seats are reserved for candidates coming from different communities and genders. Often, the holistic development of the panchayat and the welfare of all communities is ignored, but when a person from a marginalised community comes into power whose area’s development has been neglected will be looked after during his/ her tenure.

A few reasons why women have been contesting (and serving) the elections are:

  1. They want to work for their village, for their panchayat and many times, get full support from the people.
  2. Some married women were compelled to contest by the family, especially the male members because for that particular position in that particular election, only a woman (coming from a particular community) can contest for that post (ward panch/ sarpanch), making the situation a blend of class, caste, and gender. This is followed by the family campaigning for the woman and after she has won, her new responsibility is to only sign the documents and sometimes to attend panchayat meetings, otherwise, it is the woman’s husband or father-in-law who does her job, he assumes both the power and the position at the office. The familiarity factor plays a major role here, for instance, a male candidate who has already served as ward panch/ sarpanch is familiar with the people, and the functioning of the panchayat system. This makes the task easier for him while making the woman contest, that is, she contests in the name of her husband, and his previous work. A female respondent in Raipur tehsil who is currently serving as Up-Sarpanch (deputy sarpanch), recalling the 2019 panchayat elections said “pati ke naam se khade thay, tho jeet gaye (I contested in the name of my husband, so I won)’. Many of the EWRs could not answer the questions put to them, as they were less mindful of the affairs of their village/ panchayat. They were already busy being a homemaker and would prioritise the latter over the panchayat/ward’s work. They had vague knowledge about the working of the panchayat system, the responsibilities of a ward panch/sarpanch, and the candidacy criteria to contest elections. When asked whether they would like to contest again, half of the inactive EWRs clearly said yes while the active EWRs were aspiring to contest for higher positions like sarpanch, delegate, etc.

The panchayat meetings within the panchayat office are not efficient. In most cases, there is no direct interaction between the men and women representatives, women ward panch do not utter a word, and while wearing the ghoonghat (veil) they do not express themselves in their own workplace. The rigid gender roles and expectations trap women.

Most of the married women, as young girls have pursued some sort of education in their early years – some quit because they lacked interest in studies, and some were forced to quit either to help family members at home, to look after household chores, agricultural field work or simply because the secondary school and senior secondary school is far away from home. Remembering her school days, Rekha Kumari, Sarpanch of Nichlagarh, Abu Road shared an anecdote of her time when she started going to school a bit late, “Log bolte thay, ab ladki badi ho gayi, ab kya karegi padh ke, baad mey sasural hi jaayegi (people said, now since the girl has grown up, what will she do by studying, later she has to go to sasural).”

Seasonal employment can be observed all across Rajasthan as men usually migrate to other states in search of work. The Rajasthan government gives reservations to women to work as mate at MGNREGA sites. The Rajasthan Grameen Aajeevika Vikas Parishad (RGAVP) or Rajivika, an autonomous society established in 2010 by the Rajasthan Government employs mostly women (from girls attending college to middle-aged working women). This enables women to not only be financially independent but also teaches them about the functioning of the various institutions, thereby giving them the broader picture and exposure. These young and passionate women working with Rajivika have their own scooters on which they travel to longer distances to conduct meetings with Self Help Group (SHG) women, with Elected Women Representatives (EWR), etc. and spread awareness.

NGOs like Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and Jan Chetna also employ youth in various fields like education, health and nutrition, etc. FES is the foundation of sustainable and equitable development. It is committed to strengthening, reviving, or restoring, where necessary, the process of ecological succession and the conservation of land, forest and water resources in the country.

Sarmi Bai ji is currently serving as Delegate of Abu Road panchayat samiti. She started working with Jan Chetna organisation even before contesting elections. The organisation every year trains many women like her after recognising the potential in them. After receiving the training, she not only contested panchayat elections for the ward panch post but also won. She went on to win as Sarpanch from Nichlagarh panchayat, Abu Road and currently serving as Delegate under Panchayat Samiti since 2022. After becoming Sarpanch in 2010, she went on to meet American former president Barack Obama in Mumbai, which made the headline “President se president ki Mulaqat (President meets President)” in the newspapers the next day.

During her tenure as delegate, she collaborated with women from Rajivika to bring Annapurna Rasoi (Annapurna Kitchen), to Nichlagarh panchayat, got hand pumps installed for the panchayat, worked on CC roads, built chabutra (a place to rest), built washrooms, emphasised on girl education. Sarmi Bai ji is also the brand ambassador of Sirohi district’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (save the daughter, educate the daughter) campaign. She recently gave her 10th class exams proving there is no age limit for learning.

Another former EWR, Navali Gharasiya has also been associated with Jan Chetna organisation. She has been to Australia to attend international meetings where she shared the platform with women of her kind from different countries. As ward panch of Kyariya panchayat, Abu Road, she worked on girls’ education, got a record number of handpumps installed in her tenure, etc. Things like cleanliness, roads and lights everywhere, etc in Australia caught her attention and she worked on implementing the same in her panchayat after coming back to India. She questioned the widow discrimination, and child labour. She went on saying, “jo bhi jeetega, mudde tho uthana padega (whoever wins, issues will have to be raised).” In Rajasthan, girls are encouraged to drive bikes, unlike in other states. This not only makes them independent but also motivates them to choose tougher tasks. A resident of Negariya Kheda Panchayat, working as a vehicle driver himself, expressed pride as a resident of Rajasthan where young girls and women are encouraged to ride motorcycles.

The women who have smartphones and know how to use them, spend most of their leisure time listening to bhajans, and using WhatsApp and Instagram.

Empowerment programmes, education, and awareness campaigns can help women participate as leaders. By taking these steps, we can promote inclusive governance and ensure that women are heard.

Sneha Vankudothu is a research intern under the Abhijit Sen Rural Internship Programme (ASRI) with the National Foundation of India.

Gautam Bhatia’s ‘The Sentence’ Centres on a Legal Case of Immense Gravity

While the intellectual element needed to understand the ambitious built-up world is there, the human element is somewhat wanting.

Gautam Bhatia is one of India’s finest legal commentators, offering a clear, precise summary of what is happening in major legal cases, as well as providing a historical and intellectual framework through which to understand these things. He is also a science fiction writer, and in his second book of fiction, The Sentence, the story is based on a legal case of immense gravity.

The world building in The Sentence, as with Bhatia’s previous science fiction novel, The Wall, is ambitious. The story is set in the city-state of Peruma, which is divided into High Town – where the owners of the corporations that run the Mandalium mines – and Low Town, where the workers live. Once Peruma was an empire spanning a subcontinent, but a series of revolts broke up Peruma’s empire and led to the rise of several city states. A century before the main action of the novel, the Director of the Council that governs the city is assassinated, setting off repression and civil war until an uneasy truce is arranged for a hundred years with Low Town and High Town governed separately by the Council and the Commune, and a “Free and Equal Confederation of Guardians”, a judiciary composed of equal numbers of people from both the factions who have sworn neutrality as they implement the temporary Constitution in place.

Book cover of The Sentence by Gautam Bhatia

Gautam Bhatia
The Sentence
Westland IF, 2024

The hundred years of truce, and the Constitution full of compromises, referred to mockingly as the “cop out Constitution” by a group of anonymous satirists known as the Wits, is to be opened for judgment. But something else is happening alongside. The person convicted of assassinating the Director a century ago, Jagat, is about to die. The “sentence” of the title is something of a suspended death sentence. Peruma has mastered the technology of cryo-freezing and revival, and – as a consequence – reinstated the death penalty it had previously abolished. The process can keep somebody in a cryogenic state for about a hundred years before decay sets in. The judiciary had reinstituted the death penalty with the proviso that, if evidence for innocence was presented within a century, the convicted could be revived. There is a dissent, by Justice Khana, and it is one of the finest pleasures of the book, exemplifying Bhatia’s lucid and beautiful writing on legal matters.

At the centre of all of this is a last year student at the Confederation, Nila M. Originally from the Commune, with her mother as one of the leaders that the Commune insists it does not have, she hopes to be one of the 12 pupils to argue in Commune vs Council for the case of the century. She has reason to hope she will be picked, as she has been a stellar performer. Her roommate and classmate, Maru, is a quieter sort, focussing on issues of medical liabilities, much of them having to with the mining of Mandalium on which the economy of Peruma, as well as its permanent conflict between owners and workers, depends. And then everything goes sideways, and of all things Nila is approached by a descendant of Jagat to prove his innocence in the few days that he has left, before they unplug him. It is a case of unprecedented importance, and one designed to blow the history and peace of the contentious city-state wide open.

Starting off somewhat slowly, which is necessary to understand the sheer heft of details that shape the case, the novel picks up speed about a third of the way in, and then continuously ratchets up the pace until the end of book is a sprint. Set within a period of seven days, and premised around a legal case, the novel devotes relatively little time to character development except for that of Nila; instead the heart of it is the difficult moral and judicial questions and an investigation that manages to surprise at almost every turn.

Gautam Bhatia during a panel discussion in August 2019. Image: YouTube

The attention to detail is both comprehensive as well as sketchy, if that is possible. We have everything from a performance of traditional sword fighting brought together by the Urumi Collective, reflecting the name of the famous South Indian whip swords, to the design of the assassinated Director’s samadhi, as well as the confusion of streets in the Commune’s anarchic organisation. “Here was a city without a centre, without fixity, a city that moved like a breeze upon the water. If you wanted to see the administration (as Nila did) you would find out that morning where they were meeting; if you wanted to visit the museum of the library, you would have to track their movement through the topography of the city, and visit them where they were.” What suffers in the process is the human element, and it does not necessarily have to. Bhatia has done some fantastic reading to shape it – the Appendix is a fine trawl through revolutionary history – but while the intellectual element is there, the human element is somewhat wanting.

For example, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books are a fantastic treatise on the tensions of ownership and freedom, involving a radically different world inhabited by dragons and with magic, and yet all those complicated aspects emerge and shape the human condition, from a lonely goatherd to an abandoned orphan. Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, full of his comic asides, puns and pratfalls, is a very jester’s take on the Parisian Commune and primarily about how people experience revolution. In contrast, The Sentence, as intelligent as it is, offers only a glance of what it feels like to be involved in such matters. But then, Le Guin and Pratchett’s were masters of their art, and to compare any writing to theirs, even in criticism, is itself high praise.

Omair Ahmad is an author. His last novel, Jimmy the Terrorist, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and won the Crossword Award.

Why Have Savarkar’s Mercy Petitions Attracted So Much Censure and Derision?

Savarkar himself did not seem to have been comfortable with the fact that he had submitted the petitions. He certainly did not own up to them.

Excerpted with permission from The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts by Arun Shourie.

Without a shred of doubt, incarceration in the Cellular Jail in Andamans was an ordeal of the worst kind. The dungeon-like cells. The solitary confinement. The anaemic food. The cruel warders and jailor, and the extreme maltreatment by them. The beatings. The all-too-frequent caning. The daily abuse and humiliation. The punishments: the already scanty ration cut to starvation level; being placed in chains and handcuffs for six months at a time; being made to stand for two weeks at a time with iron fetters on one’s legs and around one’s feet; being locked in a cage. Like others, Savarkar was subjected to them—solitary confinement, to stand for a week with handcuffs; chain-fetters; crossbar fetters . . . ‘work’, diabolically designed to break the prisoner—pounding coir, extracting oil as the bullock does by pushing the shaft round and round the ‘oil mill’ to the point one fainted yoked to the ‘mill’ . . . Many died of exhaustion, from hunger and malnutrition, from overwork, from chronic dysentery, tuberculosis, asthma, phthisis, malaria and unbearable pain. Some went mad. Chakraborty was to recall that on the average three inmates committed suicide every month. About 400 of the prisoners were hanged or shot. Worse than even these, was the daily abuse, the sheer helplessness to which one was driven. And there was no appeal—the perpetrators were the judges. Savarkar’s health broke down. He spent almost a year and a half in the jail’s hospital. Even as he was dissuading others from committing suicide, at one point, he says, he himself thought of killing himself. That someone should do everything that he could to get out of the place is perfectly understandable.

The New Icon

Arun Shourie
The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts
Penguin Random House India, 2025

Why then have the petitions attracted so much censure and derision?

The first, of course, is the contrast with what Bhagat Singh and others said as they faced execution. Recall Ram Prasad Bismil mounting the gallows with Bismil Azimabadi’s Sarfaroshi ki tammana ab hamaare dil mein hai on his lips.

The second is the halo that has been stuck around Savarkar. When people read the petitions, they naturally wonder whether a ‘Veer’ would plead in this way.

Also read: Is Savarkar a Gujarati Writer?

Third, Savarkar himself did not seem to have been comfortable with the fact that he had submitted the petitions. He certainly did not own up to them. In the letters that he wrote to his family, and in his copious My Transportation for Life, he does mention the sort of grounds on which he has asked the Government to reduce his sentence, to transfer him back to a jail on the mainland, to give him a chance to work in constitutional ways. But in those accounts, it is as if an equal is talking to equals, almost as if a Barrister is arguing in court. There is none of the beseeching that we have encountered above. No hint that he has offered to be of service to the Government in whatever capacity they deem fit. No hint of the conditions he has told the Government he is ready to accept.

Next, there is the reaction of his own associates and admirers when they heard that he had accepted conditions for being released.

…

Then there is the image of an uncompromising, fiery, ready-for-death image that Savarkar himself had built of himself. His autobiography, his newsletters from England, his My Transportation for Life, his Samagra, the pseudonymous Life of Barrister Savarkar are all full of passages that lead one to think of him as one prepared to run any risk, to face any hardship, to stare death in its face, to die. A little volume can be filled with those passages.

Also read: Sanatan Dharma: An Ideology or the Entire Hindu Community?

Savarkar and his friends have set up the Mitra Mandal, a fledgling group that it will be said gave birth to revolutionaries and revolutionary organizations. Savarkar and his friends think much of their secret meetings. They feel that they are sowing the seeds of mass upheaval. And, therefore, are under the constant watch of the Government and its agents. Queen Victoria has died. Some of Savarkar’s friends, he says, urge that they hold a memorial meeting and pass a condolence resolution so as to allay suspicion about them and their activities. Savarkar as good as scolds them:

“Our country alone is our Emperor. We do not know any other Emperor. This is a golden opportunity to show that there is at least one institution that will proclaim this radiant truth. We should not become afraid ourselves and lose this opportunity. If this organisation is closed down for this reason, we will have to take its life to have been successful. Whenever it wants, the British Government jails even those who write with great circumspection. Then, why should we not speak the truth? Let us unfurl that resplendent emblem of independence openly. Even if we are able to do so for a moment and in the next moment we are killed by a bullet, no reason to worry. Because the cremation pyre of persons who die thus sends out sparks, and the palaces of foreign rulers are reduced to ashes in the fire that these sparks light. Those who say that those who make such attempts are hanged, well let them say what they will. We also know that much. The hanging of Chapekar gave birth to us, our hanging will give birth to others, and this lineage shall remain intact. …”

In another typical piece, we have him proclaim once again that there is no way to attain independence other than armed revolution. We have to break the weapons and power of the enemy by better weapons and greater power, he says. In no case in history, has independence been won except by triumphing in a violent, armed fight. If people are not up to this, he says, then they cannot have freedom. This is as unalterable a law as laws of nature.

…

It is from such passages—and even the ones of which the preceding are a summary, much longer and more colourful—that his image of a revolutionary was embossed on people’s minds. Naturally, when the contents of the petitions burst into view, many were nonplussed.

When Supreme Court Upheld Provisions of PMLA

The judgment was decried for the effective carte blanche that it gave to a centrally controlled investigative agency in exercising its powers.

The following is an excerpt from The Indian Constitution: A Conversation with Power by Gautam Bhatia.

In 2022, the Supreme Court heard a comprehensive challenge to the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The PMLA is one of the ‘special statutes’.

The Indian Constitution and its investigating agency—the ED—has been particularly active in recent years. The record speaks for itself: while the case was being heard, a detailed investigative report revealed a sharp rise in the use of the ED, including the targeting of opposition politicians.

The Indian Constitution : Conversations with Power

Gautam Bhatia,
The Indian Constitution: A Conversation with Power,
HarperCollins (2025)

The Supreme Court upheld the provisions of the PMLA, including the powers of arrest, search, and seizure, and the ‘twin test’ for bail. While the judgment was decried for the effective carte blanche that it gave to a centrally controlled investigative agency in exercising its coercive powers, the Supreme Court’s reasoning marks the culmination of the legal doctrines that we’ve discussed above, rather than a break with the past. In essence, the Court subordinated the reality of the coercive power enjoyed by the ED over the individual to the formal terminology used by the law (au courant with its doctrinal history under Article 20(3)), and to the continuing existence of an ordinarily extraordinary state of affairs in order to justify that power (consistent with its doctrinal history under Articles 21 and 22).

Thus, the ED’s powers of arrest—including the power not to reveal the grounds of arrest to the individual—were upheld on the basis that the PMLA was not really a penal statute, and that the ED was not really akin to the police (despite having all the powers of the police, and wielding them with much greater enthusiasm). The same reasoning was then used by the Court to exclude the applicability of the right against self-incrimination as well as the bar on confessions to police officers under the Evidence Act to the PMLA and the ED: the ED’s officials were not really police officers, and the persons they were questioning in custody were not technically ‘accused of an offence’. The ‘twin test’ for bail was not itself challenged on substantive grounds, but rather on grounds of procedural arbitrariness, and was likewise upheld.

Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, therefore, was only the latest milestone along a road that the Supreme Court had been walking for a long time, marked by inflection points such as Romesh Chandra Mehta, Kartar Singh, and other such judgments. Vijay Madanlal Choudhary saw a convergence of these paths upon one overarching doctrine of subordinating the constitutional guarantees of individual freedom to the logic of State power. As Sekhri summed up the state of play in the immediate aftermath of the judgment:

… Vijay Madanlal Choudhary is a conservative decision, inasmuch as the Supreme Court has simply remained faithful to its inglorious past of taking away all semblance of safeguards to personal liberty and property when it comes to socio-economic offences. Restrictive bail conditions in independent India first came for the essential supplies law before they became famous for anti-terror laws; reverse burdens were held good in 1964 when it came to gold smuggling; the guarantee of Article 20(3) was held inapplicable till customs officials or those from the registrar of companies concluded their inquiry given the theoretical possibility that such inquiries might, till that stage, not end in prosecution … what the PMLA does, is that it weaves together all the restrictive, rights-effacing clauses from this illustrious past in one fine blanket, and it then goes a step further. It is not restricted to just the smuggler or hoarder, but to practically anyone … in its reach and deleterious impact on basic freedoms, the PMLA is truly a sui generis law unlike any other. The judgment in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary was an opportunity to trim it down to size and prevent it from becoming another MISA from the 1970s; instead, the Court has, for now, green-lit that very outcome.

Also read: Reforming Anti-Money Laundering Laws: Insights from Supreme Court Rulings

In his famous book, The Jurisprudence of Emergency, Nasser Hussain challenges us to examine how ‘the concept of emergency cannot be separated from the logic of a rule of law’. While Hussain’s arguments are located within the context of colonial constitutionalism — in particular, how racial difference contributed to the ‘interplay between norm and exception’ — as he himself notes, the blurred lines between the two concepts have had a long afterlife in the post-colony. In this chapter, we have seen how the Indian Constitution is a stark illustration of this: Articles 20 to 22 represent what Hussain calls ‘attempt[s] to regulate the claim of necessity by rules … to locate [such claims] within a normative legality’.

The interpretive borders of this finely wrought scheme, however, were left porous by design, and ill-suited for containing what the 1818 Bengal Regulation first referred to as ‘the reasons of State’. In this context, Articles 20 to 22 have been a terrain of contestation between the ‘contrary impulses’ enabling the exercise of State power upon the individual, and constraining it. Through various inflection points, the courts have contracted the boundaries of constitutional constraint, allowing—in effect—an eternal state of necessity, a permanent exception. The courts thus have taken what was originally a colonial justification of a permanent emergency, and sanctified it with the authority of a post-colonial Constitution. Vijay Madanlal Choudhary is the most striking and most recent example of this tradition. But it is, at the end of the day, a tradition of constitutional interpretation as old as the Constitution itself, and deeply embedded in its structure, design, and vision of State power.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based lawyer.

How the Princely State of Aundh and its Raja Took Surya Namaskar to the World

The Surya Namaskar was understood by its chief proponent, Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi, to be a physical practice within a discourse emerging from an elite martial tradition of yoga as both psychophysical technique and political strategy.

Excerpt adapted from The Yoga of Power by Sunila S. Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke, published by Columbia University Press and Penguin India.

A monumental sculpture greets those who arrive at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Bronze figures arrayed in a spiral depict each position of the Surya Namaskar, a series of movements that is one of the signature sequences of modern yoga. This sculpture, completed in 2011 during the government led by Manmohan Singh of the Indian National Congress party, transmits to the visitor—especially the foreign one—a visual presentation of political soft power. It stands as a reminder to all who pass by that yoga traditions, and especially the Surya Namaskar, are of Indian origin, a point of pride for the Indian nation. The location of this sculpture, at the international gateway to India’s national capital, is apt because the Surya Namaskar has long existed within the worlds of politics and power…

Book cover of The Yoga of Power

Sunila S. Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke
The Yoga of Power: Yoga as Political Thought and Practice in India
Cambridge University Press and Penguin India, 2025

We argue that the Surya Namaskar was understood by its chief proponent, Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi (1868–1951, hereafter “the Raja”), to be a physical practice within a discourse emerging from an elite martial tradition of yoga as both psychophysical technique and political strategy, a way to claim sovereignty through the governance of the self amid the liminal freedoms afforded by indirect rule. The importance of the Surya Namaskar as a practice of sovereignty began with the actual psychophysical exercise but radiated outward and ultimately reverberated through Aundh’s political, educational, economic, social, and penal domains.

Aundh and its Raja

It is known by some but not often noted that the place that played an important role in introducing the world to the Surya Namaskar was also one where there were early models of universal suffrage, a liberal democratic constitution, an independent judiciary, and the open-concept prison. Located 150 kilometers southeast of Pune in western India, the Princely State of Aundh was made up of a scant seventy-two villages, a small territory of roughly five hundred square miles that was dispersed in twenty-four discontinuous patches across the modern districts of Satara and Sangli in Maharashtra and Vijayapura in northern Karnataka…

[The Raja] was also the architect of a series of reforms that we suggest are emblematic of yoga as political practice. These included incorporating Surya Namaskar training throughout Aundh, reforms to the educational system, administrative and judicial devolution, initiatives to achieve economic self-sufficiency, and penal reform. The pinnacle of Aundh’s political reforms was the Raja’s abdication of his royal privileges in favor of a constitutional democracy in 1938–1939, eight years ahead of India’s declaration of independence from British rule and more than a decade before India’s own democratic constitution would come into effect in 1951. He also played a leading role in social, educational, political, and cultural reform movements outside Aundh. For example, he was the first major patron of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute’s project to compose a critical edition of the Mahābhārata, for which he also painted illustrations and commissioned art from other artists. Although he was a Brahman by birth, he was critical of religious and caste practices that discriminated against women and nonelite castes alike and that, in his view, were responsible for social decline; he did not strictly obey the norm common for men of his community of wearing the sacred thread, either. In many senses, he can be considered an example of a “Brahmin double,” someone who, by virtue of his caste and gender position, could afford to mount criticisms of the very structures that upheld his authority. These various political, social, and ethical stances informed how he deployed his practice of the Surya Namaskar to speak to and effect his political positions…

Yoga on Film

Around 1928, the Raja created a silent film of just under eleven minutes on the practice of the Surya Namaskar. He either showed the film himself or arranged screenings of the film throughout British and Princely India as well as during his travels abroad. The film, entitled Surya Namaskar in both English and Hindi, is attributed to the Raja and has bilingual placards in English and Hindi that are interspersed with moving images of people performing the Surya Namaskar sequence. Given the great importance the Raja placed on performing and converting others to the practice of Surya Namaskars and the high cost of making a film almost a century ago, we consider each element of the film to be a deliberate choice on the part of the Raja and those close to him.

After a few introductory placards, the first images of the film show the Raja emerging from his palace in full regalia, with a turban on his head and a sword hanging at his side. In the next scenes, the Raja is shorn of all regalia, wears shorts with a bare chest, and performs several rounds of the Surya Namaskar sequence of movements. Although the Raja was a Brahmin, as were so many of the princes of the fragmented Maratha Confederacy throughout western India, he does not wear a sacred thread, nor does his son, who appears in subsequent frames. Neither wears any other marker of religion or caste, in keeping with the Raja’s broader social reform commitments. This contrasts with other photographs of the Raja from this time, in which he does wear a sacred thread, and is also a notable difference from the yoga teacher Krishnamacharya in Mysore, who first appears in a film performing yoga in 1938, with a prominent sacred thread across his chest and a vertical Hindu Vaishnava mark (ṭiḷak) on his forehead.

Stills from a film on the origins of the Surya Namaskar

Stills of the Raja from his film, Surya Namaskar, 1928.

The form of the Surya Namaskar depicted in the 1928 film is a swift, flowing movement with a pause only at the first and last positions (which are the same), with the downward dog position occurring in the middle. While the term vinyāsa is not used by the Raja, as far as we can tell, the idea of a flowing set of movements or steps is clearly evident in the way the Raja and others demonstrate the Surya Namaskar in this film. Alongside the Surya Namaskar, the Raja’s son, Apa Pant, also demonstrates the classic haṭha yoga technique of naulī, which involves manipulating the stomach and intestines through a dynamic movement of the abdominal muscles. In addition, the Raja and everyone else who performs the Surya Namaskar in the film can be seen speaking before beginning each new sequence. They are likely chanting the mantras that the Raja felt were integral to the practice and about which he writes in all his books, another key aspect of many forms of psychophysical yoga.

Stills from a film on the origins of the Surya Namaskar

Stills from the Surya Namaskar film.

The word “yoga” does not appear in English or Hindi in the film; instead, the Surya Namaskar is described as an “exercise” in English and vyāyām in Hindi. As we will see, however, the Raja makes no distinction between yoga and exercise/vyāyām in his writing in English, Marathi, or Hindi, and yoga is described as both exercise and vyāyām in these languages in India as well. Likewise, the placards for the Surya Namaskar sculpture in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi that we mention at the start of the chapter describe the Surya Namaskar in Hindi as both yoga and vyāyām. There is here perhaps an echo of the association between yoga and vyāyāma that we explore in the Arthaśāstra in chapter 2. Later in this chapter, we dwell extensively on the Raja’s choice of words to describe his practice, especially when addressing an English audience.

A gender balance appears important in the film. Following the demonstration of Surya Namaskar and naulī by the Raja’s son, the Raja’s wife, the Ranisaheb, performs the Surya Namaskar in a nine-yard sari (the men are in shorts). This way of draping a sari was common throughout western India at the time (and still is in many parts of the region) and, unlike the five-yard draping method, makes it possible for a woman to perform the Surya Namaskar properly, with legs spread apart rather than always kept together. After the Ranisaheb’s demonstration, the film shows the five princesses of Aundh performing the Surya Namaskar in synchronized sequence, following which the youngest members of the Raja’s household are shown making a brave and disorderly attempt to perform the sequence under the watchful tutelage of the Raja and later the Rani, who enters the scene to assist.

The next two scenes capture groups of schoolchildren performing Surya Namaskar. The film notes that requiring students to practice the Surya Namaskar is “one of many reforms introduced by the Chiefsahib in his State,” suggesting again that the Surya Namaskar was a component of other social and political reforms undertaken by the Raja. It appears that boys and girls practiced separately because they were likely divided by gender in schools generally; one last placard emphasizes that “school girls are taught” the Surya Namaskar as well.

The film ends with a rather chaotic family montage as the Raja tries to arrange his children and grandchildren for a family photo. This final scene emphasizes the very personal nature of the Surya Namaskar practice for the Raja and his family and its rootedness in the genealogy of his own political lineage, and the opening of this lineage to the general public.

Sunila S. Kalé is a professor in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her books include Electrifying India: Regional Political Economies of Development (2014).

Christian Lee Novetzke is a professor in the Jackson School of International Studies and the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. His books include The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India (Columbia, 2016).

Memory, Exile and Belonging: The Liminal World of ‘Tales from Qabristan’

In Sabin Iqbal’s latest novel, the qabristan is more than a setting; it is a threshold, a repository of suppressed histories and family reckonings.

Graveyards have long haunted the chronicles of literature, from ancient epics and medieval elegies to modern novels, serving as sites where mortality, memory and meaning converge. In these spaces, the boundary between the living and the dead blurs – Hamlet speaks to a skull, Charles Dickens’ Pip meets a convict among the tombstones, and Juan Preciado chases ghosts in Comala’s dusty graves.

In his latest novel, Tales from Qabristan, Sabin Iqbal draws from this tradition, but the qabristan (graveyard) is more than a setting; it is a threshold, a repository of suppressed histories and family reckonings. Here, graves do not conceal – they reveal, whispering truths the living would rather forget. The past rises from the earth, not as a distant echo but as a presence that demands to be faced.

At its core, the novel is a meditation on memory, grief and the inescapable weight of familial and social legacies. The protagonist, Farook, returning to his childhood village after his father’s death, must come to terms with the shifting contours of home, identity and belonging. The fragmented narrative interlaces past and present, tracing intergenerational trauma through a multitude of characters. History permeates personal struggles that shape the village, reinforcing the cyclic nature of ambition, exile and nostalgia.

Also read: How Can You Demolish a Dictator with Cartoons?

Farook is the central figure in the novel, both an observer and a reluctant participant in his family’s quiet tragedies. Caught between past and present, he confronts the erosion of old values, shaped by frustration, forced resilience and an awakening to societal injustices. His early life is bound up with figures like his father, grandmother and cousin Jami, each reflecting a world in flux.

Sabin Iqbal
Tales from Qabristan
Penguin Random House India, 2025

Farook’s struggles begin in childhood, marked by family power relations and rigid hierarchies. Exposure to religious rites becomes a metaphor for the inescapable weight of tradition. His relationship with his father, Pa, is a curious mix of admiration, frustration and emotional distance. Pa places great expectations on him, yet fails to connect with him emotionally. This disconnect is exacerbated by his father’s failure in the Gulf, which becomes a defining source of Farook’s resentment. Unlike the many migrants who return wealthy, his father fails to adapt to the materialistic demands of expatriate life, coming home not with financial success but with books and a terminal illness. The contrast between his father’s idealism and economic struggles creates a quiet but lasting frustration in Farook.

Pa often murmured, Perhaps the fault is mine, but I cannot take this anymore. One or two years more, then I’ll return for good.

The family scoffed, Why does he come home every year? He should slog it out in the desert, make some money.

Farook’s mother heard it all, sat quietly in the kitchen, her cheeks flushed red with silent tears.

Farook grew up in the shadow of this quiet collapse – his father’s failure, his mother’s grief, their family’s isolation. The Gulf dream, he learned, wasn’t just about money; it measured a man’s worth in what he could not bring back.

Years later, Farook summed it up in a single line: Pa came back with four cartons of books, not much money, and cancer in his lungs.

That was the cost – life traded for a lie, leaving behind neither wealth nor health, only disappointment dressed as legacy.

Pa and Ma’s marriage appears conventional, but beneath the surface lies unspoken conflict and quiet defiance. Pa holds authority, dismissing Ma’s aspirations – What for? To use as a wrapper? – when she wishes to collect her degree. Ma goes through both domestic restrictions and the humiliation of Pa’s financial failures, re-reading his letters in search of the man she once knew.

To outsiders, theirs is an ideal marriage, but Farook sees the hidden truth: “I have seen it all… the frustrations, solitary sighs, timid protests, and tears others never see.”

Also read: ‘The Past Is No Past at All’: Jenny Erpenbeck on German History, Abusive Relationships and Music

Ma resists subtly – silent tears instead of arguments, and later, rejecting Farook’s financial help to assert her dignity. The novel critiques how economic dependence silences women. Though Pa is a loving father, he cannot see Ma beyond her roles as wife and mother, reinforcing a patriarchal order that erases women’s identities. Ma’s quiet endurance and defiance make her one of the novel’s most powerful figures.

In Tales from Qabristan, Gulf migration is not a story of ambition but of compulsion, marked by broken dreams and weary returns. Pa symbolises this disillusionment – his idealism and ethical rigidity make him ill-suited for the ruthless migrant economy. He returns not with wealth but with books and a tumour, a haunting symbol of the personal cost of migration.

Jami, a gifted cricketer, is forced to abandon his passion for the Gulf’s economic promise, leaving with resignation, not hope. In contrast, Podiyan thrives through pragmatism and compromise, embodying the exploitative side of migrant success. Mohammed, Ramia’s husband, secures financial stability, showing how Gulf remittances shape social status back home.

Farook’s brief stint in the Gulf reveals it as a place of exhaustion and alienation, not opportunity. The novel critiques the romanticised Gulf dream, exposing the psychological toll on both the successful and the failed. It’s a quiet elegy to those who return with little more than memories, regrets and the weight of years lost.

Tales from Qabristan also situates itself within subaltern literature, where the oppressed do not simply suffer – they persist, question and defy.

In the novel, the Veda (tribal) community exists on the margins, shaped by caste, exclusion and social hierarchies. Yet, through characters like Pankan, Kochukarumban and Neelan, the novel reveals not victims, but individuals asserting dignity through quiet defiance.

Pankan, scarred by caste violence and gender non-conformity, lives as a trans woman, unsettling the village and exposing the cruelty that enforces social order. Kochukarumban and Neelan seek dignity through conversion to Islam, only to face persistent caste prejudice. The education system fails Veda children, trapping them in cycles of labour, their potential stifled.

Yet, resistance continues – Pankan’s identity defies erasure, Kochukarumban attends mosque prayers despite rejection, and Veda women embody silent resilience. Their lives challenge structures designed to keep them invisible.

Tales from Qabristan rejects romanticised struggles, exposing the hypocrisies of caste mobility in Kerala. Pankan becomes more than a person – a symbol of survival, a ghostly figure at Pa’s funeral: Far away, under a lonely mango tree, stands Pankan. I strain my eyes to look again… Is it really Pankan or an apparition?

Through Pankan’s defiance and Ma’s silent endurance, the novel critiques patriarchal, casteist and gendered oppression, forcing us to confront what it means to exist beyond society’s definitions.

Sabin Iqbal’s two earlier novels, The Cliffhangers and Shamal Days, and Tales from Qabristan share a thematic core rooted in migration, alienation and the shifting terrains  of identity. The Cliffhangers explores the disillusionment of youth in a coastal Kerala village, grappling with social exclusion and political violence – outsiders in their own land. Shamal Days shifts to the Gulf, exposing the harsh realities of migrant life where dreams of prosperity clash with exploitation and disposability. This critique reappears in Tales from Qabristan, where Pa’s failed migration story exemplifies the illusions and heartbreaks of the Gulf dream. Iqbal’s novel is lyrical and introspective, blending social fiction, autofiction and realism. His atypical storytelling and intertextual depth fit within the new genres of postcolonial literature that defies linearity, engaging readers in a world where memory and myth meld, and every grave holds a story waiting to be unearthed.

K.M. Seethi is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kerala, India. He is also the editor of Journal of State and Society. Seethi also served as Senior Professor of International Relations and Dean of Social Sciences at MGU.

How Can You Demolish a Dictator with Cartoons?

The book ‘Satire and Ridicule: Cartoons that Demolished a Dictator (July Uprising)’, edited by Shahidul Alam, weaves a framework in which the answers could be found.

How should political cartoonists and illustrators respond to a brutally repressive regime that silences all dissent and free expression? How can artists make complex socio-political issues more accessible through their work? Can satire and humour be used to defeat a dictatorship? Are political cartoons still relevant in the digital age? What’s the role of cartoonists and illustrators in society at large?

Shahidul Alam (ed.)
Satire and Ridicule: Cartoons That Demolished a Dictator
Drik Picture Library, Earki, and the Bangladesh Cartoonist Association, 2024
Cover illustration: Mehedi Haque

Based on the exhibition ‘Cartoon e Bidroho (Cartoons of Rebellion)’, the book Satire and Ridicule: Cartoons that Demolished a Dictator (July Uprising), edited by noted Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam, weaves a framework in which answers to these questions could be found. It is published jointly by Bangladesh Cartoonists Association, Drik Picture Library and Earki.

Throughout history, art has always served the purpose of an archive. From Goya’s harrowing Disasters of War and Chittoprasad’s stark illustrations of 1943’s Bengal famine to Käthe Kollwitz’s visual documentations of the Great Peasants Revolt (to name a few), art has consistently documented realities, responded to them, and quite often shaped them too.

Satire and Ridicule fulfils this very purpose. It is a collection of illustrations, cartoons and graffiti made during the July mass uprising in Bangladesh last year that ultimately led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina from power. Divided into eight chapters, the book chronologically and thematically curates the cartoons and illustrations to tell the story of the uprising – what sparked the movement and what followed. With an unapologetic tone, vivid colours and bold fonts, the book captures the zeitgeist of a nation suffocating under a dictatorial regime and chronicles how a student-led protest grew into a nationwide uprising through a blend of images and narratives.

The slogan ‘they robbed me of my mother tongue’, when Urdu language was imposed on Bengalis by the Pakistan government in 1952, gained new meaning in 2024 because of Hasina’s brutal crackdown. Illustration: Tuba Tanjum

In the book’s preface, Alam, Simu Naser and Mehedi Haque write:

“She (Sheikh Hasina) had destroyed all public institutions, converted the police into a private army and weaponised the judiciary. Leading artists and intellectuals had become complicit in the repression. They used the struggle for freedom in 1971 to plaster over the murderous repression by the Hasina regime.

There were important exceptions. A group of young cartoonists at Earki and Bangladesh Cartoonist Association (BANCARAS), along with a few of their mentors, continued to protest throughout the repressive period despite the risks. Drik continued to exhibit their work despite the danger. Some visitors continued to come and see the work despite the possible dire outcome. Some newspapers covered these events despite the risk of being shut down. With the fall of the dictator, there was a new burst of creativity which led to a new exhibition. It is the courage, the tenacity and the undying belief in democracy which brought these organisations BANCARAS, Earki and Drik Picture Library and these talented cartoonists together. We celebrate them through this book.”

This book is a tribute to the indomitable courage of the people of Bangladesh, especially young cartoonists/artists whose works, shared across the social media platforms and streets of Bangladesh,  helped build solidarities across the country even during a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Illustration: Shamiron Bormon

Encountering complex and multifaceted realities, each image, imbued with satire, irony, resilience, ridicule and anger, becomes a window into the socio-political landscape of the time. We see the dictator’s hubris lampooned, her manipulation of the 1971 liberation narrative exposed, the brutal reality of police and state-sponsored “helmet goons” and the people’s simmering discontent given a visual voice. The cartoons range from subtle jabs to outright mockery, demonstrating the diverse ways artists across Bangladesh took on Hasina’s regime and registered their dissent.

In this era often called post-truth, where entrenched beliefs, fake news and misinformation take up most of the space in public discourse, it seems easier than ever for any authoritarian or dictatorial regime to dilute and obliterate the memories of violence from the collective mind with sheer lies and propaganda. However, this book appears to be an effort to use art as a witness, remembering and documenting quite vividly what has been perpetrated and how the people of Bangladesh collectively responded with a revolution. The illustrations show how the efforts of the Hasina regime to label student protestors as ‘razakars’ (Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan Army) completely backfired, how the gruesome acts of killing students and young protestors led to even bigger resistance nationwide, how a series of misinformation campaigns by the Hasina regime were instantly debunked and turned into mockery and memes, and despite it all how the people of Bangladesh stood firm in the pursuit of democracy and justice.

While sharply pointing towards ‘Ek Dopha, Ek Dabi (One Point, One Demand)’ – used as a slogan to call for an end to the Hasina regime – the illustrations also evoke some long-buried questions regarding indigenous rights, army repression, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Indigenous activist Kalpana Chakma and her two brothers were abducted on 12 June 1996 from their home at Lallyaghona village allegedly by soldiers. She is still missing. No one has been tried for her disappearance. The Chittagong Hill Tracts, home to the largest concentration of indigenous people in Bangladesh, have been under military occupation since 1976. Photo by Shahidul Alam, of graffiti in the Dhaka University campus

It also illustrates how to deal with a media that is propagandist and complicit to state-sponsored violence,  and how not to fall prey to the ‘crocodile tears’ and ‘nice gestures’ of  leaders of an oppressive regime.

Cartoon tells Hasina to do less theatrics, ‘Pio (Dear)’. Illustration: Asifur Rahman

Satire and Ridicule provides insight into the contemporary political cartooning scene in Bangladesh, a nation with a rich history of political cartoons, dating back to its independence movement in 1971 and the years that followed. Over time, however, many leading cartoonists were silenced due to political turmoil, repressive laws, threats of arrest, censorship and intimidation. With the emergence of the July mass uprising, a new generation of illustrators and cartoonists came to the forefront, developing new visual languages of political cartoons that marked the medium’s resurgence after a long period of suppression.

More than a historical record, the book offers a visceral and compelling journey through intense social and political upheaval in Bangladesh. This book is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of political satire and art, the dynamics of social movements, and the ongoing struggles for democracy and freedom of expression. It serves as a potent reminder of the crucial role that artists play in holding power accountable and instilling hope in even the darkest of times.