My musings in the wake of how some people are parties are behaving over abrogation of Article 35A and 370 in Kashmir.

Please read here …

My brief musings on what seems to me the final frontier of democracy.

Please read here …

Friends, how can one river flow through two locations? Here I call out the right wing hypocrisy and sham in naming Allahabad as Prayag while actively running the Saraswati Heritage Project in Haryana. The Saraswati project in Haryana – noble in intent but flawed in execution if its waters are to be supplied from river Sutlej in Himachal Pradesh-  has dire implications for Panjab.

Thank you Punjab Today for publishing the piece.

Please read more here …

Friends, Indira Basu from The Quint got in touch yesterday over the Swami Agnivesh post. I told her about the temporary Facebook ban on perhaps my post being reported as ‘hate speech’. Imagine – this as hate speech!

They carried a more context driven story last evening. The story calls out the right-wing’s lack of sense of ancestry and roots. They do not know where they originate from and seem to me like a serpent devouring its own tail.

Please read here …

Friends, in this essay writer Shefali Tripathi Mehta holds forth on the idea of resistance and how it is becoming more and more important to stand up and be counted in these adverse times.

She quotes me too:

I ask Amandeep Sandhu, writer and novelist, who engages with and is followed by many on Facebook, how he decides which cause is just; which he must support. He tells me that while working on his current book on Punjab, he travelled, saw and experienced the real issues facing the farmers. While it devastated him, it also gave him a grounding in not just the farmer issues, but through this experience to chaff through the real and fake with regard to other social, religious and political issues. It reconfirmed his belief that there is power hegemony and that most often than not, the poor and the marginalised are on the side of truth. On when he stood at his street corner holding a poster in support of a young rape and murder victim, I asked if it matters who or how many are in it with him. Or why some are complacent and silent. His answer was an emphatic no, he does not look for support. Interestingly, he says he does not do anything expecting action or change, “Nothing changes – but resistance is important. Speaking up is a primary right.” He believes that there can never be “true” reporting but, “Democracy is eternal vigilance. Even if it is flawed. And so, we shouldn’t stop trying.”

Please read …

Friends, over the last few days a photograph of a Sikh police man from Uttrakhand saving a man from a lynch mob has gone viral. I wrote about it on Facebook. The post was shared many times and picked by media. Putting up links below.

DailyO picked up the post, please find here …

The Quint picked up the post, please find here …

Punjab Today picked up the post, please find here … 

Friends, except for Facebook and intense talks with journalists, I did not report or speak on the Karnataka elections. Being born Sikh, it was hard for me. Until Jairaj Singh pushed me to stick out my neck.

So, here it is because I love Bengaluru and Karnataka.

Please read here …

Friends, as the Karnataka elections neared a viral video by a group called Young Indian started doing the rounds. It called out against the ban of freedoms to eat, dress, and so on. Catheline Chen from the Deccan Chronicle got in touch to register my views.

Please read more here …

Friends, on Sunday namma Bengaluru demonstrated our joint voice from our own locations. The scale of the number of sites, people participation, our own agency was an example in itself for urban landscapes.

Arundhati Ghosh and I try to articulate our combined protest and experiment for which each of us was an organizer, mobilizer and participant. Thank you The News Minute for carrying the piece.

Please read here …

#MyStreetMyProtest