THE VERTICAL Sinking the Body Politic During the general election, prominent Indian political parties vied for villagers' affection in the Sundarbans, albeit turning a blind eye to the ongoing climate catastrophe. As demands for climate-conscious infrastructure and humanitarian relief go unappraised, people in the region are reckoning with the logical consequences of that apathy. Dipanjan Sinha In Satjelia village, nearly a hundred kilometres from Kolkata, the largest city of eastern India, every family lives with memories of disaster. In the last week of May, they were again in panic with the announcement of Cyclone Remal hitting the eastern part of India. They spent sleepless nights at the makeshift relief centre fearing that their homes will again be lost, their crops will again be destroyed, and their land will turn unfit for agriculture for a long time with saline water flooding fields. “I still haven’t been able to recover fully from the losses I suffered from Cyclone Alia in 2009,” says Srimanti Sinha, who lives in a small hutment about a kilometre away from the river. Her home was swept away in the cyclone. Every time there is a storm, she is reminded of that time. “We keep praying that the water levels do not rise up enough to breach the embankment again.” This time, though, just before Cyclone Remal hit eastern India, candidates for the 2024 general elections paid the village a visit ahead of voting on 1st June. Every major party had fielded a candidate for the region with the main contestants being from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Trinamul Congress, and the I.N.D.I.A alliance. The candidates spoke about violence, religious issues, development, ending corruption, and building a strong nation. Somehow, they managed to skip over far more immediate concerns . In Satjelia, the demand is for stronger dams and embankments to protect the land from floods. The people also want support for farmers to reduce migration for work to faraway states like Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. “What [politicians] have spoken about is important for us too,” Sinha says. “But I wish they also spoke about what we need here the most.” Satjelia is situated in the middle of a ring of islands in the Sundarban delta: home to the largest mangrove forest in the world and over four million people. Like Sinha and others in Satjelia, people in several parts of the delta have suffered losses from cyclones and steadily rising water levels. In the past two decades, the sea level in the Sundarbans has risen by three centimeters a year, according to satellite imagery and media reports , which is among the fastest coastal erosion rates globally. In 2021, Cyclone Yaas destroyed over three lakh homes as seawater breached embankments in many parts of the state. Before that, tropical cyclones—whether Fani (May 2019), Bulbul (November 2019), or Amphan (May 2020)—battered this region. Each time, embankments were breached, and saline water entered agricultural land, causing immense loss of earnings and subsequent distress migration. Among these, Amphan was the most severe, killing over 100 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. After repeated losses to their land and belongings, most young people from islands like Sagar and Mousuni have migrated to the country’s southernmost states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, over a thousand kilometers away, in search of new livelihoods. They now work as daily wage labourers and contract workers at construction sites, in factories, and on large fishing vessels. Those still living close to the water in Sundarban are desperate to move away, but they receive little to no assistance from the government. After big storms, there are announcements of relocation for victims. According to people in the villages, however, not much of that is seen happening. Bapi Bor, who lives in Bankimnagar, a village on the island near the Bay of Bengal, says homes are flooded even during high tides in parts of the delta, including Sagar Island. Sagar Island is a hub of climate refugees, being one of the largest islands in the delta. People have shifted here from small neighbouring islands like Lohachora and Ghoramara, which have been sinking in the past two decades. Now, as the water levels continue rising and Sagar Island keeps sinking, these refugees are again on the verge of losing their homes. The Sundarban delta, despite being one of the most ravaged areas by climate change globally, has been met with staggering apathy from the Indian political class. Meanwhile, a tussle between the central and state government in West Bengal has further exacerbated the poor quality of life in the Sundarbans. Many small dams throughout the islands were maintained by local construction labourers, whose work was compensated with money from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005. This national program for employment security ensured 100 days of work for people in rural India. “That money has stopped coming from the central government as they have accused the state government [of West Bengal] of corruption,” says Tanmay Mandal, a member of the village council in Rangabelia village near Satjelia. He explains that this is a serious problem for the islands since much work was done under that scheme, from maintaining earthen embankments to planting mangroves. On paper, the major political parties acknowledge the climate crisis—to varying degrees, as would be expected. BJP’s manifesto mentions it briefly, focusing more on “nature-friendly, climate-resilient, remunerative agriculture” and “coastal resilience against climate change.” The manifesto of the Indian National Congress has more detailed plans with a 13-point program under the heading “Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management.” Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress manifesto is more specific to Bengal and includes the crisis of the Sundarban delta. They mention specifically that “TMC will implement strategies to protect the rivers of Bengal, including all the vulnerable riverbanks of the state, from erosion and to safeguard communities from floods.” And yet, as the campaigns in West Bengal became more fervent, climate change remained a curio of the manifestos. In the speeches and rallies, it was lost amidst loud rhetoric about religion and rising prices. To be sure, this indifference is not limited to the delta. As the general elections rolled on from 19th April to 1st June, several parts of India were hit by a heat wave that claimed over 56 lives, of which 33 were polling officers. That tragedy, too, had little impact on the campaigns. According to Samir Kumar Das, a professor of political science at Calcutta University, the unfortunate reality of climate change is that it is only discussed when there is controversy. In other words: when the display of apathy becomes untenable, and crises become political liabilities. “The media is usually after the spectacular stories,” says Das. “But rising water levels or distress migration happens slowly. So while we see a lot of coverage after a storm, we have no idea how many people had to migrate eventually.” Across the board, political attention remains woefully inadequate as floods, heat waves, and droughts increase with the impact of climate change. In the face of such a fragmented and superficial political response, Das proposes a larger comprehensive approach, such as a central policy for distress migration. At the same time, Das notes that the climate crisis is being discussed more as it is increasingly affecting the cities in the form of a water crisis and unbearable heat waves. “The media cannot ignore it now,” he says. Das sees a shift in people's response to the crisis in the Sundarbans. “People are more vocal about what they need,” he observes. “Alms after a storm are not enough to satisfy them.” Instead, people are asking more difficult questions about the dams and infrastructure that are indicative of the broader scope of the problem. Some, of course, are intervening themselves. “It could be the beginning,” Das suggests, “of a new kind of pressure the political organisations can feel.” Then again, who can say how long it will take for apathy to become untenable? ∎ In Satjelia village, nearly a hundred kilometres from Kolkata, the largest city of eastern India, every family lives with memories of disaster. In the last week of May, they were again in panic with the announcement of Cyclone Remal hitting the eastern part of India. They spent sleepless nights at the makeshift relief centre fearing that their homes will again be lost, their crops will again be destroyed, and their land will turn unfit for agriculture for a long time with saline water flooding fields. “I still haven’t been able to recover fully from the losses I suffered from Cyclone Alia in 2009,” says Srimanti Sinha, who lives in a small hutment about a kilometre away from the river. Her home was swept away in the cyclone. Every time there is a storm, she is reminded of that time. “We keep praying that the water levels do not rise up enough to breach the embankment again.” This time, though, just before Cyclone Remal hit eastern India, candidates for the 2024 general elections paid the village a visit ahead of voting on 1st June. Every major party had fielded a candidate for the region with the main contestants being from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Trinamul Congress, and the I.N.D.I.A alliance. The candidates spoke about violence, religious issues, development, ending corruption, and building a strong nation. Somehow, they managed to skip over far more immediate concerns . In Satjelia, the demand is for stronger dams and embankments to protect the land from floods. The people also want support for farmers to reduce migration for work to faraway states like Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. “What [politicians] have spoken about is important for us too,” Sinha says. “But I wish they also spoke about what we need here the most.” Satjelia is situated in the middle of a ring of islands in the Sundarban delta: home to the largest mangrove forest in the world and over four million people. Like Sinha and others in Satjelia, people in several parts of the delta have suffered losses from cyclones and steadily rising water levels. In the past two decades, the sea level in the Sundarbans has risen by three centimeters a year, according to satellite imagery and media reports , which is among the fastest coastal erosion rates globally. In 2021, Cyclone Yaas destroyed over three lakh homes as seawater breached embankments in many parts of the state. Before that, tropical cyclones—whether Fani (May 2019), Bulbul (November 2019), or Amphan (May 2020)—battered this region. Each time, embankments were breached, and saline water entered agricultural land, causing immense loss of earnings and subsequent distress migration. Among these, Amphan was the most severe, killing over 100 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. After repeated losses to their land and belongings, most young people from islands like Sagar and Mousuni have migrated to the country’s southernmost states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, over a thousand kilometers away, in search of new livelihoods. They now work as daily wage labourers and contract workers at construction sites, in factories, and on large fishing vessels. Those still living close to the water in Sundarban are desperate to move away, but they receive little to no assistance from the government. After big storms, there are announcements of relocation for victims. According to people in the villages, however, not much of that is seen happening. Bapi Bor, who lives in Bankimnagar, a village on the island near the Bay of Bengal, says homes are flooded even during high tides in parts of the delta, including Sagar Island. Sagar Island is a hub of climate refugees, being one of the largest islands in the delta. People have shifted here from small neighbouring islands like Lohachora and Ghoramara, which have been sinking in the past two decades. Now, as the water levels continue rising and Sagar Island keeps sinking, these refugees are again on the verge of losing their homes. The Sundarban delta, despite being one of the most ravaged areas by climate change globally, has been met with staggering apathy from the Indian political class. Meanwhile, a tussle between the central and state government in West Bengal has further exacerbated the poor quality of life in the Sundarbans. Many small dams throughout the islands were maintained by local construction labourers, whose work was compensated with money from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005. This national program for employment security ensured 100 days of work for people in rural India. “That money has stopped coming from the central government as they have accused the state government [of West Bengal] of corruption,” says Tanmay Mandal, a member of the village council in Rangabelia village near Satjelia. He explains that this is a serious problem for the islands since much work was done under that scheme, from maintaining earthen embankments to planting mangroves. On paper, the major political parties acknowledge the climate crisis—to varying degrees, as would be expected. BJP’s manifesto mentions it briefly, focusing more on “nature-friendly, climate-resilient, remunerative agriculture” and “coastal resilience against climate change.” The manifesto of the Indian National Congress has more detailed plans with a 13-point program under the heading “Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management.” Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress manifesto is more specific to Bengal and includes the crisis of the Sundarban delta. They mention specifically that “TMC will implement strategies to protect the rivers of Bengal, including all the vulnerable riverbanks of the state, from erosion and to safeguard communities from floods.” And yet, as the campaigns in West Bengal became more fervent, climate change remained a curio of the manifestos. In the speeches and rallies, it was lost amidst loud rhetoric about religion and rising prices. To be sure, this indifference is not limited to the delta. As the general elections rolled on from 19th April to 1st June, several parts of India were hit by a heat wave that claimed over 56 lives, of which 33 were polling officers. That tragedy, too, had little impact on the campaigns. According to Samir Kumar Das, a professor of political science at Calcutta University, the unfortunate reality of climate change is that it is only discussed when there is controversy. In other words: when the display of apathy becomes untenable, and crises become political liabilities. “The media is usually after the spectacular stories,” says Das. “But rising water levels or distress migration happens slowly. So while we see a lot of coverage after a storm, we have no idea how many people had to migrate eventually.” Across the board, political attention remains woefully inadequate as floods, heat waves, and droughts increase with the impact of climate change. In the face of such a fragmented and superficial political response, Das proposes a larger comprehensive approach, such as a central policy for distress migration. At the same time, Das notes that the climate crisis is being discussed more as it is increasingly affecting the cities in the form of a water crisis and unbearable heat waves. “The media cannot ignore it now,” he says. Das sees a shift in people's response to the crisis in the Sundarbans. “People are more vocal about what they need,” he observes. “Alms after a storm are not enough to satisfy them.” Instead, people are asking more difficult questions about the dams and infrastructure that are indicative of the broader scope of the problem. Some, of course, are intervening themselves. “It could be the beginning,” Das suggests, “of a new kind of pressure the political organisations can feel.” Then again, who can say how long it will take for apathy to become untenable? ∎ SUB-HEAD ​ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Backwaters, courtesy of Radhika Dinesh. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Dispatch Sundarbans Climate Change Satjelia Calcutta Cyclone Remal Cyclone Alia Elections 2024 Indian General Election West Bengal Refugee Crisis Refugees Climate Migrants Trinamul Congress I.N.D.I.A alliance Dams Embankments Rural Farmers Sundarban Delta Mangrove Forest Cyclone Yaas Tropical Cyclones Cyclone Amphan Agriculture Wage Labor Migration Kerala Tamil Nadu Contract Workers Bay of Bengal Bankimnagar Climate Refugees BJP Disaster Management Congress Riverbanks Erosion Manifesto Campaign Promises Electioneering Mitigation Sagar Island DIPANJAN SINHA is an independent writer who focuses on the intersection of culture and politics. His work has appeared in The Hindustan Times , The New Statesman , and Vice . 24 Aug 2024 Dispatch Sundarbans 24th Aug 2024 RADHIKA DINESH is a visual artist and animator from Kerala whose work draws deeply from the rich narratives of South Asia. She practises blending nostalgia with whimsy, bringing stories to life through a vibrant visual language. She is currently in her final year at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. The Ambivalent Voter Jeevan Ravindran 20th Sep Beatrice Wangui's Fight for Seed Sovereignty in Kenya Pierra Nyaruai 22nd Apr Dispatch from a Village Near Hamal Lake, Sindh, in August Ibrahim Buriro 12th Mar It's Only Human Furqan Jawed 26th Apr Returning to the Sundarbans Amitav Ghosh 28th Oct On That Note:

COMMUNITY Discourses on Kashmir AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR A panel on dominant narratives about Kashmir: the longue durée of Kashmiri struggle, the continued movement-building between Kashmir & Palestine, the People's Alliance for Gupkar, and what the repeal of Article 370 really entailed. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Panel Kashmir Intellectual History Settler-Colonialism Longue-Duree of Kashmiri Struggle Movement Organization Revolution Colonialism Burhan Wani People's Alliance for Gupkar Subaltern Studies Palestine Affect Internationalist Solidarity Media Blackout Radicalization Narratives Bollywood Occupation Genocide Pogroms Erasure Mass Protests War Crimes Movement Strategy Emancipatory Politics Humanitarian Crisis Activist Media International Law Hindutva Military Crackdown Military Operations Kashmiri Struggle Discourses of War Nationalism Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Panel Kashmir 24th Oct 2020 Just over a year after the repeal of Article 370 from India's constitution, pro-India Kashmiri political parties called for an alliance. What did it all mean? In our second panel from October 2020, Kashmiri activist-scholars Ather Zia & Huma Dar, and journalist Hilal Mir, discuss the predominant discourses of Kashmir that pervade public and international narratives with Editor Kamil Ahsan. The wide-ranging discussion discusses Indian-occupied-Kashmir, India as a settler-colonial state, journalism & how the Azadi Movement and the repeal of Article 370 are depicted, and the many self-serving narratives that don’t take Kashmiri realities into account. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

THE VERTICAL Climate Crimes of US Imperalism in Afghanistan The occupation of Afghanistan demonstrated that climate catastrophe is a crucial feature of imperialism, not a bug. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi EVERY EMPIRE is unique but most empires share many discernible structural features and operational modes. Normative patterns of imperial conduct include transgressing geographic, cultural, political, legal, and other kinds of boundaries while generating new circulations of people, ideas, technologies, and practices. Historically, empires leverage inequalities and, in so doing, tend to commit crimes. In the modern era, Afghanistan has been arguably the primary victim of imperial war crimes. Since 2001, these crimes have been perpetrated by a large number of colluding and competing international actors and a wide assortment of local collaborators and proxies. It is historically rare for an empire to be held accountable for criminal conduct, and it is a bitter irony that empires present themselves as peace-loving and law-giving while imperial history can be read as repeating litanies of unprosecuted criminal conduct. Through information management predicated on censorship, propaganda, and manipulation of individual states and multinational institutions that may or may not constitute legal conduct, empires work hard to immunize themselves against their own criminality. The International Criminal Court indictment of the US and other actors for crimes against humanity in March 2020 was diluted in September 2021 after the Taliban returned to power to now make it practically impossible for the US to be investigated and held to account by the ICC. The ICC was the last and only internationally recognized authority willing to publicly pursue US imperial war crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. US imperial authority was horrifically predicated on perpetual jet bombing, wanton drone assassination, incessant helicopter night raids, routine abductions and extrajudicial killings, and systematic renditions to black sites in the country. All this occurred across a globally dispersed imperial regime of torture predicated on illegal human trafficking and conscious legal obfuscation, through chains of contractors and subcontractors working covertly across national boundaries. Rapidly emerging GIS-based technologies through which US imperial violence against the people of Afghanistan occurred—involving drones most notably—inherently challenged and transgressed established laws regarding war, military occupation, and universal human rights. U.S. Central Command movement across Kabul of a white Toyota Corolla on Aug. 29th, 2021. Mapping, central to U.S. defense companies and military, tracks an individual car. Today, former defense officials at companies like Janes and Quiet Professionals deploy the same data to ostensibly track and protect refugees. (CENTCOM/via Military Times) Here I highlight the environmental impact of the US-led international so-called “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and call for accountability and remedial action from the US and its allies for criminal negligence of the uniquely precious and life-sustaining natural resource base of the country. The US engagement of Afghanistan’s natural resources began during the Cold War in the context of the Helmand Valley Development Project involving large dams and related canals, roads, airports, and new bureaucracies and administrators organized to provide a perennial supply of water to new agricultural lands where nomads were to settle and produce cash crop exports such as cotton in the south of the country. The HVDP not only failed due to a lack of basic initial soil and groundwater surveys, but the over-salinated soil became usable for little else besides poppies that transformed Afghanistan into the world’s largest exporter of hashish, opium, and heroin in the 1980s. During this decade while the CIA was covertly funding and arming the Mujahideen, the US Drug Enforcement Agency facilitated the processing and global marketing of Afghanistan’s bountiful opiate harvests. One result of the extensive CIA financial and military provisioning of the Afghan mujahideen was the extensive landmining of mountain passes and valley pasturelands between market settings and strategic locations in eastern Afghanistan especially. The ICC was the last and only internationally recognized authority willing to publicly pursue US imperial war crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Beginning in October 2001, a twenty-year monsoon rain of US bombs fell on Afghanistan. Older well-tested munitions such as daisy cutter bombs designed to destroy forests in Viet Nam were used to decimate gardens, orchards, and farms in Afghanistan, while innovative new bunker buster bombs devastated underground water channels, overland canals and dams, and mountainous habitats. This vengeful imperial desire to obliterate single individuals from Tora Bora in December 2001 to the “Mother of All Bombs” in April 2017, to the ‘final official’ drone bombing of an innocent family in August 2021, and the hundreds of thousands of US bombs throughout this imperial occupation, have done irreparable harm by depositing depleted uranium into the soil and groundwater to such an extent that Afghanistan now joins Fallujah, Iraq, the Marshall Islands, New Mexico, Hiroshima and Nagasaki as locations where US munitions have left radiation poisoning and high concentrations of eternally disturbing birth defects among humans and animals in their wake. Deadly chemicals have long blighted the waters and wider ecosystems surrounding many hundreds of military bases in the US. Similarly, the habitats surrounding what were hundreds of military bases in Afghanistan have been forever tainted by deadly toxins, but this environmental assault is amplified seemingly irremediably by the noxious burn pits used by these bases to incinerate everything from paper to human waste to military equipment including full vehicles. These bases were found throughout Afghanistan, from mountain hamlets in the north to the ever-expanding Shindand base in the southwest near the Iranian border to Bagram in the lushly watered northern third of the Kabul valley. During the American imperium, Bagram was a city of its own, defined by a perpetually flaming and smoldering football field-sized burn pit. The toxicity emanating from these burn pits circulated near and far from the bases, resulting in inescapable disease and infertility across the biological spectrum of organisms from insects to fish, crops, plants, trees, animals, birds, and humans. Afghanistan now joins Fallujah, Iraq, the Marshall Islands, New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki as locations where US munitions have left radiation poisoning and high concentrations of eternally disturbing birth defects among humans and animals in their wake. The US military operates primarily on fossil fuels and, as a result, carries one of the largest carbon footprints in the world. Nowhere is the air pollution resulting from military aircraft and diesel-fueled wheeled vehicles more evident than in Kabul, which regressed during the US imperial presence in the country from near-pristine air quality in 2001 to having among the world’s worst air pollution during the US occupation. The hyper-urbanization of Kabul from a city of roughly half a million inhabitants in 2001 to more than five million today has occurred without a sanitation system, while unregulated private wells have depleted the city’s water supply and are also being undermined by climate change-induced deglaciation of the Hindu Kush. From lack of water to radiated water, from toxic air to poisoned soil, the fully unrestrained US imperial military conduct in Afghanistan has resulted in an environmental catastrophe that requires accountability and restitution from all international powers that have contributed to what is now genocidal famine and environmental ruin, much of which did not occur within the boundaries of international law and ethical conduct. ∎ EVERY EMPIRE is unique but most empires share many discernible structural features and operational modes. Normative patterns of imperial conduct include transgressing geographic, cultural, political, legal, and other kinds of boundaries while generating new circulations of people, ideas, technologies, and practices. Historically, empires leverage inequalities and, in so doing, tend to commit crimes. In the modern era, Afghanistan has been arguably the primary victim of imperial war crimes. Since 2001, these crimes have been perpetrated by a large number of colluding and competing international actors and a wide assortment of local collaborators and proxies. It is historically rare for an empire to be held accountable for criminal conduct, and it is a bitter irony that empires present themselves as peace-loving and law-giving while imperial history can be read as repeating litanies of unprosecuted criminal conduct. Through information management predicated on censorship, propaganda, and manipulation of individual states and multinational institutions that may or may not constitute legal conduct, empires work hard to immunize themselves against their own criminality. The International Criminal Court indictment of the US and other actors for crimes against humanity in March 2020 was diluted in September 2021 after the Taliban returned to power to now make it practically impossible for the US to be investigated and held to account by the ICC. The ICC was the last and only internationally recognized authority willing to publicly pursue US imperial war crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. US imperial authority was horrifically predicated on perpetual jet bombing, wanton drone assassination, incessant helicopter night raids, routine abductions and extrajudicial killings, and systematic renditions to black sites in the country. All this occurred across a globally dispersed imperial regime of torture predicated on illegal human trafficking and conscious legal obfuscation, through chains of contractors and subcontractors working covertly across national boundaries. Rapidly emerging GIS-based technologies through which US imperial violence against the people of Afghanistan occurred—involving drones most notably—inherently challenged and transgressed established laws regarding war, military occupation, and universal human rights. U.S. Central Command movement across Kabul of a white Toyota Corolla on Aug. 29th, 2021. Mapping, central to U.S. defense companies and military, tracks an individual car. Today, former defense officials at companies like Janes and Quiet Professionals deploy the same data to ostensibly track and protect refugees. (CENTCOM/via Military Times) Here I highlight the environmental impact of the US-led international so-called “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and call for accountability and remedial action from the US and its allies for criminal negligence of the uniquely precious and life-sustaining natural resource base of the country. The US engagement of Afghanistan’s natural resources began during the Cold War in the context of the Helmand Valley Development Project involving large dams and related canals, roads, airports, and new bureaucracies and administrators organized to provide a perennial supply of water to new agricultural lands where nomads were to settle and produce cash crop exports such as cotton in the south of the country. The HVDP not only failed due to a lack of basic initial soil and groundwater surveys, but the over-salinated soil became usable for little else besides poppies that transformed Afghanistan into the world’s largest exporter of hashish, opium, and heroin in the 1980s. During this decade while the CIA was covertly funding and arming the Mujahideen, the US Drug Enforcement Agency facilitated the processing and global marketing of Afghanistan’s bountiful opiate harvests. One result of the extensive CIA financial and military provisioning of the Afghan mujahideen was the extensive landmining of mountain passes and valley pasturelands between market settings and strategic locations in eastern Afghanistan especially. The ICC was the last and only internationally recognized authority willing to publicly pursue US imperial war crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Beginning in October 2001, a twenty-year monsoon rain of US bombs fell on Afghanistan. Older well-tested munitions such as daisy cutter bombs designed to destroy forests in Viet Nam were used to decimate gardens, orchards, and farms in Afghanistan, while innovative new bunker buster bombs devastated underground water channels, overland canals and dams, and mountainous habitats. This vengeful imperial desire to obliterate single individuals from Tora Bora in December 2001 to the “Mother of All Bombs” in April 2017, to the ‘final official’ drone bombing of an innocent family in August 2021, and the hundreds of thousands of US bombs throughout this imperial occupation, have done irreparable harm by depositing depleted uranium into the soil and groundwater to such an extent that Afghanistan now joins Fallujah, Iraq, the Marshall Islands, New Mexico, Hiroshima and Nagasaki as locations where US munitions have left radiation poisoning and high concentrations of eternally disturbing birth defects among humans and animals in their wake. Deadly chemicals have long blighted the waters and wider ecosystems surrounding many hundreds of military bases in the US. Similarly, the habitats surrounding what were hundreds of military bases in Afghanistan have been forever tainted by deadly toxins, but this environmental assault is amplified seemingly irremediably by the noxious burn pits used by these bases to incinerate everything from paper to human waste to military equipment including full vehicles. These bases were found throughout Afghanistan, from mountain hamlets in the north to the ever-expanding Shindand base in the southwest near the Iranian border to Bagram in the lushly watered northern third of the Kabul valley. During the American imperium, Bagram was a city of its own, defined by a perpetually flaming and smoldering football field-sized burn pit. The toxicity emanating from these burn pits circulated near and far from the bases, resulting in inescapable disease and infertility across the biological spectrum of organisms from insects to fish, crops, plants, trees, animals, birds, and humans. Afghanistan now joins Fallujah, Iraq, the Marshall Islands, New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki as locations where US munitions have left radiation poisoning and high concentrations of eternally disturbing birth defects among humans and animals in their wake. The US military operates primarily on fossil fuels and, as a result, carries one of the largest carbon footprints in the world. Nowhere is the air pollution resulting from military aircraft and diesel-fueled wheeled vehicles more evident than in Kabul, which regressed during the US imperial presence in the country from near-pristine air quality in 2001 to having among the world’s worst air pollution during the US occupation. The hyper-urbanization of Kabul from a city of roughly half a million inhabitants in 2001 to more than five million today has occurred without a sanitation system, while unregulated private wells have depleted the city’s water supply and are also being undermined by climate change-induced deglaciation of the Hindu Kush. From lack of water to radiated water, from toxic air to poisoned soil, the fully unrestrained US imperial military conduct in Afghanistan has resulted in an environmental catastrophe that requires accountability and restitution from all international powers that have contributed to what is now genocidal famine and environmental ruin, much of which did not occur within the boundaries of international law and ethical conduct. ∎ SUB-HEAD ​ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Aerial satellite map of the city of Kunduz, where a Kunduz Trauma Center operated by Médecins Sans Frontières hospital was bombed by a US Air Force gunship in October 2015. The former site of the MSF Trauma Center colored in yellow can today be seen in satellite images as a vacant plot filled with debris. Courtesy of Kamil Ahsan using ArcGIS. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Op-Ed Afghanistan Environmental Disaster Radiation US Imperialism War Crimes Climate Change Geography Urbanization International Law Internationalist Perspective Drug Enforcement Agency DEA Daisy Cutters Munitions Normative Frameworks Structural Frameworks Policy Torture GIS-based technologies Helmand Valley Development Project HDVP Surveillance Regimes Militarism Military Operations Taliban Media United States Memory Nationalism Human Rights Violations Human Rights Hindu Kush Bagram Heroin Hashish Opium Marshall Islands New Mexico Japan Hiroshima & Nagasaki Drone Warfare Predatory Drone Infertility Disease Generational Damage Kunduz SHAH MAHMOUD HANIFI is Professor of History at James Madison University where he teaches courses on the Middle East and South Asia. Hanifi’s publications have addressed subjects including colonial political economy and intellectual history, the Pashto language, photography, cartography, animal and environmental studies, and Orientalism in Afghanistan. 16 Oct 2022 Op-Ed Afghanistan 16th Oct 2022 RAHMAT TUNIO is an independent multimedia journalist whose work has been published in The Guardian, Independent Urdu, Dawn, Lok Sujag , and The News International, among others. Occupation and Osmosis Ryan Biller 26th Oct Universalism & Solidarity in a Post-Roe Landscape Sharmin Hossain 23rd Feb Chats Ep. 11 · On Maldives' Transitional Justice Act Mushfiq Mohamed 7th Jul Chats Ep. 1 · On A Premonition; Recollected Jamil Jan Kochai 13th Nov Discourses on Kashmir Huma Dar · Hilal Mir · Ather Zia 24th Oct On That Note:

INTERACTIVE FLUX · Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval on US Left Electoralism & COVID-19 Where do radical movements stand in the US? In December 2020, Kshama Sawant and Nikil Saval took stock of the response to the COVID-19 crisis at the federal, state, and city levels and discussed the many failures of two-party politics. But the movements for housing, defunding the police, and taxing corporations in Seattle & Philadelphia are also deploying innovative and unprecedented organizing strategies, most obviously at the local level, that have ramifications for movements across the country. Nikil Saval · Kshama Sawant FLUX: An Evening in Dissent FLUX was held at a peculiar time. In December 2020, there was both during a raging pandemic and following exciting victories by progressive candidates in state elections in the US, including Nikil Saval, former co-editor of n+1 , to PA State Senate. Tisya Mavuram and Kamil Ahsan convened with Sen. Nikil Saval and longtime socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant to talk about the future of left politics, relations with the Democratic Party, and the pandemic. In Philadelphia, on the actual city budget level, the [Defund the police] movement's ability to win the cuts it demanded did not succeed, as it didn't in many other cities. But what did happen, it is important to highlight, was a protest encampment of the unhoused on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway which is very near to the Art Museum, a symbolic institution of the city. It's one of the richest and most subsidized areas of the city. It's rich because it has been made to be rich. So to have this encampment protesting for housing was a physical challenge to the housing in the city, including the shelter system, which is in shambles. Despite attempts by elected officials, the encampments were able to secure the transfer of city-owned property to a community land trust. This was unprecedented in Philadelphia history. It doesn't meet the actual need, but it begins to pioneer how movements can work with officials on the left in city government, coming from an abolitionist impulse. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set FLUX: An Evening in Dissent FLUX was held at a peculiar time. In December 2020, there was both during a raging pandemic and following exciting victories by progressive candidates in state elections in the US, including Nikil Saval, former co-editor of n+1 , to PA State Senate. Tisya Mavuram and Kamil Ahsan convened with Sen. Nikil Saval and longtime socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant to talk about the future of left politics, relations with the Democratic Party, and the pandemic. In Philadelphia, on the actual city budget level, the [Defund the police] movement's ability to win the cuts it demanded did not succeed, as it didn't in many other cities. But what did happen, it is important to highlight, was a protest encampment of the unhoused on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway which is very near to the Art Museum, a symbolic institution of the city. It's one of the richest and most subsidized areas of the city. It's rich because it has been made to be rich. So to have this encampment protesting for housing was a physical challenge to the housing in the city, including the shelter system, which is in shambles. Despite attempts by elected officials, the encampments were able to secure the transfer of city-owned property to a community land trust. This was unprecedented in Philadelphia history. It doesn't meet the actual need, but it begins to pioneer how movements can work with officials on the left in city government, coming from an abolitionist impulse. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set SUB-HEAD ​ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the event in full in on IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Event Panel COVID-19 Recall Efforts Democratic Party Progressive Politics Electoral Politics Accommodationism Bernie Sanders Socialist Alternative State Senate Local Politics Local vs. National Politics Washington Pennsylvania City Council Races State Senate Races Centrism Right-Wing Assault Amazon Gentrification Criminal Negligence Fighting the Two-Party System Migrant Workers Stimulus Package Legitimacy of the Capitalist System Demographics The Guise of Bipartisanship Capitalist Class Reactionary Democratic Elites Nancy Pelosi Chuck Schumer Insider Negotiation Standards of Living Minimum Wage Democratic Establishment Post-George Floyd Moment George Floyd Anti-Racism Mass Protests Amazon Tax Corporation Taxation Labor Movement Racial Justice Tax Cuts for the Rich Primarying Centrist Democrats Defund the Police Abolitionism Minneapolis Police Departments Mayoralties Pledges to Defund Police Career Politicians Budget Votes Movement Organization Movement Strategy Seattle Activist Politics Black Lives Matter Democratic Socialists of America Ballot Initiative Housing Municipal Politics Shelter System Encampments of the Unhoused Negotiating Directly with Philadelphia City City-Owned Properties Land Trusts Leftist Media Magazine Culture n+1 Hospitality Workers Growth of Left Media FLUX Philadelphia Seattle City Councils Labor SENATOR NIKIL SAVAL is a father, husband, writer, and organizer. Saval’s organizing is deeply rooted in the labor movement. From 2009 to 2013, he was a volunteer labor organizer with UNITE HERE. In 2016, he was a leader in U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. He went on to co-found Reclaim Philadelphia, in 2018, he was elected as Leader of Philadelphia’s Democratic Second Ward. Saval was the first Asian American to hold the position of Ward Leader in Philadelphia. He previously served as co-editor of the literary journal n+1 and still serves on its board of directors. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times and a contributing writer for The New Yorker , covering architecture, design, and housing. His is the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (2014). KSHAMA SAWANT is a socialist activist, organizer, a member of Socialist Alternative, in solidarity with the Committee for a Workers' International. A visible presence in the Occupy Movement, and American Federation of Teachers Local 1789. She has been in office since 2014 when she was elected to the Seattle City Council on a platform of a $15/hr minimum wage, rent control and taxing the super-rich to fund mass transit and education. In 2014, she became the first socialist elected in a major US city in decades. 5 Dec 2020 Event Panel 5th Dec 2020 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Azad Essa AZAD ESSA is a senior reporter for Middle East Eye . He worked for Al Jazeera English between 2010-2018 covering southern and central Africa for the network. He is the author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (Pluto Press, February 2023). He is based in New York City. JOURNALIST WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 10 · On Ambition, Immigration, Class in “Gold Diggers” AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Despite the marketing of her debut novel "Gold Diggers," Sanjena Sathian did not set out to interrogate the model minority myth or the dynamics of class in the Indian-American diaspora. Instead, she began with the relationship of a mother and daughter. The world of an "uncritical and unthinking ambition" gradually began to assert itself in the narrative. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Live Georgia Ambition Class Class Struggle World-building Fiction Debut Authors Debut Novel Upper-caste Rules Rule-breaking Immigration Cultural Narratives of Immigration Indian-American Exceptionalism Indian-American Diaspora Good Immigrant Novels BIPOC Audiences Explanation Immigrant Pressure Unconscious Identity Miranda July Vanity Gold Diggers Ruth Ozeki Latin American Literature Magical Realism Japanese Literature Alchemy Satire Fantasy Science Fiction Genre Genre Tropes Genre Fluidity Jhumpa Lahiri Zadie Smith Philip Roth Irreverence Diaspora Big History Revisionism Myth of the Model Minority Mythology Private Schools Gold Rush Eternalism Temporality SAAG Chats Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Live Georgia 21st Jun 2021 Writer and journalist Sanjena Sathian in conversation with Vishakha Darbha about rule-breaking, questions from her publishing team, whether explaining world-building came easily to the writing of her debut novel, Gold Diggers (Random House, 2021), what makes a "good" immigrant novel, and writing about the Indian-American diaspora in its own mythologies, complications, and exceptionalism. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

FICTION & POETRY Four Lives "How would Rafi Ajmeri have fared in the Progressive era that was dawning just then? Would his liberal attitudes have hardened into dogma, or would he have swung to conservatism in the Pakistan to which his brothers migrated as he too probably would have?" VOL. 1 SHORT STORIES AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Artwork by Prithi Khalique for SAAG. 3D motion and interaction design. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork by Prithi Khalique for SAAG. 3D motion and interaction design. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Short Stories Karachi 25th Nov 2020 Short Stories Karachi Raaga Generational Stories Stories in Dialogue English Urdu Language Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Editor's Note: Earlier versions of these stories have appeared in Aamer Hussein's collections, albeit not as an interconnected set in conversation with one another as they are intended to be published here. Shefta 1. AS a young man, Mustafa Khan Bangash was given to revelry, wine and the love of dancers. His pen-name was Shefta. He composed verses for his lover Ramju, who many years later wrote her own book of poems. They say he had another lover too. He took lessons in prosody; his verses were improved by illustrious contemporaries: Momin Khan Momin, then later Mirza Ghalib. At the age of thirty-two, he set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy of Holies. On the way he and his fellow-passengers were shipwrecked on an island from where, for many days, they found no rescue, no route to freedom. They lived on a diet of sifted salt-water and herbs. When he returned to Delhi after an absence of two years and six days, Shefta had lost his taste for wine and the love of dancing women. In this city of poets, musicians and courtesans there were also many scholars and saints. Where once he had written of rapture, he now wrote lyrics of renunciation. He still sat beside his master Ghalib and watched the older poet drink, but Shefta no longer raised a glass with anyone. 2. - In 1857, during the Uprising in Delhi, the conquering British accused him of sedition and of fraternising with rebels. He was imprisoned without proof for seven years. His family’s land and properties were confiscated. He was released to see his wrecked and haunted city rebuilt and transformed, the traces of his life erased. Delhi—his birthplace, his prison, his grave. Though he does not know this yet, the task of vindication will fall to his descendants who will fight for freedom. Some will make their home in the new nation of Pakistan. But that’s in another century, in another story that has yet to be written. Uncle Rafi I can’t remember when, exactly, I first heard my mother and aunts talk about Shaikh Rafiuddin Siddiqi, known as Rafi Ajmeri, their maternal uncle whose delightful volume of short stories, Kehkashan , was published only after his early death at the age of 33. I do recall that when I began to take an active interest in modern Urdu fiction, my aunt and then my mother told me of Mamu Mian, as they called him. He had, in his youth, been considered more than promising; already well-known in his 20s, he published fiction and essays in journals such as Sarosh and Saqi . He was handsome and highly literate; although he grew up in Ajmer, where his maternal grandfather Nawab Haji Mohammed Khan had settled, his mother’s family were from Kabul, so Persian was spoken around him. His Kashmiri father was highly educated and encouraged his children in literary pursuits; both Rafi and his sister, my grandmother, published at an early age. They were an articulate, gregarious family; the brothers and sisters quoted Saadi, Rumi and Khusrau from memory; they had heard Iqbal recite his poems in their own home. They also sang and narrated the story-songs of Rajasthan where they were born and raised. I heard these stories and songs in my Karachi childhood from my mother, and with even more enthusiasm from my grandmother during long summer holidays in her home in Indore, and that’s certainly where, at least in part, I inherited my love for old stories. Grandmother married in 1914 and soon devoted herself to family pursuits, while Mamu Mian wrote story after story, spent most of his time in Delhi, and travelled from town to town in search of material. He often visited my grandparents in Indore. My mother, a schoolgirl then, remembers him on his last trip there, in 1937. He was afflicted by a mysterious ailment they referred to as melancholia, and strolled in the garden leaning heavily on his older sister’s arm. Today his condition would be called severe depression. He’d fallen in love with a distant cousin who probably returned his feelings but, in those changing times, he just hadn’t had the courage to propose: she’d married someone her parents chose for her. When the young woman’s mother heard about Mamu Mian’s feelings, she said: He only had to tell me. But it was too late. A few months later, while visiting his niece in Bombay, Mamu Mian was found dead. A literary acquaintance who will remain unnamed, was left in charge of his stories. My uncle complains that Kehkashan was randomly edited; some of Rafi Ajmeri’s stories were lost forever, and others plagiarised and published in other people’s names. However, Kehkashan survived. But though Rafi’s life’s brief story was as fascinating as any tale he might have written, no one in my family had managed to preserve a single copy of his book. It wasn’t until ’97 or ’98 that my friend, Asif, a descendant of one of Uncle Rafi’s earliest editors, unearthed a copy of it in Karachi, which he xeroxed and sent me. (Thank God for Pakistani libraries.) For days I inhabited Rafi’s world. His fiction was set in the increasingly modern milieu of his own time; it barely touched on the princely India my grandparents, and their now-married older daughters, inhabited. He wrote about students, young women and men, seeking their fortune in a competitive late colonial world. The prevailing tone of his stories is light and witty, wordly but never cynical, tinged with romance. (In one, a young woman manages to reach her lost love by an astute or accidental use of subtitles in a silent film.) Later stories show an awareness of the nuances of class and the economics of marriage. In ‘Muhabbat ka bulava’ (my own favourite), a young man falls in love with his friend’s sister, and when his loved one’s very rich father forbids the marriage, not only do the lovers elope, but the hero’s friend escapes with them to set up a life away from the rigid social norms of his family. How would Rafi Ajmeri have fared in the Progressive era that was dawning just then? Would his liberal attitudes have hardened into dogma, or would he have swung to conservatism in the Pakistan to which his brothers migrated as he too probably would have? Or would his fictions have echoed the calm voice of conscience? No way of telling, though one short, bitter text of his suggests another direction he might have taken. Here retells, from an old song, the legend of the bandit Daya Gujjar, who robbed the king’s wife of her jewels to please his demanding wife. Amma ko mera Ram-ram kehna Behna ko mera salam Gujri ko bas itna kehna Reh jaye joban ko re tham Daya ab aana nahin Daya julmi ke phande Daya phaansi ke phande (Give my greetings to my mother and sister, but to the Gujri just say to make good use of her youth: Daya isn’t coming back, he’s in the clutches of the oppressor, the noose is around his neck). As I read it, I could hear my grandmother’s singing voice. My hair stood on end as it did when I first heard it at the age of nine or ten. Lady of the Lotus 1. Her daughter gave her the red diary with a sketch or a poem printed on each page, as a gift for her fifteenth wedding anniversary in February. She had a meeting that morning, and a formal dinner to attend in the evening. Her husband had a difficult day. He didn’t want to go. The next day she was at the airport at noon, to receive the ‘Mother of the Nation’ who was coming home from a trip abroad. Later, a meeting at her sister-in-law’s house, to discuss the situation and progress of Muslim women. Her husband told her he’d had disturbing news. In the diary, she wrote: Just when I feel on the edge of a discovery—an illumination. Between then and June, after her opening entries, she used it only to write down the words of the songs she was learning. Her handwriting intertwined with the printed words and pictures on the pages. 2. June was a musical month. Her teacher, whom she called Khan Sahib, invited connoisseurs of classical music, including Shahid Ahmad, the editor of the literary journal Saqi, to hear her sing. She performed three raags— Khambavati, Anandi and Des — without making a single mistake. Her teacher was quite satisfied, her husband was pleased, the audience impressed. She was thinking of her deadline: a text to be handed over to She the next morning. A musician from Bengal, Begum Jabbar, played the sitar very well. She sang Khambavati and Darbari. Her teacher was satisfied, she wasn’t. She missed a farewell party for her friend Jane who was going back to America. At the next session four days later, Begum Jabbar played well again, Khan Sahib sang well, and her songs were well-appreciated. Her husband was very pleased with her singing, her teacher exultant. Two days later, she was singing again at a concert; she didn’t feel she sang too well; her teacher was most dissatisfied. There was a series of dinners to attend before the music conference at the new Arts Council began. Amanat Ali and Fateh Ali were performing on the opening night, she enjoyed their recital; on the second, Nazakat Ali and Salamat Ali were good in parts, but she was bored by the vocal gymnastics of Roshanara, Queen of Song. She started to learn the new Darbari tarana . It was a composition by Tan Ras Khan. She tried to sing a Thumri in Bhairavi, with her own improvisations and embellishments, but she didn’t make it. She practiced Darbari in the evenings for twenty minutes. She cancelled a party at her friend Suad’s, to practice a new Malhar, but he made her sing Anandi. She waited for him at 5.30 and he appeared at 8.30. She wanted to sing the Malhar she’d learnt but instead he made her sing Aiman and Kedara. June was ending, and she had another deadline, for the Morning News this time. She wanted to sing Malhar. He made her sing Darbari. She wanted something new and he made her repeat old lessons. Then he started her on a new raag, Mian ki Todi . She practiced Des and Bhopali, shifted to Bahaar, wanted to sing the rest of them, but he moved her to Malhar. She’d hoped he’d teach her the new string, but he made her revise the oldest. She didn’t like them much. A full Darbari with a new Tarana, and a new Khambavati at last. Satisfied ( she writes). 3. She notes her deadlines in the diary, but she doesn’t write about driving her children to school in the mornings four miles from P.E.C.H.S to Clifton, or picking them up for lunch. She mentions the parties she attended, but not the night she came back laughing because the Portuguese Ambassador had called her the Maria Callas of Karachi. She doesn’t record the passing of the seasons, the walks to the lake in the mild evening breeze, the flowers and fruit she grows, or the frangipani fallen on wet grass or picked off the branch in the morning for her hair. 4. July. Khan Sahib arrived unexpectedly. She revised Anandi, learnt a new Khambavati. Some beautiful new improvisations: Satisfied (she writes). A few days later, another unexpected visit. From Jahan Khan this time, her teacher’s maternal uncle. He started her on Khambavati. Ai ri mi jagi piya bin sagri rain Jab se gaye mori sudh hu na leni kaise kahun man ki batiyan… Ustad Jahan Khan comes by regularly now (she writes). Her pages were filling up with the lyrics of the songs she learned. She was practising ornamentation, Alankaar, in Khambavati. 5. In August, Ustad Jahan Khan brought her voice down to a lower pitch by half a note. She sang all her songs without the accompanying harmonium . The discovery amazed her and surprised everyone. She was not very satisfied with her voice at that pitch. The next day her teacher tried out the old raags at the new pitch, with only the tanpura . Every note was in tune. He will teach me morning raags in the morning ( she writes) and come in the evening to teach me evening raags . 6. After trying out several raags in Khayal, Ustad Jahan Khan struck upon Dhrupad, which her husband liked very much. She started to learn Raag Durga in the Dhrupad mode, with the Khamach rhythm; unusual and rarely recognised. She sang with the pakhwavaj , a single, two-faced drum, instead of the usual paired tablas . Eri mai nand kunwar eri mai nand kunwar eri mai nand kunwar maaa-aai nand kunwar maa-aai nanda Her voice throbbed and soared. 7. When a blister appears on the first forefinger (she writes) it is a sign that you have achieved the perfect pitch. One hour a day should be set aside, sacredly, for the practice of taans and sur sadhan: the art of song. 8. Her children will remember the concerts in the garden on nights lit up by flares or by the moon, they remember the songs and remind her of them, when she sang what, and even the words and melodies. They sat around her as she sang, or listened from the open window. They learnt her songs like the grey African parrots in their aunt’s big cage, half-understanding the words; they delighted her by singing raags in the bath, but when she persuaded them to take formal lessons all but her middle daughter would run away. They will remember her favourite book: The Lady of the Lotus , illustrated with classical miniatures: a story from her native Malwa, of Baz Bahadur and the poet-singer Roopmati, whose melancholy verses their mother set to music and sang. Years later, her son will find her a copy of the book she lost in transit, and find some of those verses. But it’s a new edition. Had I but known what pain with love would come, had I but known Jo main aisa jaanti preet ki ye dukh hoe I would have banished him by beat of drum, had I but known Nagar dhandora peetti preet na kariyo koe Did the rain fall that year of 1963? None of them remembers now: they think it never came. They remember, though, all the years she longed for rain and missed her native Malwa, and how she exulted when it finally fell. 9. After trying her voice out in several pitches, Ustad Jahan Khan brought it back to the original note. He said he’d been worrying over it for days. 10. So, what did it mean to you, the singing? Her son will ask her as he transcribes, and reads back to her the words of her diary. She remembers it all, the rooms, the faces, the applause, the ecstasy and the fall. Expression, she will reply, and release. The poetry in the music is thought, and through singing I expressed those thoughts. Sometimes late at night, the lady of the lotus will sing to herself, those songs, of rainfall, separation and exultation. Later, her son, who never wanted to, will also sing to find release. But one night, he will stop mid-song, terrified of the audience around him and the failure of his voice, and swear he’ll never sing on stage again. He will exchange the ecstasy of music for the dry solace of thoughts; he’ll write, but he inherits from her the pursuit: of austere phrase, soaring note, throbbing pulse, blistered forefinger. 11. She abandoned the diary with a final, terse entry. 23rd Nov 1963. Dinner at Khan Sahib’s house. Music after dinner. Sang Darbari. No exhilaration after singing. After this, there are only poems, wedding songs and musical notations. Dove 1. OFTEN on those long afternoons in the old house in Badayun when sunlight spread golden carpets on the stones and the older women had taken in the washing and the children were tired of playing hopscotch in the open courtyard or leaping from balcony to balcony, the girl would go to the terrace and shelter in a stone pavilion with a novel or write couplets in a notebook and then, as if she’d invited it over, the dove would begin to call her from a tree, and its call would lie like a shadow on her skin, but she never saw the bird that gave her invisible company. 2. For years after she left and crossed borders and moved houses in Karachi then Lahore and then Pindi and back to Karachi, and was known as the country’s queen of melancholy verse, she thought her invisible friend had abandoned her. Yes, but once in a top floor bedroom in a tall empty house in an Islamabad paralysed by strikes and demonstrations against a corrupt regime, as she stood looking out of a window at a flowering jacaranda, she heard the dove’s call from the tree’s upper branches, and she wondered how its plaintive song could ever have seemed to her to be the harbinger of joys to come. ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Sneha Krishnan SNEHA KRISHNAN is a writer, teacher, and translator. She is an Associate Professor for Studies in OP Jindal Global University and Founder-Director of ETCH Consultancy Services. Her poems have been published by Belongg, Analogies and Allegories, Indian Poetry Review, Lit Stream Magazine , and AllEars Magazine . Her translations and essays have appeared in Gulmohar Quarterly, The Hindu, The Statesman, Deccan Herald, Conversation, Medium, Feminism in India, Science Policy Forum and The Wire . Her short fiction has appeared in The Walled City Journal and the New Writing Anthology by Helter Skelter. WRITER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

INTERACTIVE FLUX · Jaya Rajamani & Bhavik Lathia on the US Left & Media The current mood on the US left is one of extreme pessimism, particularly in the wake of movement dissipation after the end of the Bernie Sanders primary campaign. Such a moment requires reckoning with movement mistakes, thinking about the necessity of leftist media, and possibly even a self-identification with our most doomer selves. VOL. 1 EVENT AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the event in full on IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Event Panel 5th Dec 2020 Event Panel Bernie Sanders Progressive Politics Democratic Socialism Democratic Socialists of America DSA Digital Advocacy Digital Space Funny Twitter Accounts Optimism on the Local Level Joe Biden Wisconsin Wisconsin Democrats Municipal Politics State Senate United States Progressivism Black Solidarities Demographics Populism Progressive Populism Inevitability Doomers Wisconsin as an Electoral Knife's Edge White Supremacy Fascism Republican Vote The History of the Right-Wing Trump's Base Errors in the Bernie Sanders Campaign Woke Politics Coalition Building Media Growth of Left Media Leftist Media Twitch Podcasts Liberals Breitbart Billionaire-Funded Media Messaging Status Quo FLUX Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent FLUX was held at a depressing moment for media workers on the left: all "doomers", as Jaya Rajamani referred to herself at the time. Despite the Democrats winning the White House, dispiriting cabinet appointments by to-be President Biden, especially in the wake of the loss of Bernie Sanders' primary campaign left a sense of a weak Left with the dissipation of progressive movement energy by the end of 2020. Non-Fiction Editor Tisya Mavuram convened with writers, activists, and organizers Bhavik Lathia and Jaya Rajamani to discuss how to rebuild power, the Left's relationship to media, how centrists managed to defeat a historic challenge in the form of Sanders' campaign, and a reckoning with mistakes made. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Nikil Saval & Kshama Sawant: On Movement Politics at the Local & Municipal Level, COVID-19 & the Two-Party Structure Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

INTERACTIVE FLUX · A Celebratory Set by DJ Kiran Towards the end of FLUX, a key organizer with Muslims For Just Futures, Muslims for Abolitionist Futures, among others, performed a DJ set with Bhangra and urban music beats, featuring Major Lazer, Meesha Shafi & more, bringing a wide-ranging event about many intellectual and material shifts to an end. VOL. 1 EVENT AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the event in full on IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Event Global 5th Dec 2020 Event Global Virtual Live FLUX Bhangra Music DJ Urban Desi Music Muslims For Just Futures North American Diaspora Muslim Abolitionist Futures Anti-Racism Islamophobia Major Lazer Meesha Shafi The Halluci Nation Boogey the Beat Northern Voice Jay Hun Sultaan Kisaan Bands Experimental Electronica Experimental Music Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent An uplifting set by DJ Kiran to dance to at the end of a weighty virtual event. Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID-19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

COMMUNITY Between Form & Solidarity Poet Chandramohan S in conversation with Advisory Editor Sarah Thankam Mathews Chandramohan S "One’s privilege cataracts one’s vision. Aspects of that privilege create a form of blindness, a cataracting of one’s advantage. My modus operandi is to illuminate as many blind spots as each of us have. It is not my fault that I may be born into a privilege, but it will become my fault if I do not make myself aware of it." RECOMMENDED: Love After Babel and other poems by Chandramohan S (Daraja Press, 2020) "One’s privilege cataracts one’s vision. Aspects of that privilege create a form of blindness, a cataracting of one’s advantage. My modus operandi is to illuminate as many blind spots as each of us have. It is not my fault that I may be born into a privilege, but it will become my fault if I do not make myself aware of it." RECOMMENDED: Love After Babel and other poems by Chandramohan S (Daraja Press, 2020) SUB-HEAD ​ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Interview Kerala Language Vernacular Literature Internationalist Solidarity Dalit-Black Solidarities OV Vijayan Dalit Literature Ajay Navaria Avant-Garde Form Poetic Form Deepak Unnikrishnan Resistance Poetry Love After Babel Chandramohan S is a Dalit Indian poet, writer and social activist. He is the author of Warscape Verses, Letters to Namdeo Dhasal , and Love After Babel . He is based in Thiruvandanapuram, Kerala. 31 Aug 2020 Interview Kerala 31st Aug 2020 The Craft of Writing in Occupied Kashmir Huzaifa Pandit 24th Jan Nation-State Constraints on Identity & Intimacy Chaitali Sen 17th Dec Origins of Modernism & the Avant-Garde in India Amit Chaudhuri 4th Oct Movements in Pakistani Theatre Fawzia Afzal-Khan 24th Sep Experimentalism in the Face of Fascism Meena Kandasamy 7th Sep On That Note:

INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 11 · On Maldives' Transitional Justice Act Mushfiq Mohamed On the Transitional Justice Act in the Maldives, the fractious political climate and repression, as well as the legal mechanisms and practices to seek accountability for past atrocities committed by the state. Could the volatile nature of Maldivian politics render the Act meaningless? A discussion between lawyer, writer, activist, and Senior Editor Mushfiq Mohamed & Associate Editor Kamil Ahsan on the fractious political climate of the Maldives, repression, and the legal mechanisms and practices to seek accountability for past atrocities committed by the state detailed by the Transitional Justice Act, which passed in December 2020. What is the current political climate of the Maldives, and why should South Asians everywhere pay attention? How does the recent legislation comport with political realities? What would enforcement in today’s Maldives look like? As Mushfiq wrote in Himal : “When it comes to implementation, the elephant in the room remains: why would survivors feel comfortable seeking reparations when some of the perpetrators of atrocities hold high-level government positions?” ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Maldives Transitional Justice Transitional Justice Act Ombudsman Local vs. National Politics Human Rights International Law Legal Regimes Human Rights Violations Reparations Survivors State Repression Militarism Military Coup Abdulla Yameen Mohamed Nasheed Assassination Attempts Ibrahim Mohamed Solih Legal Frameworks People’s Majlis Power Dynamics Housing State Violence Humanitarian Crisis Maldivian Democratic Party Malé Prosecutions Witness Protection Police Action Rehabilitation Reintegration Tourism Islamist Government Progressive Party of Maldives SAAG Chats Mushfiq Mohamed is a lawyer, writer, and activist based in London. Live Maldives 7th Jul 2021 On That Note: Battles and Banishments: Gender & Heroin Addiction in Maldives 28th FEB Chats Ep. 8 · On Migrations in Global History 4th MAY Chats Ep. 6 · Imagery of the Baloch Movement 28th FEB