So much of my
#photographic
life has been spent in
#Union
meetings in Meghalaya. I don't know if meetings are worthy photographic subjects but somehow they have made me understand and participate in my world and its blighted times. So some union meeting images 🧵
1/n
#ForgettheHills
#landslide
videos from South Garo Hills...
Rain is just the trigger. If you notice the trees are mostly
#Plantation
trees, Betel Nut... Once these hills were thickly covered with multi species trees.
What 'Booker Award winning
#ArundhatiRoy
' and that 'Luminous prose' brigade don't get is the depth of Arundhati's reach in India. Every essay of hers gets translated into not less
#India
's constitutionally approved languages, without permission, without copyright argument 1/n
Good to finally see someone who will truly represent the voices of the people, shared our frustrations and angst with the maai baaps in Delhi.... unlike our earlier MPs who remained mute, as they listened to their boss and not the people who elected them!
Now, need similar
Sitting in
#Shillong
I am a true election pessimist about opposition but having had to come to Patna for some family work my pessimism has taken a bit of a hit...
1. Train journey was not such a mobile BJP noise affair. People seemed to be listening to even
@dhruv_rathee
1/n
Kong Fatima Mynsong & Jean Dréze
Two ends of the contested lives of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme/Act
2024, Jongksha
#Khasi
Hills
I call them new Mawbynnas/Monoliths,
#MGNERGS
plaques strewn around the villages marking the rural assets created through
1/n
1/🧵 My dreamy and mostly apolitical daughter (18) who studied in Bengaluru suddenly says most of my friends in
#Bengaluru
are
#voting
against the BJP even those whose parents are conservative. I ask why and she says they are disgusting Da and they hate young people...
<
#MediaThieves
🧵> Dear
@IndiaToday
@IndiaTodayNE
how shameless can you be? If it was not for Googlealerts I wouldn't have known that you decided to steal the pictures from my bloody long-term engagement with my beloved Shillong (Smit) Bazaar Bus.
1/n
Surely I am listening to wrong market conversations in Bihar - but INDIA manifesto points are being discussed -
#Agniveer
stuff, job guarantee thingie - the usual everyday issues. Take a bow
#INDIA
after a long time a procedural thing like manifesto is chai - cigarette talk.
What an essay... If you want to understand Indian capitalism under BJP rule, read this one by
@mrajshekhar
. No other journalist has made me understand political economy of fascism as Rajashekhar has done. I now want to read his book
#UrbanPolitics
#HillStation
10 FACTS ABOUT
#SHILLONG
WORTH REPEATING AND 5 QUESTIONS
A VERY LONG THREAD
1. There are more tenants than houseowners.
2. There are more daily wage earners (unskilled, skilled) than salaried people
<27/11/2020 WORLD WITHOUT KONG SPELITY> Kong Spelity Lyngdoh Langrin of Domisiat,
#Khasi
Hills,
#Meghalaya
is no more. She left us yesterday night at 11.30pm. Kong Spelity - Matriarch of Domiasiat, refused to allow
#Uranium
to be mined on her land.
I donate to
@AltNews
because they keep me sane and give me hope for India. Their kind of India is my kind of India. Thank you
@free_thinker
@zoo_bear
and others for your sense of fun and courage. Please donate
<Many
#Emergencies
/Many
#SamvidhanHatya
> Look at this picture of Comrade (Now called Kalaguru) Bishnu Rabha, being chained and dragged through the streets of Tezpur, Assam in 1962 after an emergency under Article 352 was promulgated in the light of Indo-China war. Anyone (1/9)
I hate the word patron (very feudal) but I am in regular monthly solidarity with
@AltNews
.
Why don't you also think of 500/month solidarity contribution to them.
#AltNews
Hello Friends,
@AltNews
has launched a 30-day campaign to find 3000 patrons who can give us Rs 500 at the end of every month for 12 months.
Please consider becoming an
#AltNewsPatron
. Your support helps us do the work we do.
#Shillong
Local/Line/Bazaar/Smit Bus - a photo thread
Blue and yellow. Green and yellow. For me Shillong is not some bucolic waterfall paradise but the tobacco filled conversations on the dying colourful buses.
Old enough to remember the fume belching chimney like exhaust pipe.
Adity Choudhury interviewed me for The Meghalayan about Niam/Faith/Hynniewtrep - Unaddressed Postcards from Khasi-Jaintia Hills and I managed to occupy the whole page and say things like-
#Essay
Thanks to Dolly Kikon & Joel Rodrigues, finally finished an essay for a book being edited by them.
Food, urbanism and resistance - a properly biased essay with lots of pictures and without footnotes.
@DollyKikon
@rodriguesjoel0
#IdeaofIndia
#Northeast
#Khasi
My name is Angela Rangad, I belong to the matrilineal Khasi tribe of Meghalaya. I am also a beef-eating, pork-savouring Christian who also dips into the indigenous Khasi faith system for sustenance. 1/2
#WhatIDo
Some of the cover images of the books i have done - I know I will never manage to do a book - maybe that's why I end up gifting images when asked by friends whose work and ideas mean something to me. A thread
When did Government of India deem Anand Patwardhan's legendary award winning documentary 'propaganda'? Can one see the govt notification regarding this?
@TISSMumbai
@anandverite
#Manipur
#Shame
1/2
For all the intellectuals who chose
words over guilt,
history over blood,
community over fear,
chronology over rotting flesh,
fir over conversation
valley over hills
rumours over whisper
power over love
there is a video
an old one
there is shame
But with new plantation economy, illegal coal mining, rampant boulder quarrying and topped with obsessive road making - these hills are scarred and destabilise.
#ReleaseRupeshKumarSingh
Independent journalist from Jharkhand known for his reports on struggles of Adivasi communities and police atrocities against them, he has been always under State watch with his name also featuring on the 'Pegasus' list.
Whether it is Haflong railway station or now Manipur - in the name of bringing empire of development - hills are being bulldozed through. These are not acts of God but acts of deliberate destruction
Poetry 🧵
That undying moment of
#Naxalbari
and Surjit Patar. He wrote, what in my limited Shillong experience is one of the most challenging prison poems... a poem to leave with the prison authorities when the gates slam on you.
#SurjiPatar
#Poetry
1/2
I just got my copy of Jelle J P Wouters’ latest volume: Vernacular Politics in Northeast India: Democracy, Ethnicity, & Indigeneity (Oxford University Press, 2022 - ISBN 978-0-19-286346-1). The cover, with Tarun Bhartiya ‘s stunning photography, makes this an all-around jewel!
Guests from
#Manipur
Leaving
2023, The Guest Room,
#Shillong
Three young women. Meitei, Naga and Kuki. Friends from Imphal. Came to Shillong to continue working as they needed the Internet. All of them had returned to Manipur two three years ago
A fascinating essay on the violent traditions of
#anthropology
in India. After the essay do read her PhD thesis.
The article examines connections between biological anthropology in India and
#Nazi
German anthropology 1/3
2. All the auto/bike taxi guys I hired seemed to think BJP is the most corrupt party. They were channeling the washing machine talking point quite effectively and passionately 2/n
First impressions of Bihar Caste Census
1. Amazing detail
2. Poetry of Caste names
3. There are more musahars than bhumihars
4. Including me there are only 2146 non religious Biharis
1/n
Frontline Magazine features my Nian/Faith/Hynniewtrep : Unaddressed Picture Postcards from Khasi Hills. Get your copy in print if you are into paper etc.
#Christianity
#KhasiHills
#Photoessay
<There is something about the print> Finally got the latest Frontline that carries my PhotoEssay. And I was not disappointed.
I know you have seen the online version of this essay but please to get the print version.
<Comrade Donna> Donna Marwein passed away this morning. A real loss to LGBTQ+ movement of Meghalaya.
I first met her when she was an angry migrant worker (from West Khasi Hills) in a small eating joint in Anjalee parking lot.
#Landslides
etc.
Why are these new road expansions and railway invasions happening the hills?
1. Nation State Making - Making 'inaccessible' hills part of India - chaining them to the centre if you like.
2. Money Making - Obviously large infrastructural projects oils the new
Why do I think that the govt. condoned the violence in
#Shillong
today
Prelim: Remember all rally permissions issued by DC and approved by
#Meghalaya
police have stringent provisions about rally permission being withdrawn if there is violence, if there is loud amplified sound
Finally we meet / first meeting
Beppe Karlsson / Bengt G Karlsson
Ethnographer,
2022, Jingkieng
#Shillong
Author of Unruly Hills, I think the sharpest, politically enlightening books on contemporary
#Meghalaya
.
3. Amongst my savarna family get togethers, bhakta uncles, aunts and cousins seemed sheepish about Modi and clean image-
#Electoral_Bond_Scam
bond has stunned even the bhakts. Confusion reigns about the narrative. They were quoting
@dhruv_rathee
and
@ravishndtv
3/n
Why shouldn't Khasi or Garo be compulsory languages in Meghalaya - they are much-much older than Hindi, a made up colonial language merely two hundred years old!
#HindiImposition
An image of lunch in a Jhum field, older histories reflecting the new. Hope the old survives as it has in it's voluntary exchange of labour.
Image can rot.
<For A People's Shillong>
Hawkers and street vendors in Shillong have decided to stop using plastic bags and will instead use cloth bags and encourage customers to bring their own.
#UnionPolitics
#Shillong
#Ecology
'sanction to prosecute'.
If words can take on the powerful, be part of night conversations about the impending doom, I see people reaching out for
#Roy
's words on bad paper or amateurishly laid out websites. She is published more in India than the west. And read more. 4/4
I know that Bhakts with their vicitimhood intelligence would find some conspiratorial thing about Richard M. Eaton but if you really want to understand Rise of
#Islam
/conversion beyond the usual
#WhatsApp
ideas of sword and
#jihad
this is the book you should try. And then...
1/2
<Hindu Corporate India> Khasi Hills merely a backdrop - with wrong festival, wrong name, wrong dress, wrong accent, wrong language - (everything fucking wrong)
@netflixindia
dances to Hindu India Tune
Wrong translation in the next tweet
#WorkIDo
Social media goes into raptures over posts from the streets from Meghalaya’s capital while the police prevents the poor from conducting their business.
সংখ্যালঘু সম্প্রদায়ের ওপর হামলার প্রতিবাদে শাহবাগে বিক্ষোভ
স্টার নিউজবাইটস
দেশের বিভিন্ন জেলায় সংখ্যালঘু সম্প্রদায়ের ওপর হামলা, বসতভিটা ভাঙচুর ও অগ্নিসংযোগের প্রতিবাদে রাজধানীর শাহবাগে বিক্ষোভ সমাবেশ করেন বিভিন্ন সংগঠনের ব্যনারে ছাত্র-জনতা। শুক্রবার বিকেলে এই বিক্ষোভ শুরু
Why do I, who chose not to study in
#JNU
(History 1993) still feel some excitement at Left/Bahujan win in the Students' Union
#elections
?
Maybe because some of the best young minds of this blighted country choose to not to buy into the Hindu Fascist discourse...
#JNUSU
What a stupid claim? Columbus syndrome is alive and kicking in India
Sacred forests are a living tradition in Khasi Hills. And what is this 'tribal conference hall'?
#KhasiHills
#ColonialScience
#JaintiaHills
#MyTeacher
<On the day he officially leaves the ruins of Indian Higher Education>
Someone like Keval Arora is an example of what the neo-liberals (fascists) hate in colleges and universities. Does he have a PhD (i don't know)? Has he produced peer reviewed essays (don't know)?
#Manipur
I can not get the eyes of the young meitei couple in the photo out of my head or for that matter of the Kuki woman paraded naked... what makes me sad is that these moments of inhumanity we need not ask why or how but be broken and angry at the war that eats it's 1/n
#WhyILoveShillong
Pork Dosa and other surprises.
A wall in a small reggae/rock themed 'bistro' with Nagalim Calendar 2022 issued by Ministry of Information and Publicity of Government of the People's Republic of Nagalim
2022, Mawlai
And food was truly great & affordable
Lalon Fakir resurrects! Haven't heard a better celebration of him! It is up there with that long lost night at Kushtia when Lalon took over the haze filled night.
“What does caste mean?” Lalon asks
#Baul
#AntiCaste
#Bangla
#Lalon
1/n
My three immediate wishes for which we need to organise in this anti-fascist moment
1. Release of political prisoners
2. Burial of CAA/NRC/Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita
3. Right to work and welfare
And on a personal level get back to making abstruse experimental images
#AntiFascist
MEATOPIA BEYOND THE CHICKEN NECK
Recipe of AngelaTarun's
#Khasi
#Maithil
Version of
#Naga
Shredded
#Beef
Pickle
Worked out after comparing our shop bought pickle, youtube videos and love for chilly heat. (1/n)
Why do we need
#photojournalists
? Because they cut through PR image making. And if that photojournalist is Praveen Jain, you truly get an image with real teeth.
Brilliant, brilliant image.
Fanboy moment with Comrade Hiren Gohain A 🧵
I get my copy of his book (Struggling in a Time Warp) signed after answering the question whether I had read the book. It was nice of him not to engage this imagemaker in a conversation about it as he would have been disappointed at
#Shillong
#Photography
<Longread> Scroll publishes a version of 'Tastes from an Unruly City', my partisan photo/essay tribute to my love - Shillong.
A version of this essay will appear in the forthcoming book edited by
#Hindutva
When in funk make
#Naga
Style Shredded
#Beef
Pickle with your comrade wifey.
So here goes a
#Recipe
thread
AngelaTarun's KhasiMaithil Version of Naga Shredded Beef Pickle
Worked out after comparing our shop bought pickle, youtube videos and love for chilly heat.
1/9
#TaxiTales
NS
Motorbike Taxi Driver
2022,
#Shillong
This was her fourth day. She looks after her family Shop in Nongmynsong and for 'extra income', she emphasised, she downloaded the app to be a
#Rapido
captain.
You who think our homelands are punishment postings for 'yours' . Tells you more about you as much as it does about ones posted there under 'punishment'.
<Essential> One of the pathbreaking interviews on
#Manipur
. Babloo Loitongbam, legendary Human Rights activist talks of the other, reconciliation and moral imagination needed to look ahead. In admiration for his courage to step beyond the ethnic divide
too many literary writers around who occupy popular consciousness in the way
#Arundhati
does. More than the embarrassed liberal crowd forced to defend her inconvenient 'freedom of speech', Indian authoritarian state knows her reach and importance and that's why this 3/n
<Print Journeys> Actually i have never seen a photo of mine hanging on a wall, in its new home beyond my computer in Shillong. This was a first and that too in Hyderabad in this super high tech audio/video studio of Indian School of Business
Every challenge to establishment narrative from Peren to Porbunder see Arundhati and her writing as an ally. Remember even Bollywood if it has to create an evil dissenting villain, they have to reach out for the
#Arundhati
character (crinkly mad hair). I don't know of 2/n