Dalit is the New Political and Epistemic Horizon: An Interview with Suraj Yengde

In this interview, Suraj Yengde speaks with Borderlines on how Dalit intellectual assertion is shaping new horizons for politics, media, and academia across the globe. He discusses Ambedkar's writings and life as a mark of the intersection between critical Dalit and Black thought; and perceptions of the term Dalit within and outside of India. He outlines what it means to build Dalit-Muslim solidarities, how to analyze Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership through the lens of caste, and the pressing question of political prisoners in India. The interview explores multiple projects Yengde has taken on, including his books Caste Matters and the Radical in Ambedkar (co-edited with Anand Teltumbde), and the Dalit Film Festival.

ConversationsBorderlines CSSAAMENovember 23, 2020interview, Ambedkar Initiative

Writing the legacies of a partition: a conversation with Joya Chatterji

“My line is quite simple here. History challenges theory, however great. History is messy whereas theory is tidy, and, for the most part, seamless. History has its work to do, and that is, fundamentally, to stand in opposition to, and in a critical location towards, theory. We must allow the ‘mess’ to come through. If I have grown ever more concerned with chaotic agency, this is the reason why.”

ConversationsBorderlines CSSAAMENovember 12, 2020interview

The Progressive Artists' Group & the ‘Idea of India’

Every lover of Indian art knows this story: in 1947, in the immediate aftermath of India’s independence from British rule, six firebrands united in Bombay to forge a modern art for the newly free nation. They were the Progressive Artists’ Group (also known as ‘the PAG’). What does the PAG’s commitment to a heterogenous nation; a multi-cultural past have to offer us today? Art historians Karin Zitzewitz (KZ), Sonal Khullar (SK) and Zehra Jumabhoy (ZJ) unpack the loaded and inter-connected complexities of the modern and the secular given the trajectories of nation-building and cosmopolitanism in the art of those associated with the PAG.