After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru’s diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. According to Komireddi, India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.

In his blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare what he considers the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India’s past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi’s decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name.

Kapil will be joined in conversation with Andrew Mueller, Contributing Editor at Monocle and a frequent presenter on Monocle 24, including as host of the award-winning “The Foreign Desk”.

Praise for Malevolent Republic:

‘In precise and sharp language Malevolent Republic takes readers on a terrifying and yet illuminating journey through the rapidly transforming political, social and religious landscape of Modi’s India.’ — Times Literary Supplement

Speakers

Kapil Komireddi was born in India, and educated there and in England. His commentary, criticism, and journalism—from South Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East—have appeared, among other publications, in The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Spectator, TIME, Foreign Policy, and The Jewish Chronicle. This is his first book.

Andrew Mueller is a London-based writer, foreign correspondent, columnist and author. He is a Contributing Editor at Monocle, and a frequent presenter on Monocle 24, including as host of the award-winning “The Foreign Desk”. His work has also appeared in The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, among many others.

Assam’s Bengali community – both Hindu and Muslim – are no strangers to the rhetoric of xenophobia. Since the war of ‘Liberation’ with Bangladesh in 1971, the arrival of migrants to Assam has been a central theme in regional politics, sometimes with violent consequences. In the eighties, Muslims of Bengali origin found themselves under sustained attack by groups such as the ‘Assam movement’. Today, millions of Assam’s inhabitants are having to provide evidence that they deserve to stay.

The state began re-drafting its National Register of Citizens in 2014, for the first time since 1951, as part of a campaign to identify undocumented migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh who had settled in the province. The entire population of the province is around 32 million people. To establish who has legitimate citizenship is a mammoth task of bureaucracy. The first draft awarded citizenship rights to 19 of those 32 million. A second draft still left out 4 million people – and many more could now come under scrutiny again.

“While there is not yet a precise breakdown regarding those excluded from the list, it appears that most are from ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and in particular Muslims and Hindus of Bengali descent,” Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on minority issues.

To understand the processes at work, and the politics that underpins them, we’re joined by two experts with different backgrounds to shed light on the complex situation. As the 2019 Indian general election approaches, contested ideas of who – and who isn’t – an Indian citizen are likely to come to the fore, making this issue more relevant than ever.

Speakers

Fernand de Varennes is Dean of the Faculté de droit at the Université de Moncton in Canada and Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria in South Africa.  He was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues by the Human Rights Council and assumed his functions on 1 August 2017.

Alaphia Zoyab is a senior campaigner at the global campaigning organisation Avaaz who has been following the story in Assam and lobbying for action by the UN. She is a journalist by training having worked at India’s leading news station – NDTV. At Avaaz, Zoyab has campaigned to stop the Murdochs buying 100% of Sky, campaigned to strengthen laws against honour killing in Pakistan and urged the UN to issue an early warning of the humanitarian crisis that could unfold in Assam. She has two masters degrees in Mass Communication and International Affairs, and a Bachelors in English Literature.

Photograph courtesy of Avaaz

Community media empowers those who produce it, builds the social capital of a community to address critical local issues and gives people full control over their own narratives. And often, it communicates people’s needs to authority and leads to concrete resolution of local problems.

Since its inception, the leaders of Video Volunteers has been asking one key question: what kind of model will enable community media to scale to every local community in the world? Video Volunteers prototyped several different models of community-owned media. These all, to varying degrees, included the following four crucial elements we identified: the intellectual, creative, and leadership development of community media-makers; Community ownership of the content creation process; Solution-oriented stories; and community discussion and viewing of the content.

This fundraising event will showcase the film projects produced with the support of Video Volunteers and offer the audience to discuss and learn about various approaches to community media.

The event is free but financial contributions to Video Volunteers will be  gratefully received.

RSVP to jessica@videovolunteers.org or bronwyn.kendrick@www.beta.frontlineclub.com

For the first time, cameras go inside a police station run by and for women, revealing a unique perspective on what’s really going on in Indian society. Following the Delhi rape case in December 2012, hundreds of these police stations were set up across India. Parmila Dalal is second-in-command at the Women Police Station in Sonipat, in the northern state of Haryana.

This surprising documentary follows Parmila and her special team of scooter-mounted female officers who are focused on preventing the harassment of women. However, much of Parmila’s time is also spent mediating in family disputes, acting as a social worker. The family arguments Parmila is tasked with diffusing illuminate many of the fault lines running through Indian society.

Glimpses into Parmila’s family life capture uninhibited encounters with family members at war over such contentious matters as caste, dowry payment and relations with unpleasant in-laws. These scenes of family discord reveal how women’s lives are changing in India today, and how they often struggle to reconcile the conflicting demands made upon them.

Directed by: Ruhi Hamid
Executive produced by: Christopher Mitchell
Country: UK/India
Runtime: 48′

The evening will include short stories capturing the essence of big issues, films showing life in other parts of the world under difficult or extraordinary circumstances, and stories focusing on remarkable individuals.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with In the Valley of Guns and Roses director Simon Hipkins.

Full lineup to be announced soon.

FAMOUS IN AHMEDABAD
Director: Hardik Mehta
2016 / 29 min / India

Set during the kaleidoscopic backdrop of the biggest kite-flying festival in India, this stunning film witnesses the transformation of an 11-year-old Zaid from a boy next door to an aggressive and a passionate kite-runner – until he comes across a challenge that threatens to keep him away from the one thing he loves.

IN THE VALLEY OF GUNS AND ROSES
Director: Simon Hipkins
2016 / 25 min / UK

In the heart of Bulgaria’s Rose Valley, single mother Irina is desperate to give her four-year-old daughter, Stefi, a better start in life. Her main source of income comes from her dangerous work at a weapons factory where she measures and packs gunpowder into artillery shells.

THE NEW CHE OF HAVANA
Director: Alex Mallis
2016 / 7 min / USA
AlexMallis.com

A Cuban skateboarder and artist must reconcile looming changes and a nascent free-market economy with his desire to continue operating his tattoo shop – currently illegal in Havana.

SHOOTING THE TRIBE
Director: Gemma Atkinson and Fred Grace
2013 / 8 min / Colombia, UK

In 1989, the Kogi tribe of Colombia opened their doors to a BBC documentary film crew. Their intention was to send us a warning that if we continued to live our lives the way we do, the destruction of the planet was assured. 25 years later, Shooting the Tribe takes us back into the jungle of the Sierra Nevada, to understand why it is they, not us, whose way of life has changed.

BACK
Directors: Jenna Belhumeur, Elena Boffetta
2015 / 13 min / United States

BACK focuses on the hidden aspects of long-term confinement through the eyes of Otis Johnson, who was incarcerated for over 40 years. The documentary explores what re-entry means for inmates who are released in a society that has drastically changed over several decades.

The garment manufacturing industry has garnered a reputation for being an exploitative industry. Nonetheless, the Indian government is planning to train 500 million of the country’s rural poor to fill factory jobs in the country’s ever increasing manufacturing sector. Most of this work has been contracted out to private companies who profit from training factory staff.

Filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s latest film, Jungle Sisters, follows her own sister, Orlanda, as she attempts to improve the working conditions of young rural factory-workers from within the system. The documentary was screened at the Frontline Club on Friday 17 July 2015, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.

Chloe Ruthven

The film, Ruthven told the Frontline Club, was not intended to be an exposé of the working conditions in Indian garment factories.

“I’m interested in exploring aspects of the West or my heritage… I’m not interested as a white Londoner to go and make films about Indian people, there are enough Indian filmmakers and there are enough people who can do that,” she said.

However the film still showed, with unfettered access, many exploitative practices of the Indian garment industry, including the unlawful detention of workers by the factory bosses and sweatshop conditions.

“I did feel it was quite exciting to have something that could potentially be used against these corporations,” said Ruthven. “But then it’s my sister’s job on the line.”

Ruthven followed the journey that many young rural women in India take to become a factory worker.

“Everywhere we went there were these recruiting organisations going into [rural] villages,” Ruthven said. As part of a government-funded initiative, private companies recruit and train mostly young women from impoverished rural parts of India and place them in jobs at garment factories.

Chloe Ruthven

“There would be very, very quiet villages and suddenly you’d have three different Jeeps all with loudspeakers from different organisations trying to get the young people into the training centres, into the cities. And it’s all government funded,” she said.

Many of these companies do not make any money unless the women they train stay in their city factory job for at least six months.

Ruthven’s sister Orlanda was in the employment of one of these organisations, and one of Ruthven’s main concerns was that Orlanda, despite her good intentions, was complicit in the exploitation of the workers.

“If you are only accepting payment after six months then what are you doing to keep these girls in? If they’re unhappy what are you going to do about it?,” said Ruthven. “[Are you] going to lose your money? Of course not. They’re a small organisation that needs to keep it. So, you know, the whole thing was so dark.”

Coming to terms with her sister’s role in this industry was an important theme through both Ruthven’s film and her conversation with the Frontline Club audience.

“There’s such a cultural difference between what I was finding really difficult to see and badgering [Orlanda] about, which I did do quite a lot, and what she would get quite upset about,” she said.

The film explored the nuances of the industry that were apparent to Orlanda, but not obvious to Ruthven as an outsider. It would not be enough to simply film and expose evidence of the mistreatment. Instead Orlanda needed to think about the bigger picture, and that often meant taking things slow.

“I would say to Orlanda, ‘Well look we’ve got it, it’s bonded labour, let’s take it straight to the factory.’ And her line was ‘No, because I’d get booted out within seconds and nothing will change. So I need to find a way of sticking with this so I can shift things, I can get their freedoms […] If we can persuade this particular factory, that’s the second biggest factory in India and then we can work with other factories’.”

Chloe Ruthven

Patriarchy and culture played as much a part in the exploitation of female workers as the drive for profits. During one particular scene, Ruthven spoke to a security guard responsible for enforcing a curfew on the female factory workers. The guard explained his desire to protect the women from the real dangers of the city.

“When you hear the security man talking about [the women] as his daughters,” Ruthven said, “in one way part of me is horrified, and part of me quite loves him for it.” This patriarchy is a self-perpetuating problem that, in the film, Orlanda attempts to address.

Another grey area that Ruthven explores in her film is the potential for liberation that factory work can bring to rural women. “When you see two bright, really gorgeous girls like Bhanu and Bhutu [two of the films main protagonists], I wanted more than anything for them to get the hell out of the village,” said Ruthven.

“I found Bhutu’s mother really irritatingly oppressive… I just wanted [Bhutu] to have the same opportunities that young Indian boys would have.”

Ruthven was unsure as to whether the growth of the manufacturing sector in India will prove to be a liberating force for young rural women. “It’s an ongoing fight that [Orlanda] has with her bosses.”

However, Ruthven also wanted to bring the problem home with her film. “I only make work to show [in the UK]. I mean in a way I feel that my beef is with what we do, and with what I do.”

This form of exploitation does not just exist in the garment industry, Ruthven explained. “Every aspect of our life is like this, so either we’re throwing out the whole thing or we’re partaking in it,” she said.

Chloe Ruthven

In 2008 the Indian Government launched an initiative to train 500 million of the rural poor to work in its growing industrial sector. Migrants from the rural areas of India now make up a significant percentage of the country’s labour force.

Seduced by the opportunity to be independent, many hopeful young women, like best friends Bhanu and Bhutu, try their luck working for garment factories. As part of a wider recruitment and training scheme, these factories are monitored by mediating advocates such as British academic Orlanda. Her task is to bring in women from the impoverished countryside to Bangalore and other manufacturing centres, where she believes they can be “empowered” by the national economic boom.

Yet the women’s relative inexperience leaves them susceptible to exploitation, putting Orlanda’s capitalist optimism to the test. Documentary filmmaker Chloe Ruthven, who is also the protagonist’s sister, follows Orlanda as she and the workers are confronted with the brutal reality of sweatshop conditions and deliberate corporate negligence.

Directed by: Chloe Ruthven
Produced by: Mike Lerner
Country: India/United Kingdom
Runtime: 80′

On Monday 23 February, a screening of Tomorrow We Disappear transported an audience at the Frontline Club in rainy central London to the vibrant Kathputli slum in Delhi. The film follows the families of acrobats, magicians, painters and puppeteers resident in the artist colony of Kathputli as they battle the authorities who have sold their land to private developers. This screening of Tomorrow We Disappear, a sensitive and genuine depiction of the inhabitants of India’s “tinsel slum,” was followed by a Q&A with directors Jimmy Goldblum and Adam Weber.

The filmmakers began the discussion by commenting on their masterful use of sound and lighting in the film. “We really took our time from a technical perspective,” Weber said. In order to capture truly natural moments, the filmmakers planted microphones throughout the slum. “We would walk around covertly to collect audio,” Goldblum explained.

“In documentary, it’s really important to understand the obstructions you’re working with… we had to have a very tactical approach.”

The bright colours of the puppets and costumes of the artists and performers, along with the warm Indian sunlight, awarded the film a cinematic quality which would have been difficult to recreate in another location. The directors explained how they went to New Delhi to start filming after realising that the mystic place of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was in fact real. The story of the residents of Kathputli was one “that spoke to us on so many levels.”

Goldblum explained how the filming had to take place over several years as they conducted initial interviews, identified the origins of the characters and the story, then watched the conflict unfold with the Raheja developers. “We would leave and we would edit for basically a year,” he said. “We were constantly creating and destroying our movie until we got something that was emotionally honest.”

An audience member wondered how two American documentarians had succeeded in creating such an emotionally honest documentary about a culture of which they were not a part. Weber and Goldblum suggested that the universality of the experience of the Kathputli artists, whose cultural heritage was in the process of being eroded by modernisation, made it possible for them to accurately portray their story.

Goldblum also paid testament to the translator on their second trip to New Delhi, a fellow American who had been fascinated with Indian culture since the age of fourteen, which enabled them to establish a “peer to peer” relationship with the artists. The translator’s “respect for the culture allowed us to build relationships on the ground,” Goldblum explained.

Despite the language barrier, Weber described how “over time we got so comfortable with them… that we picked up a way of communicating.” The film pays witness to heated disputes amongst the artists about how best to deal with the threat of their homes being destroyed. It also offers a snapshot of the incredibly personal moments of its protagonists, such as a young boy entertaining himself by bringing his puppets to life in a dimly-lit room.

“Sometimes it [the language barrier] works in your favour,” Weber explained. “The camera sort of disappears… and characters are just living out a scene very genuinely in front of us.”

“I think our outsider status worked,” Goldblum added.

Although only around 300 of 3,000 people have moved into the ‘transit camp’ (temporary accommodation whilst the slum is renovated into modern flats), the situation in the Kathputli colony remains tense as its inhabitants refuse to leave their homes. The bulldozers have not yet arrived but small incidents often turn into full scale police raids.

For more information on the Kathputli colony and Tomorrow We Disappear, visit the film’s website here.

In 2012, the brutal gang rape on a Delhi bus of a 23-year-old medical student, who later died from her injuries, made international headlines and ignited protests. India’s Daughter is an impassioned plea for change and a tribute to a remarkable and inspiring young woman. The film explores the compelling human stories behind the incident and the political ramifications in India.

BAFTA winning filmmaker Leslee Udwin, herself a victim of rape, went to India inspired by the protests against sexual assault. With an all Indian crew, she got exclusive, first time on camera interviews with the rapists and defence attorney.

This month India’s government banned the film while the BBC moved their planned broadcast up by days and ignited a new controversy.

Following the screening we will be joined by director Leslee Udwin and others to discuss the international reactions to the film, the aftermath of the Indian broadcast ban, and the greater issue of gender based violence.

Yasmin Ali Bhai Brown is a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Observer, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Evening Standard, The Mail and other newspapers and is now a regular columnist on The Independent and London’s Evening Standard. She is also a radio and television broadcaster and author of several books exploring immigration, feminism, and race relations.

Directed by: Leslee Udwin
UK/India 2015
Runtime: 62 minutes

This screening is presented with the help of iProbono.
iProbono is a non-profit network connecting lawyers to civil society organisations and activists. The network’s global outreach enables the legal community to engage in projects from around the world and allows organisations to source assistance both locally and across jurisdictions.

As part of its free speech campaign in India, iProbono is representing Leslee Udwin and ‘India’s Daughter’.

Described as India’s “tinsel slum”, the Kathputli artist colony in New Delhi is home to over 1,500 families of puppeteers, acrobats, painters and magicians. That is all about to change. When the government sells the land to private developers, traditional life is set to be razed for the city’s first skyscraper.

Where outsiders see the slum’s rancid water and shacks, debut filmmakers Adam Weber and Jimmy Goldblum find stunning colours in death-defying performances. Whether bathed in sunlight or exploding against night skies, magnificent fire-eaters, sleight of hand magicians and glorious puppets radiate beauty in crisp, brilliant detail.

As in-fighting breaks out among colony leaders, spilling out into confrontations with developers and the government, the clock ticks onwards to the bulldozing date. Will the artists’ resolve to preserve their culture and overcome the push for progress?

Gorgeous and inspiring, Tomorrow We Disappear is a splendid tribute to fading artistry and the tenacity of tradition.

Directed by Adam Weber and Jimmy Goldblum
Duration: 85′
Year: 2014