“One of my favourite Bengaluru memories is gathering at Town Hall and singing,” says Vinay Sreenivasa, breaking into a resistance song. Vinay has attended many such protests in different places in the city and even remembers sitting on the steps of Vidhana Soudha, another former protest site, eating corn. Today getting anywhere close to the steps of Vidhana Soudha means going through many layers of security.
Today a Bengalurean can only protest in Freedom Park, the 21-acre landmark on Seshadri Road that once housed the city’s Central Jail. Even in Freedom Park, protests can only take place in a designated area “a parking lot where you are supposed to gather and raise slogans…where no one can see you,” says the lawyer and activist at a recent panel discussion titled Art as Activism: Creative Avenues for Voicing Dissent. “This restriction has not just made it difficult to protest anywhere, it has also made overall dissent itself very difficult.”
Panellists at Art as Activism held at BIC, Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The importance of dissent
The event, which was held at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC), was centred around two broad topics: the ramifications of the ruling of the Karnataka High Court that limits public protests in Bengaluru to Freedom Park and how art can serve as a medium for dissent and drive social change. The panel, which Jhatkaa.org’s Divya Narayanan moderated, also had visual artist Shilo Shiv Suleman and poet and academician Mamta Sagar, both of whom frequently use their art practice to drive conversation and catalyse social change.
Divya says protests, campaigns and movements have often been a powerful instrument globally and historically, not just in acquiring justice, but also in driving public awareness. “In India, freedom of expression is a constitutional right and raising concerns. Engaging with civil society movements and campaigns is fundamental to democracy,” she says.
And yet, these non-violent movements are often met with high-handedness and repression, she says. “Our systems and infrastructure are increasingly becoming more opaque...intolerant to public discourse.”
Sugarcane farmers under the banner of the Federation of Rajya Raitha Sanghas and Sugarcane Growers’ Association farmers walking down Anand Rao Circle flyover, during their protest rally from Sangolli Rayanna railway station towards Vidhana Soudha demanding revised FRP ( fair and remuneration price ) and and opposing fixing of meters to agriculture pump sets, in Bengaluru on October 05, 2021. | Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K
Stifling voices
In 2021, Anganwadi workers took out a rally in Bengaluru, demanding better pay. “They wanted their salaries to be hiked since ₹8,000 was not enough to take care of their families,” says Vinay. It was in that context that an interim order was passed that protests could only be held at Freedom Park. That was the beginning of restricting protests, he says.
This move, he believes, has deeply impacted the average Bengalurean’s right to free speech. “The Constitution says that we have the freedom of right and expression and also peaceful assembly,” he says. “Protest leads to some justice… that is why it is important to retain the right to protest,” he says, pointing out that this new rule has already made it difficult for people, especially from marginalised communities, to seek justice.
For instance, in the recent past, a historic rally that workers and workers’ unions undertake was not allowed; farmers protesting against the state government over land acquisition were arrested and people who undertook a silent, peaceful walk opposing the construction of a flyover at Sankey Tank were penalised. “Many of us have at least one FIR, due to the Freedom Park rule, which is what we have to fight against,” he says, referring to this rule as draconian. “Bangalore must remember the importance of protest,” says Vinay.
A file photo of a protest march condemning the murder of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: SOMASHEKARA GRN
Poetry and protest
Like Vinay, Mamta too has many memories of the city as a site of protest. For instance, she remembers waiting at the Ravindra Kalakshetra for the body of the scholar and revolutionary Saketh Rajan, who was shot by police in 2005. “His body was to be brought (here) after the post-mortem, but the police just took it and burnt it,” says Mamta, who went on to write and perform a poem, titled Song Slaughter, for Saketh.
She also talks about the song she had written for her friend, Gauri Lankesh, who was murdered in cold-blood outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar back in 2017. “It was performed by Vasu Dixit and Bindu Malini,” she says, recalling how when Gauri was shot, all of Bengaluru became a site for protest. “No one could stop it. There were thousands of people who landed in Bengaluru for this protest,” says Mamta, who also translated and performed Faiz Ahmad Faiz at the anti-CAA protest sites in the city.
She firmly believes that poetry is a way of capturing socio-political nuance. “Poetry is a very powerful tool and has to be used carefully,” she says. “It helps us sensitise minds, communities, people…building a movement that involves getting a message across.”
Shilo demonstrating one of her pieces. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Art as a tool of resistance
At the event, Shilo also screened a video of women protestors at Shaheen Bagh, peacefully protesting against the CAA, one made during her time there creating community murals. “Shaheen was a very tense moment,” she says, recollecting the horror of the sounds of gunshots they could hear in the background as they painted. “I remember as we were walking, we knew something was going to happen,” she says.
She shares one particularly poignant memory of that time: an encounter with a policeman who walked up to them, as the scaffolding around a mural was coming down, and said that he hadn’t seen anything so beautiful in his life. “Just like that beauty transcended all kinds of horrors.” Being at Shaheen Bagh was a reminder that art in South Asia is not just additive to social justice but is our intergenerational lineage “to stand among the lineage of poets like Tagore and Faiz Ahmed Faiz,” she says.
File photo of SFI workers protesting against the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh. | Photo Credit: ZAKKIR
Fearless collective
The idea that art can be a tool of resistance and radical imagination is at the heart of the Fearless Collective, a global art collective Shilo founded in 2012. The collective, she says, works closely with misrepresented communities, using self-representation and self-determination as a form of storytelling and emotional alchemy.
“We take over public spaces as we are painting murals with these communities,” says Shilo, who believes that putting the wishes of these communities in the public space is crucial. “My vision is for artists and art institutions to be able to realise that it is deeply, deeply important and vital for us to be a reflection of what is happening, to make the invisible visible through our art.”
Published - June 20, 2024 09:00 am IST
