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Showing posts from September, 2018
"A transformational constitutionality must go beyond who we are. It must ask instead: who can we be? Who must we be to ourselves and to each other? How can we use constitutional morality as a transformative power to speak not just of equality on the basis of sexual orientation and gender but on all that divides us? After Thursday, our work must merely begin so that we may not be the cause of injustice from having once been its inheritors. It is only then that we will be truly free. "            -Gautam Bhan, LGBTQ Rights Activist

Rohingyas and their Right to Return

Attended a panel discussion on Displacement, Security and Gender in South Asia. What Paula Bannerjee, one of the panelists shared is perhaps one of the most deep and striking realities of the Rohingya refugee crisis. She empasized that the greatest right of a refugee is the right to return, the right to be nostalgic about their homes.It is this right that has been snatched away from the Rohingyas. For them, home is always associated with terror, persecution and fear. Home is associated with the violence that they have witnessed, the harassment that they have gone through, the hundreds of rapes and murders they have seen before their eyes. What has been snatched away from them, is the dignity of calling a place home. What has been snatched away from them is nostalgia and memory of love.

The Sound of Silence

Am I the sound of silence Or the voice of the silenced. Am I the lullaby of the night Or the cries of the day Am I the morning moon Or the evening sun Am I the blood that flows on the road Or the pain that flows on the veins Am I the disfigured body Or the amputated heart Am I the kiss of love Or the fire of the bullet Am I the young boy washed ashore, dead Or the helpless mother, whose lullabies unsung Am I the Dalit beaten up Or the bearded man branded a terrorist Am I the woman with broken wings Or the man forced not to weep Am I power, Or love Am I the pen Or the poem Am I the fight Or the inquilaab Am I the sound of silence Or the voice of the silenced.