New Delhi: In a protest organised this week at Jantar Mantar to mark one year of Israel’s war in Gaza, one sight stood out—an artist using chalk to draw a Palestinian keffiyeh, on the road. Vishal Kumar, a 30-year-old freelance artist and a member of Progressive Artists’ League, a pro-Palestine alternative forum, was making the street art to spread awareness about lives lost in the war.
To keep the conversation alive, Progressive Artists’ League on one such occasion organised a film screening and discussion on 8 June and a cultural evening and exhibition on 9 June this year, in a small studio in New Delhi.
The poster for the event read that the events were “in solidarity with the liberation struggle of Palestinians”. “We screened a film called Gaza Fights for Freedom. And an artist who has done her Master’s project on Palestinian struggle had made an installation about the Palestinian poetry written on different fabrics,” said Kumar, adding that the forum also displayed the art of Palestinian artists.
During the cultural evening, Kumar said Palestinian resistance songs like ‘Long Live Palestine’ by Lowkey and ‘We Will Not Go Down’ by Michael Heart were sung in unison. There was also a presentation on the history of the Palestinian struggle.
“The events that we have organised in the studio space have mostly been attended by students. Some middle-aged people also attended the events that took place after the attack on Rafah,” Kumar said.
This was not the only time Progressive Artists’ League protested in solidarity with Palestine. In the past year, the forum, among several others, has continued to show solidarity with Gaza through demonstrations, protests, cultural evenings, illustrations, musical performances to inform citizens about the history of Palestine since 1948 and the ongoing war that started on 7 October last year, when Hamas attacked the Israeli mainland, killing at least 1,139 and capturing 250, including civilians.
According to the Gazan health ministry, retaliatory strikes by Israel have killed more than 42,000 in Gaza, including 16,756 children. Nearly 90 percent of the population of the Palestinian enclave has also been displaced as a result of the year-long offensive.
“We (India) got independence in 1947. We should look at their (Palestinians) fight the way we looked at our own. A few people settle in parts of a country and then slowly the entire population is confined in a strip of land,” Kumar told ThePrint.
Adding, “It’s the fight for freedom, it’s not about any religion. This is the fight that we fought too, which is why we support their fight.”
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‘Building consciousness’
Over the past year, the solidarity network for Palestine in India has solidified and expanded, to some extent on the back of the Left, particularly the Communist Party of India (CPI) which has organised several protests to raise voices against the killings in Gaza.
In one such protest held in August this year, several CPI leaders, political activists, economics professors and researchers were detained by the Delhi police, after they marched towards the Israel Embassy to demand a ceasefire and to display solidarity with the people of Palestine.
The leaders included CPI leader Annie Raja, welfare economist Jean Dreze, political activists Nadeem Khan and Priyadharshini.
The Centre of Trade Unions (CITU), a national level trade union in India, has at regular intervals in the past year, held meetings with workers, to make them aware about the happenings in Gaza. Tapan Sen, the 72-year-old general secretary of CITU, told ThePrint that several Left organisations have been giving calls across the country to condemn the “continuing genocide and also the expansion of the war zone”.
On one such occasion, Sen said that the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) called on different trade unions on 1 September to condemn the “peace breakers of the world by their imperialist hegemony”.
Moreover, he said that the different trade unions including CITU have been explaining to the workers why it is important to protest against the “genocide”. “Israeli genocide is a part of the anti-imperialist struggle that must be integral to the trade union movement. We try to build their consciousness in that direction at workplaces by having seminars, meetings and sometimes in a demonstrative format as well,” he said.
Hegemony, the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states, in Sen’s opinion, finds its face today in a brutal manner “in the theatre of Israel”. “This must be part of the workers’ consciousness and has to be constantly and consistently cultivated among the mass of the workers,” he said.
Solidarity through art
For different people, the form of protest has been different. Smish, a 30-year-old artist and a member of another alternative forum, Artist Dialogue, has been making illustrations and posting them on her Instagram account to create awareness and to protest against the killings.
On the completion of one year of the war, one of her illustrations highlighted the people who became the faces of Palestinian struggle in the past year, including Palestinian journalists Motaz Azaiza and Plestia Alaqad, and also illustrations of a Hijabi woman holding the dead body of her child and a grandfather holding his dead grandchild.
Smish said that like most people in India, she was unaware about the Palestinian struggle and only got to know about it through a friend who educated her, after which she saw several documentaries and did her own research on the subject. “I realised that they are brutally segregated and monitored,” she told ThePrint.
Smish’s Instagram with over 60,000 followers was already a space where she was vocal about causes close to her heart, including politics and human rights. “Then I decided to show my solidarity through my art. In the modern history of humans, they (Palestinians) are the most vulnerable group of people,” she said. “We need to keep talking about settler occupation.”
Smish is just one artist contributing to the cause. Through Artist Dialogue, many other artists have managed to successfully sell their art pieces online.
“We have wonderful artists who have signed up, and they are giving us their time and support. And all the money that’s coming in through their art is going to the families (in Palestine),” Meghna Prakash, 25, one of the core members, told ThePrint.
“The idea here is that we are supporting families who are not getting access to funds from NGOs. So their primary way of being able to manage food, milk or pampers (diapers) is through the funds we are raising throughout,” she said, adding that a thorough verification is conducted to avoid any scams and ensure the funds reach those in need.
Prakash said that all the initiatives are about people who want to either spread awareness or provide help through donations. While artists create awareness through their art pieces, others can simply do that by sharing posts on through their Instagram stories, she suggested. “The idea is to do this (create awareness) in our own little ways.”
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We (Indians) should look at their (Palestinians) fight the way we looked at our own (for freedom),’ said
Which Indian freedom fighter attacked a group of civilians in a music festival celebrating art, kidnapped, raped and murdered? Equating terrorists with freedom fighter is classic propoganda stemming from Pakistan. Please investigate tge toolkit and funding sources.
It’s the usual culprits. The Islamists and their bosom friends – the Leftists.
Nobody else is “standing up” for Palestine.
And these hypocrites were the ones celebrating the terrorist attack of October 7 last year.