Tag: news

consequence is of no consequence

21.03.2026

‘There is a type of rage,’ I was telling Alfonso slowly and deliberately, ‘that keeps on growing and growing. You cannot vanquish it. It is the growth of rejection.’

‘You have it. I can see,’ answered Alfonso. He was dressed, as per usual, immaculately. He had a beautiful green blazer on that reminded me of the two colours that the Koreans called green. With a purple jumper and a yellow tie. My handsome, handsome friend. His face was alive with energy, with the radiance of the sun.

‘Indeed, I do,’ I answered. ‘Yes, I sit there thinking to myself that they denied me a place at Cambridge because of the colour of my skin when I actually passed the interview. Then, they denied me top jobs and put me on the reserve list when I had passed the interviews because of the colour of my skin. They denied me what I deserved, what I was owed. They have tried to keep me down. It is because of them that I do not have children and a family right now.’

‘All you can think of,’ said Alfonso sharply, ‘is your revenge. That is all there is with you.’

‘Why deny anger?’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘As I said, the anger is getting worse and not better. And this anger is not merely for myself. Because that would be selfish. This anger is for the community. For the past, the present and the future. Besides which,’ I continued, ‘this anger has been forged over thousands of years for the oppressed. It is the anger of the whole people. No one can match this anger.’

‘This society that you accuse of racism and oppression,’ asked Alfonso, ‘how comes you have prospered in it?’

‘Because of my family that looked after me,’ I said. ‘Because I worked every hour under the sun doing work that is not on my level. With this work ethic and this energy, no one can keep me down. I am richer than all of them.’

‘How can you accuse them of being racist when all of your nearest outside of the family are from the dominant culture?’

‘Not everyone is a racist. There are those that give acceptance and even love. If a culture is racist, it does not mean that everyone follows the culture. Look at me. I don’t follow it.’

‘How do you know you are not a racist?’

‘Because, as you have just said, all of the nearest and dearest outside my family are from the dominant culture. Unlike the racists in this society, I don’t say one thing and then do another. I do as I say. I practise what I preach. Harmony. Integration across cultures. Inclusivity and diversity. While I respect and value my own background, I am more than willing to accept and befriend others, to be their lover.’

‘You criticise this culture.’

‘So what? I am British. I can criticise as I please. Who is going to stop me? The ones that can’t take my criticism are the racists, because they know that I have brown skin and they would silence me. You can’t silence the truth. This is a culture of cowardice, hate and lies, of mindless conformity and oppression and greed.’

‘Still you say it. Despite being hated for it.’

‘No one can stop me. Because it is the truth.’

‘There are consequences to speech.’

‘Consequence is of no consequence. I am not a yes man or a sycophant or a coward like many in this society. We do not have to live like this and it is not the right way to live. The real value of life is connection, diversity and inclusion. The real value of life is love. Not hate and lies and cowardice. The real value of life is to make friends with difference. To embrace difference with open arms. To learn from everyone. Openness, equality and respect.’

‘You have a narrow view of this society.’

‘As I have said before, look at the leaders of this culture. Are you satisfied with this? Are you satisfied with the garbage that they spout? Are you satisfied with how they burn the world with their greed, how they kill the innocent with impunity, how they coerce their people to follow them with corrupt taxes and corrupt lies? And then, you look at their bias and prejudice in work and even in love.’

‘What bias in work?’

‘You want statistics?  One in four young people have reported that their ethnicity is a barrier to progression in their career. There are more ethnic minority workers in insecure jobs. About 12% of ethnic minority workers have been denied promotions based on their ethnicity. We are unfairly disciplined and seen with suspicion at work. Because of our foreign names, we are less likely to be invited to the interview in the first place. About 88% of employees believe racism exists in their workplaces, and three-quarters believe racism is a problem, suggesting little progress over the past few years.This list goes on and on.’

‘You agree.’

‘Yes.’

I passed over a small coconut chocolate sweet to Alfonso and we chewed these little treats together in silent companionship. There was always much to say. And very little time to say it. But we would say it.

experiencing racism

24.02.2026

S: Someone was directly and unashamedly racist to me today. In the news this week, there is racism in sport. Players are being subjected to hate crime, thousands of messages a week. In film, there is racism. At the BAFTAs, someone used a racial slur. And in politics, all you have are these racists.

A: I notice you are not swearing.

S: That’s because of the censorship board that sits there. They never censor racism. Only when you criticise racism. We all know who they love.

A: What happened to you today? What was this racism?

S: I was helping some elderly people. Then this old man asked me what my name was. He didn’t understand it, so he had to ask to read it. Then, he said ‘Is that your real name? Has it been shortened? Because when these people come over here, they shorten their names and use different names.’

A: How was that racist?

S: It’s good you asked. Because in this racist culture, that would count as normal conversation even though it is so offensive. It is racist because it was my grandfather that came over. It is racist because this guy doubted that I was using my real name, like I was some criminal or something. It is racist because he assumed that I wasn’t British and had come over recently even though I’ve been born and bred in Great Britain. It was racist because he couldn’t even accept my answer to his question because I was different from him.

A: What did you do?

S: I looked at this ignoramus and smiled at him. Because in my culture, we treat the elderly with respect. And I knew that he would never stop being a racist. If I had said something, he would have taken offence and kicked up a fuss. Because an ethnic minority man was challenging his racist behaviour. I wasn’t racist to him. I didn’t look at his skin and assume he would be a racist. I didn’t prejudge him.

A: What is the solution to ending racism?

S: You can’t stop these idiots being ignorant. They always say that they didn’t realise how offensive they were. They say that you have to excuse our ignorance. They are ignorant on purpose. They read papers that are full of hate. They listen to politicians that are full of hate. They defend each other’s racism and teach it in schools and in their films and books and TV shows. They are a culture of deliberate ignorance and distancing from anyone perceived as different.

A: Why tell about it?

S: What else is there? Except to point out that their whole culture is one of racism. Even when you are helping them, that is the treatment that you get. And when you point it out like I do? They hate you even more. Because you dared to tell the truth about how they treated you because you were an ethnic minority man.

A: Feelings?

S: Just confirms what I think of this racist culture. There is no surprise. Someone on my level should be sitting at the top of this society. I am not because of their racism. Even when I was with the one I am with, someone shouted at me in a car to go back home when I was with her recently. That is what this is.

Learning in your own Language and Higher Education in Singapore: Degrees in Mandarin and Social Mobility

Language Barriers in Global Education

A significant barrier to Higher Education for international students from areas of high poverty is that most of these courses are taught in English and have requirements such as the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (the International English Language Testing System) English proficiency exams [1]. International students are required to produce an acceptable level of English at the application stage before consideration for courses. 

In the UK, the Home Office has waived the IELTS test for citizens of 18 countries where English is seen as an official language. However, the IELTS is still widely taught in Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, India, and Malaysia [2]. In these countries, cost would be a barrier to social mobility for many since just taking the exam for IELTS costs around two hundred pounds [3]. This is a sum which can be a challenge for students from developing countries.

Students therefore have to spend more money on acquiring English as a language with formal qualifications when it is already difficult for them to raise the funds for a degree abroad in the first place. In addition, gaining the level of English proficiency required to pass them requires a considerable financial and time investment. Therefore, in contrast to English native speakers, the international student community has to invest much more resources in gaining an internationally recognised degree. They have a considerable disadvantage which is heightened by the fact that many come from countries where students may not have many financial resources due to high levels of unemployment and poverty.

Singapore’s Mandarin Programs

The People’s Republic of China and India remain the biggest sources of internationally mobile students, together accounting for around 30% of numbers between 2018 and 2022 [4]. This year, four universities in Singapore, namely NTU, SMU, SUTD and SUSS, have launched new postgraduate programmes in Mandarin which would appeal to Chinese international students [1]. For such students, this therefore eliminates the need for acquiring formal English qualifications at a cost. Furthermore, compared to the US and the UK, university fees in Singapore are relatively lower and therefore more affordable [1]. According to one student on the course, an MBA degree in the US would cost about 1 million yuan (US$140,000), whereas a one-year course in Singapore costs roughly half that amount [5]. The offer appears to cut cost for higher education courses for those that can speak Chinese.

Expanding Access to International Study

Singapore’s policy may offer widened access to higher education for the less privileged. As Jason Tan, associate professor at NTU’s National Institute of Education, Policy, Curriculum and Leadership suggested to Singapore’s CNA938 radio show: “the choice of studying overseas is no longer a privilege only for richer people. We’re getting a much broader spectrum now of families in China who are thinking of a postgraduate overseas degree for their children.” [6]

The social experiment may enable wider access to higher education in Singapore and bring in a greater diversity of students around the world who are not limited by cost considerations to study abroad. Higher education is one of the most certain routes for achieving social mobility and therefore for reducing poverty around the world [7]. A recent study has also shown that foreign-educated graduates can reduce extreme poverty in low and middle-income countries [8]. As Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at Oxford University, Maia Chankseliani has stated: ‘Returnees use the skills and knowledge they gain abroad to drive local innovations and contribute to societal changes, which can lead to systemic poverty reduction over time’.

[1] https://seafocusnews.com/2025/07/29/1410/

[2] https://studyinternational.com/news/cost-of-english-proficiency-tests/#:~:text=English%20proficiency%20tests:%20Fair%20for,to%20international%20students’%20financial%20burden.

[4] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/03/what-are-the-key-trends-in-international-student-mobility_495dcfac/2a423a76-en.pdf

[5] https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2025/07/30/singapore-universities-mandarin-taught-postgrad-courses-raise-concerns-over-integration-and-language-policy/

[6] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20250903120713648

[7] https://www.suttontrust.com/our-priorities/higher-education/

[8] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-10-07-study-shows-how-international-student-mobility-can-reduce-poverty-low-and-middle

the age of independence

20.01.2026

S: You know, when people tell me to become independent, I just drone it out. They are constantly saying it.

A: Are you not sick of it and them?

S: The problem is the problem of the zealot. Independence is their religion. They will have no blasphemy of their god, independence.

A: There is a criticism here.

S: This is the age of independence. And look what it has brought them. They are all sick and suffering from depression. Because they are alone and they are not connected.

A: Is that just from their independence?

S: Most likely. Do you think it is normal to live without human connections? Obviously it is not. They have made themselves sick. I’m not going to make myself sick. They have made themselves poor. I’m not going to make myself poor. It is against reason. Why would I court precarity, the precarity of independence? Again, look at their politics. They are the politics of independence.

A: What do you mean?

S: Brexit and the solitary isolation of Great Britain. Trump in America deciding that he is going to make enemies with all the world and separate himself with walls and with hate from everyone. Keeping out of the climate accords and Nato. No togetherness and no community. Not so splendid isolation all over the world with the far Right. Trade tariffs and other bullshit to try and keep the world disconnected and countries isolated from each other. It is the politics of isolation and independence. Yet these politicians are not different from the people in this country. The people always say it is not us, it is the politicians. However, these people and these politicians are all one with each other.

A: What do you think?

S: Fuck their so-called independence. We come from India. We come from Punjab. We are Tigers. We have a community. We live for the community and connection. We have a family. We live for the family and connection. We have real independence. Because we do not believe in the state. We hate the state. We believe in ourselves. The village and Punjab. We do not believe in false superiority based on race and ethnicity. We do not believe in the injustice of ‘independence’ which relies on exploitation and the mongering of hate and superiority. We are not wage slaves because the family supports us. We are not selfish, greedy and grasping because the family supports us. Our reliance on the family is not dependence. We are independent because we rely on the family. In the village and in Punjab, we have the politics of togetherness. The community comes first, not the individual and his isolation. Belonging comes first, independent identity afterwards. We don’t have the ego and arrogance to be independent in the way of these selfish countries and their politics. In their countries, we are the only ones that are independent. Because we copy no one. We follow no one. We follow our own path. The path of The Tiger. The path of the truly independent. And that is why we have self-determination. And them? They have nothing and are nothing. There is no way that they can last. Because their independence will lose them all of their power. The way of power is connection, not arrogance. The way of power is togetherness and not loneliness. The way of freedom is not the solitude of the tyrant, but the laugh of the crowd. They deal with atoms. We deal with the universe in its connections.

the impermeability and resilience of hate (microfiction)

21.11.2025

S: A lot of people think that racism is natural.

A: Why?

S: Because they have cultivated it to be so strong here. One of the most xenophobic and racist countries in the entire world.

A: Why remark upon it? They are racist but you are not allowed to say that they are. They don’t want to admit it to themselves. They are under the delusion that they are good people. They have made the country into an embarrassment.

S: The reason I bring it up is to ask you the question. Have you ever pondered upon the impermeability and resilience of hate?

A: What do you mean?

S: These haters can be around people of difference the whole day at work and so on. In different social settings, wherever. They have been around us for hundreds of years. And yet, they still hate us. We are not included in their social networks. Their deepest relationships are like for like.

A: So from that you draw the conclusion that hate is impermeable and resilient?

S: It is not, of course, everyone. There are exceptions. My closest friends are across cultures. But, speaking in general terms, all it takes is a human dung heap like Farage or Trump for them to flare up with their hate crimes. And recruit their little chickenshit scumbags to stoke the flames and rouse up these imbeciles in this society against us.

A: What is the point of pointing it out? It is not going to change anything.

S: To say the truth is an act of resistance in itself. I don’t accept the bullshit lip service narrative that they are trying to project, that racism has been cured, that there is no work to be done, that everyone is living in a rosy tinted reality holding hands. They are wrong. They are atrocious. Their society is atrocious. It is worse now with racism than when I was a kid, when the skinheads were around.

A: You want to say the truth and they want to cancel you. What is this game? Why is it worth playing?

S: One day, they will look back at this period in history and they will say that it was The Tiger that was right. It is right to be militant against their racism. It is right to criticise them. It is right to fight them. It is right to keep on saying that it does not matter what colour someone is, what culture they are from, that everyone is worthy of love and that we are all human beings.

A: But you don’t see these racists as human beings. All you do is swear at them.

S: When you become a monster, then in the story, there will be someone to kill the monster. The hero. In this story, it is The Tiger.

Educational Poverty for Dalits in India

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

This piece was submitted for a journalism internship as a writing test. The author, Dr. Suneel Mehmi, is proud to come from the Dalit Community and to be an Untouchable.

06.09.2025

India, which has a caste system and caste discrimination against Dalits (the lowest castes) also has the largest population of 287 million illiterate adults in the world. That is 37% of the global total [1]. If illiteracy can be considered an indicator of exclusion from education, then Dalits must be considered as victims of this educational poverty and deprivation, since 62% of Dalits are illiterate indicating they have likely not completed primary school [2]. Informal data indicates that more than nearly 60% of children who drop out of school are Dalit children [3].

Caste discrimination aligns with gender discrimination to fuel illiteracy, evident in the fact that the literacy rate of female Dalits in Bihar was 38.5% in 2011 [4]. To put that into perspective and stark contrast, the literacy rate in the United Kingdom is considered to be 99% for both men and women [5].

Despite the fact that education is the best way to eradicate poverty and build a better future, this education is still systematically denied to Dalit children in India [6].

While the caste system has been abolished in the law, there is ongoing discrimination and prejudice against Dalits throughout India including in the field of education. Dalit students face unique challlenges in becoming students. The family is so poor and unemployment rates are so high that even in today’s world, Dalit children are sold into bonded labour so that they cannot study, just so that the family can eat [7]. Many Dalit children are studying while they are malnourished.

In schools, Dalit children are often bullied and discriminated against. In Bihar State in India for instance, while there is a legal obligation to include children from all castes, still schools are either abandoned or barely functioning. If Dalit children attend the schools, they are treated with cruelty or neglected. Practices of discrimination include being forced to sit at the back of the class and prevented from touching or interacting with classmates from other castes [8]. Far from being able to join in school activities, stories of verbal and physical abuse against Dalit students from both teachers and classmates are rife [9].

The dropout rate for girls is exceptionally high. Children already vulnerable due to caste prejudice are placed in even greater danger, and there is the perpetuation of a cycle of poverty which has remained unchallenged for generations [10].

Education is key to increasing the prosperity, security and happiness of any country. If there is systematic and institutionalised exclusion of the Dalit community in India from learning, then the country cannot advance as a whole. To counter poverty, we must first counter the educational poverty and deprivation for Dalits.

[1]

https://www.oxfamindia.org/featuredstories/10-facts-illiteracy-india-you-must-know

[2]

https://childrenontheedge.org/how-we-help/education/dalit-children-in-india/addressing-caste-discrimination

[3]

https://childrenontheedge.org/how-we-help/education/dalit-children-in-india/addressing-caste-discrimination

[4]

https://www.oxfamindia.org/featuredstories/10-facts-illiteracy-india-you-must-know

[5]

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (retrieved March 13, 2016) quoted at https://countrymeters.info/en/United_Kingdom_(UK) 

[6]

https://www.globalcare.org/project/india-patripul-dalit-education/

[7]

https://www.globalcare.org/project/india-patripul-dalit-education/

[8]

https://childrenontheedge.org/how-we-help/education/dalit-children-in-india/addressing-caste-discrimination

[9]

https://www.globalcare.org/2018/05/poverty-and-prejudice-changing-the-story-for-dalit-children/

[10]

https://www.globalcare.org/2018/05/poverty-and-prejudice-changing-the-story-for-dalit-children/

Exhibition: The Time is Always Now – Artists Reframe the Black Figure (Some Notes)

National Portrait Gallery

02.05.2024

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now

Summary: Artwork from the African Diaspora. The website says:

”As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced”.

Notes:

– The title ‘The Time is Always Now’ comes from James Baldwin in the 1960s writing about the civil rights struggle.

My comment: So the aim of the exhibition is to combat racism and this is what it should be judged on – if it is giving dignity, equality and positivity to the black figure. Is it?

Overall impressions:

Goes through quite a lot of the current thinking about racism like ‘double consciousness’ when non-white people have to look at themselves through a white perspective as well as their own non-white perspective, etc. Educational for people that haven’t experienced racism and don’t really understand what it is like.

The art is presented as educational and as being completely resistant to racism. Can art be unambiguous and not contradictory like that? How easy is it to escape racism and to be free in terms of artistic vision and in your expression?

And how beautiful are the artworks? Were they captivating? Art does not have to be apolitical to be beautiful. But I wonder whether there were any pieces of great beauty in this exhibition.

Some Works Which Caught My Attention

As Sounds Turn to Noise (bronze sculpture)

Thomas J Price

https://www.galleriesnow.net/artwork/as-sounds-turn-to-noise

The artist says this is a composited fictional character ‘which really looks at the value systems contained within portraiture and monuments’. He was supposed to be giving power and grandeur to ‘fictional everyday people’, the under-represented black people excluded from art history and classical sculpture.

My Comment: Why closed eyes? The artist says she is embracing ‘the inner world that she’s manifesting there and trying to bring clarity perhaps, to all this noise around us’.

I wrote a book about the valuation of symbolic blindness in imperialistic, racist and misogynistic Victorian Britain. When blindness stood for power. Are the eyes closed because of this association from the past? Devaluation of sight in this system of valuation as in Western culture – when for Indians it is the queen of the senses and the motor of revolution.

The statue stands right at the front of an exhibition where we are looking – a guide to how we are supposed to see the rest of the exhibition?

Composited photographs from Victorian Britain by Galton were used to isolate supposed ‘racial features’ – how distanced is this sculpture from that process of racism and essentialisation when we are talking about race and the black figure reframed?

Ivan (painting)

Jennifer Packer

https://www.studiomuseum.org/artworks/ivan

My favourite painting in the whole exhibition. This is an intimate portrait of one of the artist’s friends and family. It is about a ‘human relationship’, not a person.

The face is caught in a mood of introspection. A thinking man. A reflection on thought and on the minds that give us our personality, that create our relationships with others. The restricted palette of pink is beautiful: textured, cloudlike, dreamy. Details make up the piece, there are no flat colours, many many colours. Complication. Nuance in technique. The enigmatic meaning of the feet – one clothed foot, one bare. The play between the spectacle of the body and the covering of the clothes, the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’. A drip of paint falls from the black figure as it escapes into liquid from form. There is an air of insubstantiality, dissolution, as though everything is melting away.

The thoughts of this thinking man are what are highlighted by the artist in the personal relationship. So is she connected to him because he thinks? And what is the emotion here about that connection and his thinking? It is a mysterious image, a puzzle. Maybe her thoughts about him are unresolved, oscillating between definite form and the cloudiness that informs the image. An ambigious, contradictory and paradoxical image.

Seeing through Time

Titus Kaphar

Seeing Through Time, 2018

A painting I found very beautiful too.

This is supposed to ‘dismantle’ an exclusionary Western visual representation and to subvert it. The artist is replacing the white female figures from neoclassical style paintings with black women. The artist deconstructs the western representation and removes it from the picture through cutting, etc. Then, he inserts the black figure – inclusion.

In this painting, the black serving figure for the white woman then serves the black woman instead, so the racial power disappears from the image.

The white figure disappears and becomes a black face. However, there is a sophisticated point to this image: the white figure is still providing the frame for the black face. Blackness is still being seen through the frame of whiteness. If you look carefully, one of the eyes is cut off by the outlines of the white figure that has been cut out. The black eye is limited by the white outlines that have been given to us from history. There is a tired self-awareness in this image.

The black face inside the white frame looks sad. Her own body is missing – the black body. Even her hair – with all of its power and symbolism – is not being presented. We are seeing the fragment of a black woman’s body – she still hasn’t achieved full representation. The image conveys the sadness of racism and the artist’s rendition of the black figure. It is still a work in progress, still unattained. The Time is Always Now…

‘Chocolate House Greenwich – Society, Intellect and Chocolate in 1700s Greenwich’

Old Royal Naval College

22.04.2024

This opinion reflects my personal views in my capacity as a private individual and does not reflect any consensus or anyone else at any of the organisations I work at or volunteer for.

Ascending up the stairs to the exhibition space on the mezzanine, you see a window through which you glimpse another world, another milieu, the past. It is a rare interior scene of a coffee house, one of the new forums for public debate that shaped the modern world. The customers are reading the newspapers that created the imagined community and fostered and nurtured the Western nation-state. Thus begins the historical journey into the Chocolate House in Greenwich. We are guided through a sort of window onto the past.

Behind another window, we then see the esteemed lady that ran the Chocolate House on Blackheath as one of the many women in history that have provided the world with its unique and wanted things. It is Grace Tosier ‘at the height of her powers’. Her eyes stare at us in the portrait through time. We are sharing her vision. She is the character that is leading us through things, the guide, the model: a strong, independent woman in a capitalistic culture. The heroine for this time and this society.

We learn that the Chocolate house served royalty. It then ‘became the Georgian equivalent of a celebrity hotspot’. So now we experience the glamour of the place.

The exhibition now shifts its focus. The story changes. We start learning about the origins of chocolate in South America, how it came to Europe, how it involved the morally reprehensible evils of a capitalistic society which evolved from slavery and exploitation. The trajectory of the story has shifted. We have come to a moral reckoning of the realities behind the glamour of the chocolate house. A confrontation with evil.

At this point in the story of the exhibition, like a huge wild monster from the imagination, we see a glorious display of the Cacao Tree rising up on the wall against a black canvas. The plant is covered over in insects. Why this image? The beauties of nature? The absolute origin of chocolate depicted without any varnish, perhaps, warts and all? The idea that the comforting illusions of capitalism, when the veil of ideology has been ripped off, reveal an insect-ridden reality?

The story of the exhibition journeys next into how coffee houses enabled ‘the free discussion of the latest ideas, unrestrained by the protocols of the royal court.’ In the light of what was before, the implications begin to produce a result: the free speech of this country is founded on the fruits of slavery and exploitation. It is an implicit link.

There are quite a few interesting pictures to ponder over at this junction in our journey which reflect the culture of the times, so that the task of time travel is further enabled.

Now, there is the context: Greenwich. So the place is elaborated.

A table draped in a table cloth reveals the production process of chocolate.

We then move onto the last years of the Chocolate House. And we see an image of what the building might have looked like from the outside.

Finally, the piece of the resistance: the final destination of our time travel. In a room, we enter the chocolate house. We are fully immersed now in the space. There is a life size reproduction of Grace Tosier’s image as we descend down the ramp to meet her face to face. A video plays in the space to complete the immersion not only through space in the room, but through vision, sound and characterisation. We have travelled backwards through time into the space of the chocolate house.

What do we make of this exhibition? It covers a lot of ground to make a coherent narrative: this was the chocolate house, with all of its social and political implications at the time, with its basis in capitalism, exploitation, slavery. With its enabling of social mobility at the same time for women like Grace Tosier in this context. All of the pertinent facts are presented. There is balance. And there is a stimulation of the senses with pictures and videos alongside the curator labels. There is the face of Grace Tosier to characterise the whole scene, as well as the images from the country of origin with the people there.

You get a sense of historical immersion in the chocolate house. You get a ticket into time travel into Greenwich in the 1700s – a unique virtual reality experience. An enabling of the imagination. A real journey into another place and time.

My overall sense of the exhibition is that it is interesting, unique, well researched and well thought out. In addition, there were labels for the children which would make them interested in this topic that they love too – chocolate (and the pictures to stimulate their imaginations). This was a conscience driven exposure of the past and its evils, the foundations of the public forums and the discussions that they bred that have lasted into the present, the foundations of the modern day nation state and its present evils in the evils of the past.

I did feel a certain want in the exhibition – I wanted to know more about Grace Tosier, the character that we meet face to face. A curiosity about her. But of course, the reality is that while we have a name and an image, we cannot expect a biography in a historical exhibition like this. Part of the fun is imagining her life, too. Part of the fun is being stimulated to know more – and the chocolate house exhibition certainly does this. So, in summation, a stimulating and unique experience which fosters a self-reflection on the economic and political origins of our public forums and our public discourse, what has made us and this state into what it is today, a real journey. A real experience of learning.

Writing with Fire Review

12.03.2022

Often, we retreat from the very great but empty noise that the Oscars make. However, on this occasion I decided to watch one of the films that was up for the nominations, ‘Writing with Fire’. Famously, if one is from an Indian ethnic background, the documentary is the first Academy Awards nomination which has been directed by an Indian director (Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh). It is also one of the only films, Indian or otherwise, which has ‘untouchable’ women as heroines. Luckily for me, the film is on BBC IPlayer and is available to stream online as part of their ‘Storyville’ series.

‘Writing with Fire’ is about the perils and adventures of three lower caste (‘Dalit’ which translates as ‘oppressed’) women journalists, Meera, Suneeta and Shyamkali. They work for the only entirely woman run newspaper in India,  Khabar Lahariya or ‘Waves of News’. In the opening credits, the film makers write that when these Dalit women set up a newspaper in 2002, they ‘started a revolution’. The film follows the newspaper story from 2016 when the publication went digital. The attempt is to show a sea-change. Meera says, “In our region, a journalist meant you are an upper-caste man. A Dalit woman journalist was unthinkable. Over the last 14 years we’ve changed this perception.” Meera asks us to consider what it would be like if Dalit women had power and what they would do with it.

What follows in the film is a traditional and thoroughly conventional hero narrative which has been built up over thousands of years. The difference is that the hero is not a hero, but a heroine, and from the lower castes. What is the traditional hero narrative? The hero comes from humble origins, like the Greek demigods raised secretly by peasants as children. However, such humble origins disguise the greatness, nobility and royalty of the hero, which are revealed later. The hero faces adversity and mortal danger, as in a glorious battle. It is stated in the credits that India is one of the most precarious places in the world to be a journalist, with many murdered. The film shows the response to one murder of a female journalist by the workers of Khabar Lahariya. The hateful trolling of the women journalists is illustrated as well as their vulnerability to the Indian mafia. The hero is threatened by a return to quotidian  life, like Hercules compelled to clean the stables. Thus, the women’s husbands attempt to stop them writing for the newspaper to work in the home instead as housewives. Finally, the hero must triumph. Khabar Lahariya is presented as an out and out success, measured by the amount of YouTube views it attracts, which number in the tens of millions.

This hero narrative unfolds amidst a glorification and justification of journalism, the pursuit that the women have dedicated their lives to. Towards the end of the documentary, Meera recites that the journalists are fighting to transform society. That they are holding the powerful to account. That they have made their journalism the voice of democracy. That they didn’t let the fourth pillar fall. And that they continue to hold a mirror to society. Thus, the film seems to be about everything that lip service holds dear: truth, balance, democracy.

Not only this, but the journalists are presented as law-givers. The screen first jumps into motion with Meera asking a woman in person about being raped multiple times in her home by four men. The opening credits mention how many Dalit women are subjected to violence across India and the film shows how Meera and others are trying to challenge the justice system which doesn’t respond to these atrocities. The unnamed rape victim says that the police refuse to lodge her complaint and intimidate her when she attempts to do so. The woman is going to newspaper because they are the only ones that listen to her story. As the husband of the victim says, “We don’t trust anyone else. Khabar Lahariya is our last hope”. Meera confronts the police about the multiple rapes and she proclaims that she is “fighting for justice in a democracy”.

My impression of the film as a whole was that it was a story told well. Certainly, Dalit women deserve to be seen as heroes too. The focus on the stories of the three women journalists gave that personal touch which made the abstract ideals the film supports into something concrete and something that the viewer could really relate to. The cinematography by Sushmit Ghosh and Karan Thapliyal was very beautiful. However, I am more pessimistic about the role of journalism in society. The documentary aims to present the journalist as objective, neutral, impartial, a server of truth, justice and democracy. These are claims that are a stretch of the imagination much too far for me. Again, I am troubled by why the Western media has nominated the film for an Academy Award. Khabar Lahariya is the voice of the poor, oppressed women in India. Naturally, they are pessimistic about power and the government in India. That is, they criticise the society they find themselves in because they hope to transform it and make a better position for themselves. This is fine. This is acceptable. Indeed, I support these women in their mission. However, what is unacceptable, is that the Western media and its public discourse always criticise India when they know nothing about it, in a supreme act of Orientalism and racism. The Academy seems to have selected a film which presents India as a colossal sewer because this is what they think about the country. This is not fine. This is what is unacceptable. And in this, they are trying to use that objectivity associated with journalism to try and present their racist notion of a whole country as the unqualified truth. Final verdict? A good, revolutionary film spoiled by an Oscar nomination and Western practices of racism.