It is time to write a Christmas message. I write this message as someone that comes from a Hindu, Guru Ravidasia and Sikh background but, as everyone knows, Christmas has become cosmopolitan in the United Kingdom, even regarded by many as a secular festival. All faiths and backgrounds sit together on Christmas day to make it an occasion for family and friends. Christmas is celebrated in different ways by all of us but we share the celebration together.
In my view, one of the themes of Christmas is a belief in dignity against a society that may take dignity away from people. Jesus is born to a poor family, in a stable, and first welcomed by shepherds—people on the margins of society. In addition, Jesus was a Jew from Galilee and Jews in 1st-century Judea were an ethno-religious minority living under Roman imperial rule, with limited political power. Within the Roman world, Jewish people were often stereotyped, taxed heavily, and at times persecuted for their customs and beliefs. So for me, the nativity story, which sees Jesus as God, returns dignity among those often overlooked.
If there was an earnest belief in dignity, I believe the work of improving society would have been done and the champions of diversity could rest. This could have happened long ago. One of the great examples of the belief in dignity is the Edict of Ashoka from the 3rd Century BCE. Reeling from the devastation of wars that he had caused, wracked by guilt, Ashoka turned to compassion and respect for all people to transform himself and his world.
In his rock and pillar edicts, Ashoka affirmed the inherent dignity of every individual, passing over divisions of ethnicity, religion, or social status. Ashoka supported religious tolerance among Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Greeks, Persians, and other groups within the empire. He promoted equal justice and humane treatment under the law, as well as respectful dialogue between cultures rather than dominance or suppression. Ashoka wrote that honouring others’ beliefs “strengthens one’s own faith,” reflecting an early understanding that dignity and equality thrive in diverse societies.
The nativity story and Ashoka matter to us today. The belief in human dignity is not a modern invention but has deep historical roots. This belief has long been essential to peaceful coexistence in multicultural societies. I hope that we can all believe in dignity so that we can all live dignified lives. Not just at Christmas, but all the year round. My thoughts go out to the Jewish community as I write because of the recent Bondi Beach mass shooting, but also to all in this world affected by those for whom there is evidently not a belief in dignity, of the dignity of life, the dignity of choice, the dignity of difference and the dignity of diversity.
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.
S: There are two kinds of people. Those that would kill Hitler. And those that would not.
A: Are you just talking about Hitler?
S: That is up to you to decide. When a tyrant and a despot, a fascist, when scum takes over, should you lie back and let him fuck you? Should you let the scum dictate the terms? Or should you end it? That is the difference between a non-man and a responsible citizen. It is the key question of our times, of any time.
A: So you would kill Hitler.
S: In the cradle if I had to.
A: You could square that with your conscience?
S: Do you hear the screams of the ones that he persecuted? Do these screams haunt you? Can you hear those screams in the night?
A: You would be the judge of life and death?
S: If you do not kill Hitler, you are Hitler. You accept sin.
A: Sin, judgement, murder. What is this philosophy?
S: In the film ‘Hum’ (Us), Tiger says that there are two kinds of cockroaches. A cockroach from the gutter can make an individual sick. But a cockroach from the dirtiness of sin makes the whole of society sick.
A: Nobody believes in sin any more.
S: That is your mistake. Sin does exist. Sin is objective fact. Sin is what the Hitlers of this world commit. If evil has a face, that is it.
A: What makes you so good that you would punish sin with death?
S: Whether I am good or not, I try to be good. Whether or not there is a fight, I try to be a warrior. Whether or not I have the opportunity to make a real difference, I try to make a real difference. It is not your nature that makes you good or evil. It is what you do with what you have. We all make mistakes.
A: Hitler will never come before you. You are one of the little people. There will never be the occasion. Hitler is protected by this society. This society models itself on Hitler, despite the pretence that it does not. This society is obsessed by Hitler.
S: When there was no way, Narsimha the Man-Tiger exploded from the column to kill the tyrant that thought himself invincible. The prayer of the people is god upon earth, to kill Hitler. In my culture, the obsession is the murder of Hitler. In one corner of the world, they give birth to warriors. That is why Punjab is immortal. That is why Punjab is just. Because we kill Hitler. India’s contribution to the war against Hitler was decisive.
S: All they do is spout hate. Every single word is a hate crime. But then when you point out that they are racist, suddenly there is shock and surprise.
A: You are talking about someone in particular?
S: Look at that piece of shit Farage…
A: Here we go again.
S: He is lucky…
A: Stop there. Don’t say it.
S: Okay, I won’t. But look at their strategy. Hate crime after hate crime. The persecution and oppression of anyone perceived as other because of their culture or race. And then, if you ever point it out, then there is denial, denial, denial. Outrage even. That is the thing about a racist. If you point it out to them, they think that they are entitled to anger. They love lies and lies only.
A: And what of it? A bastard is a bastard. They cannot be legit.
S: You know what it is? The racist pretends that they love the Other. They have this deceit that they love the Other. They won’t countenance any exposure of the stuntedness of their hearts.
A: That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? How do you reckon they are fabricating a tale of love?
S: Look at imperialism. They pretended they loved us so that they could rule over us. They said they loved us so much that they were going to ‘civilise’ us. When they had no civilisation because unjust rule over another is not civilisation, it is barbarity. Thinking yourself better than another because they are different and excluding them is barbarity, not civilisation. A civilisation of barbarity.
A: You are importing your experience of that one into things. I know you. And your constant sneering is why you are unloved.
S: Love at the cost of conscience is not love.
A: Have you not heard that all is fair in love and war?
S: Stoop to their degraded level for love? Impossible for The Tiger. That is the cant of their culture, their celebration of injustice. Love is justice or it is nothing. And justice itself is love. That is why I stand apart from them. That is why there is one Tiger. And a world of sheep.
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.
Today, Alfonso had been worried about me. I had ended up in the Accident and Emergency department in the hospital again. I clung to danger. Danger clung to me. Of course, it was the leg. The leg again and again. The scars of love will ache and hurt never goes away. The world did not want me to stand upon my feet. But I stood upon my feet. And I swaggered when I walked. I was Punjabi. I was The Tiger.
It had been touching to see him so worried, with that diamond veneer that he had which was so hard and polished. At times, he could be cruel and dismissive. He had a pretence of insensitivity. But he was like me, sensitive and, ultimately, loyal.
Because it was unclear what the risks were, I had had to cancel my evening plans for working before I had found out. It had turned out to be alright and I had got the all clear. So I had a whole evening free. I had watched the Hindi remake of ‘Groundhog Day’ which was one of my favourite films. Alfonso had asked me to tell him about the film. Who knew India better than me? I was her most loved son. The one that had married her, Mother India. Her son and her most devoted lover.
I wrote:
A common story in India for all, the film is about unemployment. And not only unemployment, but also the unfair demands that the families of women have. Which is that, as a man, you not only have to be working, but that you have to have a top government job to have their daughter. Indirectly, the film is a criticism of the slaves to the state and their corruption, their slavish mentality, their sickening and conformist, selfish and materialistic grasping of the resources of the oppressive, exploitative state and the inhumane bastards that sustain it, those who do not care about preserving life in a world of corruption.
It is not enough that the state steals, pillages, rapes. Worse than that, you have to dedicate your life to its atrocities.
The film explores the nature of altruism, goodness and the preservation of the life force through the lens of the Bhagavad-Gita. The motto that you should do good actions and then not worry about the results or the rewards that you get or the cost that it will take. This is the philosophy of the warrior from thousands of years ago. The philosophy of war. Because Krishna who I am named after persuaded Arjuna to go to war for justice against everyone he knew and loved when he was going to withdraw from the battlefield. And I have been raised on that philosophy and the Mahabharata where those scenes come from. I have been raised in that warrior culture. The film is about us, the warriors.
As I watched the film, I thought about my own youth. I did not want to work in a job where I was making the rich richer. That was not my destiny. I wanted to work in a job where I did service for society. For justice. And so, I could not get married. Because I did not have a high status, high paid job. The unfair demands of other people could not be met.
In the film, the hero is stuck on the day before his wedding. He is stagnating in a life without marriage and love. After all, that is my life. That is the life of the man that does not want to be a slave to the state in a world of slaves to the state, to the rich and the powerful. Instead, this man wishes to be good. To do good things. He wants to be a hero and not a slave.
The woman that he loved, Titli (Butterfly), she spent all of her time arguing with the hero. Her voice was magical. A memory came back to me. But what was she? The one that seduced the man into the evil and oppression of the state. She was a siren.
The story is a comedy. There has to be a happy ending. Yet in real life, if you are not a slave to the state, then you cannot catch the butterfly in your hand. You watch it dancing away in the air, like her, the angel.
However much the warrior craves the sweetness of the siren, however sweet it is to die in beauty, he has to resist. Odysseus was tempted by the siren. He had to impose deafness and silence on his men and get them to tighten his own bonds so that he did not fall into the death in the mouths of the siren. But Odysseus is not Indian. He failed to stop his own ears and accept deafness and silence himself. He is the pawn of the state. When he feigned madness, he was still trapped by the state. He is a slave. Odysseus listens to the song of the siren. He is enamoured by the trap of the state, the trap of the siren. The trap of slavery.
The warrior has to forsake love if love is from the slaves to the state. The warrior has to forsake status if that status comes from the state. In a world of false wars and corruption, the warrior only has one duty. To not only forsake the state, but to destroy the state. Because to do good work, that is the only way. The way of the warrior. When Krishna taught Arjuna in the Gita, it was to go to war against the state, the evil usurpers and oppressors. Arjuna was the son of a god, he was divine. God cannot serve the state, he must be against it. It is our duty to take the power away from the state and to become truly noble, to serve the people and justice. This is warrior culture.
I can live a life in sickness and without love knowing that I am not a slave to the state and knowing that I have not killed my humanity. After all, it is better than the alternative.
In this film, there is the spirit of The Tiger. Of Krishna, the liberator and the revolutionary. I am not alone. India courses through us. I am India. Six thousand years of knowledge and war are in us. We are the Revolution and the days of the state are numbered. The state is a mere blip and dead end in human history.
Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab saada zindabaad! Jai Maa Kaali! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution live forever! Hail the Dark Mother!
When I did my PhD and then got my doctorate published as a monograph, I showed that, just after the invention of photography, Victorian authors associated photography with women and a challenge to the patriarchy and its law. Because of this, throughout the novels of Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Henry James and Wilkie Collins, photography was belittled and there was an attempt to exorcise it from the text. They associated photography with a woman’s supposedly superficial and legally ignorant gaze in The Moonstone (alongside the Indian gaze of the Idolater). The reason was because photography was used to photograph the body and women were seen as bodies rather than minds. Therefore, the denigration of photography was the denigration of the body in Judaeo Christian culture and the repressed times of the Victorians. The most obvious equation of photography with women and their bodies is in She, where Ayesha, the epitome of feminine beauty and physical attractiveness is able to make telepathic mental photographs of the male heroes through her surveillance in her feminine empire and as an expression of her womanly power.
It was the feminine body of photography that was thought of as such a challenge to the male body of the law in these novels that I studied. A usurper to the throne. The medium of revolution.
Almost two hundred years after that equation of the photographic with women, I walked into a feminist protest through the means of photography at the South London Gallery. It was an exhibition space where women were fighting against injustice, state regimes and the law, like the laws controlling abortion. These women were trying to extend the meaning of protest photography. It was a fight of the truth of women against the ideology of the patriarchal state.
The exhibition label calls this ‘the fourth wave’ of feminist protest which is about the empowerment of women, uses internet tools and includes factors such as intersectionality, where there are overlapping oppressions such as misogyny, race and class (Wikipedia). The exhibition is organised in four different sections:
– Body as Battleground
– Institutional Failure
– Revising Histories
– Feminist Futures
Here, in this review, I am going to consider the photography that I had a particular interest in.
Sofia Karim, Ihtijaj (Resistance) (Delhi, 2019)
This photograph is part of a series against anti-Muslim citizenship laws in India which have gone against the ideals of cosmopolitanism and acceptance that Indian descent people like me have grown up on. The title of the series is Turbine Bagh, which is a woman’s resistance movement intended to go against the oppressive laws. The image is printed on a samosa packet made out of newspaper – Sofia was served a samosa packet with court hearings on it once. The image is something that is being fed to the recipient of the law, of news. It is food, nourishment. For the women’s resistance movement.
What strikes me in this black and white photograph is the relationship between the active body of the woman holding her hand above her head to make a gesture and the seemingly passive bodies of the other seated women around her. This is what is apparent at first sight: the movement towards resistance, the action. The active woman’s mouth is forming words. She is communicating, acting. She is energy in the face of passivity. And you look closely to the woman in the right that creates a relationship to this action – her hands are clasped in seeming prayer. The resistance is the prayer of the people, of women. The active woman is the heroine that they are praying for to overturn the injustice of the modern day state. And then, the passivity of the other seated women becomes something else. It is the gesture of waiting. Patient waiting. For the revolution. For the fire that burns and sears the world.
The humble samosa packet which contains the greatness of the revolution.
Hoda Afshar, In Turn (2023)
Tehran’s ‘morality police’ killed twenty-two year old Mahsa Amini for not wearing the hijab under government standards. These photographs are one with the protest against that legally sanctioned murder of a woman’s freedom and choice over her body.
The photographs are staged images that utilise the imagery of the doves, birds that are released at the funerals of those that have lost their lives in the protest. The birds stand for martyrdom and peace.
The women in the photographs are largely anonymous because anonymity protects the protesters on social media. These protest photographs show women plaiting each other’s hair and discarding their veils. The hair is plaited as respect is given to women freedom fighters fighting in Kurdistan against the Islamic state. They plait their hair before battle.
These monumental photographs are impressive and powerful. They give a body to the protesters and, with it, humanity. A community is formed around hair and the freedom to show it. The large format itself is a celebration of women and female bodily display, the ‘exposure’ that photography gives. Because, despite the fact that most of the models are anonymous, in the final images as we walk through the space, as you journey through the images and the story they are telling, you see the full frontal body of the woman with doves and her face is completely visible. And on the reverse, you can see the profile of a woman that braids the hair.
The plaited black hair of warfare and the white doves of peace tell a story. To have peace, you have to have the war first. Peace is the aim that can only be achieved through fighting for the rights to have choice and freedom. In the final photograph, a pair of hands braids the hair Another pair of hands superimposed on the back of the woman whose hair is being plaited holds the dove of peace and martyrdom. A reminder that freedom costs something. The fight.
These photographs are an inspiring celebration of heroism.
Sheida Soleimani, ‘Tulip Poster’ from the Series To Oblivion (2016)
This poster is a tribute to the Iranian women unjustly imprisoned and killed by the state. The tulips reference an Iranian revolutionary song that sees the flower as revolutionary hope – because although it is fragile, it is resilient and it regrows every spring. The numbers on the back of the poster show current published data of those arrested and killed by the Iranian state.
The redness of the flowers. Blood. Against the mountain in the background. With their stalks, the tulips are the ladders up to the peak. They are the scaffolding that can even go above the peak. To ascend the ladders, you have to have the revolutionary hope. Which no sword can cut down. Which no gun can diminish. The tulips are the beauty of hope. The beauty of the revolution. They transcend death with their growth. They have the beauty of growth, nature, resilience. To ascend the ladder of hope is the ascent into heaven. In the religious context of the photographer’s background, this is the image of faith in the revolution and eternal justice. Like Antigone, the photographer promotes the eternal laws of justice rather than the man-made laws of the earth.
Wendy Red Star, Amni (Echo) (2021)
This is a tribute to the matrilineal clan membership of the Appsalooke Nation which was erased by colonialism and its patriarchal laws. The artwork gives power back to the women in her family (the photographer who is Wendy Red Star, her daughter and her great-great-grandmother). And the power back to the names of the women of the Nation.
This was one of the most moving of the artworks in the exhibition for me. They called them Indians when they are Native Americans. They took their land and tried to destroy their culture and their people. They are us. We also have clan membership through our mother – Mother India is our mother and the religion of my mother is the Mother Goddess. It is this which the patriarchal, colonising state wishes to destroy and, with it, difference.
The names of power call out in the background, behind the photographic sculptures. And the photographs themselves build power. Out of the small photograph at the base, a greater entity is formed through the use of overlapping photographs. If you look carefully, you see that the aura is extended into the names of power behind, with the use of negative white space.
One of the ideas around photography when it first came into widespread use was that it could take away the soul of the sitter. Here, that idea is reversed through resistance against the patriarchy.
Because the photograph of the great-great-grandmother is there and the different generations, the photograph scultptures build up the matrilineal history which the law and the colonising state wanted to end. In the face of erasure, we have the form that has come back to us, become literalised in word and image. The phoenix has emerged from the flame.
…
The exhibition included many other pieces worth a careful examination and study. My overall impression of this exhibition is that I learnt a lot from it and I was inspired by it. We, our community, we also fight the wars against the patriarchal state and its patriarchal laws. For our way of life. For our culture. The patriarchal law wishes to kill what we are. We, the ethnic minorities, even if we are the men, we are also the women.
And the photographs showed the resistance can take many different forms. There are many dances to learn. Many songs to sing.
Time and time again, the photographs exposed what the patriarchal law of the state is. And why it has to be fought against. Not just in ‘other countries’. In Western type countries like Australia and Poland.
Sometimes, I was disappointed. One video installation said to become a ‘peaceful warrior’ and not ‘an angry warrior’. I don’t believe we should spit out our anger. But the philosophy of India is that everyone has their own path. Who are we to judge? As long as the warrior remains the warrior. That is the point.
The union of women with photography suggested calamity to the male Victorian authors that I studied. It suggested the revolution. The exhibit of feminist protest photography is the natural outcome of the resistance. As a form of truth which exposures the corrupt heart of power, photography has few rivals. These images demand more attention and more thought. Within them, they contain the resistance to the state structure and the patriarchal law. And, within them, they contain the conception of justice that the patriarchal law does not have, with its false claims to universality, timelessness and ‘truth’. By making photography concrete, by giving it the female body, these photographers have fought against the male body of the law with its male subject. They have created women’s – and photography’s – jurisprudence in the present moment.
In the end, the warrior loves the warrior. The exhibition is warrior culture.
What’s on the Turner Prize shortlist this year in terms of ‘Punjabi’ art? Covered with a giant white doily, a red Ford Escort vehicle is presented to us. The ‘art’ is in front of a photograph of a family with the car.
Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.
Obviously the artist shortlisted in this country – when they are Indian – would necessarily be female. This is what ‘diversity’ means to white people when it comes to the Subcontinent – the women. Their books, their art, their cinema. It is all celebrated. Because they are heroic ‘victims’ of Indian culture to the West. Us men are to be ignored and marginalised. Because we are the ‘oppressors’ of women in this culture.
And what about this piece which white taste has valued? The big white doily is the key. It covers over the car. The migrant desire – according to the rules of white society – is to be covered over in whiteness. The white doily – the whiteness – is self-consciously patterned and artistic – it is the touch of art in the piece. Otherwise, there would just be a car and a family snapshot. The white doily – the whiteness – is what creates this exhibition as a piece of art work. It is what demonstrates ‘taste’, ‘selection’, artistic ‘discrimination’ (the pun is intended).
And what about this ‘migrant desire’ which – despite the capture of the car in the whiteness that is like a constraining net – blasts songs of freedom and liberation (laughable)? It is ideology at work. The veil of ideology covering over the vision of the car, the white veil over things for the migrant experience. Blinding the eyes and vision. Interfering. Coming between self and object, mind and reality. Art is the white veil itself. What else is? They sing of freedom. When they are the exploited. They sing of liberty. When they are constrained and bound by the white net.
The car. The phallic symbol. Red to signify status and dominance. Gross materialism. Migrant desire is couched as greed. Desire for masculinity in this patriarchal white supremacist society. Desire for control – one drives a car.
Desire for freedom – the car represents freedom. A cliched symbol of freedom the car. But this one is caught up in the net. Even the music – they blast snippets of songs about freedom. Even musically, the freedom is partial, disrupted, interrupted, punctured by purposely oppressive silence.
Do you know what the net signifies in India? The net of maya – illusion. Gross materialism. Trickery. What comes between us and the understanding of reality. The doily is perhaps maya. This white culture and its control, its limitation of freedom for the migrant. The doily becomes kitcsch art – described by several art historians as the artwork of a capitalistic, unthinking and unfeeling, philistine and totalitarian society.
Yet, there is a paradox. If I remember correctly from the Metro newspaper article that I read today about the art piece, the doily also represents the Sikh and Indian workers that worked in textiles factories in huge numbers when they first migrated here to the United Kingdom (Metro 24.04.2024). So this net of whiteness is being created by the migrants themselves. Their deference. Their blind adulation. Their willingness to be exploited. Their inability to revolt against the systems of power.
So what are the migrant desires of the Father in this image? As seen through the eyes of a Punjabi woman? Desire to criticise the wants of the Father? Or an attempt to be sympathetic to his wants?
The artist writes:
‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’
But is this a re-imagination? Look at the piece again. It tries to base itself against reality as ideology – against the photograph, the representation of reality. The photograph has the Indian family in it. The base unit of Punjabi and Indian culture. The finished art exhibit has no family in it. It has a relationship merely to the Father in a patriarchal system of culture. A Father that wants to be covered in whiteness. Is this what is valued in this culture? Probably. The probability is on the side that adulates whiteness and patriarchy. The family is forgotten in favour of the Master. In favour of isolation and individualism. In favour of the desire for mastery and control and power.
All views in this article represent my personal views as a private and political individual and do not represent the views of any of the organisations I work at. My expertise? My PhD involved the early history and reception of photography in its political and legal contexts.
‘Don’t survive it. Live it.’ These were the words that someone said to me recently. Survival is the most important thing for us as a species. In the field of psychology, they tell us that the human mind is geared towards survival. That’s where we get our intelligence from: evolutionary adaptations for surviving. But with survival, you have to live it too. You have to experience the fight.
The new photographic display ‘Echoes of the Blitz’ shows how we have to live through our survival. The exhibition ‘explores how Underground stations and metro systems provide shelter to citizens during periods of war – now and in the past’ [1]. How, when you are confronted with death and mortality, when you look death in the eyes, you fight for breath, sense and security. How you find shelter in unexpected places in extreme circumstances and still make a life for yourself. How throughout history and its rivers of blood, throughout the modern period and the supposedly ‘civilised’ Western world, people have hidden in fear to preserve their life, children, culture and heritage.
In total, the photography gallery displays:
‘70 striking images, including historical images from the Museum collection alongside 38 contemporary photographs by six renowned, mainly Ukrainian, documentary photographers.’ [2]
Some of the most recognisable images of the war have been of people sheltering in the London Underground shelters and these icons of memory are given an update and a new relevance through a juxtaposition of the scenes in the Underground shelters in Ukraine.
According to the London Transport Museum, what we are seeing is:
recent photography of ordinary Ukrainian citizens in extraordinary circumstances. They are shown sleeping, waiting, cooking, washing clothes, caring for their pets and creating temporary make-shift homes in Metro stations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and its second largest city Kharkiv. These scenes are ‘echoed’ in the black and white archive images of Londoners taking refuge in Tube stations during the Second World War. [3]
The aim of the exhibition is to:
present strong parallels of human experience across different locations and conflicts. This exhibition documents the resilience of people in Ukraine and London during times of war and the reality of having to escape from aerial bombardment. [4]
Other comments have been made about the aims of the exhibition. Matt Brosnan, Head Curator, London Transport Museum, said that the photographs ‘show the resilience and tragic reality of war’ [5]. Stefan Günther, Project Manager, Photo, n-ost, said that the exhibition is ‘an opportunity to perceive the current war in Ukraine on a very personal level, away from the wider political and media glare’. [6]
I think that the exhibit makes concrete the idea of Ukrainians rather than Ukraine. All nations are fictions. It is the people there that are real. And in these photographs, we see the people directly and how they are having to live. And it is photography and its truth that allows us to see the reality behind the abstractions of the newspapers. It is photography that allows us to see them face to face and come directly into their lives. As a matter of fact, the frames of the exhibition invite us to do this. The black and white World War photographs have black frames. These photographs are framed and closed off to us – because as we know, the past is a foreign country. However, the photographs of the Ukrainians are not framed. We are in direct contact with them through our eyes and our perspectives. We are immersed into their world. There is no separation from us through the device of the frame. What is happening there is spilling out into our world, including us. Asking us to contemplate, sympathise.
Some historical details taken from the London Transport Museum website allow us to see the facts behind what is being portrayed:
London’s air raid sirens sounded almost every day for eight months from September 1940 to May 1941 and again between June 1944 and March 1945. Sheltering in Tube stations overnight became a routine. There were special admission tickets, bunk beds on the platforms, refreshments and, at some stations, libraries, music and live entertainment.
In Kyiv, sheltering in the Metro peaked at around 40,000 people at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Some stayed overnight, others for days or weeks, returning to the surface only for groceries or to wash. Those who lost their homes lived underground for months.
Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia, experiences more frequent shelling. People spent more time in the Metro there, creating comfortable homely spaces with bedding, tents, carpets, decorations and toys. [7]
After you have read the blurb of the exhibition, the first photograph that dominates is ‘Woman in tent at Dorohozhychi station’ by Maxim Dondyuk, 2 March 2022. The woman defensively has her hand held to her shoulder, covering her chest: a striking image of someone in need of protection, someone that has to defend themselves from an unjust attack. She has to comfort herself with that hand on her shoulder. The woman stands out isolated from the crowd behind her that is not visible, vulnerable and isolated, perhaps like the situation of Ukraine itself – a country that has been left to fend for itself by the ‘civilised’ world of modernity which has disappeared when it is needed. She looks directly at the camera: she implores us to look upon her as the fate of her people, the innocent civilians subjected to the imperialism of the modern day state and its brutality, to their unjust greed and their uncontrolled and obscene desire for control, domination, land and resources. She asks us to acknowledge our role, the roles of our countries that have left her in this position. Does she ask us why? Her face is touched with sadness and suffering. She is in – through the connotations of the opening of the tent – in the dark den of despair, half-eaten by the hole, the absence.
In terms of its historical importance, the exhibition features one of the first ever photographs that were taken when the war broke out and the Ukranians sheltered in the underground stations. Viacheslav Ratynkyi, that on the very first day of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 he went down into the Metro and brought a camera so that he could document the situation. [8] The people have used the edges of the stairs along the walls as seats to create a clearing in the middle so that others can move up and down. They have been resourceful to give themselves make-shift seats that would be extremely uncomfortable to sit upon for long periods of time. They have had to adapt for survival and protection as a group, a group and species bound together by necessity and the cruel games of the politicians and the modern day states that are supposed to serve and protect them, the states that are supposed to be bound by the laws and justice. In response to the unjust throne of the state and its modern day king, who cannot sit as he should, the people sit heroically and patiently, in solidarity and suffering. They begin the long wait for peace, the desire of every thinking and feeling human being. These people are the human contrast to the inhuman face of power and brutality, the fascism of the modern-day state.
When I say I am Indian and come from India, it is the India of the people, not the India of the politicians or the intolerant and oppressive citizenship that they want to create. The state that they create is not India. What they create is corruption. We, we the people, we are India. And here, in this photography exhibit, we have the Ukrainians and Ukraine. These people are not defined by the war. In this exhibit, we see them doing the things that we all do every day: listening to music, learning, reading, dying their hair. Holding each other for comfort. They are victims of the state and the politicians. But they have organised themselves. They have created a space away from the brutal games of the state and its quest for total domination. Across world history, across the suffering that man has created, we look at the victims of the politicians and how they have tried to carve out another space and another reality beyond what the unimaginative and corrupt state has imagined. People who live through their struggle for survival. With resilience. As I look at these photographs, I know that one day, the modern-day state with its evils will fall. It has to. Because the spirit of the people will one day overcome the absurd egotistical limitations of geographical and racial boundaries. You can see this in the people and the photographs. You can feel the power of pure being. The desire to move out of the control of others. The spirit of resistance. The spirit of overcoming. Because these people are not trying to create a nation state down there in the underground shelters. They are trying to create a human community: a sphere of protection and life. It is a world meant to foster life – the world that we are trying to create by countering domination with the philosophy of live and let live, by countering selfishness with the desire for preservation, by countering the desire for destruction and death with the desire for life and the future.
If you want to see what a real hero looks like, don’t look at the soldier with blood on his hands, the killer for the state. Look at the everyday hero that fights for survival in an oppressive world and the games of control around them by trying to create another reality – the reality of peace and life. Freedom from death, envy, killing, exploitation. Freedom from the state and its obscenity and blood lust. The people that have created history, tradition and culture by surviving – by fighting to survive and live through that survival – and not by dying and killing in war.
Dr. Suneel Mehmi – LLB Honours in Laws, LLM in Law and Society, PhD in the Law and English Literature
JAI MAA KAALI!
13.01.2023
The Legal Change (FACTS)
From April 2024, the minimum salary requirement for people who want to bring a foreign family member or partner to the UK will rise to £38,700. This is a jump from the current threshold of £18,600.
Comparative Law (FACTS)
Where countries do express the requirement as a minimum income, such as in Belgium or Norway, Library research has so far not found any examples of the threshold being set above or close to £38,700 (the level the UK Government ultimately intends to reach).
SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS: Comparative law shows that this government has to be seen as extorting a price on love compared to every other supposedly civilised Western country in the world. They have deliberately set an unrealistic threshold to counter what they see as the threat of immigration. So, the UK is a pioneer in racism and paranoia over immigration compared to every other country.
The Rationale (SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS)
Obviously, the aim is to cut immigration. However, the unspoken secondary rationale is to construct immigrants as ‘burdens’ on the system who might claim benefits from British people by emphasising that families have to support themselves without any help from the government:
The ministers are constructing immigration as illegal, attaching the label of illegal to the immigrants that have come into the country, as though this is a violation of fairness, ‘the rules’, the law and order. Again, there is the perception that the immigrants are taking over the country, that their entry is ‘unsustainable’, as though this country with all its wealth and resources couldn’t accommodate them:
In a statement to MPs, the home secretary said migration to the UK “needs to come down” and there had been “abuse” of health and care visas for years.
“Enough is enough,” Mr Cleverly said. “Immigration policy must be fair, legal, and sustainable.”
The government is using its own failure in providing infrastructure and services to the communities to justify the action it is taking, pitting us against them to cover up its own failure of duty:
‘People are understandably worried about housing, GP appointments, school places and access to other public services when they can see their communities growing quickly in numbers.’
While seeming to apply to everyone in a false pretension of ‘universality’, the policy is deliberately targeted at ethnic minority men who are the most likely to marry abroad and to bring a partner from abroad. As such, this legislation has to be seen as an attack on the ethnic minority men and their ability to marry and to reproduce in this country. This is a deliberately racist and sexist policy.
Yes, white British men and white British women can meet people from abroad or that are not UK citizens and marry them. No one is saying that is not the case. However, what is the bigger likelihood about who this will happen to – someone who has deep connections with the people of another country, or people that most likely don’t?
The policy asks the ethnic minority man to become wealthier than the average worker. What is the average wage in this country? The threshold is above it –
According to the ONS, the average salary in the UK in 2023 for all employees was £29,669, a 6.8% increase from 2022. For full-time workers, the average UK salary in 2023 was £34,963, a 5.8% increase YoY.https://standout-cv.com/pages/average-uk-salary
Why should ethnic minority men (or men that want to marry someone from abroad) have to be wealthier than all of the other men in this country to bring someone over? Why do they have to work harder than everyone else? There is no reason for it, except to discourage people from marrying someone from abroad. And to make anyone that can’t earn enough feel like a man that cannot even provide for his family and afford to love someone from a community in a different country, to render them financially powerless and devalue them and their ties and roots.
The ethics of the legislation are horrible. How disgusting is it to put a price on love? How disgusting is it to put up walls around love so that people cannot move within the channels of love? Are other people from other countries – who haven’t been brought up in the privilege and wealth that we have – whose financial problems have probably been caused by us in this country and the Western world – aren’t they loveable? Can they not be the wives and mothers, or husbands and fathers in this country?
The government’s financial control of the family unit – the original economy – is unethical, unfair, unjust and, I would argue, illegal. They are acting ultra vires – everyone has the right to a family irrespective of money. Someone here can marry someone and then claim benefits because they have married a UK citizen. Someone from here can have kids if they can’t afford them and then rely on the government for help. And they do. This ‘problem’ that legislates love is a false problem because the government only sees immigrants as a burden on the system out of racism.
Can I ask you, do you have to buy the right to be a citizen in a country, or to become a wife, husband, father or mother? Do you have to buy these things? Since when? Why do you have to be a wallet to love someone? Is money everything in this world, the only condition for love and the family? How disgusting do you have to be to think this? Isn’t the government supposed to support love and the family? Why is nobody challenging these laws? This law is the mark of a government that only cares about money and keeping its money to itself, that literally sees citizenship and love as expenditure that is not worth having – unless you keep to your own in this country. Endogamy is the practice of only marrying within your own community, clan or tribe. This is the legislation of endogamy which bears striking similarity to those people that make their children marry their cousins so that they can keep the money in the family – a practice only concerned with resources, ownership and a financial distrust of any outsider who will come in and take a portion of the share for themselves.
diary of a lone man 