Polis Project Conversation Series

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan is in conversation with Dr. Deana Heath about her book Colonial Terror. Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of...

This is the final conversation of this four-part series. Photographer and educator Rishi Singhal reflects on teaching photography and visual practice to a new generation of artists and practitioners who are committed to producing and creating socially relevant bodies of work. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative Commons License)

This is the third conversation of a four part series. Photographer and filmmaker Laura Saunders discusses her work on the US / Mexico Borderlands, by interrogating the multifaceted histories of migration; and the colonial violence of the border as a site that produces narratives of criminality. Laura is documenting the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, an expansive fracking project tha...

This is the second conversation of a four-part series. Sinthujan Varatharajah is a political geographer, essayist, and researcher based in Berlin. Their work focuses on geographies of displacement and statelessness. In this conversation, they discuss the relationship between spatial politics, geographies of power, and statelessness. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative commons license)

This is the first conversation of a four part series. Bombay-based photographer and author of The Red Cat and Other Stories Ritesh Uttamchandani and Suchitra Vijayan discuss her book Midnight’s Borders, as a continuation of their decade-long conversation about history, memory, and photography. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative Commons License)

Last year, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing had filed a lawsuit against Cisco on the grounds that a Dalit employee had been severely discriminated against by his ‘upper’ caste supervisors. While the US does not specifically have laws against caste discrimination, the California government used sections of the historic Civil Rights Act, which emerged out of the African Ameri...

In this conversation, The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan discusses Prof. Craig Jones's recent book The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare. Over the last 20 years, the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations and spaces that generals and commanders had exclusively inhabited....

In 1964, Malcolm X wrote, “There is no system more corrupt than a system that represents itself as the example of freedom, the example of democracy, and can go all over this earth telling other people how to straighten out their house when you have citizens of this country who have to use bullets if they want to cast ballots.” Fifty-seven years later, these words remain true. - Guantanamo is still...

Since September, thousands of farmers have been protesting the new laws that aim to deregulate Indian agriculture. They have clearly stated that these neo-liberal laws will dismantle safeguards, create greater instability, severely affect their livelihoods, and put the country's food security at risk. While simultaneously creating an opportunity for large private corporations to enter and exploit...

Madhuri Sastry, freelance writer and the Marketing Director at Guernica magazine, hosts The Polis Project’s roundtable discussion “Leaders they want; leaders of nobody". Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is the first Black woman, and the first person of Indian descent to occupy this lofty position. While it is a moment of pride for Black and Brown communities, in this roundtable we will reflect o...

For each episode of 5 Objects, we ask a guest to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performance, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices of objects have ranged from books by Edward Said, Steve Biko, and Assata Shakur, music from Notorious BIG, art by Ermias Ekube, the radio, and becoming...

In 2015 columnist Katie Hopkins published a piece in the British tabloid sun calling African migrants “cockroaches.” Ms. Hopkins is not alone. Speaking at election rallies in 2018, Amit Shah, India's Minister of Home Affairs, called Bangladeshi migrants “termites.” Shah’s spiteful rhetoric echoes authoritarian leaders, genocidaires, and war criminals who not only orchestrated mass violence but des...

In this podcast, Francesca Rechhia talks to Prof. Nosheen Ali, a Pakistani sociologist, author, and activist about the state of education in Gilgit-Baltistan, the threats to activism, and the influence of the military. Ali is a part of the Global Faculty in Residence at New York University's Gallatin School of Indivualized Studies. She works and writes across a wide range of themes, including femi...

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. This week, we speak to Nidhi Prakash, a reporter f...

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. This week we speak to Samia Assed, an activist fro...

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. The podcast is available in video and audio format...

Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Prof. Romila Thapar about her new book "Voices of Dissent" and the history of dissent in India.

Every Wednesday, leading up to the American Presidential elections, The Polis Project will host activists, organizers, writers, reporters, and progressive voices as a part of our Politics Podcast. They don’t just tell you what happened. They inform you of the issues, policies, and legislation that matter to their communities, beyond the headlines. The podcast is available in video and audio format...

In this conversation, The Polis Project's Suchitra Vijayan and Vasundhara Sirnate, discuss Prof. Ravinder Kaur's new book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India.  Prof Kaur walks us through the transformation of the Indian nation-state into a neoliberal business enterprise and theorizes the process of branding the nation-state through a rich visua...

Earlier this year, Citizens Against Hate (CAH), a Delhi based collective, published “Everyone has been Silenced”: a comprehensive report on UP violence and its aftermath. In this episode of The Polis Project Conversation Series, Suchitra Vijayan discusses the report and places the violence in the context of institutional bias against the Muslim community with Dr. Sajjad Hassan, who leads the Citiz...

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He completed his Ph. D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before that, he completed BAs in Philosophy and Political Science at Indiana University. His theoretical work draws liberally from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemp...

“Consistent resistance” and the peaceful struggle for equality of the Pashtun Tahafuz-Movement by The Polis Project

On dissent, building transversal solidarity and nurturing the will of the people: A conversation with Ammar Ali Jan

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the "The Emergency" on 25 June 1975. It lasted for 21 month period from 1975 to 1977. This period is often referred to as the dark period and an aberration in India’s recent history. What if the emergency was not an aberration, instead it was an event that grew out of existing political traditions, historical legacies that can still be felt in the prese...

A nation needs its anthems, flags, soldiers, and statues. But, the function of the writer is something else. Writers are the ones who capture the conflict, the dissonance, and often the lies we are constantly told over and over again. We’re all living through a remarkable moment, especially for many of us in South Asia, particularly in India. As we at The Polis Project try to make sense of what is...