Category: 2020

Suniti Sanghavi: Nov 1 – Nov 5, 2020

Nov 1: Day 1 of my fast, day 251 of our chain.

The last few weeks have exposed how globally vulnerable we are to our own intolerance, our irrepressible desire to seek comfort in our familiar belief systems, and our general unwillingness to acknowledge that our critics speak the truth just like we do. Just like our truth is obscured to them, their truth is hidden to us under layers and layers of differences in perception. But the truth does not cease to be true just because we are blind to its different manifestations. Our critics are not our enemy. If anything, they are our windows to a broader reality, our key to discovering the truth in much deeper relief than our familiar, sheltered worlds would ever allow us to appreciate.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Nov 2: Day 2 of my fast, day 252 of our chain.

When we’re way more privileged than others, playing just for the sake of winning is cheap, immoral and meaningless. The only meaningful victory is then to help others win too. Let’s learn to share our privilege.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Nov 3: Day 3 of my fast, day 253 of our chain.

As I delve into issues of privilege, I realize how fortunate I am to occupy the middle rungs in the ladder of privilege in the world. I can say I have experienced both – superfluous privilege as well as a critical deprivation of it, by living in different parts of the world as a woman of color, as a privileged majority, as a shunned minority and much more in between.

I am thankful for each experience, because my greatest privilege is that of having had the opportunity to see the world from more perspectives than one. My personal trials are clearly not exceptional. Our world today is throbbing with questions of privilege, as different sections of the world’s population emerge from hitherto isolation and mingle with each other robustly, drawn by the promise of new opportunities, but terrified by the discordant strangeness of the unknown world.

Deprived of the comforts of familiarity, we yearn for some control over the course of our own lives, and resent others the privileges we lack. But the realization of being in a sub-optimal situation is the greatest propellant for personal growth, and the more that realization sinks in, the easier it is to shed a yearning for revenge in favor of healing. As for revenge, here’s a quote by Marcus Aurelius that really speaks to me: “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Nov 4: Day 4 of my fast, day 254 of our chain.

Election Day yesterday was draining, and very reminiscent of the Indian general elections of 2019 that saw Modi back in power for a second term. Years of monumental failures by the incumbent candidate with little else to show, and yet, there are droves of people who vote them back to power just to spite a community they have been brainwashed to hate. Thankfully, it looks like a narrow escape from four more years of Trump for the US! Not that it means any of the systemic problems the last four years exposed are going to vanish, but at least we have been spared a continued entrenchment of the Trump clan in US politics!

Foremost on my mind today: what will happen of the Republican Party after four years of allowing itself to be ideologically hollowed our and subverted by Trump? Even more pressingly, will the Democrats become such safe players now that they will be the new conservatives? Who will now be progressive enough to really push forward the systemic changes needed to get us out of the terrible quagmire we find ourselves in today? I look with hope at AOC and her squad.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Nov 5: Day 5 of my fast, day 255 of our chain.

When we are born to privilege in a highly unequal society, we automatically become party to an infrastructure of oppression. The slightest scrutiny suffices to reveal that our habits, comforts, and pastimes are built on the misery and desperation of others. We remain the unwitting gatekeepers of an unearned, hereditary privilege as long as we refuse to shun our decadence and actively embrace this reality.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed beyond a doubt who the most essential workers are – it is the humblest cleaners, farmers, and nurses we need the most, and yet we keep falling short on showing them our gratitude. In India, we even snatched the bare minimum living resources from them, forcing them, including the very young, sick and old, to walk en masse from our opulent cities hundreds of miles back to their impoverished hometowns. The lack of outrage at this from our middle class was telling. It was an open declaration that we are a society that doesn’t care.

Let us assume that the sudden onset and uncertainty surrounding the virus contributed to a general panic resulting in this lack of compassion in March. What is our excuse in November with the lockdown effectively over for months in spite of large numbers of daily positive cases? It is again the humble physical laborers who have to risk their lives and endure needless hardships to feed themselves and their families: my dear friend Ira Ghosh recently expressed her consternation at buses being allowed to transport these laborers but not trains, which are more convenient. Reports of hiked bus fares and flouted social distancing norms are also doing the rounds. Such reports are now coming in from other parts of India too, including Mumbai and Delhi.

Why do we squeeze those we need the most to their breaking point? This is not a failure of resources or infrastructure – it is the failure of our own collective will towards humanity.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Amit Dhawan: Oct 7 – Oct 11, 2020

Oct 7: Day 1 of fasting for the 4th time only on honey and water , Day 226 of the chain.

Recently the UP rape case was another example of the upper caste people bullying the lower caste and ruling the area despite all the reforms and stuff that had been introduced by the government over the years, this casteism has been growing instead of being reduced, being a good citizen we need to fight for equality of all the people and value humanity over castes

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 8: Day 2 of fasting for the 4th time ( Only on Honey & Water) day 227 of our chain.

There was a video of this old couple which was viral and Somnath Bharti was being tagged and after seeing that he immediately visited this couple…My salute to such politicians who are ready to help needy people… I wish if we chose such people who care for humanity…we need more sensitive politicians to rule our country…

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 9: Day 3 of my fast, day 228 of our chain.

I wish to see the solutions to the problems of this country… We have thousands of issues in this country but what can be the solution to those is important…. Just talking about the problems is no solution…. We need real action… My fast is dedicated to the solutions of the problems….

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 10: Day 4 of fasting for the fourth time only on honey and water, Day 229 of the chain.

I wish if there can be a criteria set for the politicians. Half of them have serious criminal records… More crimes and more are the chances of getting a ticket for fighting election…. This is not acceptable… And today my fast is a symbol of protest against criminals ruling our country….

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 11: Day 5 of fasting for the 4th time only on honey and water, Day 230 of the chain.

#isupportfarmers… Why is it so that the rate of the farmer’s crops decided by gov but when Ambani or other corporate companies sell it they put their exorbitant prices… No gov controls that 😡

My fasting today is dedicated in support of our farmers 🙏

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Suniti Sanghavi: Oct 2 – Oct 6, 2020

Oct 2: Day 1 of my fast, day 221 of our chain.

Today, I fast in solidarity with Manisha Valmiki and her family. A beautiful child of just 19 years, full of life, joy, and hope, was attacked, abused, mutilated, and then left by the wayside to perish without consequence. But there were consequences, though diluted because of our inescapable caste-calculations. Not what the upper-caste perpetrators had reckoned with. Not in the state of Uttar Pradesh. And so her recently dead body, probably still warm with life, was burned by the UP Police with all the evidence she still held alive. While her family members were locked away so that they couldn’t interfere. Turned overnight into involuntary mascots of the multi-layered chain of caste violence in 21st century India that Dalits are supposed to call life.

There has not been a word of commiseration from the generally loquacious Modi, over two weeks into this unfolding tragedy. As I was recently informed by one of his supporters, they want to destroy modern India to build a new one on the principles of Dharma and Karma, as written in the Bhagvad Gita. What Dharma? And Karma?? Do they even know what that means?!

Modi and his supporters are shallow like a fungal growth, completely lacking in roots. They have conflated the worst chapter of Hindu history, Manu and his crude, juvenile and cruel casteist philosophy, as immortalized in the Manusmriti, with the rich symbolism, metaphorical depth, and universal philosophical twists, turns and insights contained in the Bhagvad Gita. The true essence of the Bhagvad Gita would allow for limitless evolution, and not a regression to a fixed, rigid, manmade description of an ideal Hindu, mired in externalities.

Stop highjacking what is univerally true and timeless in Hindu philosophy in the name of your cheap and tacky Hindutva! Down with Manuvaad!

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 3: Day 2 of my fast, day 222 of our chain.

As a participant in the web-conference held by the Reclaiming India Coalition today, I was privileged to witness the breadth, depth and richness of Indian society that I had often dismissed as cliché in my younger years. I was so often moved to tears that I was glad I didn’t have to share my video all the time…

My head is still swirling with the profound impressions of the day, and I’m going to be busy assimilating its richness for quite some time to come. But there was one moment of dread and trepidation for me today – when I saw one of the panelists seated in front of shiny brass figurines of Ram and Sita. I have been ambivalent about God for as long as I can remember, but in recent years the sight of such figurines has only elicited an internal gag reflex in me.

Then this man, Prof. Anantanand Rambachchan, spoke. I felt the need to pinch myself, as he said: “Too many Hindus still define their identity in relation to those they can diminish”. He went on to say: “Caste is a betrayal of the Hindu religious tradition”. Is the present-day Hindu still sentient enough to heed such messages? Or have they already bargained their soul for the hype and bluster Modi offers?

The true heroes of the day for me were the Dalit activists. I cannot escape feeling that Dalit activists have a special purity and sense of purpose that the more privileged amongst us can never match – their every thought, word, and act in the service of the truth is a shining act of liberation in the face of tremendous odds. Ours, in contrast, is an easy freedom tarnished by disuse.

Prof. Roja Singh coached the audience on the permanence of the dehumanization of Dalits as a product of their demonization in scriptural and oral Hindu narratives. She exhorted us all to recognize the danger of how our religious stories have been written, and to work towards undoing their damage by changing the songs, the language, the children’s stories to reflect an equal pluralism.

Martin Macvan, a truly awe-inspiring Dalit activist working in Gujarat, mentioned 6000 castes and subcastes that dictate social interactions in India. This, he said, cannot be be dealt with by an upper caste interpretation of “dharma” but only through the legal framework of the constitution. India cannot reclaim itself unless it reclaims itself from the clutches of the caste system.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 4: Day 3 of my fast, day 223 of our chain.

Today my thoughts might best be captured by this poem (I admit it has a very strange meter) I wrote over a year ago:

As I walked down my path well-trodden,

The trees were laden with a murder of ravens;

A bunny below they prepared to strike,

Petrified in the bushes without fight or flight.

The air nearly crackled from the tension of the snare,

But I was bigger and stronger and walked on without a care.

As I kept walking down my path well-trodden,

The ravens turned into angry, armed men;

Another cowered below them as they prepared to strike,

Pleading in the bushes without fight or flight.

The men looked the same, but the hunters bore sashes,

The one who wore none bore the crack of their lashes.

The air crackled again from the tension of the snare,

But I just put on a sash and walked on without a care.

Walking on further down my path well-trodden,

The saffron-sashed men grew more and more craven,

‘Til it was me they surrounded and prepared to strike,

Trapped in their midst without fight or flight.

My sash wasn’t enough, I’d been marked for my heart,

Which still throbbed with life and did things that stood apart

From the crowd with hearts traded for cold uniform hate,

Who spoke in coded chants I was learning too late.

The air nearly crackled from the tension of the snare,

My ghost had no pesky heart, and walked on without a care.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 5: Day 4 of my fast, day 224 of our chain.

I spoke about the splendor of the Universe. You thought I was calling you insignificant.

I reveled in the beauty of Mathematics. You thought I was calling you ugly.

I marveled at the richness of Language. You thought I was saying you didn’t speak well.

I relished the magic of Music. You thought I was calling you uncultured.

I felt we could live as one with the World. You thought I was disloyal.

I apologized. I said I used the wrong words. You said my words wouldn’t change my attitude.

I changed my words, and admitted my attitude could be better. You said it didn’t matter, you only wanted revenge.

I went away. You had your freedom, unfettered influence and power.

I had gone away. You wanted glory. You wanted what you thought I had.

I was long gone. You wanted to see your name. In the Universe. In Mathematics. In Language. In Music. In the World.

I was long gone. You said I took your name away.

I was long gone. You put your name on everything you thought was mine.

But the Universe was never mine. I only borrowed its splendor by noticing it.

You work hard to own the Universe. But your eyes stay shut to its splendor.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Oct 6: Day 5 of my fast, day 225 of our chain.

So much of “my” life is spent defending what is “mine” from “you”.

So much time and energy is spent working to make sure “I” have more than “you” do.

But then I realize, “you” are mine. And “I” am yours.

We are united by love, which has always been present in abundance. Like the air we breathe. But tricked by fear, we hold our noses and fight for air.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah