Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee organises press conference and release of Kabir Kala Manch's music CD by writer-director-actor Girish Karnad...
September 25, 2012 12:00:00 AM IST MTG editorial
Kabir Kala Manch is a group of students and professionals. It has been creating awareness about social issues through their Shahiri, protest songs and street plays in Pune. For Kabir Kala Manch, art is much more than entertainment. It's an anthem to denounce injustice, mobilise the oppressed, prepare them for struggle, create consciousness and ensure change.
It is for this crime that the State has declared them Naxalites since 2011. Today while Deepak Dengle and Siddharth Bhonsle are in prison, many other members including singer-poets Sheetal Sathe, Sagar Gorkhe and Sachin Mali have gone underground after threats from the police.
The CD album titled "Hi Amchi Gani - Amcha Gunha Kay?" of spirited music, decked in folk-form is a compilation of 11 songs from their earlier two albums.
The idea behind this initiative is three-fold:
- Make the Kabir Kala Manch songs available to the people. - Bring to light the cases against two members Deepak Dengle and Siddharth Bhonsle who were arrested on 12 May 2011 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). - Provide legal counsel and support to the members of Kabir Kala Manch.
Girish Karnad will release the CD of the songs on Thursday, October 4 at 3 pm at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh. Other theatre persons and artistes will be present.
This event has been organised by the Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee.
About the The Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee:
According to official government figures, on an average, two Dalits are killed and three raped every day across India. All the more shocking is the fact that even in Maharashtra which gave birth to major social reformists and progressive thinkers like Jyotiba Phule and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the incidence of atrocities remains unacceptably high.
In this landscape it cannot be surprising that Dalit and Adivasi youth have begun to voice their protest more openly than before. After the police killings at Ramabai colony and later, the Khairlanji massacre many protests took place. Instead of bringing the guilty to book the State responded by branding the protesters as Naxalites. Later Dalit cultural activists like Sudhir Dhawle were jailed for "sedition".
It is in this context that the story of Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) must be understood.
Kabir Kala Manch is a Pune based cultural troupe mainly consisting of Dalit youth from the region. First coming together against the communal carnage in Gujarat, they have taken part in innumerable public interest causes like slum-dwellers rights, workers rights and sustainable development, but their special affinity has been fighting for the annihilation of caste to which end they led from the front by promoting and publicising inter-caste marriages within the group. As a cultural troupe and as songwriters they performed for and with movements led by Medha Patkar, Bhai Vaidya, as well as with groups from the working class movement.
In 2011, the state began to brand them as Naxalites. Today while Deepak Dengle and Siddharth Bhonsle are in prison, many other members including singer-poets Sheetal Sathe, Sagar Gorkhe and Sachin Mali have gone underground after threats from the police. All are charged with being Naxalites and the ATS is using an uncritical media to plant regular allegations against the KKM. Even these allegations do not accuse the KKM of any violence, but are dependent mainly on guilt by association.
It is not so long ago that Dr Binayak Sen was similarly charged and jailed for close to three years before the Supreme Court intervened to grant him bail. Binayak Sen had by then become an international cause celebre. It was hoped that his release on bail would put a brake on the targeting of innocent civilians for the mere "crime" of taking up the cause of the poor.
The targeting of KKM shows that this is not the case.
The Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee urges the government of Maharashtra to withdraw all false charges against members of the KABIR KALA MANCH, free cultural activists who are currently in prison and allow the KKM to perform in public again.
Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee is a group of citizens concerned with the erosion of the cultural space and the right to protest in India. It includes:
Anand Patwardhan, Bhai Vaidya, J V Pawar, Kamayani Mahabal, P A Sebastian, Prakash Reddy, Ramu Ramanathan, Ratna Pathak Shah, Sambhaji Bhagat, Simantini Dhuru, Sudhakar Suradkar, Sumedh Jadhav, Suneeta Rao, Teesta Setalvad, Vivek Sundara and many more.
