On 16th November 2015, I went to take part in the protest march called by the Garo Students’ Union (GSU), Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR), CSWO along with a few other activists from Meghalaya. I went not because I was instructed to by ‘party high-command’, not because I was threatened or coerced by anyone…
RAIOT Posts
On October 25 2015, the Editors of five Nagaland-based media houses were issued a notification by a Colonel of the General Staff for Assam Rifles. Given the gravity of the matters raised in the notification we, the Editors of various English and Indigenous language newspapers of Nagaland have taken the communication as an opportunity to reflect, consult and critically examine what our role is in these circumstances.
As India celebrates the National Press Day and the very freedom of press that has liberated us, we the Journalists, Newspapers and media houses in Nagaland faces a difficult challenge of delivering transparent and free communication and expression to our own people.
Although the buzz around TED has died down but its bastard lowbrow child called TEDx stalks the provincial countries and towns like a persistent salesman.
Shillong with its vanity number plates of ‘educational capital’, ‘rock capital’, ‘cliche capital’ has had many of these TEDx full of 18minutes of wannabe celebrities, failed politicians, music evangelists, development messiah, crumbling royalty with useless insights and bad powerpoint slides. It is high time to cap this crap.
We need a hundred Lalus. Without the willingness of leaders to change the structure of society, forcibly if necessary, there can be no development. Without Laloo, there would be no Nitish either.
“Where is all that foreign food?” asked the middle aged gentleman. “Wasn’t there supposed to besome cuisines from across the world? I had Thai food when I visited my son in Bangalore and that Austrian stall has run out of sausages. I guess I will go make a run for the Bhoi stall.”
Brutal attack by Meghalaya Police on the students of Kiang Nangbah College, Jowai, a government college, for demanding better educational facilities. Video via Wyrta and a statement by TUR
For the urban middle-class of Shillong, Indigenous Terre Madre (ITM) was a chance to enjoy themselves, flirt with foreigners, a day to relax and unwind, all-in-all an event to savour (literally). For the rural poor, it meant some money coming their way, some photos taken of them and for the rural elites it meant that they could show up their ”traditional” knowledge and open up ‘their’ villages to outsiders.
Raiot is excited at publishing first of the extracts from Eat Dust : Mining and Greed in Goa by Hartman de Souza. For a zine published from Meghalaya, the other frontier of Mining in India, it is fitting that we learn from Goa – that raving beach infested greed fest.
“Our land has a history of being ruled by tyrants and hypocritical regimes, but we Kashmiris have always voiced our opinion against that. I couldn’t stay silent on this issue. This is a protest song against a political gimmick set to undermine the kashmir issue and to influence our Kashmiri sensibilities through pseudo monetary packages. A shame full event done in the name of democracy.”
Ali Saffudin
It is fair to say that in any writing of the history of western music in India, Shillong would deserve a chapter. It is just that the writing of this chapter has become way too problematic – too many loose ends, too many grand unifying theories. The culture of western popular music in Shillong has no shortage of hagiographers. In fact most of the writing on this field has been gushy, uncritical and downright fallacious (there have been so many that it would be worthwhile to bring out a compendium of these).
National Film Award, Best Screenplay / In which Annie Gives it Those Ones, 1988 Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of…
We, the citizens of the Indian Union, cannot afford to forget the year 1965. The world we live in was shaped in no small way…
Newspaper: Say, Knock…Knock…Knock….Knock
Me: Knock…Knock…
Newspaper: Ask who has now turned non-vegetarian
Me: Who?
Newspaper: Cow. Today, she tried to eat two more men in Mainpuri (Uttar Pradesh).
Kylli na ki heh ka NESFAS kiba ieid eh ia ki nongrep ba haduh katno tylli ki jait jhur ki tip khnang ba ma ki ruh ki dei ban poi sha khlaw ban leit kheit hi ia ki? U Bah Phrang Roy ne kiwei pat kiba kam ba ki ieid ia ki nongrep ne ia ki bam tynrai (indigenous food) jong ki Trai Ri kim lah ban shu kren khlem da pynlong ialade ka bynta jong ka system kaba ki kam ba ki ieid palat.
Ha ka 35 snem ka sngi iap u khlur ka RI, Ka RAIOT ka kynmaw sngewieid ia U Bah Shlur Nongbri, uwei na ki khlur kynjat bol (Football star) uba don nam jong ka Wahingdoh Sports Club bad ka Shillong, u la khlad noh na ka pyrthei ha ka 3 tarik November 1980. U long U Captain ba wanrah jingjop ym tang ha ka kynjat ball hynrei U la dei uwei na kiba la wanrah ka jingpawnam ka jaitbynriew hi baroh kawei.
While state seems in no mood to repeal bloody AFSPA and continue oppression on people by killing dissident voices with impunity, people are bound to revolt. A continuous humiliation and torture of people living under AFSPA is just unbearable. This colonial rule and bloody thrust of power and resources must end.
Last week on 26th October, we encountered an innocent looking ad in a local newspaper Meghalaya Basin Development Authority, for those who are not into these things,…
Only aspect of this work that depicts matriliny and what it does to girls lies in the context behind the pictures. Without that background, this is, sad to say, a blatant exhibitionism of the girls of the village, culminating in a series that doesn’t quite capture the empowered status of these girls but antithetically subjugates them to the desired outcome of the viewer who in this case is Karolin Klüppel.
ML 05 B 6055 documents the journey of a bazaar bus between the village of Mawjatap in the East Khasi Hills and Shillong
Has “freedom” turned into one of those buzzwords honoured more in the invocation than in its exercise?
The BJP’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 has ushered in an unprecedented attack on India’s democracy and injected new elements of intolerance and authoritarianism in the lives of people living in the country.
Late Prof. G. G. Swell, MP from Shillong, speaking in the Indian Parliament on Beef eating North East and BJP’s divisive cow politics
I am tired of governments.
Of this one. This one. This one. This one. This one. And this one.
And the one before.
And the one after.
Capitalism doesn’t assist us in destroying itself. Should we actually become effective in building an anti-capitalist mass movement, they won’t issue us a paycheck. Instead, they will do everything possible to discredit, neutralize, imprison and kill us.
One has to wonder what kept these literary “stars” from this praiseworthy gesture of returning their state-given awards when the Gujarat pogrom was going on in 2002, or against the pogroms that followed the demolition of Babri masjid in 1992/3, or against the genocide of Sikhs around 1984, or heck, against the ongoing genocide in Kashmir or that of Dalits
it felt as if you are somewhere close,
drawing near in the language of the body
and whispering a language of forgetting
to those you could not.
“Natural” Conservativeness in Shillong and Khasi-Jaintia Hills could be due to the fact that most of their encounters with Modernity are given directly by the Church or ”reviewed” by it.
I would repeatedly press the rewind button on my small grey Akai tape to listen to these songs. With the audio cassette, patience matters and one would be duly rewarded and satisfied in the end.
Wanphrang Diengdoh’s photo essay on protests against New Shillong Township by villagers who are being displaced by the project.
Same day, the Draft Bill on the Meghalaya Grassroot Institutions Governance Act, 2015, will be officially discussed in DD Lapang committee, Raiot places the document before the citizens of Meghalaya
Is Babri and Dadri really an anomaly in the “idea of India”? The Dadri lynching has given the recently dethroned faction of the “idea of India” establishment an opportunity to denounce the “idea of India” faction that is in power now. What is the politics of this 2-way mockfight and what other possibilities of politics does it want to suppress?
I Bah Webster Davies Jyrwa i kren Maitphang ha ka ‘KA MARYNTHING RUPA’ jong i Bah L Gilbert Shullai kaba i thoh shaphang ka put ka tem, ka rwai ka siaw ha kito ki por mynbarim mynbajah bad ka jingiaid lynti ki nongtem ka Jaiaw Orchestra bad ki paralok jong ki.
Delhi Sultanate, one of the pioneers the sounds of Dancehall / Hip Hop and performance poetry in India, writes of his musico-political influences.
Translation of a poem by Manglesh Dabral, one of the most important contemporary poets writing in Hindi. Manglesh recently returned his Sahitya Akademi award in protest at the silence of the Akademi at murders of writers and state’s complicity in rising intolerance in India.
Meghalaya RTI Movement uncovered a large scam worth Rs. 9,26,36,105.80 in distribution of CGI sheet. What follows are the findings for you to read/download
Why Meghalaya needs a Working class movement, Thma U Rangli Juki’s campaign paper on worker’s rights
Hungry in Mawphlang – a Graphic Tale
A short and hungry graphic diary of Indigenous Terra Madre food fest in Mawphlang
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