My #15August2020 thread...

I grew up seeing the Indian tricolour flag waving around me on 15 August. As the Prime Minister of my school cabinet and the President of my college, I am sure I gave speeches about #Freedom, what it is, and why it matters...
Oppressers & colonialists may have their eras, but they have *no phenotype*. History is not just the past; it is also the present in view from a future. And we can do better at challenging the statist frames when it comes to speaking of Freedom & Independence of people in the now
If nationalism is a productive force in your thinking, and whichever country you identify with, I urge you to read texts like Tagore’s ‘Where the mind is without fear’ and Frederick Douglass’s ‘What, to an American Slave, is the 4th of July?’...
My memory today - as woman or Kashmiri or Indian or Briton or existentialist non nation-statist thinker - is complex, but 2 images stand out —

One: I’m a small girl who sits reading big books on the steps of a sunny verandah outside a freedom fighters’ flat in my neighbourhood..
The very humble, gentle, old man from Andhra wears thick glasses & lives austerely in a room full of books & papers. He’s kind to me & we exchange smiles & occasionally a sentence or two abt books. He died before I finished school. I’m always in awe of how he was part of history.
Two: I’m in summer 2020 in lockdown in intense pain a few months ago & I pick up a book to read from my bookshelf that tells the story of Kisainin Jaggi Devi (female farmer Jaggi Devi) who was a freedom fighter. This evening, aptly, I finished reading it..
Here are some images that speak for themselves.
Here are some images that speak for themselves.
Here are some images that speak for themselves.
Here are some images that speak for themselves.
Here are some images that speak for themselves.
As an embodied person, my Independence Day this year was 13th August — my operation day! Start of freedom from suffering day! 🌹💕 I’m not nationstatist fundamentally, with this thread I am requesting reflection on your part if possible for you 😇
You can follow @NitashaKaul.
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