IMG_0333 By Pooja Pant On Flickr.

'Sentiment must be outlawed from the domain of science and things should be judged from an objective standpoint. For myself I shall find as much pleasure in a positive destruction of my own ideology, as in a rational disagreement on a topic, which, notwithstanding many learned disquisitions, is likely to remain controversial forever.' Dr. BR Ambedkar, 'Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development'.

Hips Liberated Because the Feet Have Been Shackled

Hips Liberated Because the Feet Have Been Shackled

Originally posted on COOLIE WOMAN:

Michael Goldberg Collection, U.W.I., Trinidad. http://www.cooliewoman.com

For the new Indian site Scroll.in, I wrote about my affection for chutney music. Here’s the piece:

Bollywood and my mother’s bhajans were the background music of my childhood. Growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, any and all yearning for lost homelands was set to the score of…

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Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate (2016).

1962

Mother's storybook photos become viral sensation

Mother’s storybook photos become viral sensation

Originally posted on Flickr Blog:

When we first spotted Elena Shumilova’s photostream, her photos instantly took our breath away. The Russian photographer transports her viewers into a beautiful world that revolves around her two little sons and their adorable pets — scenes literally out of a storybook. Elena’s use of natural light, colors, and her enchanting rural surroundings have not only…

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अनन्त का छंद - 6

अनन्त का छंद – 6 प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी ग. ज्ञान 75. इस पूरे प्रकरण में ‘नॉलेज़’ शब्द के लिए ‘जानकारी’ की जगह आम तौर पर प्रचलित ‘ज्ञान’ शब्द का इस्तेमाल किया गया है । वैसे भारतीय चिन्तन परम्परा में ज्ञान का प्रयोग सार्विक भाव के उदय के लिए किया जाता रहा है । यह ज्ञान पूंजी कदापि नहीं हो सकती । इसे हासिल करने की कोई वैज्ञानिक-तार्किक विधि नहीं । इसी तरह जानकार और ज्ञानी में भी फ़र्क किया जाता है…

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Black motorcycle clubs emerged throughout Cali in the 50s & 60s, and fought against racism and stereotypes of the day for their right to live the outlaw biker lifestyle — like the East Bay Dragons, Fresco Rattlers, Outlaw Vagabonds, Defiant Ones; down South in LA were the Choppers, Soul Brothers & of course, the Chosen Few.

via: the selvedge yard

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The Wayland Rudd Collection A project organized by Yevgeniy Fiks

The Wayland Rudd Collection focuses on the representation of Africans and African-Americans in Soviet visual culture. A point of departure for this project is Fiks’ collection of over 200 Soviet images (paintings, movie stills, posters, graphics, etc.) of Africans and African-Americans spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s. Fiks invited contemporary artists as well as activists, historians, sociologists, political theorists, and specialist in cultural studies to select one or more images from this collection and asked them to respond to it either via artwork, performance, lecture, or other forms.

Wayland Rudd was an American actor who began performing in the Hedgerow Theater in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania under the directorship of Jasper Deeter. Rudd first received critical acclaim for his performance in Eugene O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones.” Frustrated over racism in the entertainment industry, Rudd moved to the Soviet Union in 1932 where he began a successful career in Soviet Theater and Film including work with the famed Russian Director Vsevolod Meyerhold. He later received a degree from the Theatrical Art Institute in Moscow and worked at the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Theater. Rudd died in Moscow in 1952.

During Wayland Rudd’s twenty year-long career in the Soviet Union, he appeared in numerous films, theatrical performances, and plays. He was also used as a model for paintings, drawings, and propaganda posters and, in many respects, defined the image of the “Negro” for generations of Soviet people. Although only a small section of the assembled images in The Wayland Rudd Collection are of Wayland Rudd, the project is given his name to commemorate this American-Soviet actor’s personal story as a case in point of the complex intersection of 20th century American-Soviet narrative.

The images in The Wayland Rudd Collection present a very complex and often contradictory mapping of the intersection of race and Communism in the Soviet context. The participatory aspect of this project adds the needed dimensions to show this complexity—giving the viewers the capacity to digest this history. This project investigates the promise and reality of Communism vis-à-vis the issue of race in the 20th century through the Soviet experiment. It presents this issue as unresolved, revealing the Soviet legacy on race as a mix bag of internationalism, solidarity, humanism, Communist ideals as well as exoticization, otherness, racist stereotyping, and hypocrisy.

Participants: Suzanne Broughel, Maria Buyondo, Dread Scott, Jenny Polak, Michael Paul Britto, Nikolay Oleynikov, Ivan Brazhkin, Haim Sokol, Kara Lynch, Dr. Allison Blakely, Dr. Romy Taylor, and others

"In India all religions hold in common the idea of two indivisible elements, a male and female principle, Purusha and Prakrti, or Shiva and Shakti. The two elements originate in a single primordial being which manifests a 'desire to create'. From a unitary state of repose this emergent, but creative, tension gives birth to the universe and the multiplicity of beings and things of this world in a state of unceasing instability and flux, of time and constant change, of birth, reproduction, decay, death and rebirth. Out of a permanent coition of opposites the many are born, and with them confusion, antagonism, separateness. But the universe longs to regain its primordial state of oneness, and seeks to reverse the fragmentation. The return path, or restoration of lost unity, is the business of religion, yoga, ritualized sex, and its opposite : rigorous asceticism. These comprise a tool-kit of diverse, and divergent, religious techniques."

Richard Lannoy and Harry Baines, 'The Eye of Love', Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1976.