In 1989, playwright, actor, and activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked by political thugs while performing a street play outside of Delhi. His death led to the founding of Sahmat, an influential artist collective that has taken a consistent stance against the threats of religious fundamentalism and sectarianism in India through a vibrant mix of high art and street culture.
As the No. 59 bus hurtled down Ratchadamnoen Klang road in Bangkok's Old Town, its passengers diverted their attention from the intense midday heat to a small crowd on the concrete below. About 25 people were marching and chanting, photographers scuttling in front of them.
Shake Girl is a massive collaborative effort between fifteen students and two instructors over the course of one quarter (Winter 2008). These students comprise the first edition of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project -- a group dedicated to acheiving this monumental task on an annual basis.
Miku is a Japanese virtual idol. She is 16 years old. Miku is created in 2007 and has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese.
Mukti Caravan, the Campaign on Wheels, is a mobile cultural group of former child bonded labourers. Started by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement), a movement started by now Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, it involves activists visiting villages to create awareness about need for education, emphasizing on the need for improving access to education and quality of education, to completely eradicate child labour from the society.
"Thai artists and art students are on the frontline of their country’s swelling pro-democracy movement, calling for reforms of Thailand’s military-backed government, and breaking both taboo and national law to criticise the nation’s monarchy.
Alokananda Roy walked into Calcutta's Presidency Jail on International Women's Day, 2007. The Indian classical dancer had been invited to watch female inmates perform, but it was the men who caught her eye.
"They shook me," she says. "Their body language — it was as though they had no future, nothing to look forward to."
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
The Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF) is a non-profit organization that has been continuously holding above-the-line campaigns encouraging people to quit smoking. However, the number of people quitting smoking has not diminished as much as they want.
Cartoons Against Corruption is a cartoon based campaign by political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi to support anti corruption movement in India, best known for sharp hard hitting anti corruption cartoons. Using national emblems and current political news, Trivedi creates cartoons that don't attempt to skirt the issues at hand, but portrays his political stance straightforwardly.
A social experiment testing the public’s reaction to gay people in China has gone viral.
The blindfolded activists stood in public wearing T-shirts that said “I’m gay would you hug me?” and video of the protest then spread rapidly on Weibo, a hugely popular social media platform in China.
The social experiment follows a recent announcement by Weibo to ban gay content on its platform of 400 million active users.
The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural peoples throughout the country, but especially in hill and mountain areas, both because of their direct provision of food, fuel and fodder and because of their role in stabilising soil and water resources.
With World Comics India, the organization he started, Sharad has pioneered a cheap and easy medium for poor people to communicate meaningfully on issues that are neglected by the conventional media. While the urban elite dominates public media, the grinding day-to-day concerns of millions are rarely heard. Layers of discrimination and abuse heaped on huge numbers of people keep their problems out of sight and out of mind.
On September 16, 1932, in his cell at Yerwada Jail in Pune, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.
A group of women walked from Barisal, Bangladesh to Khulna to join up with the long march that was crossing the city that day. By long, I really mean long: this march traveled a distance of 145 kms, walking most of the way, meeting people, holding street meetings and telling people why the Rampal coal plant shouldn’t be built in the Sundarbans.
Daku is an Indian graffiti artist that engages in street art with political and social meaning. Little else is known about the elusive artist, due to the illegal nature of his work. The name "Daku" literally translates to bandit or dacoit in Hindi.
Hok Kolorob. Let there be noise.
It was perhaps these two words of protest that eventually led to the arrest of two engineering students for allegedly molesting a fellow student at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University last month.
Under the moniker BomBaebs, Pankhuri Awasthi and Uppekha Jain rap about rape, cultural stereotypes, religious biases, and hypocrisy surrounding sexism and gender biases in India. They open the video with a disclaimer, warning that “This video doesn’t have any explicit or bannable content. It is just that the reality for women in India is Explicit.”
Meet To Sleep, a campaign started by Blank Noise, asks citizens from all across India to come to different public spaces like parks, and sleep there in order to take back free spaces without being afraid for their safety. The first meet was organised in November, 2014, in Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park. And since then there have been eleven meets across various cities including Jaipur, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.