As part of our April month’s Sanyukt Jayanti intellectual gatherings, gatherings were organized with older adolescents and youth, to speak and engage with the idea of peace. This was in backdrop of sensationalist messages all around – of war, of targeting a particular community.
In the first gathering, the youth had an in-depth discussion around food politics and devaluing and criminalization of grassroot food cultures. Grassroot NT-DNT and Adivasi youth thought about the need to proudly reclaim their food, that is actually diverse, full of nutrition, unifying; but these same youth are being bombarded with messages of food politics that are pressuring them to hate and give up their own food habits, and move towards vegetarianism which is unnatural to them, and actually only eaten by a minority of the country.
This was followed a few months later with another talk – by Vaibhav Chhaya – a Marathi poet, independent journalist and Ambedkarite author. Using facts and research, he unpacked the messages being spewed by dominant news media supporting war, and put forth the actual impact of war historically on vulnerable communities.
