This satirical polemic addresses Ajay Piramal and the wider nexus of the BJP-led state and crony corporates (notably Adani-Ambani), charging them with using legal, political, and extra-legal means to silence dissent. Framed as two provocative requests, the author first volunteers to be arrested and prosecuted for “defamation” — demanding the spectacle of litigation as a public test of whether asking questions about the DHFL debacle is now a punishable offense. The letter catalogs named victims of legal harassment, violence, and suspicious deaths (journalists, RTI activists, and dissenting civil-society actors), criticizes SLAPP-style tactics attributed to corporate counsel (DSK Legal), and recalls Vijay Mallya’s critique of Indian prisons to underline the contested nature of incarceration. Second, in darker satirical mode, the author offers to be “erased” by the state-corporate apparatus to expose the climate in which inconvenient lives are neutralized, invoking calls previously made for legalizing active euthanasia as a political statement about living under a failing “welfare” state. The piece concludes by situating the critique within Mumbai’s cultural imagery — quoting “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” — and appends a list of institutional and international recipients.
Category Archives: Art of Resistance
Following the dictum “Cultural revolution must precede political revolution”, we are striving to create the scope for an alternative cultural space, which can offer resistance to all forms of coercion, and can also serve as a medium for conducting non-violent, horizontal dialogical exchanges.
Affidavit And Public Legal Representation In Opposition To The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) Of Electoral Rolls, 2025
This affidavit opposes the 2025 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as an unconstitutional and discriminatory exercise that extends the exclusionary logic of the NRC–CAA–NPR regime. Framed as an administrative update, the SIR reproduces a politics of fear, surveillance, communal polarization and bureaucratic coercion—already driving marginalized citizens to despair and suicide. It exposes the State’s transformation of citizenship from birthright to conditional privilege, mediated by data and documents. Against this, the affidavit invokes planetary citizenship—an ethical-ecological vision affirming belonging beyond paper, religion, nation, or algorithm.
Why Indian Political Parties Are Ecologically Indifferent
This article examines the deep-rooted ecological indifference of Indian political parties across the ideological spectrum. Despite unprecedented environmental degradation—from the destruction of forests in Hasdeo and Nicobar to toxic urban air and vanishing rivers—ecology remains absent from India’s political grammar. The essay argues that this neglect is not accidental but structural: born of a development myth that equates progress with extraction and nationalism with industrial expansion. In a corporatized democracy, parties serve capital before climate, leaving the earth unrepresented in the republic’s moral imagination.
Why India Needs a No Kings Movement: From Fascist Corporatocracy to Partyless Democracy
This essay traces the global and Indian convergences of authoritarian populism, corporate capture, and digital surveillance through the metaphor of kingship. Beginning with the “No Kings” movement in the U.S., it reinterprets democracy as an anti-monarchical ethic — a practice of shared sovereignty rather than submission to personality cults. Through Modi’s curated spectacle of power, the text exposes India’s descent into corporatocracy, pseudology, and ecological tyranny. It ultimately envisions a “partyless democracy” rooted in decentralization, mutual care, and invisible leadership — a republic without kings, parties, or masters.
“Who’s Got the Paper? I’ve Got the Match”: Osibisa and the Politics of Documentation
This paper offers an interpretive and historical reading of Osibisa’s 1970s Afro-rock track Who’s Got the Paper? as a sonic meditation on the politics of documentation, identity, and resistance. Beneath its surface as a jubilant “party anthem,” the song encodes a global genealogy of documentary surveillance—from colonial pass laws and apartheid bureaucracies to postcolonial citizenship registers and digital data regimes. The refrain’s dialectical call and response—“Who’s got the paper?” / “I’ve got the match”—stage an encounter between state surveillance and insurgent agency, between the archive’s demand for verification and the people’s capacity for ignition. Combining lyrical analysis with postcolonial, Foucauldian, and musicological frameworks, the paper interprets sound as a mode of political imagination that exceeds textual control. Extending this argument to the Indian context, it situates the song’s critique within contemporary regimes of legibility exemplified by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), National Population Register (NPR), the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA)—each reiterating the colonial “paper logic” of inclusion through exclusion. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, James C. Scott’s notion of legibility, Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception,” and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, the essay argues that Who’s Got the Paper? performs the political imagination of music as resistance—where rhythm becomes revolt and dance becomes dissent. Through the contrapuntal readings of Edward Said, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Frantz Fanon, Osibisa’s sound emerges as a postcolonial act of re-signification: transmuting the colonizer’s documentary order into an emancipatory rhythm of decolonial speech.
Nixit and the Pharmaco-Capitalist Soul: Hauntings Under Piramal Pharma
This essay interrogates Nixit—a nicotine lozenge produced by Piramal Pharma—as an artifact of contemporary bio-political control. By examining its chemical composition, rhetoric of health, and psychopolitical subtext, the paper situates Nixit within the neoliberal economy of purification, where addiction is not eliminated but reformatted for consumption. Drawing on Freud’s psychoanalysis and Foucault’s biopolitics, alongside the cinematic allegory of Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking (2007), the article reveals how the pharmaco-industrial complex transforms rebellion into obedience, recoding the smoker’s desire into a commodified act of self-regulation. Incorporating Nietzsche’s genealogy of internalized violence and Derrida’s notion of hauntology, it further argues that the lozenge embodies the spectral persistence of repression under the guise of care. In the age of “managed freedom,” even the act of quitting becomes a performance of compliance—sweetened, packaged, and sold as virtue.
(W)holistic Resistance and the Courage to Stand Alone: OBMA’s Call for Justice and Dissent in India
This statement reflects OBMA’s introspection and reaffirmation of purpose amid ongoing struggles for justice, accountability, and ecological integrity in India’s increasingly oligarchic and censored environment. Drawing inspiration from Gandhi’s satyagraha, Tagore’s “Ekla Chalo Re,” and the resilience of figures like Umar Khalid, it underscores the moral necessity of walking alone when truth demands it. Acknowledging internal hesitations, systemic suppression, and self-censorship, OBMA calls for renewed ethical persistence, strategic communication, and collective courage — bearing one’s own cross with conscience, foresight, and faith in transformative action.
Defending Dissent, Protecting Ladakh: OBMA Stands with Climate Activist Sonam Wangchuk
The Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) stands in unwavering solidarity with Sonam Wangchuk and the Ladakh Movement, recognizing their struggle as a fight for environmental justice, climate action, cultural autonomy, and democratic dissent. Highlighting Ladakh’s vulnerability as the “Third Pole” of the world, the statement critiques the abrogation of Article 370 and the selective, contradictory application of Article 371, exposing the central government’s sidelining of local governance and ecological concerns. OBMA condemns Wangchuk’s arbitrary NSA detention and the violent suppression of peaceful protests, emphasizing that the movement’s constitutional demands for statehood, Sixth Schedule inclusion, and ecological protection are lawful, ethical, and globally aligned. The statement affirms that safeguarding communities, ecological integrity, and the right to dissent are duties of conscience, wisdom, and citizenship.
Joyful Festivals, Not Noise and Smoke in Kolkata and West Bengal (AN ONLINE MASS PETITION)
Kolkata, once the “City of Joy,” now faces climate fragility from rising seas, cyclones, and severe pollution. Festivals throughout the year amplify this crisis with high-decibel firecrackers, DJ systems, dazzling lights, and toxic idol immersions, worsening air, noise, and water quality. Despite strong laws and repeated court orders, lax enforcement and state subsidies for festival committees deepen unsustainable practices. The toll is stark—over 18,000 premature deaths annually from air pollution, alongside cardiovascular, respiratory, and mental health harms. This Fridays For Future (FFF) India petition calls for urgent enforcement of pollution laws, ending arbitrary state funding, ensuring just transition for firecracker workers, and promoting sustainable, culturally rooted celebrations that protect citizens, animals, and ecosystems.
Non-Godi Media, This Is Your Wake-Up Call: The DHFL Scam
This video is a direct appeal to India’s non-Godi media to break their silence on the DHFL scam—a financial catastrophe that destroyed the savings of pensioners, defence families, employees, and small investors while powerful corporations, auditors, rating agencies, and regulators escaped accountability. It exposes how political donations, celebrity endorsements, fraudulent credit ratings, judicial opacity, and sweetheart deals under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code enabled the systematic looting of public wealth and its transfer to oligarchs like Ajay Piramal. By demanding fearless reporting, a Judicial Truth and Accountability Commission, real penalties for gatekeepers, anti-SLAPP protections, and restitution for victims, the video insists that silence from independent media is not neutrality but complicity in state-corporate betrayal.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 