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.
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.
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.
Shut Down Arms Factories to Stop Wars: Dismantling the Global War Profiteering Machine
The global arms industry—worth nearly $95 billion annually—is both a driver of human suffering and a silent engine of ecological collapse. Wars claim over 2,000 lives daily, displace millions, and shatter societies, while leaving behind poisoned aquifers, fragmented habitats, and toxic soils contaminated by unexploded ordnance and chemical residues. Arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and RTX thrive on this devastation, rewarded by soaring stock prices whenever conflict erupts, while shadowy brokers such as Viktor Bout and Aboubakar Hima profit from prolonging wars that ravage both communities and ecosystems. India exemplifies this global dilemma, channeling vast sums into defense while underfunding water, health, education, and environmental resilience. The campaign “Shut Down Arms Factories to Stop Wars” demands dismantling this war economy by halting weapons production, regulating brokers with ecological due diligence, mandating transparency of emissions and toxic legacies, and reallocating resources toward human well-being and planetary stewardship. Peace cannot be defined as the mere absence of war—it must mean fertile soils, clean water, healthy bodies, and thriving ecosystems within Earth’s limits. Yet even the green transition carries risks: critical mineral extraction for renewables, if pursued without justice, threatens to replicate the violence and exploitation of fossil fuel regimes. A just future requires confronting militarism, curbing extractivism, and investing in life over destruction. Only by linking disarmament with ecological restoration can humanity secure genuine peace within planetary boundaries.
Paramavaiṣṇava The Capitalist (A Play)
Paramavaiṣṇava The Capitalist is a neon-charged, satirical spectacle blending Bollywood masala, Bharatanatyam, and Afrobeat to expose corporate hypocrisy and political cronyism in India. Inspired by critiques of corporate malfeasance, it follows Atheist (AT), a Gully Boy-style skeptic, and Vaiṣṇava Bard, a melodramatic poet, confronting Paramavaiṣṇava, a smug oligarch masking scams like the ₹45,000 crore CHFL heist with Gauḍiya Vaiṣṇava piety and show-off Gandhian rhetoric, abetted by Saffron Supremo’s “Gandhigiri Murdabad” political regime, accused of electoral chori (fraud), and Judge SLAPPavati’s SLAPP suits. Set frequently in a cyberpunk courtroom and surreal Mumbai street, it features Gandhi and Tagore’s spectral critiques, a Chorus of Ghosts with inflatable Gītās, and props like rubber ducks and selfie-stick bazookas. Through frenetic dance, biting rap, and a Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro-inspired hanging gesture finale, it indicts corporatized hypocrisy, electoral bonds, ecological ruin, and judicial complicity, urging audiences to reclaim dharma from corporate and saffron hegemony.
When Institutions Dodge Responsibility, Who Answers to the DHFL Victims?
On 30th July 2025, OBMA submitted a detailed appeal to India’s top regulatory and judicial authorities, calling for institutional accountability, independent inquiry, and restitution for thousands of DHFL depositors whose savings were wiped out. Despite detailed evidence of auditing failures, flawed credit ratings, and regulatory lapses, SEBI’s response was allegedly a bureaucratic deflection, refusing responsibility. To highlight this stark contrast, we designed a poster juxtaposing the plea for justice with SEBI’s mechanical reply, exposing systemic evasions and the erosion of public trust. Download, share, and spread this poster—because when regulators dodge responsibility, ordinary citizens pay the price.
We Love You SRK, But You Must Answer for DHFL!
This statement calls on Shah Rukh Khan to take accountability for endorsing DHFL between 2015 and 2018, a period when lakhs of small depositors were persuaded to trust the company before its collapse in 2019, which wiped out over thousands of crores of rupees. Citing the Consumer Protection Act, it argues that Khan failed in his duty as a celebrity endorser to exercise due diligence, and demands a public apology, disgorgement of his endorsement fees, penalties under law, and a temporary ban on financial product endorsements. Drawing on his iconic film roles, the appeal frames accountability not as hostility but as an act of love and justice, urging Khan to stand with victims as the true hero he portrays on screen. It ends with a call for public action—signatures, solidarity, and collective pressure for justice.
DHFL Scam: Who Audited and Rated Our Trust?
Between 2010 and 2019, DHFL projected itself as a secure, AAA-rated housing finance company, yet it concealed one of India’s largest financial frauds involving shell companies, fictitious loans, and alleged political collusion with the BJP. Despite glaring irregularities, auditors and credit rating agencies continued to endorse its credibility, betraying the trust of lakhs of ordinary small depositors. The collapse left vulnerable groups—senior citizens, widows, pensioners, and salaried professionals—with devastating losses, while the resolution process (reportedly) disproportionately benefitted one chosen corporate acquirer. This appeal demands disciplinary action against negligent auditors and rating agencies, restitution for depositors, transparency in insolvency proceedings, and systemic reforms to restore accountability in financial governance.
Resist Fear, Defend Freedom: Stop SLAPPs, Stop Surveillance
This video exposes how India’s democracy is under siege through SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), draconian laws like UAPA, and unchecked digital surveillance. From the DHFL scam victims fighting corporate–state collusion, to students, journalists, and whistleblowers imprisoned or silenced, the message is clear: truth-telling has been criminalized. Drawing from Tagore’s vision of a fearless India, the video demands strong anti-SLAPP protections, accountability in surveillance, and safeguards for free speech — reminding us that defending dissent is defending the Constitution itself.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 