[Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Hashiya Exhibition Invite

[Iram Ghufran]

> Hi Iram, Can you post it on sarai announcements?
>
> thanks
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Dear friends,
>
> Warm wishes from the Hashiya team!
>
> We are a beginning of a voluntary community action group that will 
> initiate and carry out politico-cultural activities in the Jamia Nagar 
> area in order to engage with and act on the issues related to 
> marginalisation and urban poverty. (See our concept note below this 
> email for more details.)
>
> Hashiya team is putting up an exhibition as an outcome of the process 
> activity that we called */HASHIYE KE RANG/* or COLOURING THE MARGINS. 
> We held sessions with children of all age groups in a few schools in 
> the area on Children's Day where children expressed their views and 
> perspective on their lives through painting/drawing. All these schools 
> cater to the children mostly from lower class and lower middle class 
> families and most participants are girls.
>
> We will put */all these paintings/* into the exhibition without 
> judging them for the level of "artistic skill" or presence of a clear 
> social message. /*We value these expressions just as they are*/, for 
> each child made the images that their minds conjured while we spoke 
> with them about their lives, school, home, neighbourhood and the 
> larger world.
>
> *We invite you to visit the exhibition to be held on November 19-21, 
> 2007 between 10 am and 5 pm in collaboration with the Community 
> Outreach Programme of Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, ** Jamia 
> Millia Islamia** at Cafe Castro, JMI with friends/family/colleagues*. 
> We also extend a special invitation to you for the formal opening of 
> the exhibition on the 19 November at 11 am by Ms. Samina Mishra .
>
> Samina Mishra is an idependent film maker and writer of children's 
> literature. Her first book for children "Hina in the Old City" was 
> published by Tulika. She has made documentary films like "Aadha 
> Aasman" and "The House on Gulmohar Avenue". She has conducted numerous 
> workshops in Delhi and elsewhere encouraging creative writing, 
> thinking and exploration for children and has, in her own words, 
> "ended up with lot of work with children, home, belonging and such 
> issues". Samina is also a very special member of the Jamia community- 
> having been herself a student of the Jamia's AJK Mass Communication 
> Research Centre and having translated children's stories written by 
> her great grandfather, Dr Zakir Husain from Urdu to English- published 
> by Young Zubaan in their "The Magic Key series".
>
> Please come to see t he exhibition and interact with participating 
> children, their families, other community members on the themes of 
> marginalisation, urbanisation, children's perspective and aspiration 
> as also Hashiya and our work , with light music, over a cup of tea at 
> our wonderful venue- the Cafe Castro.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Ghazala Jamil
>

HASHIYA



No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected 
to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are 
an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your 
face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up 
a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is 
being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; 
if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left 
but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your 
words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can 
never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; 
neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in 
the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places 
and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us 
belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old 
woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what 
only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects 
us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a 
man.
What moves at the margin.
What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one 
you knew.
What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company. …


… In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets 
instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and 
disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a 
device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing 
love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. 
It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants 
whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of 
their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order 
to force obedience.

Toni Morrison


On the city margins: Jamia Nagar

Jamia Nagar is a predominantly Muslim community in the south-east corner 
of Delhi- literally on the city margins- a mish-mash of upper class 
enclaves where the rich wall themselves in socially (and physically in 
most cases) and poor quarters or ghettos, if you wish, which contain the 
repressed lower economic class. They stick together to protect their 
‘cultural integrity’ and to ensure their physical safety from real or 
perceived threat of communal violence or simply because there is no 
where else to go to. The rest of the town seems unable to bear their 
company, rent them houses or hire their labour. A place where a 
self-defensive and chosen form of marginalisation as well as a 
negatively produced and repressed “Other” exist concurrently.

Residents use these “self-defensive” or “repressive” walls to “protect” 
themselves but end up as unwitting perpetrators and victims of 
marginalisation leading to ‘otherness’ and suspicion, leading further to 
possibilities of criminalisation.

Hashiya

Our self-image is partly made up of how others see us and partly of our 
own assessment of our self. Where does one end and the other begins? The 
answer comes out a little garbled and unclear. What is clear though is 
that our self-image influences the way we behave or carry ourselves. In 
turn that influences people’s opinions of us which contribute to an 
altered (?) self-image. What if we extend this self image concept from 
individuals and apply it to group of people or communities?
Hashiya is an exploration of their identity by people, and creation of a 
new altered identity for those who engage with the process. It is to 
support or bringing to fore (to the space where it can be used) 
knowledge created about a group of people and the world they cohabit 
with other people and communities by themselves.

Language/articulation and the social conditions which shape it are the 
central theme since, through communication or an inability to 
communicate, specific ideas and interpretations of the world and how 
people behave in it are formulated. Hashiya, therefore, aims to become a 
space/an opportunity to give tongue to the language of the marginalised 
and through this new articulation give rise to a new political 
consciousness that brings change and creates new realities.

Most groups working with the marginalised study them and their problems 
and inadvertently stop at creating knowledge about them for the 
mainstream. Hashiya will make conscious effort to study the society from 
the peripheral perspectives and strive to present these to the larger 
society. We will strive to create avenues for politico-cultural 
expression for the people of the community and use these to uphold the 
rights of the poorest within the community.

Hashiya will always remain a community based voluntary action group 
initiated and sustained by the energy and people from within the 
community. In this manner it is different from other people’s 
organisations that depend on external leaders who work for a period of 
time with community and then ‘hand over’ to leave and move on.
Hashiya: activities

Activities that bring in more exposure to the world for children, youth 
and women from the community.
Activities promoting democratic outlook
Activities promoting arts and articulation

Regular Local film screenings- World cinema, children’s cinema
Bookshop and reading room
Talks and readings by personalities in various fields
Gatherings around music and poetry
Publishing: Hashiya aarai (to comment)
Books that carry articulation and expression of the marginalised 
communities and seek to end/minimise the degree of separation of the 
side stream from the ‘mainstream’.
Books that comment on larger issues of the community, the larger society 
and the world.
Abridged booklets, pamphlets liberated from jargon- for the consumption 
of community in English/Hindi and Urdu.


The other aspect of Hashiya activities will be those that will draw 
energy from the above politico-cultural activities. Gaining strength 
from people’s articulation of their issues and concerns Hashiya will 
initiate and facilitate activities monitoring (and thereby, 
strengthening) the reach of the people to public welfare services and 
programmes of other community based organisations.

Building and facilitating network of other CBOs in Jamia Nagar area with 
the objective of enriching work through sharing and increased 
accountability
Monitoring and strengthening reach of the people to welfare services 
available in the area by the network.



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