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South Asia Solidarity Group video channel

South Asia Solidarity Group

An online conversation between Dalit women sanitation workers from India and migrant cleaners from Britain, talking about strategies and challenges and how to win these crucial struggles.

Listen to an exchange of workers' experiences, struggles and strategies for organising and building solidarity between worker activists of the Karnataka-based Sanitation Workers Union, the BBMP Pourakarmikara Sangha, affiliated to the All-India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), and the Cleaners and Facilities Branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

The sanitation workers in Karnataka, who are almost all Dalit women, have won some inspiring victories in their ongoing battles against outsourcing, acute caste-based exploitation, and anti-union repression, and for recognition and workers rights in a climate where a far-right Hindu supremacist government is in power at the centre.

There are some striking parallels, as well as many key differences, with the experiences of precarious mainly migrant workers employed as cleaners in Britain who are engaging in sustained campaigns to be brought in-house and to win basic rights such as sick pay and decent wages and against exploitation and racism.

Speakers include:
Com. Nirmala, President, BBMP Pourakarmikara Sangha
Sucheta De, Vice-President All-India Central Council of Trade Unions
Charlie Macnamara, IWGB Head of Organising and branch support
Wilson Ayala, IWGB Cleaners and Facilities Branch Chair
Maritza Castillo Calle, Vice-President, IWGB

The meeting took place in Kannada, Spanish and English with translations.
Please email us to join in these conversations and help grow our global resistance to precarious and racialised labour exploitation.

2023 India Independence Day protests in London are in support of support of the mainly Christian Kuki-Zo women who are facing horrendous sexual violence (naked parading, gang rapes etc) from heavily armed mobs supported by the BJP government of Manipur state. In many cases the police have handed over women to mobs. This is happening against the ethnic cleansing of the Kuki-Zo people from the hills of Manipur partly (with their villages burnt down) so that their land can be handed to the mainly Hindu Meiti community who live in the valleys of Manipur. It is also partly in the interests of mining corporates since the hills are rich in minerals.

The demonstration is also in solidarity with other minoritized women in India - Muslims and Dalits - who also have been targeted by Hindu-supremacists.

There has been an ongoing epidemic of violence against Dalit women and girls by oppressor-caste Hindu men who are protected by the BJP. Muslim women too have suffered unspeakable violence since Modi's BJP government came to power in 2014. There have been sustained attacks on Muslim communities not least from the Gujarat 2002 Pogroms, when Modi was the Gujarat state minister.

The demonstration is also in solidarity with all those surviving/ resisting the horrendous violence against Muslims which is sweeping the states of North India even upto the national capital Delhi over the last few weeks. This is violence whipped up by frequent calls for a Hindu state (where Muslims will not be permitted to live) by BJP leaders and others supported by the government.

Speakers (and messages of solidarity) included:
Kailean, Chair, Unau Welfare (UK)
Kalpana Wilson, SASG
Claudia Webbe MP
Satpal Muman, Chair Castewatch UK
Apsana Begum MP
Mohammad Owaise, UK Indian Muslim Council
Taranjit Chana, Million Women Rise
Kaulathu Mohamed, Strive UK
John McDonnell MP
Sister Mbahupa Florence Handura, NEHANDANOVIWO Grassroots All-Afrikan Women's Internationalist Solidarity Sisterhood (NEHANDANOVIWO-GAAWISS)
Nirmala Rajasingam, Movement for People's Struggles, Sri Lanka (UK)
Lotika Singha, INSAAF
and others.

UK book launch of Azad Essa's must-read book Hostile Homelands : the New Alliance between India and Israel (Pluto Press, 2023).

Chair: Dr Nathaniel George, Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS. Author Azad Essa will be in conversation with writer and activist Amrit Wilson (South Asia Solidarity Group) and Kashmiri lawyer Mirza Saaib Beg.

Hosted by South Asia Solidarity Group, the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, and the Department of Development Studies, SOAS.

Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a 'Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi's India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support.

India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India's foreign policy. Looking to replicate the 'ethnic state' in the image of Israel in policy and practice, the annexation of Kashmir increasingly resembles Israel's settler-colonial project of the occupied West Bank. The ideological and political linkages between the two states are alarming; their brands of ethnonationalism deeply intertwined.

Hostile Homelands puts India's relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of Zionism and Hindutva; India's changing position on Palestine; and the countries' growing military-industrial relationship from the 1990s. Lucid and persuasive, Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.

Azad Essa is an award-winning journalist and author based between Johannesburg and New York City. He is currently a senior reporter for Middle East Eye and has written for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Guardian.

‘Today’s Israel and Modi’s India are natural partners, sharing values of racist ethnocracy and illegal annexation, and for Israel, offering a market for military and other advanced technology. This valuable study traces the complex evolution of their relationship’- Noam Chomsky

‘A brilliant and courageous book ... the definitive treatment of the overlooked alliance between the far-right wing governments of India and Israel. Essential reading for the escalating neo-fascist forces in our turbulent times’- Cornel West, American philosopher

‘Formidable and timely. Azad Essa lays bare the historically malignant roots of an often overlooked and underestimated kinship between two ideologies, Zionism and Hindutva, hungry for land and hungrier for dominance’-
Mohammed El-Kurd, Author of 'Rifqa'

‘A call for global solidarity. Essa reveals the mutual agenda of the unholy India-Israeli ethno-nationalistic alliance, showing just why both those states are a danger to progessive internationalism. In dealing with the rise of Zionism, along with Modi's capture of state power in India, he deals with their ramifications on Kashmir and Palestine, on Indian diaspora and Israel's role in Africa’- Ronnie Kasrils, former South African Intelligence Minister, author and activist

‘For decades, India’s leaders spoke in hushed tones about their relationship with Israel. Essa reveals the long history of their alliance and shows how it is built on shared supremacist ideological projects whose devastating and inhumane consequences are borne by Palestinians and Kashmiris living under occupations. An essential, must-read book’-
Mohamad Junaid, Anthropologist and Kashmiri writer

Amrit Wilson speaking on the 21st of April outside HM Treasury in London at XR's The Big One.

Amrit discusses colonialism, debt conditionality, root causes of climate change and crimes of Modi, the BJP and Adani today. Amrit warns of Adani's sponsorship deal with London's Science Museum and liberal fixes.

The transcript of her talk is below.

When I look at this huge triumphal building before me next to the absurd rituals of the horse guards I can’t help thinking of the cruel plunder of colonialism which hid behind this pomp and show. My country, India, like so many countries of the global south was plundered by the British. Robert Clive who is celebrated with a statue which we see next door was a merciless asset stripper, and it was he who set up the world’s first multinational company - the East India Company.
The East India Company was a blueprint of the corporate power we see today. It had its own private army, which tortured, raped and killed all those who resisted, just as the corporates are doing today across the world from India to Ecuador to Nigeria, it left devastation and death everywhere and like the corporates of today it had no qualms about dealing in harmful commodities. It imposed crippling taxes on India’s people and extracted forced labour - forcing people to grow cash crops, at gun point and preventing them growing food crops.
It created a famine in which 10 million people, one third of the population of Bengal died.
After the first war of independence in 1857, in which the people of India of all religions and classes united against the East India Company, the British state took over and ruled directly. They put in place divide and rule policies nurturing enmity between Hindus and Muslims. And we see the legacy of that divide and rule, that enmity, today in Narendra Modi’s Hindu-supremacist fascist regime in India which is engaged in genocidal violence against Muslims.
Once one of the richest countries in the world, India became one of the poorest. So while they still tell us, from that building over there, that colonialism brought benefits to India and didn’t do much for Britain, we know that this is a stupendous lie. Utsa Patnaik the well-known Indian economist has shown, between 1765 and 1938, Britain drained a total of 45 trillion dollars from India which is 17 times the Britain’s total GDP today.
In the period after ww2, in the era when colonialism was being swept away by anti-colonial struggles across Asia and Africa, to keep control of the economies of the countries the imperialists invented another stupendous lie.
That they would give loans to the ex-colonies to help them develop. Eventually these loans led to debts and then conditionalities like austerity and privatisation. Each conditionality leading to a further draining of resources, and further debt.
And the development they imposed caused and is continuing to cause untold suffering and Climate crisis. Last year Pakistan was engulfed in devastating floods – they were largely a result of World Bank policies and also of the so-called irrigation networks the British had set up – networks which were more about extraction than about irrigation. Networks which changed the nature and course of the mighty Indus river.
Today in the neoliberal era with the growing power of finance capitalism we see a reconfiguring of capitalism and the emergence of a new colonialism where British banks like HSBC and Barclays who were deeply implicated in slavery now working closely with global corporations – launching wars and shoring up repressive governments.
In India the Adani group works closely with British banks on the one hand and Modi’s fascist Hindu supremacist regime on the other. Adani has been exposed as the biggest fraud in corporate history but he is continuing to destroy pristine forests, and extract coal from new mines and he is spreading Modi’s poisonous Hindu supremacist ideology. And shockingly not only the banks but our own Science Museum in Kensington is involved in greenwashing Adani. Science Museum director ex-Banker Sir Ian Blatchford has ignored his own organisation’s due diligence report on Adani and kept it secret from the trustees. But - the activists of the Fossil Free Science Museum group have made it available as a wonderful book. Hopefully it will shame Blatchford into seeing sense
Because Adani must and will be defeated and with him the genocidal Modi regime! And, for that, solidarity is crucial!
So let us be clear demanding an end to debt can only be a confusing half way house. Justice demands reparations for all the historic and continuing plunder of the lands and from the peoples of the global south, and justice demands we show our total solidarity with those who are resisting both the corporates as well as the fascist regimes in countries like India. Climate justice is a global issue inextricably tied up with capitalism. It is only by confronting capitalism that we can achieve climate justice.

Watch our event 'From Ayodhya to Leicester: revisiting Ram Ke Naam with Anand Patwardhan on the 30th Anniversary of the Demolition of the Babri Masjid' held on Sunday 11 December 2022, 2.30pm UK; 8pm India.

Ram ke Naam is an award winning film about the demolition of the 500 year old Babri Masjid in the city of Ayodhya by Hindutva mobs on 6th December 1992. The was not only an act of profound violence in itself but was preceded by a Rath Yatra, a so-called religious procession, through the heart of India which whipped up anti- Muslim hate and violence as it travelled through villages and towns. The demolition of the Masjid was followed by riots across India in which some 2500 people lost their lives. It was also a major factor in the rise of a Hindu and Brahminical-supremacist movement and the coming to power of the BJP.As the film also shows Hindutva has long been a world-wide movement which has long drawn moral and financial support from the diaspora.

Anand Patwardhan’s iconic film 'Ram ke Naam' (In the Name of Ram) examines the period immediately prior to demolition through the eyes of ordinary people in and around Ayodhya. What did they think of the Hindutva mobilisations entering Ayodhya and of their aim to build a temple to Ram where the Mosque stood.

At this online event we will show clips from the film and acclaimed director Anand Patwardhan will reflect on its significance in 2022, in conversation with poet and activist Shareefa Energy and Dr Kalpana Wilson of South Asia Solidarity Group.

Chaired by Naeem Badiuzzaman, Strive UK
Organised by South Asia Solidarity Group and Strive UK
#RecallingBabri

Teesta Setalvad speaks on the significance of the 30th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition ahead of our event this weekend.

Signup to 'Ayodhya to Leicester' via our social media where we will be revisiting the award winning film Ram Ke Naam with its maker Anand Patwardhan on the 30th Anniversary of the Demolition of the Babri Masjid.

In the wake of the violence in #Leicester, we call for peace and unity among all South Asian communities in Leicester and across the UK. We stand together as South Asians of all faiths and none and strongly condemn all the incidents in which individuals have been targeted for their religion, places of worship have been targeted, and fake news has been circulated to provoke conflict. We echo the sentiments in the recent joint statement of Hindu and Muslim faith leaders in Leicester who state that ‘We arrived in this city together, we faced the same challenges together, we fought off racist haters together and collectively made this city a beacon of diversity…we together call upon the inciters of hatred to leave our city alone’.
While many media outlets are still claiming that the conflict in Leicester began with the India-Pakistan cricket match on 28th August, we are clear that this conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities has been deliberately imported to Leicester over a longer period by right-wing Hindu supremacist political organisations linked to the Indian government.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (#RSS) – an avowedly fascist organisation which was formed in 1925 modelled on Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and its overseas wing the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (#HSS), is at the heart of this network of organisations. The RSS promotes a Hindu supremacist ideology in which India’s Muslims are demonised and scapegoated as the enemy within. India’s Prime Minister Narendra #Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS, and since he came to power India has seen an epidemic of mob lynchings of #Muslims, Christians and Dalits, orchestrated and state-sponsored pogroms of Muslim communities, and government bulldozers demolishing the homes of those Muslims who dare to protest. In all of these the slogan of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has been a war cry used by Hindu-supremacist stormtroopers while carrying out the attacks. It was chilling to hear this same slogan being raised by the hundreds of masked and hooded men, many brandishing weapons, who marched through an area of Leicester where many of the residents are Muslim on Saturday 17 September.
Many of those who took part in this march were brought from Wembley and Harrow in London, Birmingham and other places outside Leicester in coaches and it is believed that in the days prior to the demonstration Hindutva activists from these other cities had been giving street-fighting training to young Hindu men in Leicester. The RSS also have the support of Islamophobic British #fascist groups, Britain First, English Defence League and Patriotic Alliance and there were reports of their members taking part in the march.
The violence in Leicester is not primarily a result of the presence in the city of more recent working class migrants from India, as some are claiming – it is planned and orchestrated by organisations which are well-established in the UK and are part of the international network of Hindu supremacist groups.
There is a long history of Hindu supremacist activity in the UK. The RSS systematically set up, or took over, a host of organisations in the UK, including the Hindu Council UK; the National Hindu Students Federation; the National Council of Hindu Temples; and the charity Sewa International, which was exposed in 2002 for channelling funds to organisations which carried out violent communal attacks in Gujarat. But people living in Leicester testify, despite the earlier activities of the pro-Hindutva groups, the city remained peaceful with good relationships between Hindu and Muslim communities. They say that what is happening now is a new phase of RSS activity. While old activities - fundraising, building and strengthening Shakhas (ideological and physical training centres), influencing both the Conservative and Labour parties, and making online threats against anyone who does not agree with them - continue, they now have a new aim of provoking communal conflict on the streets in Britain itself.
This is why progressive South Asian groups and individuals peacefully protested outside the Indian High Commission on Thursday 22 September. Our message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his party, the #BJP and his organisation, the RSS, is: Stop Dividing Our Communities! The diverse, multi-faith South Asian diaspora in the UK must stand together against fascism in all its forms, as it has always done.

Protest outside World Bank 9 September 2022
Asad Rehman, director of War on Want

“1200+ people dead, 10m displaced, 33m affected, 800K livestock dead, 1m homes washed away, 200+ bridges collapsed. The planet is being killed today, not tomorrow, in front of our eyes. Pakistan had the hottest city on earth, Jacobabad at 51 degrees celsius in May 2022. It experienced forest fires, melting glaciers and now has the worst floods in living memory. It’s at the epicentre of climate catastrophe. Cancel the debt, give Pakistan climate compensation now.”
Claudia Webbe, Member of Parliament for Leicester East

We stand with the people of Pakistan who are calling for:

1. The unconditional cancellation of all debt, illegitimately owed to the World Bank, IMF and all creditors to Pakistan

2. An end to fossil fuels and a just transition to renewable energy globally

3. Climate reparations to Pakistan and the Global Majority for loss and damage, and for the trillions of dollars plundered through colonialism and its enduring legacy, capitalism.

A preventable humanitarian crisis
Pakistan is in the midst of an unprecedented climate catastrophe caused by rich nations. Pakistan has 7253 glaciers the most outside of the arctic polar region - they’re all reportedly melting fast. Monsoon rains in the country are 2.87 times higher than the national 30-year average — the UN calls it a “monsoon on steroids.” It is estimated that the widespread destitution and devastation caused by the floods will cost Pakistan at least 10 billion dollars. Moreover, over 2 million acres of agricultural land have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of livestock have been destroyed, triggering fears of massive food shortages in the coming months. People are going hungry and in need of urgent medical attention. At least 35 million people are displaced (roughly 90% of the population of Canada). Major parts of the affected regions are areas with vulnerable and marginalised communities, such as in Balochistan: the floods have increased inequalities, there’s a lack of access to humanitarian support, and they’re facing discrimination and repression.

Politically made destitution and environmental destruction
Pakistan causes just 0.4% of all global CO2 emissions, but is the 8th most vulnerable country to the climate crisis. In fact, while rich countries are responsible for over 90% of excess carbon emissions above the safe planetary boundary, countries like Pakistan have not even fully used their fair share of emissions. Yet, while some countries and companies in the Global North are wreaking havoc on the planet, countries like Pakistan are bearing the brunt of others’ criminal recklessness and unfettered greed. Unaccountable and destabilised Pakistani Governments were given huge loans as part of the West’s Cold War strategy to crush socialist movements and restructure Pakistan’s economy to enable foreign capital and companies to continue exploiting and plundering it following colonial rule.
#PakistanIsOurStory
#ClimateReparationsForPakistan
#EndFossilNow
#FloodinPakistan
#ClimateSolidarity

Protest outside World Bank 9 September 2022
Dr Ahmad Mahvish
South Asia Solidarity Group and Women Democratic Front

“1200+ people dead, 10m displaced, 33m affected, 800K livestock dead, 1m homes washed away, 200+ bridges collapsed. The planet is being killed today, not tomorrow, in front of our eyes. Pakistan had the hottest city on earth, Jacobabad at 51 degrees celsius in May 2022. It experienced forest fires, melting glaciers and now has the worst floods in living memory. It’s at the epicentre of climate catastrophe. Cancel the debt, give Pakistan climate compensation now.”
Claudia Webbe, Member of Parliament for Leicester East

We stand with the people of Pakistan who are calling for:

1. The unconditional cancellation of all debt, illegitimately owed to the World Bank, IMF and all creditors to Pakistan

2. An end to fossil fuels and a just transition to renewable energy globally

3. Climate reparations to Pakistan and the Global Majority for loss and damage, and for the trillions of dollars plundered through colonialism and its enduring legacy, capitalism.

A preventable humanitarian crisis
Pakistan is in the midst of an unprecedented climate catastrophe caused by rich nations. Pakistan has 7253 glaciers the most outside of the arctic polar region - they’re all reportedly melting fast. Monsoon rains in the country are 2.87 times higher than the national 30-year average — the UN calls it a “monsoon on steroids.” It is estimated that the widespread destitution and devastation caused by the floods will cost Pakistan at least 10 billion dollars. Moreover, over 2 million acres of agricultural land have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of livestock have been destroyed, triggering fears of massive food shortages in the coming months. People are going hungry and in need of urgent medical attention. At least 35 million people are displaced (roughly 90% of the population of Canada). Major parts of the affected regions are areas with vulnerable and marginalised communities, such as in Balochistan: the floods have increased inequalities, there’s a lack of access to humanitarian support, and they’re facing discrimination and repression.

Politically made destitution and environmental destruction
Pakistan causes just 0.4% of all global CO2 emissions, but is the 8th most vulnerable country to the climate crisis. In fact, while rich countries are responsible for over 90% of excess carbon emissions above the safe planetary boundary, countries like Pakistan have not even fully used their fair share of emissions. Yet, while some countries and companies in the Global North are wreaking havoc on the planet, countries like Pakistan are bearing the brunt of others’ criminal recklessness and unfettered greed. Unaccountable and destabilised Pakistani Governments were given huge loans as part of the West’s Cold War strategy to crush socialist movements and restructure Pakistan’s economy to enable foreign capital and companies to continue exploiting and plundering it following colonial rule.
#PakistanIsOurStory
#ClimateReparationsForPakistan
#EndFossilNow
#FloodinPakistan
#ClimateSolidarity

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About SASG

South Asia Solidarity Group (SASG) is an anti-imperialist, anti-racist organization based in Britain. We are committed to supporting, publicising, and building solidarity with people’s struggles for justice and democracy and against exploitation, gender and caste based oppression, imperialism, war and the so-called ‘war on terror’ in the countries of South Asia.

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