High in India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, flash floods and mudslides ripped through the village of Dharali in August, sweeping away everything in its way. Several shops, resorts, multi-storey hotels, and homestays were destroyed in a single wave. The map of Dharali was changed.

Photographer Gauri Gill's exhibition The Village On The Highway captured the "architecture of resistance"—the improvised structures that housed India's historic farmer protests from 2020 to 2021. "I just thought it's incredible how they are managing to inhabit the highway," Gill reflected.

Across North Indian cities and towns, bulldozers have become instruments of unchecked state power. In recent years, authorities have demolished hundreds of Muslim homes, mosques, businesses, and community spaces—often without due process, or with little warning.

Students allege that since the December 15th, 2019 incident, Jamia Millia Islamia has steadily increased surveillance on campus, effectively banning protests against the administration. While the first official notice came in August 2022, students claim they were under watch even before that.

In July, The New York Times published Bret Stephens’s op-ed that Israel “is not committing genocide”, even as UN bodies document mass killing, starvation, and systematic destruction in Gaza. Stephens questioned why the death toll — nearly 60,000 — was “not higher” if genocide were occurring.

When Anuj Behal first met 30-year-old Vicky Bhatt in West Delhi’s Anand Parbat, he was in a rush. “It’s my eleventh time going abroad for a show,” he said, casually counting on his fingers. “Germany, Poland, Canada—three times—London…” He trailed off, losing track of the countries he’d been to.

Every June 30, Rehana Khan and her two sisters celebrate their father’s birthday with chocolate cake. This year, the cake remained on one side of a video call in Mumbai. Their father, Dadamiya Khan, marked his 48th birthday 2,000 kilometers away in Bangladesh, the country he had left as a child.

In Episode 4 of our podcast, Technologies of Genocide, host Suchitra Vijayan is in conversation with activist, writer, and poet Abduweli Ayup on the Uyghur genocide. She reflects:

Zareena Darr’s wistful voice reaches out to me, journeying from a decades-old cassette tape to a website as part of the UK-based Tape Letters project. The project highlights the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape, as a mode of long-distance communication by Pakistanis.

The Kashmir Times' defunct office in Jammu was searched based on a First Information Report alleging criminal conspiracy, Jammu and Kashmir’s State Investigation Agency stated on November 19. We completely reject these allegations. This action is yet another attempt to discredit and silence us.

As part of our newest podcast series, Technologies of Genocide, host Suchitra Vijayan was in conversation with Abdullahi Halakhe on the genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Suchitra reflects on their conversation: thepolisprojectinc.substack.com/p/what-is-ha...

Field reportage and research by The Polis Project reveal the patterns underlying the campaign to erase India’s Islamic sites under the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule. Mosques, madrassas, tombs, and mazars—shrines built over graves of Muslim saints—are razed, fenced off, or dragged to court.

Poet and novelist Vinod Kumar Shukla is widely regarded as one of the greatest living writers in the Hindi language. His refusal to relocate from Raipur, to write in English, or to self-mythologize within the circuits of Delhi and Mumbai has long become an act of dissent.

'The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience' is a first-hand account of life during the genocide in Gaza, narrated through the diary entries of Plestia Alaqad, a journalist and author. Alaqad brought the daily realities of the genocide to a global stage on her social media platforms.

The story of Kerala is often narrated through numbers: 100% literacy, less than 0.5% absolute poverty, the highest life expectancy in the country, and the lowest infant mortality rate. But these numbers conceal rising inequality, debt-led consumption, mass internal migration, ecological precarity.

Mumbai, pull up! In his new book, scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde turns 31 months behind bars into a searing account of caste, class, cruelty, and the human bonds within India’s broken prison system. Join us for the book launch.

On October 3, 2025, Italy shut down. Trains stopped running, ports closed, and highways were blocked as 2 million people joined the largest general strike in recent history. The following day, more than a million marched in Rome. The reason was Palestine.

At the edges of the Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza, Sadiqa Abu Hashish, 23, sits inside a tattered tent, holding her three-year-old daughter. She fled with her children from northern Gaza in February 2024, joining the millions displaced by Israel’s war on the region.

Nothing shocks us anymore, presumably because we have been anesthetized for far too long. The tragic reality of our present is not that we are being lied to or kept in the dark; it is far stranger and darker: we know that things are going horribly wrong, but we are not able to do anything about it.

In 2023, I had a tough time locating online links to some key citations for an essay. Links to most articles were broken, and the websites did not work. It seemed that most of the archival data I was looking for had either been erased or replaced.

Today is scholar, writer, and human rights activist, G. N. Saibaba’s, death anniversary. After 3,592 days in prison and only 219 days of freedom, he died in Hyderabad on October 12, 2024. He was born in a peasant family in rural Andhra Pradesh and paralysed by polio at age five.

On July 21, 2025, the Bombay High Court delivered justice to a dead man. Kamaal Ahmed Ansari had already perished behind bars, his spirit crushed by nearly two decades of juridical indifference. The court quashed earlier convictions of all 12 accused in the 2006 Mumbai local train bombings.

On a November morning last year, two dozen Delhi University students stood outside Nirman Bhawan, demanding a concessional pass for the Delhi Metro. By noon, police had detained more than thirty of them. How did Delhi build a metro that remains unaffordable for the workers who keep the city running?

A section of Tamil cinema is undoing the culinary worldviews of the past. Popular Tamil films like Blue Star and Nandhan have stretched the boundaries of what is showable food on screen. Close-up visuals of pork and beef are a big deal because meat eating is directly linked to caste.

TOMORROW — Varsha Bharath, director of ‘Bad Girl’, joins host Suchitra Vijayan and guest host Aditya Shrikrishna. She brings along five objects that have shaped her life and work. WHEN: Tomorrow, September 29 TIME: 10 AM ET / 7:30 PM IST WHERE: YouTube Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/5-objects-...

Septuagenarian Tapan Chatterjee is one of the last living survivors of a daring attempt by political prisoners to break free from the “condemned” cells of a notorious Indian jail. 16 of his comrades were gunned down. Chatterjee is now the only surviving witness to this chapter of Naxalite history.

HAPPENING TODAY! Register here for free: www.eventbrite.com/e/1673311342...

Suchitra and Vaniya will discuss how technology companies have become active collaborators in systems of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. From AI surveillance and predictive policing to cloud infrastructure for military logistics, Big Tech has become indispensable to Israel’s genocide.

Call for Volunteers in New York City The Polis Project is a New York–based global magazine of dissent. In the past, we’ve hosted lecture series such as Dissent in Dangerous Times. We’ve held James Baldwin reading clubs, screenings and conversations with award-winning filmmakers.

As soon as I settled onto the plush red carpet, Gul Noor Bibi handed me a cup of steaming qahwa. She was displaced from Pakistan’s erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas. I arrived expecting to document displacement but discovered something more: a story of resilience and adaptation.

In August 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran construction worker who had lived in Maryland for years, entered the Baltimore field office of ICE. He did not walk out again. He was detained, facing yet another attempt by the Trump administration to deport him.

The title of Hafsa Kanjwal’s book, 'Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building under Indian Occupation', was renamed A Fate Written on Matchboxes: State-Building in Kashmir Under India for Indian readers. This change speaks volumes about India’s claim of political supremacy over Kashmir.

As part of our Dispatches series, Suchitra Vijayan was recently in conversation with Professor Heba Gowayed on how U.S. universities are increasingly silencing scholarship and speech on Palestine.

In episode one of our newest podcast, Technologies of Genocide, Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) speaks with Eric Sype and Jalal Abukhater from @7amleh. They interrogate how Israel’s assault on Palestinians is enabled by global tech giants. Eric's key points:

On 25 August 2025, Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing at least twenty people. Among them were four Palestinian journalists: — Hossam al-Masri (Reuters) — Mohammed Salama (Al Jazeera) — Mariam Abu Daqa (freelance) — Moaz Abu Taha (NBC)

Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day: Eight years on, the violence continues. On 25 August 2017, Myanmar’s military junta, the Tatmadaw, launched a campaign of killings, mass displacement, and systemic persecution against the Rohingya. 700,000+ people were forced into Bangladesh.

It isn't every day that we witness a voice long silenced by the state return to public discourse. Shoma Sen, scholar, activist, and political prisoner, writes for The Polis Project on 'Viyyukka', a landmark collection of stories by women revolutionaries. www.thepolisproject.com/read/resista...

On 15 August 2010 in Oaxaca, México, Pablo López Alavez was driving home with his wife and his grandson when a red pickup truck cut them off. Fifteen hooded and armed men dragged him from the driver’s seat, threw him into their truck, and drove away.

We speak with those documenting and resisting the digital and material infrastructures of mass violence. From Gaza to Myanmar, from Kashmir to Xinjiang, from Tamil Eelam to Sudan, states are enabled by platforms, financed by banks, armed by corporations, and legitimised by silence.

The popularity of the saint-poet Kabir among the English-reading public, owes a great deal to translation. 'Kabir: Walking with the Word', edited by Sanchit Toor, emphasizes Kabir’s spiritual quest and his invitation to prioritize our shared humanity over divisive identities.

In Uttarakhand’s Himalayan foothills, thousands of working-class families face an unsettling reality: their homes may soon disappear beneath soaring concrete pillars of a 62-billion-rupee elevated expressway.

On 10 August 2025, Anas al-Sharif — Gaza’s most recognisable frontline reporter — was killed alongside four Al Jazeera colleagues in an Israeli strike on a journalist tent outside al-Shifa Hospital. Under the Geneva Conventions, journalists are protected. Their deliberate killing is a war crime.

In a move raising serious concerns about freedom of speech, the Indian State in Kashmir has banned 25 books under its new criminal codes. The order, issued on August 5 without due process, declares these books “propagate false narratives and secessionism” and must be forfeited to the government.

An investigation by Middle East Eye has uncovered the extent of a sustained campaign to derail International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan’s investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. The revelations are deeply troubling.

JOIN US TOMORROW! Suchitra and Heba discuss the repression of academic freedom when it comes to Palestine. Under the guise of “safety,” administrators are silencing dissent, erasing Palestinian narratives, and reshaping the boundaries of discourse. Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/censoring-...

Six years ago today, India unilaterally revoked Article 370, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its limited autonomy and laying the legal groundwork for a full-fledged settler-colonial project. At The Polis Project, our mandate is unwavering: we centre communities in resistance.

The word hunger may sound abstract to most but in Gaza it represents a physical and psychological assault. The body loses its balance. Nothing functions normally. Pushed to the limits just to survive, people no longer adhere to the ways they once considered normal.

What does it mean to teach, learn, or speak about Palestine in the American university today? Heba Gowayed and Suchitra Vijayan will speak about the political policing of syllabi, the institutional backlash, and the implications of this climate of fear.

A collection of 20 short stories written by women revolutionaries, titled Viyyukka, meaning “The Morning Star” in Gondi, reflects the Maoist movement in areas of armed struggle in India. The stories have been published, ironically, at a time when the Government is trying to exterminate Maoism.

On Saturday, Israeli naval forces stormed the Handala, a civilian aid vessel attempting to reach Gaza. On board were 21 international activists and journalists, including Chris Smalls, the U.S. labour organiser who led the historic unionisation drive at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse in 2022.