Return to hope? Kolkata trio register protest against polarisation through unique calendars

For three years now, Kolkata-based independent documentary filmmaker and activist Mitali Biswas and her friends Sagarika Dutta and Abir Neogy have been performing what can only be described as a labour of love. And the fruit of their collective labour is a project titled Calendar: Canvas of Untold History.

Quite literally, the three friends produce an annual calendar, themed on topics that are largely under the public’s radar despite being in plain view. “The primary aim was a desire to talk about marginalised people,” says Mitali. “And because all three of us have been associated with the women’s rights movement, our first calendar was about women from history.”

Among the topics for the 2024 calendar are love jihad, the hijab ban, the show of social and communal harmony among ordinary people during the NRC-CAA protests, the East Delhi riots, and the farmers’ protests, or the loving care bestowed on Kolkata’s historic synagogues by a group of Muslim caretakers, even as Israel and Palestine are engaged in brutal conflict in West Asia.

The context to the illustrations on every page are provided in both Bengali and English.

The theme is harmony, and the need to put up every possible barricade against rabidly religious polarisation. “The ambience of violence all around us, and the rise of the right wing, make it imperative that our protest is heard,” Mitali says. “We want to remind people what the real India is like.”

For the first calendar in 2022, among the women were freedom fighters like Kalpana Dutta, Pritilata Waddedar, and Suhasini Ganguly, as well as pioneering feminists like Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, who flew in the face of extreme social opposition to set up a school for Muslim girls in the early 20th century which went to become Kolkata’s famous Sakhawat Memorial school for girls.

For 2023, the trio focused on women involved in contemporary Indian socio-political movements such as the NRC-CAA agitations, or the iconic 2004 protests against the Armed Forces Special Prevention Act (AFSPA) by the group ‘Mothers of Manipur’. This last was a rally in the nude staged by women at Kangla Fort in Imphal valley, against the reported rape and murder of 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama, picked up by the 17th Assam Rifles under AFSPA and found with 16 bullet wounds the next day, as well as horrific injuries to her genitals.

“Every time, the illustrations were done by artist friends of ours, all of them young people, such as a friend from Kashmir who illustrated the page on the role of women in the Kashmir agitation for 2023,” Mitali explains.

Clearly, the calendars have begun to make an impact. “More than what we sold in Kolkata, we were able to ensure that the calendars reached activists, professors, and other relevant people in all parts of the country,” Mitali says.

The response among ordinary buyers has been strong too, says Mitali. “Friends have joined our project from all over India. And there have been almost no negative reactions thus far. A few people were hit a little hard by the AFSPA protest visual, or that of Nangeli (a Dalit woman in early 19^th-century Travancore, who supposedly cut off her breasts in protest against an oppressive tax), but on the whole, we’ve had nothing but support.”

Details of the 2024 calendar from Calendar: Canvas of Untold History are available on the project’s Facebook page