Friday 19 September 17:00 ~ For the Love of a Kashmiri & Vanishing Acts, part of Amsterdam BANGS autonomous theatre and performance festival.
The evening starts with poetry inspired by our solidarity with Palestine, extending to include Kashmir. Then a story about love in a mesh of unfreedoms, followed by a talk using extracts from books on Kashmir recently banned by the Indian government.
This year’s donations go to mutual aid in Palestine and Kashmir without relying on the NGO complex.
Politicians are selfish comedians constantly fooling us.
But we the people are much better clowns!
Climb off the stage, flood the streets!
BANGS WILL TAKE OVER AMSTERDAM!
Amsterdam BANGS festival is a politically charged joyride. Check out the website and instagram for more.
For the Love of a Kashmiri
Storytelling
August 5th, 2025 marked six years since Kashmir’s autonomous status was unilaterally revoked by India. To commemorate, the Indian government released a list of 25 books to be banned in Kashmir. Books about Kashmiri struggle for freedom. Over the next days, police officers raided bookstores in Srinagar, demanding to annex copies of the banned books. Kashmiris laughed. Try as it might, the state cannot ban the yearning for freedom. Can it chain the wind? They say that freedom, azadi, travels through the hearts of lovers, dreamers. It seeps through walls and widens the cracks in them. This is a story of hearts caught in a mesh of unfreedoms – asking: Can love be chained?
Vanishing Acts
by Sruti Bala
This talk uses extracts from books on Kashmir recently banned by the Indian government to reflect on disappearance and erasure as modes of governance on the one hand, and as tools of theatrical performance on the other. The talk concludes with an invitation to write postcards to incarcerated activists.
Before these shows, we will be gifted with poetry by @cglr_ksgl on Palestine, to create a movement extending the solidarity many of us have learned to have toward Palestine to include Kashmir.
This year, half of the money we are raising is going to support a project in Kashmir documenting land grabs.