For a little more than a month now, an artists’ collective in Mumbai has been diligently releasing a new poster on social media every night, highlighting an array of contemporary concerns in India, from restrictions on free speech to caste-based discrimination. Called Posters Unite, the campaign is an initiative of the 2020 Group, which describes itself “self-organised coalition of artists, architects, filmmakers, cultural administrators and live art practitioners”.
The poster series began on January 26, Republic Day, and will culminate on March 2 with a parade from Shivaji Park in Dadar to Carter Road in Bandra. The four-hour march, from 4 pm to 7 pm, will include plays and other performances. Around 1,000 visual and performing artists have been roped in for the event. They will choreograph various segments of the march, which is open to all.
The parade is being held in solidarity with Artists Unite!, a two-day event in Delhi on March 2 and 3, at which more than 200 musicians, artists and poets will perform at the Red Fort to speak up against hate and intolerance.
The initiative aims to highlight the threats that face India’s democracy as it heads into the general election later this year, according to the Posters Unite website. A member of the 2020 group told Scroll.in that the campaign seeks to “sow the seeds of a creative movement towards futures that we desire, and wish to realise – futures free of hate, of discrimination and violence”.
The march comes at a time of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan after the February 14 terror attack on a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama and the subsequent Indian Air Force strike on a terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot on Tuesday. This was followed by a reports of both countries shooting down each other’s fighter jets on Wednesday and Pakistan taking Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman into custody. He is to be freed on Friday.
While the campaign has not changed its focus in the wake of these events, an anti-war message is very much a part of the initiative, the representative said. “The focus for the Walk For The Future remains the same,” the group member added. “A collective desire for peaceful and loving co-existence, for freedom do not change when there is escalation, and bomb dropping at the border. It only reaffirms our need to take an active role in crafting our future.”
The 2020 group was formed last year (the 2019 election was “the glue that brought us together”, the representative said) with an aim to use art and creativity to promote a the vision of a more robust democracy for India. “Of course there was an overall urgency to counter divisiveness and the language of polarisation,” said a group member. “But for us, it posed a creative challenge. How not to be reactionary only, how to bypass current icons (enough fekuji memes and jokes going around whatsApp), and importantly evoke new possibilities, new language of poster making.”
More than 60 artists and studios have contributed posters to the campaign, including Aastha Chauhan, Jesal Kapadia, Monteiro-Jayashankar, Anpu Varkey, Shireen Gandhy, Geeta Seshu and Sukanya Ghosh, but the posters are released without credits. Contributions are open to all, according to the website.
For the 2020 Group, posters were the best medium to raise their voice against majoritarianism and hate. messages. “Posters have played their part in major social and political movements the world over, and have been used as a powerful medium, left right and centre,” the group representative said. “Its format, often converting text to image has a minimalism, a brevity and a charge. A commitment to release one poster every night, with copy-left, hi-resolution contributions by many artists, many of whom are trying to provoke new ways of seeing and imagining, rather that subscribing to one political or ideological mandate.”
Free of copyright, the posters can be downloaded, printed and shared by anyone. The posters reference several contemporary events in India since 2014, such as rising mob violence by cow protection vigilantes that has largely targetted minority, the 2016 suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, the ban on beef consumption and sale of cattle for slaughter in several Indian states and the use of pellet guns to crackdown on unrest in Kashmir, a debate that had peaked during the protests against the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in July 2016.
Several posters issue a call to “desaffronise”, which the 2020 Group defined as their variation of the word “decolonise”.
“Desaffronise is a call, to keep our constitutional fabric whose one bedrock is secularism, intact To prevent the re-writing of history, the colouring of our culture in the colours of Hindutva,” the representative said. “It is a new word, but very much aligned with the ideas of our Constitution.”
Corrections and clarifications: This article has been edited to clarify that organisers of the march have stated that the initiative does not intend to target a specific political party. “A common thread in all of them is to highlight the Constitution and showcase India’s plural and secular traditions,” they said.