Berkeley is home to over a century of radical organizing by South Asian Americans, from Ghadar Party freedom fighters to new generations of feminist and LGBTQ organizers. Our first art show, “OUR NAME IS REBEL”: IMAGES OF BERKELEY’S RADICAL SOUTH ASIAN LEGACY, ran all November 2013 in celebration of this legacy.
San Francisco Bay Area artists NISHA SEMBI and AMMAN DESAI brought radical histories to life through fine art pieces that included paintings, linocuts, prints, and an indoor mural installation. Their subjects covered a century of local South Asian American movements for justice, but with a special focus on the Ghadar Party, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2013.
Many of the stories were from the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, a monthly radical history event curated by Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee, which just celebrated its first anniversary. Sembi and Desai’s works sat alongside some of our favorite pieces of art from the Bay Area’s radical South Asian publishing history.
All art below is © the original artists (with the exception of “Ghadar Di Gunj” and “United States of India”).
Please get permission from the artists before reusing/reproducing these images.
[Nisha Sembi, with Amman Desai and Barnali Ghosh / “Kartar Singh Sarabha” (2013) / Mural] Kartar Singh Sarabha (1896-1915) was a UC Berkeley student, poet, and revolutionary who organized immigrant students and farmers to fight British rule in India. He moved to Berkeley in 1912, at age 16. As an early member of the Ghadar Party, he organized Punjabi farmers around California, and managed the printing of the party’s newsletters while living at 2026 Center Street. Kartar returned to India in 1914 to help organize a nationwide armed revolt. He was captured by the British in 1915, and executed at age 19. He went on to inspire South Asian anti-colonial heroes like Bhagat Singh. The Ghadar Party was a radical South Asian anti-imperial movement founded in 1913, and headquartered in San Francisco. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs from across the West Coast came together to organize a global movement to fight the Empire, often organizing alongside anarchists, Wobblies, and Irish nationalists. Thousands of Ghadarites returned to India to help organize an armed mutiny. While the Ghadar Mutiny failed, the Ghadar Party inspired anti-imperial movements around the world. 2013 marks the 100-year anniversary of the Ghadar Party, whose legacy we honor with our art.
[Nisha Sembi / “Free India Now” (2013) / Acrylic on wood] When Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended elections and civil liberties in 1975, UC Berkeley’s Indian Students Association responded with protests, newsletters, and organizing. The students, mostly recent immigrants, continued their struggle against state repression for the full duration of the Emergency, from 1975-1977, despite threats from the Indian government. Growing up as a political organizer in Berkeley, Sembi was drawn to the image of masked South Asian women organizing for justice in her hometown. The radiant piece depicts the activists in paper bag masks worn to protect their identities and dramatize the repression. The masks, an idea borrowed from Iranian activists protesting the Shah, often bore revolutionary messages. Sembi transposes a Black Panther Party slogan onto a mask, drawing connections between movements.
[Amman Desai / “Har Dayal” (2013) / Linocut print] Lala Har Dayal was a founder of the revolutionary Ghadar Party. He moved to Berkeley in 1911, living at 2026 Center Street for some of that time. He was a complex figure, at times influenced by Hinduism, anarchism, and industrial unionism. His speeches across the West Coast helped mobilize South Asian American students, farmers, and other American allies to organize to free India from British imperialism. Desai depicts Har Dayal organizing South Asians in agricultural communities. While many of his audience members were focused primarily on immigrant rights, Har Dayal made the case that they were likely to gain equal rights in the face of American structural racism only after their homeland was decolonized.
[Nisha Sembi / “Ghadar Printing Press” / Acrylic on wood] The Ghadar Party, the revolutionary South Asian American movement to end British colonialism in India, started publishing newsletters and pamphlets in 1913. Their press was based in San Francisco, and operated first by UC Berkeley student Kartar Singh Sarabha. Ghadar publications were smuggled into dozens of countries. The original press is now located at the Stockton Gurudwara Sahib. Sembi’s painting pays homage to the Ghadar printing press and its role as a powerful tool to mobilize communities to resist colonialism. The hand-cranked printing press, portrayed here in riotous color, enabled arguably the most effective publishing project in South Asian American history, helping convince thousands of West Coast immigrants to return to colonized India to organize a mutiny against the British.
[Amman Desai / “Kartar Dhillon” (2013) / Pen on paper] Berkeley resident Kartar Dhillon (1915-2008) was the living link connecting a century of South Asian American radical organizing. Her father was one of the earliest wave of immigrants from Punjab to the US, and she was one of the few female members of the Ghadar Party. Over the years, she worked as a World War II machinist, supported the Black Panthers, did labor and working class organizing, and raised three children as a single mother. In her final years, she mentored young artists and activists fifty years her junior. Desai frames Kartar Dhillon as a modern day Meerabai (see bottom center), a Hindu saint often seen as a symbol of female autonomy in light of gendered familial and cultural expectations. Dhillon defied family and community expectations to pursue education, work, activism, and motherhood on her own terms. (Can you find the hidden bullhorn, pen, paintbrush, and baby in the image above?)
[Amman Desai / “Tinku” (2013) / Linocut print] Activist and tech entrepreneur Ali ‘Tinku’ Ishtiaq was born in Bangladesh, and moved to Berkeley in 1982. He was an early founding member of Trikone (the world’s first South Asian LGBTQ organization), a co-founder of the Bangladesh Support Network, a co-chair of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and a co-founder of Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism. A long-time Berkeleyan, he recently returned to his adopted hometown after several years away. This print honors Ishtiaq’s role in the founding of Trikone, as well as the role of South Asians organizing against the occupation of Palestine and Kashmir.
[The United States of India, August 1924 / Image courtesy South Asian American Digital Archive] The publication depicted is an issue of The United States of India, an English-language Ghadar publication launched in July 1923. On the cover is an alternate female representation of India, wearing a sari, but with Euro-American influences.
[Artist Unknown / “Support the Indian People’s Struggle…” (c. 1976) / Woodcut / Image courtesy Sharat G. Lin] The Indian Students Association at UC Berkeley responded to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s suspension of democracy in India in 1975 with years of protest, writing, and nationwide organizing. This focus was reflected in the newsletter, The Bridge. This woodcut was created by an American ally and gifted to the student movement opposing the state of Emergency in India, according to ISA activist Sharat G. Lin. The image ran on the front cover of the October 1976 issue of The Bridge. Articles in the October 1976 issue of The Bridge included “Indo-Dictatorship or Democracy,” “Nehru on Fascism,” “The Indian Communist Movement,” “Dalit Panthers – Harijan Revolt,” and a proposal for a North American “Alliance Against Fascist Dictatorship in India.”
[Ghadar ki Gunj (Urdu edition), 1914 / Image courtesy South Asian American Digital Archive] The publication on the left is the first Urdu language edition of Ghadar ki Gunj (“Echoes of Mutiny”), a compilation of nationalist and socialist poetry. On the cover is a personification of Mother India, armed and ready to defend her homeland.