Oh look! ANOTHER one. Longlisted for Baillie Gifford. Even published by the SAME publisher. But I guess if I say a word about it, the literary national treaures of UK will (again!) compare me to Taliban & Daesh? And write 100s of articles smearing me?
Short 🧵

https://twitter.com/_thelondoner/status/1867611601731494205

Now before I am accused AGAIN of “policing the imagination” and “not reading the book,” yeah, I read it!

It was the year when I was setting up a book prize and ALL of UK publishing could not scrape together 100 books across all genres by writers of colour for submission

🧵Western governments have long been expert in propaganda photos which are effective AND cost efficient thanks to active collusion of Western press. One of my fav examples is Liberation of Paris 1944. SO many photos and press reports and very few tell the truth

https://twitter.com/prem_thakker/status/1862619297165521050

We have all seen pics like this: white soldiers marching the streets of Paris; white leaders of the Allies waving at crowds; white soldiers kissing women and babies and being mobbed by joyful Parisians. And few of us know that this spectacle was staged.

A short 🧵for this US election day. For the first time in my life I fully recognise that its results are irrelevant. They are nothing more than another PR exercise intended to obscure the Empire’s brutality and distract from the real work of liberation.
1/3 As a Hindu upper caste woman who grew up in India, I benefit from being part of the structurally privileged majority. Thise means my instinctive & ingrained politics are small c conservative. Twitter community has taught me to push past instinct & upbringing 2/n

Much to critique about Starmer’s stance on trans rights but 2 points:
1. Human rights are not beans to be counted and ‘balanced.’ Either we ALL have human riggts. Or none of us do.

2. Changes for equality have ALWAYS been against “public will” (a euphemism for elite bs) How does he plan to assess this ‘public will’? By another Brexit like referendum? Or by the hateful shreiks of a moribund press? Or by the numbers who turn out at protests?

Or by principles, ethics, basic morality? Changes for equality have ALWAYS been guided by the last!

A decision delivered on the day marking the martyr of the independence movement (specifically Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru who were executed in prison in 1931). Almost as if nobody thought this one through….

https://twitter.com/thequint/status/1638863454395039744

Almost as if BJP want to build RG as the face of the opposition in the country.

More than slight tbh. This was a really odd one. Homophobia of various (older, female) characters was a running and not very funny gag. Yet it also centred a homosocial relationship the way Bolllywood often has. #ABollywoodStateofMind

https://twitter.com/hamzajahanzeb/status/1638084861918433281

I re-watched the film while working on my book & found the depiction of Kantaben’s homophobia disturbing and fascinating. It’s articulated via the older, female, Gujarati house help which adds a whole range of intersections of gender, class, ethnicity etc #ABollywoodStateofMind

Happy #Pride. I am not marching for multiple reasons (including heat exacerbated pain issues) but I wanted to talk about why I (and how) as a straight woman, I wrote a gay brown protagonist in my novel @HotelArcadia_ I was introduced to public activism by queer friends in NYC.

As a teen in the 80s, I watched in horror as politicians, media, every sector of society victim blamed my friends for the AIDS crisis.

As a teen I chose love. And justice. And equality. I chose my friends.