Curatorial Note by Adwait Singh
There is a theological tradition, as old as philosophy itself, that’s known for its negative deductions of the divine. Deriving from Greek roots, the term ‘apophatic’ signals knowledge gleaned through denial, or negation. God is not this, nor that—is how an apophatic theologian would approach his quandary, not unlike a sculptor chipping away at a marble block to wrest the form. The present body of work by Wahida Ahmed traces, and troubles recent constructions of identity in her native Assam that can be described as apophatic in their negative renderings of regionality through abjection. It does so by employing jacquard—a weaving technique comprising a chain of punch cards that automates patterning—as a medium, metaphor, and lens for scrutinising the socio-cultural fabric of the state.
Jacquard in the form of mekhela sador, or the red-on-white gamosa has come to symbolise the Assamese cultural identity like few other things. To date, the lurching clacks issuing in tandem with the tug, swing, and pedal of jacquard looms predominate the sonic landscapes around Guwahati. During a visit to one such village called Sualkuchi, around four years ago, the artist fell in with a pile of discarded punch cards, prompting reflections about punch-outs whose very elimination secures the weave. A materialist affinity began unfolding as this dross, twice removed from the final garment, came to correspond to her own existential position. Over time, these salvaged dots, like dregs in a cup, started revealing patterns, agencies, and exclusions shaping the Assamese society at large.
Expulsions have long governed the matrix of Assamese identity, stretching at least as far back as the Partition that saw a large influx of refugees from what East Pakistan was then. Consequently, the Immigration (Expulsion from Assam) Act of 1950 was passed by the Indian parliament and the first National Register of Citizens (NRC) prepared for its execution in 1951. Despite these provisions, the migration continued illegally on account of poor border enforcement and a lack of political will to stem it. In 1979, a group of student leaders, alarmed by unexplained inflation of electorates in certain pockets of the state, broke out in fierce protest. Their demands for detention, deportation, and disenfranchisement of illegal immigrants gathered into a mass movement that would last for 6 years, ending only with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985.
When the final draft of NRC was published in 2019, it failed to account for a little over 19 lakh applicants (almost equally divided between Hindus and Muslims), leaving them to appeal before a Foreigners’ Tribunal, or face detention. While the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 offers a glimmer of hope in the form of expedited citizenship to non-Muslims excluded from the NRC, it leaves Muslims in precarious stead. Notwithstanding the overt protests greeting CAA in Assam, the ethnic nature of the age-old anti-foreigner crusade in the state has been gradually giving way to the countrywide phenomenon of Hindutva.
Over the recent years, the state has emerged as a nursery of sorts for testing, naturalising, and disseminating a politics of predestination that packages the safety of the elect in terms of damnation of the rest. Its manifestations range from Foreigners Tribunals to detention centers that have started spreading well beyond Assam. Earlier this year, the Matia Transit Camp became operational as the largest detention center in the country with a capacity to hold 3000 inmates. Located 125 kilometers west of Guwahati, the place has already become synonymous with the nearby ‘ghost mountain’ which, as the legend goes, was a preserve of the dead that no one was allowed to cross. ‘An ancient ghost mountain crowned with a storm’—the haunting words by the celebrated poet Nilmani Phookan have come to adumbrate the faces of the living-dead at places like Matia whose fates hang in limbo. Like its followers, the moon appears to have been banished to the shadows. By posing its dark side to the audience, Ahmed offers the possibility for a vision uneclipsed by prejudice. It is a vision that glows with migrant knowledge collective singing of borgeets and zikirs, and sways to the rhythms of syncretic rituals.
