12th May 2020
6pm IST
The webinar will be held on the online platform Zoom. To join the webinar please click on the link below:

To start off the Guftgu Talk Series 2020 we will be in conversation with photographer and author Rohit Saha on his book 1528. To purchase a copy of the book you can write to hello@rohitsaha.com or visit the links below :
Within India
For outside India

About 1528:

In August 2016, after a 16-year hunger strike protesting the removal of the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), civil rights activist and poet, Irom Sharmila broke her fast. 

Her drive for change began in 2000, in response to the slaughter of ten people at a bus stand by the armed forces in a village called Malom. This incident came to be known as Malom Massacre.AFSPA(Armed Forces (Special Powers)Act), as it has been enforced in Manipur – often described as a ‘disturbed state’ – allows the military to execute anyone on the mere suspicion of terrorism. It has recently been claimed that there are well over 1528 people who have died in such Extra-Judicial killings carried out by the Armed Forces between 1979 and 2012. With this project, my aim was to understand the nature and scale of these fictitious clashes that are called ‘fake encounters’, keeping the landscape as a witness. By volunteering for the EEVFAM (Extra-Judicial Execution Victim Families of Manipur) – an organization formed by the widows of victims – I gained insight and gathered evidence about the situation at hand. By going through victims’ testimonies as well as witness accounts, I was able to shape my current perspective – a photo book of my personal experiences in Manipur between 2016-2108.

About the author :

Rohit Saha b(1990)  is a visual artist from Calcutta, India. He works with photography, illustration, and animation to narrate stories. He has been working with communities, landscapes, and socio-political phenomena in various parts of India. He did his Bachelors in Multimedia with specialization in Animation from St Xavier’s College, Calcutta and did his Masters in Photography from National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar. His graduation project about extra-judicial killings in Manipur titled “1528” won the Alkazi Photobook Award 2017. He was awarded the prestigious Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellowship in 2018