SECULAR and progressive cultural practitioners all over India today suffer from a sense of disconnect. There had been all-India organizations in the past like the Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association and the IPTA which had offered to some extent a platform where such cultural practitioners could come together and exchange their views on the evolving context of their creative practice. After these ceased to exist at the all-India level, some of the government-sponsored but autonomous bodies like the Sahitya Akademi, the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the National School of Drama etc had at least partially allowed a confluence of the sheer diversity of cultural practice in our country, giving the practitioners a crucial sense of connectedness.

Today, however, we are being sucked into a dark vortex of change threatening to undo the very idea of progress which had emerged from the Freedom Struggle. India’s sovereignty and the Constitution that holds us together emerged from that Struggle. Both are under attack now from the alliance that global corporate capital has formed in our country with the most virulent fascistic forces represented by RSS-BJP at the social-political level. The same fascistic forces control the government and the administration today at the Centre and in many of the states.

In the cultural sphere, this means that all cultural practice is subsumed as ‘culture industry’ under the dominance of corporate capital and media owned by it. At the same time, it also means that to strengthen and perpetuate that dominance, the most retrograde and divisive ideology is promoted among the people in an aggressive manner. Policies of public education and research are subverted. The cultural ‘akademis’ themselves lose whatever autonomy they had and are sought to be taken over by the government. A regime of terror on one hand and a culture of silence on the other jeopardise all creative initiatives among the people.

The Indian Cultural Congress held in Kochi from 20-22 December, 2025 was a preliminary effort on the part of such cultural practitioners to come together overcoming the barriers of geographical distance and linguistic diversity and to find out ways of addressing and resisting that onslaught, which all of them are conscious of in one way or other.

The Government of Kerala hosted this Cultural Congress at a time when it would be hard to find a state government to admit or endorse the relevance of the project; the Chief Minister of Kerala himself addressed the inaugural session in a speech that emphasised the importance of culture and the need to preserve the diversity that is our strength. The all-India online cultural newsletter Hum Dekhenge was brought out in print for the first time under the auspices of the Cultural Congress and distributed among participants. 

Apart from the Kerala Government’s initiative, the Cultural Congress could not have materialised except for the joint effort put into it by various organisations and individuals in Kerala, by a bevy of volunteers including students and youth who worked day and night and by the people of Kochi. Spread over the generous grounds of Subhash Park overlooking the Kochi backwaters, grounds which were not cordoned off from the streets in any way, it was indeed an exhilarating experience to find that audience was never lacking for the simultaneous discussion groups during the day and the cultural performances in the evening. Participants included some of the best-known figures on the Indian cultural scene today who have distinguished themselves by their outspoken defense of democracy and secularism in culture. Most of those invited came and some who were unable to attend due to unavoidable reasons sent messages supporting the purpose of the Congress.

The unassuming and friendly ambience to which both organisers and participants contributed provided a backdrop for the alternative aesthetics that they were all looking for together in opposition to the present cultural regime based on money and violence.

The performances that took place at different venues, whether it was the play on Babasaheb Ambedkar from Telengana, or the JANAM presentation on women’s work or the Haryana group’s recitation performances from Muktibodh—they were all experimenting with alternative ways of reaching out to the larger sections of people under the thrall of corporate media. This same problematic was articulated by participants in discussion groups such as the one where young film-makers from Tamil Nadu narrated how they were trying to overcome the barrier of the lack of financiers in making serious films. The need to combat the co-option of folk and tribal culture by the world market and its alienation from its toiling primary producers was also discussed in a different group.

It would be difficult for a single person to sum up the matter deliberated on in all the discussion groups; in some of the groups presentations by the main discussants were followed by enthusiastic exchanges from the floor. One could see that people were eager to raise questions and express their views in spite of the problems natural to a multi-lingual gathering.

The predicament of the writer today, resistance through theatre, tradition and modernity in music and dance, language as communication and language as instrument of domination, media, state and society, science and myth – such topics provided the platform for cultural practitioners to take a self-critical view of their own role in a situation of crisis. While everyone agreed that culture was going through dark times, some hope was also generated through the exchange.

I shall here try to tease out what the nature of this hope was and also to indicate the shared anxiety as to how far this hope can be turned into a joint resolve.

The Cultural Congress, on its last day, adopted a Declaration unanimously. It was also proposed by Professor Ganesh Narayan Devy that the next Cultural Congress should be held in Dharwar, Karnataka. Thus a time frame is created and some basic principles for what is to be done within this time are agreed upon.

The Declaration talks of four principles that cultural practitioners present at the Cultural Congress recognize as the common basis of their practice: the secular principle, the peace principle, the freedom principle and the respect principle.

Coming together of people from different linguistic and artistic communities, probably with different political views, at the Cultural Congress took place on the basis of these principles. If this is so, then we also have to admit that the common ‘politics’ of this gathering is the resolve to bring other cultural practitioners in their states with similar views together on the same platform. Also the other side of this ‘politics’ is to identify and combat that which is the greatest threat to these four principles on the ground, namely the RSS-BJP’s alliance with global corporates and their plans of ‘social engineering’ to perpetuate their joint domination over the people of India.

The cultural aspect of this struggle is all the more crucial because this evil hegemony draws part of its strength by inflaming contradictions within ourselves, stoking the conflicts, uncertainties, deprivations that are a part of our social-political history.

Our enemies have been able to carry their campaign of hatred and division so far into the minds of the people that today we are being forced to fight a ‘war of position’, defending the rich cultural heritage we gained through the Independence Struggle from being destroyed altogether. To turn this into a ‘war of manoeuvre’ at the cultural level, enabling us to forge ahead with cultural alternatives is the task we have set for ourselves. Whether we can rise to the challenge the future alone can tell, but this is the hope that the Cultural Congress has awakened in us.

Interventions by two very eminent participants in this Cultural Congress summarise the reason for such hope. Saeed Akhtar Mirza said that after making ‘Naseem’, his last film which evokes the destruction of the Babri Mosque, he had thought that everything had come to an end; but after that, he just went travelling all over India meeting and talking to very ordinary working people everywhere. That brought back his faith in the country of his birth. Similarly, Ganesh Devy while giving dire warning about the violent language of domination that is overwhelming us today said that such domination has happened in the past too, but the people of India have always been able to survive it and to emerge stronger. This time too they will do it.