In 2002, as a 19-year-old student in Pune’s Wadia College, Ramesh Gaichor was disturbed by the deadly communal violence in Gujarat that had...
In 2002, as a 19-year-old student in Pune’s Wadia College, Ramesh Gaichor was disturbed by the deadly communal violence in Gujarat that had claimed over 1,000 lives. Passionate about poetry and theatre, he soon found an outlet for expressing his anxieties: the Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural organisation founded by artiste Amarnath Chautaliya in response to the Gujarat riots.
Most of the early members of the Manch were students and artists, largely from Maharashtrian working-class families. Gaichor’s father, for instance, worked as a security guard in Pune’s Yerawada area.
The young members staged songs, poems and street plays about communal harmony and unity. Over the years, their numbers dwindled, but Gaichor and a handful of others stayed, and gradually established the Manch as one of Pune’s foremost progressive socio-cultural movements, using music and theatre to raise awareness about casteism, patriarchy, communalism, farmer distress and various forms of extremism.
Kabir Kala Manch was one of the 250 Dalit and human rights organisations that organised the Elgar Parishad, an event that took place in Pune city on December 31, 2017, a day before violent clashes broke out between Maratha and Dalit groups near the village of Koregaon Bhima in Pune district.
On September 7, Gaichor and his Kabir...
