Songs from a separatist rehabilitation camp
India, March 8 -- F
our years after Dhiraj Rabha was born, his family fled their home in Baraligaon, Assam. His father, Dhananjay Rabha, had joined the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) as a student, in 1984. By 1999, convinced the rebellion had lost its way and keen to be part of promised peace talks with the government, he laid down arms. As a senior member of the political wing of ULFA, this meant he and his family were now under threat.
Dhiraj Rabha, 30, still lives in the rehabilitation camp to which they moved. It sits in an abandoned cotton mill. Tall bamboo machans serve as watchtowers. Its architecture of surveillance has informed his art.
His graduate degree presentation at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan included a watchtower th...
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