“There is my friend, my sister,” said Pinky Kumari, her face lighting up with a smile. She was pointing to a photograph on display at an art exhibition in Shahbad Dairy, a low-income neighbourhood in North Delhi, on September 6.
The photograph showed Srishti Gupta, a 28-year-old artist, addressing a group of women, who were listening attentively. Gupta used to run basic literacy classes for the women of Shahbad Dairy, Kumari recalled.
A few steps away from this exhibit, scraps carrying children’s messages for Gupta adorned a sheet of sky-blue chart paper that hung from a string. “Miss you Srishti didi,” many of the messages read, using the Hindi word for elder sister as a mark of respect. Some of the children told Scroll that Gupta besides teaching them art also helped them revise their school lessons.
The residents of the neighbourhood have not met with Gupta since April 11, when she was detained by Uttar Pradesh Police for allegedly inciting violence during a workers’ protest in Noida, an industrial city in the National Capital Region. Her friends, who describe her as an “illegally imprisoned artist”, had organised the exhibition in Shahbad Dairy to raise awareness about her incarceration.
In April, thousands of industrial workers hit the streets in Noida to...
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