Touchable project is a socially engaged arts organization that works with religious and cultural communities from South Asia and the diaspora. We do this work through creating art that assists in our visibility and engagement in all of our communities. We support artists, movements, healers, and organizers dealing with intractable systems of oppression through a collaborative model centered on socially engaged art making that develops activists and grassroots work. Using a transmedia approach, we connect multiple disciplines and platforms -- from film to spiritual practice to software development -- to maximize potential for change and engender workable, community driven solutions to the most pressing challenges we face.
Our vision is to center the leadership of South Asian minority groups in the ongoing redefinition of South Asian identity in NYC, America, across the Diaspora, and in our home countries, from India to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh to Pakistan. Our membership includes Dalits (formerly known as the “Untouchable” caste in India), Adivasi (indigenous), Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian South Asian women who live on the margins of mainstream South Asian culture. While we are homogenized through the process of racialization into the category “South Asian” (and therefore share many of the daily challenges of racism), the reality is that this label renders invisible the violence (including sexual) Dalit, Muslim, Christian, and Adivasi immigrants have faced in our home countries because of Hindu fundamentalism (currently a ruling force under the Modi administration in India), which seeks to make Hinduism and its strictest interpretations the way of the land, fueling both Islamophobia and anti-caste attitudes here and abroad. It also masks the traditional cultural structures of Hindu fundamentalism that serve to maintain barriers along race, class, gender and religious lines, allowing for their transference to the experience of life in NYC for far too many immigrants and their children. We have been galvanized by the stories of our members who have been ostracized, targeted by individuals and organizations but who have no been able to share their stories publicly.
We began with the making of the film #Dalitwomenfight. During its production the incredible demand for our content and stories led us to share and create art inspired from this film. This has ignited a passionate arts movement that has reach from the diaspora in the US into India all with the aim of exploring and sharing the Untouchable/Dalit experience to not only shed light on our resistance and dignity but also to create international movements to end caste in our lifetime. As a result the Touchable project now includes multiple artmaking strategies and campaigns that help us continue to break the silence on caste apartheid, build with other communities, and create compelling experiences around the unique experiences of the Dalit community. We have worked on various caste related arts projects and events including #DALITWOMENFIGHT, #DALITHISTORYMONTH, and the California Textbook struggle.
As socially engaged artists we believe art -- in both process and product -- is the ideal tool for breaking the silence on taboo subjects such as the state and religious violence we face in our communities, both here and abroad. Because many of us are systematically locked out of institutions due to our status as religious and cultural minorities within the South Asian American community, art allows us an organizing platform from which to be seen, resist, strategize, and move our communities toward healing.
Our presentation strategy is multifold. Because of the urgent circumstances of the Dalit/Untouchable community, we intend on securing theatrical distribution, as well as the international festival circuit. In addition, we will be working with international and national NGOs in India, US, and Europe who work on caste, human rights, and women’s issues. Since we will be collaborating with these organizations throughout our production process, we intend to continue this relationship so that they can be presenting partners for local screenings, art making workshops, and advocacy presentations, where the film and our other ongoing art and technology projects are used to support local, national, and international campaigns against caste.
