Dámaris Herrera Salazar

Since March 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic, there have been more than 200 million confirmed cases worldwide, including almost 5 million deaths. The pandemic has functioned like a macroscopic x-ray, making visible a wide range of socioeconomic fault lines and political failures.

In January 2020, the elite Indian engineering college IIT Kanpur set up a panel to investigate whether the Urdu poem Hum Dekhenge (“We shall see”), written in 1970 by the eminent South Asian poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, was “anti-Hindu.” Students had recited the poem on the college’s grounds to express support for those who were protesting against new discriminatory citizenship laws and heavy-handed police action targeted at India’s Muslims.

The Immanent Frame invites proposals for Exchanges on any questions related to the academic study and public understanding of secularism and religion. The deadline for submitting an Exchange for consideration is October 1, 2021. Click here for the submission form.