Emily Drabinski discussed the assault on free speech by right-wing movements around the world
Grace Banu was in a mental hospital, put there by her parents and subjected to injections multiple times a day to ‘change’ her gender when she discovered B R Ambedkar. It happened one afternoon in between painful sessions with the doctor when she walked into a lounging room and saw old books on the shelves. She picked out a blue spine and saw Ambedkar’s photo on the cover with the words ‘Speeches and Writings’. She started reading and her life was never the same. Banu isn’t the only one whose trajectory was changed with words. Most people gathered at the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi on Saturday were part of that coterie, there to discuss the need for the government to set up libraries in a country with a severe lack of spaces to access knowledge for free without censure or policing. The event was organised by the Free Libraries Network (FLN), a collective of more than 200 libraries around the country, which works to bring free libraries to underserved populations and recently released a policy report to advocate the same
