Fearless Collective Mural - London

EXCERPT

On 18 May 2024, Fearless marched alongside 1 million people in London to mark 76 years since the Nakba, or the ‘Catastrophe’. As a South Asian organisation tied to movements in the global south, little brings us to work in the heart of empire. Yet at moments like this, when we believe we’ve seen the very worst of humanity, only for it to be surpassed the very next day, the very next hour, it becomes crucial to look at the roots and intersections of what unites us. The South Asian decolonial movement is inextricably linked with the ongoing liberation struggle for Palestine. The British empire, which drew the borders for the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, also signed the Balfour Declaration, in favour of ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’. 800,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes during the Nakba in 1948, with keys to their homes in hand. The images are reminiscent of the millions of South Asians displaced and dispossessed during the Partition at the same time. South Asian poets, writers, politicians and workers have historically been brothers and sisters in arms for the Palestinian cause. As the mass killing of more than 36,000 Palestinians and their continued displacement escalates before our very eyes, we know that the Nakba did not begin, nor end in 1948, and that the cultural resistance must live on. 

Fearless came to London to occupy public space in the heart of this empire, to create a public monument in the form of a mural, that tells the story of our people of the global south and our resistance against ongoing imperialism.

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