All Was Good

Taking its sardonic title from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ill-fated words, Teresa Braggs’ All Was Good drops us amongst eclectic student groups protesting the proposed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the city of Bangalore. They coin slogans, sing songs of resistance and discuss politics in a social-media-savvy, international lingo. The casual camera captures their weary eyes, hoarse voices and inked fingers, the imprint of long nights spent in barricaded streets and makeshift shelters.

In September 2019, Modi assured expatriate crowds at a Houston rally that everything was fine back home. Weeks later, protests broke out across the country against the proposed CAA, which sought to introduce a religious criterion to regularising illegal immigration. Combined with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the act would potentially denaturalise marginalised individuals unable to prove their citizenship.

A fleeting glimpse of Utopia, All Was Good presents another vision of community, one mindful of irreconcilable differences and united under the secular Indian constitution. Burka-clad Muslim women join hands with Dalit and LGBTQ activists to lead the protests, pitting a different politics of identity against the NRC’s mandate of self-identification. Riddled with internal contradictions, the participants may not always agree, but they will have heard each other.

– Srikanth Srinivasan