Passive Protest; notes on resistance

‘Passive Protest: Notes on resistance’ is a rumination on anti-colonial resistance in relation to my great grandfather, Raghubhai Shastri who was a freedom fighter in India in the 1930’s. The work is a culmination of archives of his life, his freedom fighting work and subsequent arrest and imprisonment as a result of mobilising against the colonial British Law in India. His playful approach to finding loopholes in the system, like hiding behind the pretense of religion and smashing colonial produce such as pumpkins as an act of anti colonial resistance. These stories inspired the three part performance series, the last of which happened in Singapore. The work holds space for the actions of the average middle class Indian civilian and archive stories that have been passed down through word of mouth but never formally recorded. My work ultimately begs the question; What does it mean to hold space for actions of anti-colonialism within my ancestry in the colonising land?