Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians is a collective of community members, activists, artists, performers, academics, physicians, and professionals from across Aotearoa New Zealand committed to a vision of India based on progressive values.
We believe that India has long offered a vital register for democracy, pluralism, socialism, religious freedoms through state supported secularism and seek to forward these fundamental values in the engagement of the community in Aotearoa with India-related issues. We hope to provide an intellectual and community space that brings together both first generation immigrants alongside the diaspora that has called Aotearoa New Zealand home for multiple generations.
Some of the key issues we hope to address through dialogue on various platform include:
- Concerns around the consolidation and deployment of hate in India.
- Concerns that this hate is being fuelled by the Indian diaspora in Aotearoa.
- Concerns around restrictions and persecutions of political dissenters in India.
- Concerns around homogenization of culture around singular narratives of India.
- Concerns around policies (cultural, political, health, and economic) that work to systematically marginalise communities in India.
- Concerns around human rights of minority groups in India.
- Concerns around dignity and wellbeing of gender diverse communities in India.
- Concerns around women's rights and reproductive justice in India.
- Concerns around youth and children's rights in India.
- Concerns about the effects of ongoing neoliberalization on low-income communities in India.
- Concerns about the ongoing privatization of public resources in India.
Our goal is to both counter this climate of hate and extreme neoliberalism as well as offer an alternative register based on the principles of dialogue, difference, and equality.
Through community outreach and engagement, we hope to make space for different ways to talk about India that are not deeply embroiled in historically problematic projects, but rather offer a progressive narrative for future facing policies and practices.
