Yamini Krishnan | 11 June 2023 | Scroll.in

When Varavara Rao was arrested in 2018, many of the demands for his release focused on his identity as a poet. “What kind of country are we,” a concerned citizen said in dismay, “when we put poets behind bars?” This, perhaps, is an indication of the revolutionary power that poetry can have.

Hamraaz is an anonymous poet on Instagram who has amassed a community of 1,500 followers for their poems about instances of oppression at the hands of the government. With a bio that reads “Here is where I whisper poems about the dark times”, Hamraaz ends every post with a seemingly ominous request. They ask their followers to DM them their e-mail IDs for the project’s mailing list. “It’s an insurance policy if nothing else”, they write, “in case they shut this page down like they shut down my Facebook”

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