Aamir Aziz, Anita Dube and Four Things We Learn on the Repackaging of Resistance for Elite Consumption

The recent allegations by poet-activist Aamir Aziz that acclaimed artist Anita Dube appropriated his protest poem Sab yaad rakha jayega, without letting him know and without compensation, reveal far more than a mere dispute over intellectual property, plagiarism and royalty.

It reveals the structural inequities embedded in the art world, where privilege, commercialisation and systemic erasure merge to silence marginalised voices. At its core, this is a story about who gets to own dissent, who profits from it, and who is left fighting for recognition in a system forever rigged.

And the irony?
The poem raged against injustice.
Anita Dube turned it into a luxury commodity—proof not only that injustice is alive, but that it now wears silk gloves and sells itself as art. That a poem written in defiance was gutted,defanged,and stitched into velvet for profit pic.twitter.com/1ldmB24yN9

— Aamir Aziz (@AamirAzizJmi) April 20, 2025

Asymmetry of privilege

Aziz’s poem, the title of which translates to 'everything will be remembered' emerged from the fiery heart of India’s anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2019-2020.

Its powerful lines, “Tumhare haath mein jitne bhi teer hain, sab humare seenon ke liye hain (All the arrows in your quiver are meant for our chests)," became an anthem for resistance against state violence targeting Muslims and other marginalised communities. The poem’s power lies in its raw, unfiltered origin. It was born in protest camps, recited at police barricades, and shared through grassroots networks.

It may not have been Faiz’s Hum dekhenge but along with Varun Grover’s Hum kagaz nahi dikhayange, Aziz’s poem captured the essence of a powerful moment of resistance. Invoked as a record of injustices by a majoritarian establishment, Aziz’s poem accentuated the idea of resisting oppressive forces by sticking to collective and individual memories.

When Dube, a celebrated artist with ties to elite galleries, allegedly reproduced Aziz’s words in a luxury art installation, imprinting them into velvet and wood without compensation to Aziz, it epitomised an old pattern of the extraction of marginalised narratives by those with power. Aziz, a Muslim poet from a community disproportionately impacted by the CAA, represents voices often excluded from mainstream cultural institutions in recent years. He did not operate within a rarefied art world usually dominated by upper-caste, economically-privileged gatekeepers.

This asymmetry reflects what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay termed “potential history”: the erasure of oppressed groups’ contributions by systems that repackage their resistance for elite consumption. By divorcing the poem from its political context and creator, the installation risks reducing a cry against state violence to aesthetic ornamentation. Worse, the gallery’s alleged initial refusal to acknowledge Aziz’s claims underscores how institutions often protect privileged artists while treating marginalised creators as disposable.

Commercialising dissent

Art’s commodification is not new, but the co-opting of dissent reveals a perverse irony: the same systems activists fight against end up profiting from their resistance. Dube’s use of Aziz’s poem, reportedly sold for lakhs as part of a high-end installation, exemplifies how radical art is sanitised for capitalist markets. It mirrors the trajectory of progressive slogans or indigenous designs which are mass-produced by fast-fashion brands.

"I don’t know this artist’s work," writes Amitav Kumar, but "it seems to be of the sort that prettifies protest, a kind of decorous practice dear to liberals."

Aziz has allowed free use of his work for protest purposes, stating, “Poetry is a weapon, not a product.”

Yet Dube’s alleged actions cross a critical line, of profiting from his labour without credit, of transfiguring solidarity into exploitation.

The gallery’s belated offer of an “amicable resolution” reduces this to some kind of a contractual oversight.

This commercialisation also neuters dissent’s political edge. When a poem about state violence becomes a decorative piece in a private collection, its urgency is strangulated. As Arundhati Roy once said, capitalism has a “genius for absorbing its own antagonists.”

Privilege blindness

Dube’s stature as a former Kochi-Muziris Biennale curator and internationally exhibited artist underscores how privilege operates in the art world. Her access to galleries, critics and funding mechanisms grants her work immediate legitimacy. This is the legitimacy Aziz, despite his viral impact as a poet of protest, lacks.

Dube’s defence, that her intent was to “celebrate” the poem, is perhaps well-meaning. But it reveals a common blind spot among many elites. It is the assumption that as allies, their work “elevate” marginalised voices, while in reality they end up erasing the agency of those voices. This mirrors colonial patterns where colonisers “preserved” indigenous art while destroying its creators’ autonomy.

Anurag Minus Verma notes that for artists who come from privileged backgrounds, "the gaze should be on the other and not on self." He adds:

"So the easiest route is to borrow. They turn to marginalised cultures like tourists with a camera and a foreign grant, seeking stories that have already survived a thousand retellings without their help."

Role of institutions

The incident also exposes institutional complicity. Galleries and curators, eager to appear politically engaged, often tokenise dissent without addressing power imbalances.

While Aziz’s legal battle may secure credit or compensation, true justice requires systemic change of dismantling the extant systems, and not just being focused on policing plagiarism. In this quest, compensation and public credit are minimal steps; they must be paired with institutional reforms.

Aziz’s struggle is not an isolated case but a symptom of an art world that remains exclusionary and extractive. Unless cultural institutions confront their role in perpetuating caste, class and religious hierarchies, even self-identified progressive art will continue to be a paradox – a pretty veneer over systemic rot. True allyship requires transferring power, not just quoting slogans. As Aziz’s poem reminds us, the arrows of injustice are sharp, but collective memory can be sharper. Sab yaad rakha jayega…

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