Em No Nahi

Em”—No—is about a refusal that turned into a rallying cry in Meghalaya, as 90-year-old Kong Spillity Lyngdoh Langrin turned away those who would mine her land in the West Khasi Hills for uranium. Tarun Bhartiya’s images and text distill that defining moment into a moving celebration of civic resistance.

Tarun passed away earlier this year, a prolific photographer and documentary film-maker, a highly regarded film-editor, an accomplished poet in Hindi, as well as a co-founder and editor of raiot, the path-breaking webzine that emerged out of Shillong. Tying it all together was a declaration he made with pride: ‘I do politics’. 

The pictures in this book, and the brief notes that accompany them, are that politics. They are only a small selection of the thousands of images that Tarun left behind on his computer when he suddenly passed away, an invaluable record of an ‘outsider’ reading deeply into the society and landscape of Meghalaya. 

Em No Nahi carries over 80 photographs and a moving afterword by Angela Rangad, Tarun's comrade in life and politics, as well as a special pull-out booklet A Very Short Guide to Uranium Mining.