‘Why do we need libraries?’: For rights, reading and resistance

Drabinski discussed the assault on free speech by right-wing movements around the world, including a “double-digit rise, in percentage points, every year over the last four years, to books being challenged in libraries” and the takeover of library boards in the US. “The right knows that libraries are where the fight for political action happens,” she said, referring to how movements like Occupy Wall Street, ACT UP (in response to the AIDS crisis), and the 1960s civil rights movements “always had reading and libraries at the centre” of spreading information about people’s rights. She mentioned how public libraries in America have been used to temporarily house homeless people in winters, use washrooms without charge, spread awareness of government programs, give internet access, and more.

Drabinski recently travelled to Dibrugarh to see libraries set up by Rituparna, which have become a site for queer people to gather, read and celebrate each other. “People ask us about how we get funds for these operations but it’s not just the job of NGOs like ours to set up good libraries. Libraries are places where we discuss rights that are ultimately the job of the government, for which we pay tax,” she said. She added that it’s difficult for transgender people to access scholarships for higher education because they are often “pushed out” of the regular schooling system due to classroom discrimination and lack of access to books and reading. “That is not the same as dropping out,” she pointed out.

Sivadasan told the story of C Kannan, one of Kerala’s foremost trade union leaders, who was born into a poor family and failed fourth grade, leaving school to work in a bidi factory. But the factories he joined were the hub of one of the most cohesive and organised collectives in the country, bidi workers who would sit around each other and read the newspaper, an activity that “made them more well-informed about their rights than many formally educated people.”

Sumit, one of the trustees of The Community Library Project (TCLP), said that as a poor Dalit student who got admission to a private school on an Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota, he often faced harassment and doubted his abilities. “It was only when I walked into TCLP that I learnt that using a free facility wasn’t something to be ashamed of. No one asked me if I could read. They assumed I could and that’s why I’ve shown up. The word ‘free’ needs to be stripped of its negative associations,” he said. On the fear of state ideologies influencing books shelved in public libraries, he said, “It’s true libraries are a very effective organising tool, that’s why they can be used as a site of propaganda or resistance. But we have to make sure we take over these spaces and use them for good.”