Photobook Launch: Tarun Bhartiya’s Em No Nahi

Wednesday 2nd December, 2026

6:00 pm, ArtsTwo 3.20, QMUL

The South Asia Forum is honoured to celebrate the life and work of Tarun Bhartiya (1970-2025) with an event on Em No Nahi, a photobook published in 2025 by Yaarbal Books. Em No Nahi collects notes and images from Bhartiya’s engagements with movements against uranium mining in Meghalaya, northeast India.

About the book: A refusal to give up land for mining uranium by the 85-year-old Kong Spillity turned into a rallying cry for people in the Khasi hills. Photographer Tarun Bhartiya documents a moving celebration of civic resistatnce.

Tarun Bhartiya (1970-2025) was a documentary filmmaker, poet, photographer and social activist.

Angela Rangad is a campaigner for democratic rights and a socialist, feminist activist from Meghalaya.

Bengt G Karlsson is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University  and the author of Unruly Hills (Berghahn, 2011).

Rangad and Karlsson will be in conversation with Amit Rai, co-Director of the South Asia Forum and Reader in Creative Industries and Arts Organisation at QMUL. 

All welcome. No registration required. Books will be available for purchase at discounted price at the event.