This conversation was based on Aimen’s five-year research with Aurat March and Aurat Azadi March, and her organising experience in both feminist and leftist spaces. This research is undertaken as part of the Sustaining Power: Women’s Struggles Against Contemporary Backlash in South Asia project, an ESRC-funded collaborative research project encompassing Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Aimen charted the ways backlash is operationalised against the marches and how entanglements between digital and non-digital publics inform repression through disinformation. She also shared how disinformation is weaponised to curtail political activity and create violent circumstances. Her work also uncovers the contours of different backlash actors and insight into their modalities of spreading propaganda against feminist assertions, and political activities. In the last leg of her conversation, she invited us to think of political futures despite what seem like insurmountable odds and calls for building solidarities grounded in humility and collaboration.