Some lives exist only in files, headlines, or accusations. How do paperwork, policing, and media narratives quietly decide who belongs? What does democracy look like from below?
Join us for a talk by the award-winning journalist Neha Dixit from India, at Copley Square, Boston, this weekend, drawing on her book ‘The Many Lives of Syeda X’. Online option available. She will explore how journalism can recover erased histories, expose routine violence, and hold power to account.
When: Saturday, 02 May 2026, 3:00- 5:00 pm
Where: The Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, 2nd floor, Boston, MA 02116 (Copley Square T stop).
Who: Organised by the Boston South Asian Coalition in collaboration with the Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan) and co-hosted by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) and Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia.
In this talk, Neha Dixit will highlight the struggles of urban poor workers, showing how economic marginalisation intersects with political and social exclusion. She will examine media influence, gendered surveillance, majoritarian politics, and the slow erosion of democratic rights in contemporary South, and reflect on the hidden struggles and the everyday realities of citizens caught in the machinery of the modern state, amid shrinking media freedom and democratic backsliding.
About the speaker: Neha Dixit is an independent journalist and author based in New Delhi. For over two decades, she has reported on politics, gender, labour, and social justice in South Asia, producing investigative, narrative, and long-form journalism for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Caravan, The Wire, and others.
Her work has exposed extrajudicial killings, hate crimes, human trafficking, unethical clinical trials, and sectarian majoritarian violence. She has won over a dozen national and international awards, including the International Press Freedom Award (2019), the Chameli Devi Jain Award (2017), and the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism (2011).
Her debut book, The Many Lives of Syeda X (Juggernaut), traces 30 years in the life of a migrant Muslim woman navigating Delhi’s informal labour economy, holding over 50 jobs without minimum wage. The book, a vivid portrait of urban India’s invisible workforce, was named Book of the Year 2024 by The Hindu and Deccan Herald. It won the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman and Kalinga Best Debut Award and a Special Jury Mention by the CG Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.
