At the height of the protests against India’s controversial citizenship law in 2020, when Aamir Aziz first recited his poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega – Everything Will Be Remembered – it became a rallying cry to remember, resist, and bear witness.
About five years later, the poem is at the centre of another kind of reckoning, one that raises questions about artistic ownership, ethics and consent: Aziz alleges lines from his poem were used without permission, credit, or compensation by acclaimed artist Anita Dube in a gallery exhibition.
In a series of posts on 20 April, the day after Dube’s solo exhibition concluded at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, Aziz accused the artist of using his poem “without my knowledge, consent, credit, or compensation”.
The poet, based in Mumbai, said he was alerted to the poem’s unauthorised use on 18 March by a friend who noticed his words stitched into a work on display at Dube’s exhibition.
“That was the first time I learned Anita Dube had taken my poem and turned it into her art,” he posted. “When I confronted her, she made it seem normal, like lifting a living poet’s work, branding it into her own and selling it in elite galleries for lakhs of rupees was normal.”
Aziz first performed his poem in early 2020 during nationwide protests against the then newly enacted citizenship law and the proposed National Register of Citizens, legislation seen as targeting the country’s Muslim minority. Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega quickly became emblematic of the resistance, resonating alongside Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge and Varun Grover’s Hum Kagaz Nahi Dikhayenge.
The poem appeared everywhere, from placards at Shaheen Bagh, a major site of the protests in Delhi, to a speech by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters at a pro-democracy rally in London.
Dube’s work has always been political. The feminist artist is known for conceptual art that delves into themes of power, identity and resistance. Her recent show at Vadehra included works referencing political and social revolutionaries like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and Dr BR Ambedkar, and carrying Aziz’s lines. One piece was even titled After Aamir Aziz.
“Let’s be clear: if someone holds my poem on a placard at a protest, I stand with them. But this is not that. This is my poem, written in velvet cloth, carved in wood, hung in a commercial white cube, renamed, rebranded, and resold at an enormous price without telling me,” Aziz wrote. “This is not solidarity. This is theft. This is erasure.”
Aziz claimed one of Dube’s pieces was retitled after his legal team sent a notice, though he didn’t specify which one. He also said Dube had been profiting off his poetry for years, referencing another work from 2023 which he claimed drew from the same poem without his knowledge.
In a statement to The Independent, Dube acknowledged “an ethical lapse” in not obtaining Aziz’s consent. “As a visual artist I work with materials that I love, that become means to critically comment, and the intent of quoting words from Aamir Aziz’s poem was to celebrate them,” she said.
“I realise that I made an ethical lapse in only giving credit but not checking with Aamir before using words from his poem,” she added. “However I reached out and called him, apologised and offered to correct this by remuneration. Aamir instead chose to send a legal notice, and then I had to go to a lawyer as well.”
As to the allegation of seeking to monetise Aziz’s poem, Dube said she “immediately put the works not for sale” and that she hopes to “resolve this issue in a fair manner”.
Aziz, however, maintained that the credit was not clearly visible to the public.
The Vadehra Art Gallery said they had been in touch with Aziz and his representatives for over a month. “This is a situation that we have taken very seriously. We immediately ensured that the works Aamir Aziz has concerns with were not offered for sale. We hope that the discussions that are ongoing between Aamir Aziz and Anita Dube can be resolved in an amicable and constructive manner,” it said in a statement.
The gallery’s director, Roshini Vadehra, told The Independent the wall text “thanking Aamir Aziz was added as soon as he expressed concern”, although “credit was always given to him in the artwork captions”.
The title of the piece After Aamir Aziz wasn’t changed in response to the poet’s legal demand, she claimed. It “was named that from the beginning”.
Vadehra acknowledged that Dube’s works were meant for sale but were “declared not for sale as soon as Aamir expressed concerns”.
Asked about the gallery’s protocol for exhibiting art using creative work from other people, Vadehra admitted a “lapse”.
“We work closely with the literary world. Writers from all over the world are close associates of the gallery,” she said. “This was a lapse in this case. Hopefully a fair and amicable resolution will be reached.”
In the art world, the incident has raised uncomfortable questions, not only about credit and consent but the broader, more nuanced issue of political resistance becoming an aesthetic commodity.
“A politically aware and conscious artist like Anita should have been sensitive to the ethics of copyright,” said Alka Pande, a curator at Visual Arts Gallery.
“Borrowing or collaborating, particularly when working with a private gallery where the works are available for sale, deepen the gravity of ethical issues involved. This should not be taken lightly,” she said. “I am glad Aamir Aziz raised his voice and made Anita acknowledge her unethical lapse. I sincerely hope this episode will lead to greater caution amongst the visual artist community as there is in the literary world, to copyright issues.”
Hussain Haidry, poet, lyricist and screenwriter, noted that works like Dube’s could hinge entirely on the power of borrowed words.
“The artwork becomes a symbol of resistance because of the poem. It doesn’t become meaningful because of the velvet, or the materials used,” he said. “It’s the words that give it a political context, a particular social currency, and even a saleability among the progressive elite.”
The artist’s intent, Haidry argued, didn’t erase the effect. “What this kind of appropriation does is that it defangs the voice of the oppressed. In its original form, the poem has the power to challenge and convert minds. This gallery setting makes it palatable, convenient and toothless.”
In her statement, Dube invoked the framework of a world of “fellow-traveller solidarities” and “Copy Left” where ideas were freely exchanged in the spirit of political kinship.
But as many pointed out, that vision could not exist without consent or an honest reckoning of how power moved through creative economies.
Author and cultural commentator Anurag Minus Verma described it as akin to aesthetic tourism, where privileged artists mined marginalised experiences for borrowed meaning and market value.
“They turn to marginalised cultures like tourists with a camera and a foreign grant, seeking stories that have already survived a thousand retellings without their help,” he said.
“The culture is readymade, the struggle pre-curated, the grief already poetic, and there is a market. All one has to do is arrive late, document it with the gaze of a saviour, reframe it in neutral tones, and sell it in the marketplace of ideas.”
