Poet Aamir Aziz accuses artist Anita Dube of using anti-CAA poem without credit, compensation; ‘ethical lapse’, she says
Aamir Aziz published the poem on his YouTube channel in January 2020 during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens protests
Aamir Aziz, a poet whose spoken word performances have achieved virality since 2019, accused artist Anita Dube of using lines from his poem, Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega, in her works without his “knowledge, consent, credit, or compensation”.
Aziz has reportedly asked for equal compensation for the works incorporating text from his poem, and the matter is being discussed by the parties’ legal representatives.
On April 20 — a day after Dube’s solo exhibition came to a close — Aziz took to X (formerly Twitter) to write a series of posts. “My poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega has been used without my knowledge, consent, credit, or compensation by the internationally celebrated artist Anita Dube,” he said.
Aziz published the poem on his YouTube channel in January 2020 during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens protests. Dube, 66, an internationally renowned feminist artist and the 2018 curator of the Kochi Biennale, also publicly voiced her support of the protestors’ democratic right to dissent at the time.
A solo exhibition of Dube’s works, titled “Timanjala Ghar: Three Storey House”, opened in New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery in the middle of March and ended on April 19. It carried a series of works including those that referenced words by revolutionaries such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King — both of whom fought against racial discrimination and apartheid — as well as Dalit icon Dr B.R Ambedkar, who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution of India. A few works also incorporated Aziz’s poem, one of which was titled, “After Aamir Aziz”.
Aziz also showed photographs of four of Dube’s works which, he stated, contained words from his poem. He claimed that one of the works was retitled after he sent a notice [he did not mention to whom he sent the notice]. Another was not renamed despite his notice, he further contended.
“On 18th March 2025, a friend saw my words stitched into a work on display at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi and immediately called me. That was the first time I learned Anita Dube had taken my poem and turned it into her “art.” 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. But the more I looked, the worse it got. I discovered she had been using my poem for years including in a 2023 exhibition titled Of Mimicry, Mimesis and Masquerade, curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala and then again displayed in the India Art Fair ‘25. She didn’t mention this in our first conversation. She hid it deliberately,” he claimed.
“Let’s be clear: if someone holds my poem in a placard at a protest, a rally, a people’s uprising, I stand with them. But this is not that. This is my poem, written in velvet cloth, another carved in wood, hung inside a commercial white cube space, renamed, rebranded, and resold at an enormous price without ever telling me. This is not solidarity. This is not homage. This is not conceptual borrowing. This is theft. This is erasure. This is entitled section of the art world doing what it does best extracting, consuming, profiting while pretending radical,” he added.
The artist responded to the accusation on Monday stating that she was saddened by the “social media trial” initiated by Aziz, and that she had “been in love with Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega, especially some lines”, which she contended to have used in the “spirit of Commons and Copy Left”. The artist said she made an ethical lapse in not checking with Aziz before using words from his poem, but only giving credit to him, and that she hoped the matter would be resolved in a fair manner.
“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. “Haman hai ishk mastana, haman ko hoshiyari kya” [I am the inebriated love, why should I be conscious; a popular line from 15th century poet Kabir's work] is a good way to describe this. It is the lost old world where there were fellow-traveller solidarities, spirit of the Commons and Copy Left. I have quoted Martin Luther King, Bell Hooks, and others in the same spirit in this exhibition and elsewhere.
I realise that I made an ethical lapse in only giving credit, but not checking with Aamir using words from his poem. However, I reached out and called him, apologized, 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 far as the accusation of my wanting to monetize the poem goes; I immediately put the works not for sale. I hope to resolve this issue in a fair manner,” Dube’s statement read.
According to intellectual property law expert senior advocate Chander Mohan Lall, “Under India copyright laws any form of reproduction of a work without a license would constitute copyright infringement. Unlike the United States, India does not have a de minimis exception, where an insignificant use of a copyrighted work does not constitute infringement. In India, the copyright law is clear that reproduction of even part of a work comes under the purview of the law. What’s more, an acknowledgement is not enough, as most people tend to think. A written license, which clearly states the terms under which the author or creator of a work has allowed it to be used, is important. This can include the time period of usage, the geographic extent in which the use is permitted, compensation, how much of the work is used etc. Taking the text of a literary work and converting it to an artistic work will require licenses.”
Aziz, whose poem’s translated text was famously read out by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters during a 2020 event to protest the incarceration of Wikileaks whistleblower Julian Assange, also accused Vadehra Art Gallery of refusing to take the work down when he asked them to do so.
“I have sent legal notices. Demanded answers. Asked for accountability. In return: silence, half-truths, and insulting offers. I asked them to take the work down. They refused,” he wrote.
The works were taken off sale after Aziz got in touch with the gallerist and artist.
“Vadehra Art Gallery has always stood behind strong, political creative expressions. We believe in giving such a space to this community of practitioners because it is important and vital for our society. All the works that used a few words from his poem were attributed to him in the wall text. They were displayed alongside works that carried the words of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Dr B.R Ambedkar, all of which were also attributed in the artwork captions,” said gallery director Roshni Vadehra.
Earlier in the day, the gallery issued a statement: “We have been in touch with Aamir Aziz and his legal 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. We remain committed to all artists and their creative expressions, and for building respectful dialogue across the art community.”