Firecracker activist Ash Sarkar first grabbed headlines last year when she spoke truth to power on national TV in the UK. She talks to Nishat Fatima about life as a viral sensation.
In July 2018, 26-year-old Ash Sarkar, a senior editor at left-wing independent media organisation Novara Media, went on the show Good Morning Britain to talk about the anti-Trump protests on the occasion of his visit to the UK that month. In a debate that would have been right at home on Indian TV, the host Piers Morgan, an infamous rabble-rouser, repeatedly baited Sarkar, interrupting her, talking over her and falsely labelling her an Obama supporter. When he wouldn’t stop, she finally burst out, “He’s not my hero. I’m a Communist, you idiot!”
She went further, calling out Morgan on his incompetence as a journalist for not holding Trump adequately to account when he interviewed him. And when Morgan once again tried to call her pro-Obama, Sarkar said, “I’m not pro-Obama. I’ve been a critic of Obama. I’m a critic of the Democratic Party because I’m literally a Communist.”
It’s been six months since that comment went viral, since Novara Media began selling T-shirts with “I’m literally a communist” on them and people started to recognise Sarkar in “bizarre” places.
This story is from the February 2019 edition of Elle India.
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This story is from the February 2019 edition of Elle India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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