The New Materialists Comrades, we have recently seen the Janmastami celebrations in JNU by right wing and casteist forces i.e. ABVP and NSUI in many places of JNU. Celebration of the Hindu festivals (in the name of celebrating Culture) is the act of enhancing and strengthening the caste system. Krishna, the god of Hindus who …
Mayawati or Hatshepsut: Her place has to be shown
A handbag. A false beard. Two seemingly innocuous objects which transform into fearsome symbols, when they adorn the statues of Mayawati and Hatshepsut respectively. These women statues have unleashed unprecedented amounts of societal outrage. Is the cause for outrage the engravings themselves, or the depicted demeanor, or is it the act of consecrating …
Janlokpal bill: a brahmanic and patriarchal script
Anu Ramdas The Jan Lokpal bill is under 35 pages. The creators of this document successfully manufactured a ‘revolution’ out of this. The corporate media sold it as such, and some academics called it a ‘movement’. Media and academia largely did not comment on the contents of the document. Their preoccupation was with the …
Women and PR
Gail Omvedt PR, acronym for proportional representation, is new to the majority of Indian feminists – but one that deserves thinking about, now that another session of the Lok Sabha has ended without any significant change on the issue of quota for women. As an editorial in a Women’s Studies network bulletin put out by …
Dalit Feminism
M. Swathy Margaret (First published in the March-April 2005 issue of Insight Young Voices magazine) I am a Dalit-middle-class, University educated, Telugu speaking Dalit-Christian-Woman. All these identities have a role in the way I perceive myself and the worlds I inhabit. I, as a Dalit woman, primarily write for Dalit women to uphold our …