IAS Officer Transferred after Gandhi Tweet, But Remains Committed to Her Freedom of Speech and Freedom to be Ironic

By Gaurav Jain तुम कहोगे वो व्यंग्य का तंज ना समझ पाए काव्य का रस क्या समझेंगे । फिर तुम्हारी कविता के एक एक अक्षर की होगी चीरफाड़ और फिर से तुम पर सब बरसेंगे । (You’ll say, they didn’t even get the taunt of sarcasmWhat will they get of the essence of poetry.Again each letter of your poem will be torn apartAnd they’ll rain down on you again.) Nidhi...

Jun 2019

After Payal Tadvi’s Death Can We Allow Medical Education to Continue to Pretend to be Casteless?

  Payal Tadvi By Nisha Susan If you haven’t been living under a rock, you have heard women asking each other for the numbers of non-judgemental gynaecologists. Non-judgmental gynaecologists is what they ask for, not women gynaecologists. The medical system makes it amply clear that women doctors can be as emblematic of the horror-movie patriarchy...

May 2019

Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker Win Reminds Us of Oman’s Recent Slave-owning Past

By Nisha Susan My schoolmates and I read the news that Jokha Alharthi had won the Man Booker International with a thrill. At last we could read about our childhood home Oman in a novel, we texted each other yesterday. We left school in Muscat a couple years before the Internet so all we knew about Oman when we lived there was from the heavily sanitised...

May 2019

In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow is Sexy, Sterile and So Burnt By Marvel

By Gaurav Jain Spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones. Pepper Potts arrives for the fight in an Iron Woman suit and Valkyrie swoops down in her winged horse, but Black Widow gets the chop. Or in Marvel style, she gets splayed picturesquely at the bottom of a cliff after a deliberate suicide jump. In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow...

May 2019

Let Us Admit the Sins of Atishi Marlena

By Nisha Susan My friends and I like to retell a story about a well-known Bangalore feminist who passed away a few years ago. Two stories actually. One that when her husband brought home, over her objections, a friend with a reputation for being abusive to his wife, she left the house and sat on the footpath and told everyone who asked her why she...

May 2019

20 Questions for SC Panel that Cleared the CJI of Sexual Harassment Charges

By Gaurav Jain Protests at the Supreme Court. Image via Twitter @DeshdeepDU The Supreme Court’s special in-house committee investigating sexual harassment accusations against the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi, has given its verdict—it found “no substance” in the allegations and has exonerated him completely. The SC’s Secretary General...

May 2019

The Unpleasant Meanings of Sri Lanka’s Hijab Ban

By Nisha Susan Woman on Beach at Sunset – Mt. Lavinia – Colombo – Sri Lanka by Adam Jones via Flicker CC by 2.0 Back in 2009, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy said hijabs were a sign of women’s debasement and began the process of banning them. In the heat of that particular episode of the global culture war, I interviewed an assortment of hijab-wearing...

May 2019

CJI Sexual Harassment Case: Why Gogoi’s Accuser Rejected SC Panel and What It Stands For

By Gaurav Jain Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. Image via Twitter @VishalGadaraCC The woman complainant who accused Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment has ‘withdrawn’ from the Supreme Court’s inquiry into the matter. At least that’s what most media will have you believe. What she actually said was that “I felt I was not...

May 2019

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To My Mumbai Polling Booth Yesterday

By Paromita Vohra Early morning voting rush in Mumbai. Image via Twitter @modichirag0808 Mumbai, Monday 29th April There have been ads on the radio, rich with meaning. Bombay people are being exhorted not to take the long weekend. One Hindi ‘Go Vote’ ad goes like this: a man/actor playing a daily wage worker says, “Building roads and flyovers and...

Apr 2019

CJI Sexual Harassment Case: Conspiracy Theorist Dude is Court’s Mehmaan, Female Complainant is Marauder

By Gaurav Jain Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. Image via Twitter @Dilsedesh On Wednesday April 24th, a Supreme Court bench heard lawyer Utsav Bains’ allegations of how the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi is being targeted by a conspiracy of fake sexual harassment allegations. Also that day, a Supreme Court panel committee of three...

Apr 2019