Category: India
-
Chokhri, a New Sexual Health Project, Maps Marital Rape and Abortion in India
There’s a scene about birth control in the questionably feminist 2017 Hindi flick Lipstick Under My Burqa that stuck with me. Shireen, whose abusive husband rapes her and refuses to use condoms, goes to the gynecologist for another abortion. The gynecologist tells her she can’t keep having abortions and using the morning after pill, and the only other form of available birth control…
-
Justice for Asifa: Sexual Violence, Religious Conflict, and the Politics of Outrage
On January 17, Muhammad Yusuf Pujwala and Naseema Bibi saw the body of their eight year old daughter, Asifa Bano. The child, a member of the nomadic Bakerwal community, a Muslim herding community residing in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, had been missing for several days. While her parents hoped for her safe return, they…
-
Woman Imprisoned for Converting to Islam Tells Indian Supreme Court: “I Want Freedom”
Read the original article at Feministing. On Monday this week, a young Muslim woman faced the Indian Supreme Court, finally allowed to speak after being imprisoned for converting to Islam and marrying a man of her choice. After months of petitions, news coverage, and speeches from everyone but her, she said laid out her demand clearly: “I want freedom.” In…
-
Begums, Buddies, and Bandits: Imaging Queer Histories and Imagining Queer Futures in Dedh Ishqiya
The full essay is published at Critical Collective, an Indian journal of art and visual culture. In December 2013, under Delhi’s smoggy winter skies, the queer community gathered in response to bad news: The Supreme Court had just upheld Section 377 of the Indian penal code. Prohibiting all forms of sex besides heterosexual intercourse, the…
-
Pink’s Right. Sometimes You Just Want To Clock a Man With a Beer Bottle
Find the original article at The Ladies Finger. Sometimes, you just want to clock a man on the head with a beer bottle. This, at least, is the lesson I draw from Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink. And boy, is it true. The past few weeks have been one of those times. It’s the beginning of cooler…
-
Seeking Sunny Leone: Academic Writing on Indian Erotica
Read the full piece at Critical Collective, a global India-based web journal of fine arts. One sweltering Delhi May, hot on the research trail of visual and cinematic erotica, I wandered through the back lanes and offices of the B-film marketers of Chandni Chowk. A family friend—we’ll call him Deepak Uncle— had agreed to show…
-
The Men Who Raped India’s Nirbhaya Will Hang—But That Doesn’t Mean Justice
Originally published at Feministing The rape and murder of Jyoti Singh haunts Delhi. It hovers in the landmarks of the southern part of the city—an overpass, a mall. It is commemorated as a yearly time of mourning and renewed commitment by feminists and rights activists. It hovers in the back of your mind at night, when you…
-
A Class War in India’s Capital and the Global Movement for Domestic Workers
Originally published at Feministing In Noida, India, a sprawling suburb on the outskirts of Delhi, expensive apartment buildings tower over shantytowns. Each day, migrant workers – mostly women – rise from these informal communities to commute to their jobs as domestic workers in nearby luxury apartment complexes. Like most urban spaces, it’s a scene of blatant,…
-
I’m an American woman living in Delhi. ‘Don’t date the locals’ is horrible advice.
I first fell in love in Delhi three years ago, with an Indian classmate during a college semester abroad. The city and the relationship were new and exciting. We spent hours talking in the warm kitchen, a cigarette dangling from my girlfriend’s lips as she cooked. My budding relationships with her and with our new friends…
-
Coverage of the Indian Student Movement for the Right to Dissent
Here in Delhi, recent central government action against students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, including the jailing of three student activists under archaic sedition laws, has prompted a movement for the freedom to dissent. You can check out my coverage of the movement for Feministing below. Activists Charged with Sedition as Indian Students Protest for the…
Reina Gattuso 