Tag Archive for "India"

Posts Tagged India

Why These Activists Are Protesting Hindu Nationalism in Trump’s America

On Friday, September 7th, six activists from Chicago South Asians for Justice stood up in the middle of the plenary panel of the World Hindu Congress in Chicago to voice their resistance to the Hindu nationalist political movement currently ascendant in India.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

Indian Supreme Court Decriminalizes Queer Sex, and Everyone Celebrates!

HAPPY 377 READ DOWN DAY, EVERYONE! In a rare piece of absolutely fabulous news, on Thursday, September 6, the Indian Supreme Court officially decriminalized homosexuality.

By Ahila Devi • 6 years ago

Violence Against Women Is Cemented in Urban Infrastructure. We Need #CitiesForWomen.

With its population of nearly 1.5 million, my hometown of Madurai, India, is a city rich in history, culture, and proud traditions. But like many large cities around the world, it also is a place that can be unsafe for women.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

Harsher punishment won’t keep kids safe from sexual abuse: the death penalty in India

When rape makes the headlines in India, talk of hanging begins. Commentators blare from news screens; politicians pledge death. These stories of brutal crime and brutal punishment, all in the name of protecting women and girls, tell us something important about contemporary Indian responses to rape. They also tell us about a fundamental flaw in our thinking about sexual violence and punishment across contexts: a mistaken idea that the primary threat to women and children is from the “outside” or the “stranger” rather than our own homes.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

As the Future of Climate Change Becomes Daily Reality, Poor Women Feel the Heat

The more privileged residents of the Global North have a strange sense of time. Even as the storms get fiercer and the forest fires burn, climate change is often seen as the reality of a cataclysmic future.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

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 is the condom. Shireen, however, knows her husband won’t use them.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

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 were greeted with the worst possible news: Their child had been raped, physically tortured, and murdered.

By Reina Gattuso • 6 years ago

Students strike, farmers march, and women rise: This week in India’s social movements

You don’t need me to tell you that these are dark times. From Mississippi’s recent (and definitely unconstitutional) banning of abortion at 15 weeks, to Trump’s revolving-door series of government appointments which are now slated to include a known torturer, the news is bleak. And it’s not only in the U.S.: Authoritarian right-wing governments are on the up worldwide. Including in my current home, India, where the right-wing BJP has been in power since 2014.