India can solve its rape problem. The question is: Do we want to? A week after an “encounter” with Telangana police left four rape and murder-accused men dead, it might not be out of place to ask if India has solved its endemic problem of violence against women. Have men stopped raping women, or killing […]
The rise of fundamentalism, chauvinistic nationalism and macho leadership has made defending women’s rights that much harder, I report from Bangkok at the Beijing +25 review. Away from the tight-lipped silence of government officials locked in negotiations, some 150 people sat huddled on the floor outside one of the cavernous conference halls of the United
The battle for gender equality in an era of machismo politics Read More »
One in three women worldwide faces violence. We should be angry. Women have been told to be many things – patient, accommodating, docile even. Now, for the first time on an international platform, they are being told to be angry. Not that they needed prompting. Anger was in evidence at the regional Beijing +25 conference
Women who speak up against sexual assault will almost always sought to be silenced by men who are backed by institutional support. When classics professor Mary Beard tells the story of Tereus who, in Greek mythology, cuts off the tongue of Philomena after raping her, it is to point to a particularly grisly example of
In a country where 52% of women say it’s ok to be beaten by a husband and one in three experience violence at the hands of a partner, the views of Kabir Singh director, Sandeep Reddy Vanga that physical violence is a sign of true love are dangerous, I write in my Hindustan Times column.
No. Physical violence is NOT a demonstration of true love. Read More »
When the religion of the perpetrators becomes more important than the crime of rape itself, then you know you are witnessing a civilisational breakdown. To find evidence of the epidemic of violence against young girls and women gripping India, you have only to flick through your newspaper. In the recent past: Two minor sisters, 13
India’s child rape crisis Read More »
Nuh in Haryana is India’s most backward district. It is also where Rakbar Khan and Pehlu Khan were lynched on suspicions of cattle theft. I travel to Nuh to meet their families. Lying on a string cot beneath a row of pale green prayer beads that hangs from the wall, Asmeena Khan holds up a
The world’s longest and largest march by survivors of rape and sexual assault covering 24 states over 10,000 km in India seeks to break the silence and stigma around rape. My Hindustan Times column. Y’s husband beat her senseless when he found out that she had been raped by three men in the fields where she
The long march to justice Read More »
A new book by my friend and college room-mate Sohaila Abdulali explores the idea that victims of sexual violence are not broken beings. Awful as it is, rape is survivable, and those who have been raped are deserving and capable of happiness again. I don’t remember the precise moment when my then college roommate, Sohaila
What we talk about when we talk about rape Read More »
We can’t seem to stop talking about sexual violence from strangers, but cannot seem to start talking about it (or even acknowledge), about the violence many women face from within their own homes. If a picture says a thousand words, then a graphic illustration of 137 figures — the number of women killed every day
Home is the most dangerous place for many women Read More »
In Hindustan Times: Frankly, I find this business of ranking ‘worst’ countries to be tedious. To be bad is bad enough; better or worse is an academic argument. That report, the one that damns India as the worst country in the world for women, came out in a week when one of the country’s most
Worst, second worst or 5th worst doesn’t matter. India is bad for women. Read More »
In IndiaSpend: Anti-trafficking activist Sunitha Krishnan, one of three finalists for the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity spoke to me on sex slavery, rehabilitating victims of sex trafficking and death for raping children. New Delhi: She’s dodged an acid attack, had a fatwa issued against her and survived 17 separate physical assaults. But Sunitha Krishnan, 46, doesn’t seem
Children don’t seem to be a priority in this country Read More »