In the years to come, how will we remember Paris? The Games where for the first time as many women as men competed? Or the Games where an ugly gender row over a female boxer revealed the persistence of misogyny? A Games where women owned the headlines and made history? Or a Games where inclusion did […]
At the most gender equal Olympics, the good, the bad and the downright hideous Read More »
The night before, she has done the unthinkable — beaten a wrestler who has been unbeaten since the beginning of her international career. The night before, she is India’s great medal hope, a silver at the very least but gold is within kissing distance. The night before, she is the woman who took on the
Pinned to the mat by rules, Phogat remains a champion Read More »
It seemed fitting that India’s first medal in Paris was won by a woman. It seemed fitting too that the second medal in Paris was also won by a woman. Of course, it seemed entirely fitting that both were picked up by the same woman: Manu Bhaker, the first athlete in independent India to win
How Manu Bhaker found her groove—and Haryana became a crucible for women athletes Read More »
Four years after it passed a law ostensibly to prevent fraudulent religious conversions, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to get tougher. The maximum punishment for marrying a woman by deceiving her or converting her religion is now life imprisonment, instead of the earlier 10 years. Earlier, only a family member could lodge a complaint,
Anti-conversion laws exude fear of independent women Read More »
When Shashi Bala, the daughter of a farmer in Himachal Pradesh’s Garli village in Kangra district, saw an ad on Facebook for a drone programme, free for women at IIT Mandi, she assumed it was fake. So she cross-checked on another website, found it was correct and promptly signed up. Designed to train women to
Brave new world: Skilling women for modern India Read More »
Of course there will be medals. And headliners smashing records and setting new standards. Of course there will be tales of winning and, the vastly more heart-breaking, tales of nearly-winning. Beyond the medals, ranks and records what do these once in four years games represent? Back in Paris after 128 years, this will be the most
At the most gender equal Olympics, women to watch Read More »
Given that it is a project over seven decades in the making and a core promise of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) manifesto, you would imagine that post-Independence India’s first Uniform Civil Code (UCC) would be breathtaking in the scale of its imagination — or at least reflective of Constitutional values of equality and dignity.
A lost opportunity for a forward-looking civil code Read More »
Earlier this week, the ghost of Shah Bano, lurking in the shadows for close to four decades, popped up again. A Supreme Court ruling that all women, including Muslim women who marry under their personal religious law, are entitled to maintenance, once again took on the old question of whether Muslim women can claim maintenance beyond what
The only state in India with a woman chief minister has been grappling with an alarming problem of public vigilantism and moral policing. Earlier this week, a video of a TMC functionary called Tajmul Islam surfaced. In it he can be seen flogging a couple in public in daylight for having an alleged extramarital affair. Shot in
Public vigilantism is alive and shockingly well in West Bengal—and other parts of India Read More »
Even though it happened 20 years ago, Sharif Rangnekar still remembers that assault. The pain, the fear, the shock, the shame. Back then, sex between men was illegal, and there was a whole lot of stigma attached to even talking about it. Moreover, men are supposed to be “big and strong”, so to admit to
Tejbir Singh, 29, the son of a farmer, had been in love for two years with Meena, 28. She was the daughter of his maternal uncle’s brother-in-law, not a blood relation by a mile but still, out of bounds for marriage in Haryana. When the families refused to accept the relationship, Tejbir and Meena decided
When I decided to quit my full-time job with this newspaper and go freelance so that I could spend more time with my then school-going daughters, my father-in-law was appalled. But he didn’t want to directly question my decision and, so, told a friend that he would make sure my children were well looked after