The 36-year-old rape survivor in the Muzaffarnagar riots. (Image Source:Raj K Raj/HT Photo) When the riots broke out in her village in Muzaffarnagar that day on September 8, 2013, her husband had taken their elder son who had a fever to the hospital at Shamli. She was alone at home with their three-month old baby boy. As the rioters approached, she escaped through the back door, clutching her baby, running, running, running through the sugarcane fields, ignoring the cuts made by the sharp leaves. When she stopped for breath, she could see the road ahead. Then the men caught her. Afterwards…

In the patriarchal dustbowl of India, sport has been the key to transforming the lives of girls. Now, a generation of girls stands to lose what their predecessors laid out for them A prolonged protest could derail the progress of the past few years. The website Scroll reports that the wrestlers’ agitation has already resulted in many budding female wrestlers rethinking their careers. A whole generation of girls in sport stand to lose what their predecessors laid out, despite the challenges, for them. (ANI) It’s a question the women wrestlers do not want to consider: What if you lose? “But…

For some weeks now, India’s top court has had marriage on its mind. One five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud is hearing why the LGBTQI+ community should be (or should definitely not be, depending on your perspective) granted marriage rights at par with other citizens. Another five-judge bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishen Kaul—who is also on the marriage equality bench—looked at easier ways to end a marriage. And the week ended with the top court saying it would look at divorce under Muslim personal law. The second one first. The no-fault, no-wait divorce On Monday, Justice Kaul’s…

The wrestlers are strong, articulate, disciplined winners who’ve travelled all over the world and are public figures in their own right. Yet even they had to knock on the Supreme Court’s doors for the most basic demand of getting the police to do their job and lodge an FIR (first information report). On April 21, seven women wrestlers went to Delhi’s Connaught Place police to file a complaint against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a six-time BJP MP who heads the Wrestling Federation of India (what skill politicians bring to sporting bodies is a question for another day). The police shooed…

At the heart of the Supreme Court marriage equality hearings lie a host of patriarchal anxieties over the challenge to the definition of family Nobody can predict which way the courts will rule. But to listen to the proceedings, is to hear the story of a nation where people fall in love and dream of building lives and setting up their own families. It is to hear of what senior advocate Saurabh Kirpal calls “lavender marriages”, where gay men are married off to women under family pressure. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO) So far, the objection to marriage equality has been roughly…

Couples who wish to marry under the Special Marriage Act must serve a 30-day notice during which their personal details are on public display. This violates their privacy and leaves many vulnerable to parental and community reprisal. The police met her, her partner and her father to conduct an ‘inquiry’. Why get married in court? Was the father ok with her decision? Fortunately for ‘S’, he was, even though the Act does not require parental permission, only consenting adults. “In Uttar Pradesh it is routine to call couples and often their parents to the police station, particularly in cases of…

Arguably the most significant hearing on LGBTQI rights since the Supreme Court decriminalised sex against the “order of nature” in 2018, here’s what the case being heard by chief justice DY Chandrachud and justices SK Kaul, Ravindra Bhat, Hima Kohli, and PS Narasimha has thrown up so far. Under discussion are adoption, majoritarian opinion, fundamental rights, marriage and the definition of family itself. It’s clear that the ramifications of this case will have an impact on all citizens. A question of rights Opening the arguments for the petitioners, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said the logical step after decriminalising homosexual relations by reading down section…

( Image source: https://www.theknot.com/) Marriage, insists the government of India through solicitor general Tushar Mehta, can only take place between a biological man and a biological woman. It is a religious and social construct over which Parliament and not the courts have jurisdiction. Allowing marriage equality will cause “complete havoc” with the country’s personal laws. At the time of writing, the Supreme Court is yet to announce the names of the five judges of the Constitution bench that will begin to hear arguments on Tuesday from as many as 18 petitions that have been clubbed together. But here’s what we know so far: Taking…

There’s never been a better time for women athletes in India The first time Anne Aiza Khan wore a pair of shorts was at a football tournament in Kolkata. (Courtesy: Anne Aiza Khan) The first time Anne Aiza Khan wore a pair of shorts was at a football tournament in Kolkata. The year was 2016 and although Anne, now 25, had begun playing the game three years earlier, it was always in long pants.

According to a 2015 Dasra report, 23% of girls eventually drop out of school because of a lack of menstrual hygiene facilities (HT PHOTO) At three of the four schools I attended, including a co-ed one, the uniform was a dress or skirt. Teachers were obsessed with the length of the dress, and let me say that in both the all-girls schools and the co-ed one, the girls never gave up trying to hack the one-inch-above-the-knee rule. Decades after I left school, most had switched to salwar-kameez-dupatta for senior students. But skirt or salwar, the one idea that had endured was modesty for girls.

“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.” Dr BR Ambedkbar A painting in Madhubani Style by Delhi-based artist Malvika Raj, also the cover of the book Spotted Goddesses: Dalit Women’s Agency-Narratives on Caste and Gender Violence. (Image source: Glasgow Women’s Library) From the time of Savitribai Phule, the self-taught feminist reformer and India’s first woman teacher who fought for girls’ education and campaigned for widow remarriage, Dalit women have been at the forefront of change. These include warriors from 1857 like Jhalkaribai who tricked the British by disguising herself as Rani Lakshmibai,…

Mumbai Indians skipper Harmanpreet Kaur along with teammates celebrate with the Women’s Premier League 2023 trophy. (Source: ANI) By Sharda Ugra Not sure how many noticed, but in his introduction of the captains on the opening night of IPL 2023, Ravi Shastri called out Hardik Pandya’s name as, “captain of the Gujarat Giants.” Pandya is captain of a Gujarati team, defending IPL champions, Gujarat Titans. The Giants are another squad from Gujarat who just played in the Women’s Premier League (WPL). The same mistake is highly unlikely to happen again over the next two months, but the Giants owners can…