Dear Chief Minister
Throughout the terrible times we have seen these last two years, it is the news from Kerala that has helped so many of us to keep faith in governance – that a state can be honest, open, participatory, concerned for its people, focused on health, and not play politics, all of these have been remarkable and many of us, Keralites and non-Keralites alike, have drawn valuable lessons from the Kerala experience.
Today morning we woke up to the news that the Child Welfare Committee has ordered that Anupama’s child must be brought to Kerala in five days for a DNA test.
However, the process is still overseen by the officials who directly connived to give the baby away for adoption. The family’s criminal acts are still under a very lax, lagging investigation. Anupama’s educational certificates are still in their possession and the police refuses to intervene to restore them to her.
Indeed, the evil that Prof Kannabiran identifies so excellently in this letter must still be fought, until justice is done. Just the return of the child to Kerala cannot replace justice. Anupama suffered tremendous domestic violence, deliberate endangerment, cheating, and illegal custody at the hands of her family. That cannot be papered over,
Continue reading Rise Above Traditional and Conservative Misogyny — Open Letter to the Chief Minister of Kerala: Kalpana KannabiranAnupama has committed no crime. She got pregnant. She did not murder anyone. She did not rob a bank. She did not betray the nation. She committed no terroristic threats or acts. She is not a smuggler, a thief, a rapist, or a crook. She got pregnant. Getting pregnant is not a crime. She got pregnant and decided to keep her baby. This is not a crime.
Continue reading Do not let the injustice drag infinitely — Open Letter to the Chief Minister of Kerala — Dr Gayatri DeviThe strange case of ‘honour-baby-snatching”,: involving a local-level CPM leader in Thiruvananthapuram city, Peroorkkada Jayachandran is still haunting us despite every attempt by the CPM cyberwarriors to smother it. Mr Jayachandran still feels completely justified and hundreds of left supporters, including so-called progressive women, are ready to proclaim that this dastardly act is a ‘father’s right’. Mr Jayachandran’s nineteen year old daughter Anupama fell in love with a dalit man, a leader of the DYFI, got pregnant by him, and decided to keep the child. Anupama’s parents decided that there was loss of honour in this and proceeded to perpetrate unspeakable violence on the young woman, trying to force her to abort her baby, and finally by snatching away her baby days after it was born. They twisted the entire machinery of child protection and adoption and the police to give the child away without the consent of its parents.
Continue reading Restore Faith in Kerala’s Progressive Legacy — Open Letter to the Chief Minister of Kerala: Prof Mohan RaoI should be forgiven for this flippant-sounding title. But it is a living reality in Kerala that gender politics is increasingly reduced to soppy sentimental drama. Honestly, if there are CPM supporters out there, especially the Delhi-elite breed who call this title mere click-bait, I don’t give a flying fuck about what you think. You are not living this nightmare, we are.
Continue reading The Angry Young Woman and the Malayali (Progressive) Acchan -2 : The Second SeasonThis reflection has been long coming: the whole idea of women’s empowerment has been steadily deteriorating in Kerala since some years now. Actually, even from the side of the government, there is much less talk about it, even though it flowed into Kerala in the 1990s through the government, somewhat neoliberalized already, after the Beijing Conference. The national environment has of course been especially hostile with Hindu majoritarian conservatives in power whose ideas about ‘Indian culture’ do not offer any prospect of expanding the resonances and meanings of women’s empowerment — the opposite being more likely. But in Kerala too, interest in it has decidedly shrunk. Among its former constituents, especially the women’s self-help groups, it means little other than income-generation and entry into local politics.
Continue reading Time to dump ’empowerment’? Feminism, women and the state in kerala todayJOIN THE 1200 human rights and women’s rights defenders and civil society activists who have signed this petition.
Text of petition below. Link to sign the petition.
Women of Afghanistan demand a just peace that guarantees the rights of all people.
We, the true friends of Afghanistan and signatories of this open letter, declare our support for Afghan women’s demands expressed below, and join them to call on the United Nations, the government of Afghanistan and national and international actors to fulfill their obligations and undertake responsible measures that would lead to a just peace that protects the interests and rights of all the people of the country.
The women of Afghanistan have suffered through ruinous wars for more than 40 years. Their lives have been impacted by a war in which they have played no role, and which has resulted in in the loss of their human dignity, as well as their innocent sisters and mothers, spouses, children and young people, during a cycle of endless violence, sexual apartheid, kidnapping, rape, slavery, absolute poverty and injustice. Their houses have been destroyed, their children have become orphans and several generations of our people have been displaced in their own land, as well as in the regional states and the world-over.
Guest post by RAKESH SHUKLA AND AARTHI PAI
The Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care, and Rehabilitation) Bill 2021 scheduled to be tabled in the current session of Parliament has grave implications for workers and marginalised populations. Trafficking is a criminal offense and indisputably requires strict measures to combat unscrupulous persons who exploit the vulnerability of workers. Instead, the current draft ends up criminalising vulnerable individuals in the absence of comprehensive policies, programmes and measures that address the factors that make persons vulnerable to trafficking. The aspiration to move and access better living conditions, poverty, lack of equal opportunity and skewed development policies force persons to move in an unsafe manner and accept work in a criminalised environment for instance in sex work, undocumented workers abroad or for organ trade. Continue reading The Trafficking Bill 2021 – Assault on Labour and Industry Rights: Rakesh Shukla and Aarthi Pai
A statement signed by 900 individuals and groups
We, the undersigned women’s rights groups and concerned individuals are outraged by the reprehensible targeting of Muslim women on GitHub, a free web platform, where Twitter handles, and photographs of Muslim women were uploaded with the explicit aim of directing sexualised hate and harm at these women. More than 80 women were profiled, their images were sought to be “auctioned” by soliciting users to take their pick on the “deal of the day”, on the basis of their identity and for their views. This is a conspiracy to target women by creating a database of those Muslim women journalists, professionals and students who were actively raising a voice on social media against right wing Hindutva majoritarianism. The intention is to silence their political participation.
This attempt to de-humanise and sexualise Muslim women is a systemic act of intimidation and harm. This is not the first time this has happened. Before Eid, similar cyber violence against Muslim women was organized by stealing pictures of Pakistani women from their social media handles.
This is a targeted hate campaign against Muslim women in India and abroad amounts to sexual harassment, criminal intimidation, and cyber stalking. It violates their right to privacy, which is a travelling right, and it is an act of censorship. It puts their life and liberty at risk.
This is a targeted campaign to regulate their political speech and political participation in democracy as full and equal citizens of this country. It is part of the project to push Muslim women out of public spaces, offline and online, by causing them harm and censoring their speech. Having witnessed the leadership and power of Muslim women in the anti-citizenship amendment act (CAA) movement, right wing Hindutva men have used social media as a political tool to deny Muslim women their right to lead our collective fight for secularism, peace and citizenship. Continue reading An open letter demanding action on the online targeting of Muslim women
Guest post by ANANNYA DASGUPTA
Scroll had recently featured the Foreword to a book, with the heading ‘What do allies write about when they write (poetry) about feminism?’ The descriptive tag read – Saikat Majumdar surveys a unique anthology in his Foreword to ‘Collegiality and Other Ballads’. What makes this anthology unique? Sometime in 2020, Shamayita Sen had circulated a call ‘seeking poems on feminist ideology’ from ‘non-women’. I remember thinking, surely the call will be revised; feminist allies must know that there is a problem with excluding women from a space meant to check the pulse of contemporary feminisms. Besides, who is non-woman enough to want to be a part of such a man-book? While the premise of the book was not revised, the category ‘non-woman’ has been. The title page of the anthology now reads: Collegiality and Other Ballads with a tag – feminist poetry by males and non-binary allies. The opening line of Majumdar’s Foreword adds to the uniqueness of this mostly male-only feminist anthology by attributing uniqueness to feminism itself: ‘Feminism is the name of a unique battle.’
Continue reading How Might a Feminist Respond to a Collegial Mansplaining of Feminism? Anannya DasguptaMy tribute to Kerala’s irreplaceable K R Gouri Amma. The brightest bolt of lightning that illuminated the dark skies of twentieth century Kerala.
टिकरी बॉर्डर पर युवा महिला कार्यकर्त्ता के साथ यौन हिंसा और अपहरण पर सार्वजनिक बयान, 9 मई, 2021
बंगाल से आयी असोसियेशन फॉर प्रोटेक्शन ऑफ़ डेमोक्रेटिक राइट्स (एपीडीआर), श्रीरामपुर की 26 वर्षीय कार्यकर्त्ता के 30 अप्रैल 2021 को बहादुरगढ़, हरियाणा में हुए निधन पर हमें गहरा अफ़सोस है। यह युवती किसान आंदोलन से बेहद प्रेरित हुई और 2 से 11 अप्रैल को बंगाल में आन्दोलन का प्रचार कर रहे किसान सोशल आर्मी के साथ टिकरी बॉर्डर पर आंदोलन के प्रति अपना समर्थन दर्ज कराने आयी थी। उसे खोने का शोक मनाते हुए, हम टिकरी बॉर्डर पर उसके द्वारा बिताये चंद दिनों के दौरान उसके साथ हुए घटनाक्रम के बारे में सुन कर भी बेहद चिंतित और परेशान हैं।
Public Statement on the Sexual Assault and Abduction of a Young Woman Activist at Tikri Border issued on 9 May 2021
We deeply mourn the death of a 26-year old activist from APDR (Sreerampur) in West Bengal, who passed away on 30th April, 2021 at Bahadurgarh in Haryana. She was deeply inspired by the farmers’ movement and had gone to express her solidarity at the Tikri border with the Kisan Social Army who had been campaigning around Bengal from 2nd April to 11th April, 2021. As we mourn her loss, we are also deeply troubled and concerned on hearing the events that had unfolded during her short stay at the Tikri border.
Posted below is the English translation of a Punjabi poem by SWARAJBIR, Editor of Punjabi Tribune, on the culpability of the state. The poem in the original Punjabi is at the end.
Mahavir Narwal breathed his last yesterday, of Covid. He was an active member of the CPI(M) and the father of Natasha Narwal, activist of Pinjra Tod, a feminist collective, who has been in jail for a year along with Debangana Kalita, another Pinjra Tod activist. Along with many others, Natasha was accused on the basis of no evidence, of having caused the violence in Delhi in January-February 2020, the violence that was in fact carefully planned and orchestrated by the forces that run this regime.
What all the activists jailed for the 2020 Delhi violence are guilty of, is the firm commitment to equal rights to citizenship in India, and unrelenting opposition to the regime’s continuing attempt to establish Hindu Rashtra, a project rejected by the vast masses of this country, and which we will resist and defeat through militant non-violent means.
When accounts are drawn up of this criminal regime, we will remember the disrespect to the Constitution repeatedly shown by different arms of the judiciary. Natasha was refused bail on earlier occasions, and her latest plea for bail to meet her Covid-stricken father one last time, was scheduled to be heard today, Monday the 10th of May, the morning after Mahavir Narwal’s death.
Dear Kind Judge Sahib
Swarajbir
Kind Judge Sahib,
Mahavir Narwal is dead.
Yes Judge Sahib,
Natasha’s father
is no more in this world.
Kind Judge Sahib,
A day ago, this daughter
had come to your Court.
She had not said
“Don’t prosecute me”
She had not said
“Declare me innocent” Continue reading That Monday will not come, Judge Sahib: Swarajbir
This is a guest post by FULANA DETAIL
The post below is hard to read. It is written with a great deal of rage and pain and grief. It is a post about sexual violence. It is not explicit in any way. It does not describe sexual violence. It describes the feeling of being before the violence of masculinity. It describes the violence of the feeling of feeling. Which is why it is hard to read. You may wish to think carefully about whether you want to read further. Please consider this a trigger warning.
Today I performed an exorcism. I performed an exorcism of every image that floods the media of sexual violence, of rape and mutilation, of violation, of violence that should be undoable and unthinkable. I decided to think it. I let these images move through my mind and my body. I performed an exorcism for every woman, and everyone who believes herself woman, and lives woman, and every one who lives as not man. I performed an exorcism for everyone who is not a man. I performed an exorcism for every man who is not a man. I let image, upon image, upon image, upon image, upon image, upon image, flood my mind. I opened my mind as wide as I could, without filter and protection. Eventually I let my mind break at the seams, for many hours. I let my mind descend into terror. I let my mind touch madness. I let my mind become a not mind. And not by reaching atman or bhramaan believe you me. I let my mind become incoherent.
Continue reading An Exorcism For Every Woman and A Curse on Every Man: Fulana Detail
Malathi de Alwis in Delhi, May 2014.
This is my Mala.
Every person touched by her friendship felt this sense of unique connection to Mala. To receive the gift of her attention was to forever feel the tug of a thread that attached you to a part of her heart. She would remember you at some point or the other even if you were not constantly in touch, with that fine-tuned sensitivity that brought to you the exact poem or thought or photograph or experience that linked the two of you.
It was nothing short of magical, her capacity to make very single person in her widespread community of friends across the globe, feel special to her, linked to her through one or the other of her passionate interests. A feminist activist and scholar committed to understanding and countering ethno-nationalism in Sri Lanka, she was part of the wider community of South Asian feminists who constantly struggle to transcend the barbed wire borders of our nation-states in solidarity and hope. Her friends and colleagues in Sri Lanka can speak more about her activism, but one of the feminist enterprises with which she was involved was the collective, anonymous column called Cat’s Eye, which began in the Lanka Guardian in the late 1970s, and through several incarnations, is now a blog. Continue reading Malathi de Alwis 1963- 2021 – beloved friend, feminist comrade
Over the past one year, I have been trying to make a college in Kerala – in a women’s college in Kerala– take some action against one of their faculty members who rained abuse on me publicly, including a public assertion about his possession of a penis, at a seminar in which I was an invited guest. This happened in November 2019.
Continue reading The gender between men’s legs and other learnings from a college in kerala133 संगठनों और 858 लोगों की तरफ़ से जारी बयान
Scrap the “Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance” Immediately
इस बयान पर दस्तख़त करने वाले संगठनों और व्यक्तियों की फ़ेहरिस्त इसके अंग्रेज़ी वर्ज़न में देखें.
प्रिय मित्रों,
18 वर्ष की आयु में हम अपने पार्षदों, विधायकों, सांसदों को वोट दे सकते हैं। 18 की उम्र में, हम तय करते हैं कि कौन ऐसी नीतियां बनाएगा और लागू करेगा जो हमें, हमारे प्रियजनों, हमारे समुदाय, हमारे देश को प्रभावित करती हैं ।18 में, हमें अपने मताधिकार का जिम्मेदारी से प्रयोग करने के लिए पर्याप्त परिपक्व माना जाता है ।
हालांकि, चाहे 18 साल की उम्र में हो या 50 की उम्र में, हमें अपने रोमांटिक पार्टनर तय करने की या किससे शादी करनी है की, इजाज़त नहीं है!! अल्पसंख्यक धर्म, जातियों, दबी–कुचली जातियों, समलैंगिक ट्रांस और क्वीयर के साथ दोस्ती और रोमांटिक संबंध नहीं बनाने के लिए हमारे परिवारों द्वारा चेताया जाता है ।अगर कोई हिंदू महिला किसी मुस्लिम पुरुष से प्रेम करती है तो यह समाज में अपराध माना जाता है, अगर वे शादी करते हैं और महिला मुस्लिम धर्म में धर्मांतरण करती है तो यह मान लिया जाता है कि मुस्लिम पुरुष ने उसे धर्मांतरण के लिए मजबूर किया है। अंतर–विश्वास और अंतर–जाति विवाहों में भी, यह मान लिया जाता है कि दूसरा व्यक्ति महिला की इच्छा के विरुद्ध धोखा देकर उसे बाध्य कर रहा है और उसके इरादे गलत हैं। अक्सर हम सुनते हैं कि कैसे समलैंगिक जोड़ों को उनके जैविक परिवारों, समाज और पुलिस द्वारा प्रताड़ित किया जाता है जिसमें पुलिस कानूनी प्रक्रिया पूर्ण करने और संरक्षण देने के बजाए परिवार की आकांक्षा को ही पूरा कर रही होती है ।समलैंगिक महिलाओं, समलैंगिक पुरुषों, ट्रांस व्यक्तियों को तथा सिर्फ स्त्री–पुरुष सम्बन्धों पर विश्वास करने वाले ब्राह्मणवादी परिवार इस से परे, अंतरंग संबंधों और सामाजिक जीवन जीने के आकांक्षी, लोगों को घरों पर गंभीर दमन का सामना करना पड़ता है ।
27 नवंबर 2020 को पारित उत्तर प्रदेश सरकार के धर्मांतरण निषेध अध्यादेश में, रोमांटिक पार्टनर चुनने में धर्म, जाति, लिंग और लैंगिकता की सीमाओं का उल्लंघन करने वाले लोगों पर परिवार–धर्म–समुदायों द्वारा की गई हिंसा को मंजूरी देने की बात कही गई है।एक्ट के मुताबिक हर धर्मांतरण गैरकानूनी है। धर्मांतरण के लिए जिलाधिकारी से पूर्व मंजूरी जरूरी है।अधिनियम में यह भी कहा गया है कि किसी व्यक्ति के पिछले धर्म में पुनर्परिवर्तन अवैध नहीं है, भले ही जबरन किया जाए ।जबकि हिंदू दक्षिणपंथी समूहों और दक्षिणपंथी नेतृत्व वाली सरकारों ने अंतर–विश्वास रोमांटिक संबंधों के बारे में लोगों को ‘ लव–जिहाद ‘ के रूप में भड़काया, जहां ज्यादातर मामलों में मुस्लिम आदमी को आतंकवादी मान लिया जाता है, ऐसी कोई घटना या आंकड़े नहीं हैं जो यह साबित करें कि ऐसे रोमांटिक रिश्ते कभी आतंकवादी गतिविधियों से जुड़े मिले हों दूसरी ओर, ऐसे असंख्य उदाहरण हैं जहां राज्य और समुदाय ने अंतर–विश्वास प्रेम और विवाहित वयस्क जोड़ों पर गलत तरीके से हमले किये हैंI स्थानीय पंचायतों ने भी समुदाय के मानदंडों का उल्लंघन करने के लिए युवा जोड़ों को मौत के घाट उतार दिया है। हाल ही में शेफिनजहां मामले 2018, में, जहां अंत में सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने विश्वास बदलने का अधिकार माना, और कहा कि विश्वास बदलने का अधिकार पसंद का मौलिक अधिकार है और यह भी देखा गया है कि, एक बार दो वयस्क व्यक्ति रोमांटिक साझेदारी में प्रवेश करने के लिए सहमत होते हैं तो परिवार, समुदाय, कबीले की सहमति आवश्यक नहीं है । Continue reading ‘उत्तर प्रदेश विधि विरुद्ध धर्म-समपरिवर्तन प्रतिषेध अध्यादेश’ फ़ौरन रद्द करो : एक बयान
A STATEMENT BY 133 ORGANIZATIONS and 858 INDIVIDUALS
Dear friends,
At the age of 18, we can vote for our councilors, MLAs, MPs. At 18, we decide who will make and implement policies that affect us, our loved ones, our community, our country. At 18, we are supposed to be mature enough to responsibly exercise our voting rights.
However, whether at the age of 18 or at the age of 50, we are not allowed to decide our romantic partners or who to marry. We are not allowed to have friendships and romantic relationships with people of `the other’ religion, caste, ethnicity, genders, sexualities.
If a Hindu woman chooses a Muslim man as her romantic partner, it is considered a crime in society and if they marry and the woman converts to Muslim religion, it is assumed that the Muslim man has forced her for conversion. In inter-faith and also in inter-caste marriages, it is taken for granted that the other person is bound to cheat you or dupe you and that the person you have chosen to be your partner has some wicked, ulterior motive to `make’ you fall in love.
In homo-erotic romantic relationships, often we hear how lesbian couples are being tortured by biological family, community and the police often acting on behalf of the family. Lesbian women, gay men, trans persons face severe repression at home for transgressing gender norms, aspiring for intimate and social lives beyond the compulsory Brahmanical hetero-normative family system. Many of us have similar painful and traumatic experiences.
`The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance 2020’ passed on 27th November 2020, seeks to sanction the violence committed by family-religion-communities on people who transgress boundaries of religion, caste, gender and sexuality in choosing romantic partners.
This Ordinance is simultaneously an attack on any person who wishes to change her religion. According to the Act, every conversion is illegal. The conversion requires the prior sanction from the District Magistrate. The Ordinance also says that `reconversion’ to a person’s previous religion is not illegal even if done forcibly. This is the gateway to what is termed `ghar wapasi’.
Over the last few years, the Hindu right-wing groups and right-wing led governments have accelerated their attempts at whipping up paranoia about inter-faith romantic relationships. They deliberately call it ‘love-jihad’, equating the Muslim lover with terrorism, while there have been no incidence or statistics that even the right-wing gangs or governments have been able to furnish. Continue reading Scrap the “Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance” Immediately: A Statement
Statement Condemning the murder of Gulnaz Khatun and demanding a speedy investigation
We the undersigned feminist groups, activists and individuals are deeply anguished at the killing of a 20-year-old poor Muslim girl, Gulnaz in a village in Bihar‘s Vaishali district. The young girl, an economic support to the family and about to be married was killed after her stalkers poured kerosene oil on her and burnt her alive on 30 October 2020. The girl was admitted in a nearby hospital with 75 percent burns and later moved to Patna Medical College. In her video statement when she was in excruciating pain, she clearly identified the three attackers. She succumbed to her injuries on 15th November 2020. The case has made hardly any progress. There is very limited coverage about the case in electronic Media and print media. According to the reports one accused has been arrested and police is still looking for the other two.. There are also reports that the family of victim is being harassed by the accused. Continue reading Statement condemning the murder of Gulnaz Khatun
Dear friends in the WCC
I am writing to you at a time so dark that unless we hold hands and feel the warmth of each others’ palms, we may even lose our sense of reality. This is my way of holding your hand and gaining strength from your presence.
Continue reading How to see in the dark? An open letter to the women in cinema collective
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 