'The Rajasthan human rights commission has said that women who live with their partners before marriage are “like concubines”, and that live-in relationships should be legislated again to “protect women”. “It is the responsibility of the government and human rights organisations to protect women from the harms of live-in relationship through intensive awareness campaigns,” an order issued by the commission’s chairperson, Justice Prakash Tatia, and member, Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma, said.
'Twenty-three years after it was banned following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the Bajrang Dal on December 6 this year renewed its pledge for a Ram temple at the mosque site. The anniversary of the demolition is technically a day of “valour” (Shaurya Diwas) for the Hindutva outfit. This year, however, Shaurya Diwas wasn’t subdued as in many past years. There were elaborate press releases and there was heightened activity on right-wing Twitter handles in support of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.
;Forget cuss words, now even the images of Indian goddesses have failed to make the cut in front of the Indian censor board. In the soon-to-be-released film Angry Indian Goddesses, amongst the 17 cuts that the Indian censor board wanted filmmakers to make, was the blurring of the images of two Indian goddesses -- a picture of Lakshmi in the credits, and later in the movie, a picture of Kali. Movie producer Gaurav Dhingra said that he had failed to make the cut in front of the revising committee.
'On Saturday, senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram admitted that the ban on Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was unjust. “I have no hesitation in saying that the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book was wrong,” he said. The proscription was imposed 27 years back, in 1988, when Chidambaram was the Minister of State Home Affairs in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet. The novel had outraged conservative Muslim opinion when it was published.
'Track legend P T Usha has shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi protesting against the decision of School Games Federation of India to organise the athletic events for boys and girls separately. In her letter, Usha cited the SGFI calendar, showing that athletic events for boys and girls will be held separately in the second week of January 2016 and fourth week of December this year in Nasik and Pune respectively. SGFI is the national apex body for organising various sports and games among all Indian schools.
'The murder of a Bajrang Dal activist has made Karnataka tense . The Hindutva groups are calling it "revenge" for the lynching of a Muslim in distant Dadri, UP, for allegedly eating beef. Prashant Poojary, 29, was killed in Moodabidri, Dakshina Kannada, on 9 October, according to reports. Poojary had actively worked to close slaughterhouses in the district. He was allegedly murdered by six people who came on motorcycles, wearing masks and wielding knives. It was on the cards, perhaps.
'On a Wednesday afternoon, two of us women journalists with The Quint proceeded to Delhi University’s North Campus for a story on the ambiguity of sexual consent, and how sometimes ‘yes’ doesn’t mean yes. What we didn’t know was that it would land us up in a police thana. The story we were pursuing was for a campaign The Quint has spearheaded, called #MakeOutInIndia – an open celebration of sex and sexuality, without any euphemisms attached.
"Denying allegations that the Mangaluru City police were forced by right-wing activists to get women out of a party, the city police commissioner, S Murugan said that the organisers did not have the necessary liquor permission. According to a Hindustan Times report, Mangaluru police forced women dancing at a discothèque of a three-star hotel to leave on Saturday night, allegedly at the behest of the Bajrang Dal.
"Six years after that infamous battering of a group of girls inside a Mangaluru pub, cultural vigilantism is no more the preserve of a few lumpens. The inclination appears to have seeped into the very fabric of Karnataka's coastal society, with even young college students — often its victims — now donning the mantle of the moral police. A boy and a girl belonging to different religious communities were suspended by the government PU College in Sullia, around 70 km from Mangaluru, last month after sparking protests on campus. Their fault: they were seen together at a cyber cafe.
"Last week, co-convenor of the Bajrang Dal’s (BD’s) Bantwal cell, Bhuvith Shetty, triggered a controversy by welcoming the assassination of scholar M.M. Kalburgi. Thirty years after its creation, the BD has enlarged its agenda in such a manner that the rule of law is at stake. The BD was founded in 1984 under the auspices of the VHP to increase Hindu mobilisation for the Ayodhya movement. While the first leader of the BD, Vinay Katiyar, was a former RSS pracharak, the organisation lacked the disciplinary regimen of the RSS. Up until 1993, the BD did not even have a uniform.
