'Last year, just before Narendra Modi's victory in India's general election, I had written in an article, Gender violence and Narendra Modi, about what life might be like in the country if he were elected. Now, some eighteen months later, it is clear that my fears were more than justified. If the run up to the election was horrifying in its violence, today things are infinitely worse.
'I heard PM Narendra Modi talking at the Gold Monetisation scheme launch a few days ago. I couldn’t help but observe that he was making terrible blunders, one after the other in his speech. By the time the speech ended, I was really cringing and wondering how the PM can speak like this at a national level. So what did he do wrong? Well, he used gendered language to begin with.
'In the cacophony of political debate in India, the right-wing holds an untainted record of presenting disinformation in the loudest voices. Besides a swarm of flag-waving swayamsevaks and jingoistic andh-bhakts, Modi is also backed by a fat chunk of upper-middle class, what some might call, “English-educated” Indians and class-A industrialists & capitalists.
The band of Modi supporters also has its share of public figures. And Chetan Bhagat, in his latest column “Anatomy of a Liberal,” has proven yet again, why he is by far the worst thing to have happened to the world of writing...'
'In 2013, the Gujarat government denied an entertainment tax exemption to Meghdhanushya, KR Devmani’s Gujarati film on the gay community featuring Manvendra Singh Gohil, the openly gay prince of Rajpipla. The response to a Right to Information petition filed by Scroll.in has now confirmed that Meghdhanushya was the first and only film to be refused a tax exemption certificate on the grounds of its subject matter in the 16 years since Gujarat's entertainment tax policy came into effect.
...In a working paper, Seetha Menon, a PhD student at the University of Essex, used a large survey to look at the effects of domestic violence. The data came from the 2007 National Family and Health Survey, which interviewed 124,385 women between 16 and 49 years of age. When she controlled for factors such as household wealth, age, and birth order, she found that nearly one in ten of child deaths under the age of one could be attributed to domestic violence. If the sample was narrowed to only rural households, that number doubled to nearly one in five deaths. Direct trauma to the foetus while the mother is pregnant is just one of many ways in which domestic violence could lead to child death. The psychological stress can also have a detrimental impact on the development of the child, which can result in low birth weight or preterm delivery, eventually contributing to early death.
'Shama Parveen was 28 years old and eight weeks pregnant when she died last week... Parveen was buried in the graveyard at the edge of Talheta village at 2 pm on October 22. At 6.30 the next morning, a neighbour, Premvati Prajapat, found the body lying outside the grave, five metres away and alerted the family. “I could not understand,” said Saifi. “I thought maybe an animal disturbed the grave and I went there to set it right.” It wasn’t the work of an animal.
'The highly respected British medical journal Lancet has now pulled up the Indian government for failing to stop acts of rape and physical violence against women and girls. The journal has also indicated that it could commission a landmark paper to actually gauge the burden of such acts of violence in India in the near future. In an exclusive interview to TOI in Mexico, Richard Horton, the editor in chief of Lancet said the government "has the primary responsibility for the protection of women which extends from to issues of security to issues of health".
'A BJP leader, in-charge of its membership drive here, was today arrested for allegedly assaulting and intimidating a woman councillor of his own party. "Navin Raman Patel was arrested for assaulting and intimidating a woman councillor of BJP, Simple Tandel, at a programme held by the party in a hotel in Nani Daman area today," Police Station Officer at Nani Daman area Sohil Jivani said. The act of attack of the BJP leader went viral on various social networking sites as it was caught on CCTV camera...'
'Fourteen prominent women’s organisations and over 20 women academics from universities across the United Kingdom have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is due to visit the U.K. in November, expressing their alarm at the rise in gender violence in India.
As women concerned with combating violence against South Asian, Black and Minority Ethnic women and girls, we are writing to express our deep disquiet about your government’s approach to gender violence. When you were elected to lead India with a massive mandate from the people many had hoped that you would use it to try and improve women’s lives. Instead, your actions (and inaction) suggest that your government is not only indifferent to the increasing violence against women and rigid patriarchal control of their lives but often endorses and reinforces it. Recently, you the Prime Minister of India, along with top ministers of your cabinet, have reported to an unconstitutional authority, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who have called you to account for your actions. We find this shocking, because the RSS is a paramilitary organisation modelled on the Italian Fascist and German Nazi parties and known also for its violent misogyny. And while we know that you yourself have been a life-long member of the RSS, we think that in a democratic country like India, it is crucially important that the government is answerable only to parliament and democratic procedures.
