In 2012, while researching fishers’ rights to the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary on the eastern coast of Odisha, I stumbled upon an unexpected conflict. Odiya fishers were accusing long-settled Bengali fishers of being undocumented migrants who had destroyed the ecosystem with […]
‘Girls of Mumbaistan’ is a new addition to the Mumbaistan series by acclaimed film director and novelist Piyush Jha. Like ‘Mumbaistan’, this book is made of three novellas. Two have female protagonists and the last one has a transgender protagonist, […]
Over 50% inmates in Tihar prison belong to Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribe and from Other Backward Classes (OBC), as per Prison Statistics 2018. The data was recently shared by the Ministry of Home Affairs in response to a question in […]
Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India, is widely remembered for her lyrical poems and contributions to the freedom struggle and championing for women’s rights. A child prodigy, freedom fighter and leader, she was also a skilled orator and exemplary administrator. […]
In 2016, New York-based writer-journalist Yashica Dutt ‘came out’ on Facebook as a Dalit in response to Hyderabad PhD scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide, which many have labelled an “institutional murder” after he protested against the casteist policies of Hyderabad University. […]
Since the heady days of the classical arts renaissance associated with India’s independence movement, hardly anyone examined the process by which Sadir, for centuries performed by hereditary dancers in temples, courts and palatial salons, was transformed into modern-day Bharatanatyam. But […]
Early this week, I was in Chennai – where we had eventually been invited and stormed the conservative portals of Chennai. After eighteen years of resistance from their powers-that-be, we performed ‘The Vagina Monologues’ before an enthusiastic audience that couldn’t […]
HYDERABAD: This Valentine’s Day, we give you a sneak-peek into the lives of some couples, who broke the barriers of caste, religion and gender binaries to be with each other I met Kamini in school. Our love story had a […]
“The political condition of a stateless person is much worse than that of a political prisoner. The person loses more than his or her freedom…he or she loses the “right to have rights”. A stateless person represents ‘a new kind […]
The scholarly literature in the Islamic world has always been a private enterprise. Individual scholars quite early in the Islamic history span a web of intellectual network. In conversation with each other through exchange of ideas, these scholars by mid […]
