Payal Tadvi By Nisha Susan If you haven’t been living under a rock, you have heard women asking each other for the numbers of non-judgemental gynaecologists. Non-judgmental gynaecologists is what they ask for, not women gynaecologists. The medical system makes it amply clear that women doctors can be as emblematic of the horror-movie patriarchy that is the medical system. You have met them. Now imagine the three senior doctors who reportedly bullied and tortured Dr Payal Tadvi all the way to suicide in BYL Nair Hospital, Mumbai as your doctors. Imagine Drs Hema Ahuja, Antika Khandelwal and Bha ..read more

By Nisha Susan My schoolmates and I read the news that Jokha Alharthi had won the Man Booker International with a thrill. At last we could read about our childhood home Oman in a novel, we texted each other yesterday. We left school in Muscat a couple years before the Internet so all we knew about Oman when we lived there was from the heavily sanitised newspapers, a rare book or two by foreign writers, the rumour mills and of course Oman’s own self-fashioning propaganda machinery. My father likes to tell this argument he overheard between two patients in his waiting room. The Omani patient ap ..read more

By Nisha Susan My friends and I like to retell a story about a well-known Bangalore feminist who passed away a few years ago. Two stories actually. One that when her husband brought home, over her objections, a friend with a reputation for being abusive to his wife, she left the house and sat on the footpath and told everyone who asked her why she was sitting there. The second one was when she got into a protracted argument with an auto driver who wouldn’t return her change. The auto-driver eventually snapped ‘soole’ at her. That’s whore in Kannada. She is supposed to have said, “naan soole i ..read more

By Gaurav Jain Protests at the Supreme Court. Image via Twitter @DeshdeepDU The Supreme Court’s special in-house committee investigating sexual harassment accusations against the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi, has given its verdict—it found “no substance” in the allegations and has exonerated him completely. The SC’s Secretary General issued a terse note on the subject that has exploded into a major controversy, with criticism mounting in mainstream and social media. There were public protests against the judgement in Delhi and Bengaluru on Tuesday May 7, with many more cities exp ..read more

By Nisha Susan Woman on Beach at Sunset – Mt. Lavinia – Colombo – Sri Lanka by Adam Jones via Flicker CC by 2.0 Back in 2009, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy said hijabs were a sign of women’s debasement and began the process of banning them. In the heat of that particular episode of the global culture war, I interviewed an assortment of hijab-wearing women from across India. A number of young women I spoke to despised the hijab and couldn’t wait for a day when they could stop wearing it. But several other women I spoke to were the first in their generation to wear hijabs. Whichever grou ..read more

By Gaurav Jain Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. Image via Twitter @VishalGadaraCC The woman complainant who accused Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment has ‘withdrawn’ from the Supreme Court’s inquiry into the matter. At least that’s what most media will have you believe. What she actually said was that “I felt I was not likely to get justice from this committee and so I am no longer participating in the 3 Judge Committee proceedings.” The complainant has not just withdrawn from the SC’s peculiar and unethical hearings—she has rejected and repudiated them. In a press ..read more

By Paromita Vohra Early morning voting rush in Mumbai. Image via Twitter @modichirag0808 Mumbai, Monday 29th April There have been ads on the radio, rich with meaning. Bombay people are being exhorted not to take the long weekend. One Hindi ‘Go Vote’ ad goes like this: a man/actor playing a daily wage worker says, “Building roads and flyovers and bridges is hard work. It’s toil and trouble. But then, when it’s complete we feel proud. We feel we’ve had a hand in building the country. But you – you don’t have to build roads and labour so much to contribute to the country. We’ll do that. You just ..read more

By Gaurav Jain Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. Image via Twitter @Dilsedesh On Wednesday April 24th, a Supreme Court bench heard lawyer Utsav Bains’ allegations of how the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi is being targeted by a conspiracy of fake sexual harassment allegations. Also that day, a Supreme Court panel committee of three judges junior to the CJI, Justices SA Bobde, NV Ramana and Indira Banerjee, met on the matter of inquiring into the sexual harassment allegations against the CJI. The committee issued a notice to the woman accuser requiring her to attend the first he ..read more

By Nisha Susan Shy came for cameraperson If you have watched the televised interview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by movie star Akshay Kumar you likely already have your favourite moments. If you asked me to pick one it would be the moment in which Modi decided to demonstrate that national artefact – Man Tells Wife Joke. In the matter of form Modi has displayed great exactness in performing this traditional art. Let us examine it closely. #WATCH PM Narendra Modi speaks on Akshay Kumar & Twinkle Khanna pic.twitter.com/r0Y2fCjaK0 — ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2019 The segment begins with Modi ..read more