Ultra Violet is a place for Indian feminists. It’s a place for sharing stories and views and questions. It’s a place for exploration, opinion and information. It’s a place where we can come together to understand what other feminists around the country–or around the world–are saying. If you want to write for UV, please read this. More about UV here.

We’re Talking About…

July 21, 2010

Infantile Shortshrift

INDIA HAS NO law to criminalize child sexual abuse (CSA). The Prevention of Offences against Children Bill was drafted in 2005, but it has been in the cold storage despite the setting up of the Commission on the Protection of Child Rights in the same year. On a wave of moral panic after the Ruchira [...]

May 30, 2010

Good Girls Don’t Talk to Boys

GOOD GIRLS Don’t Talk to Boys. And vice versa, although an exception may be made for good boys who are simply lured by bad girls.
Recently, I came across this new item that talked about a young girl in a Chennai engineering college who killed herself because she was ticked off for talking to a boy. It [...]

May 25, 2010

A Sporty Conversation on Gender in the Academy

HERE’S A PART IMAGINARY, part real email thread of conversations among faculty members at an elite law university in India. Two developments are being discussed simultaneously – one is a weekly cricket match, and the second is the establishment of a women-only Women’s Law Society. The names of participants in the conversation have been changed [...]

December 17, 2009

Crime Non-Fiction

By Sridala Swami

IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY devoured every one of the three books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, you have at least heard of it: the story of the girl with the dragon tattoo who plays with fire or kicks the hornet’s nest. She is Lisbeth Salander, abused child, accused adult and unlikely crusader along [...]

October 14, 2009

The Women’s Reservation Bill – Empowerment or Besides the Point?

By Martin Lehmann-Waldau

The Indian parliament recently showed intense activity to promote women’s representation in decision-making bodies. Some months back, a bill was passed that reserves a staggering 50% of seats for women on the panchayat level. Currently under review and soon to be debated in the Lok Sabha is the Women’s Reservation Bill that promises [...]

October 13, 2009

Time to listen to her voice

By Deborah Herbert of Population First
As the day of voting for the Assembly elections approaches, the political parties have been making their achievements and plans known to the voters of Maharashtra through their manifestos. With a lot at stake for the political parties in the fray, they are leaving no stone unturned to convince the [...]

July 17, 2009

Wishes For A Woman

ACCORDING TO THE calendar Parsis follow, today is my birthday. It is an event only family and very close friends know about, the more popular occasion being my date of birth next weekend. Of the seven people who wished me a Happy Birthday today, four followed it up with blessings for a good sasroo, i.e. [...]

July 16, 2009

Instant Divorces

LATELY, I SEEM TO BE hearing a lot about the break-up of marriages and subsequent divorces. There was the Hiphop Grandmom writing on incompatible alliances and how they’ve led to the breakdown of marriages. Then, today, over at the F Word Blog, I read a piece on how British Tory party members want a provision for a [...]

July 14, 2009

How to Conduct A Wedding

WITHOUT BEING hyperbolic, let me just say that this nearly made me upchuck my morning tea. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh subjected 151 women to ‘virginity tests’. The women were to be part of a mass marriage scheme in Shadol near Bhopal. To avoid ‘complications’, the state government saw it fit to conduct physical [...]

July 03, 2009

One Step Forward…

…AND ANOTHER ONE BACK. While the decriminalization of consensual gay sex is indeed a victory for those rooting for orientation-equality (refer to this news item), constricted notions of propriety continue to be imposed on basic choices deemed even remotely threatening to social fabric. A case in point being denim. I kid you not. Jeans, according [...]