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…

December 10, 2009

‘Staying Alive’: An Audit of the Law against Domestic Violence

By Sonal Makhija
EARLIER THIS MONTH, the ‘Staying Alive: Third Monitoring and Evaluation Report 09’ on the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) was released in Delhi. The report tracks the implementation of the Act for the third year in a row and has become a way to document jurisprudential development of the [...]

December 01, 2009

Of fatigue and forgetting

YESTERDAY, I WAS LOOKING at this report released by the World Economic Forum last month, and I started drafting a post with some excerpts. Just to make it easier for people who don’t want to read the whole thing. It was1 am, I was tired and suddenly I felt overcome with this sense of futility, [...]

October 22, 2009

Single in the City

By Ramapriya Gopalakrishnan

Leafing through pictures mailed by a friend, I find one of me on the beach laughing uninhibitedly with my hair streaming in the wind, and I smile to myself thinking ‘this is so me.’ I am a single woman in her thirties, have never been married and have no ‘special [...]

June 30, 2009

The Fear of Feminism

ON A RECENT VISIT to a Ivy League university in the US with scholars from across the Global South, we came across something strange. A book on feminism from its library had a bizarre tag pasted on it. The tag was brought to our notice by Elizabeth Weed, one of the editors of the acclaimed [...]

March 06, 2009

Poster Colours

SOME OF YOU have asked how you can help in the campaign against the attacks on women in Mangalore and Bangalore. Running a poster campaign in your neighborhood, college or office is a quick and easy way.  Here are some posters I’ve received from different organizations. Click on the download link to get a large-size [...]

August 29, 2008

and another birthday thought…

UV’s BIRTHDAY? Usha and I looked at each other, our eyes saying ‘you mean it’s been a year?’
Actually, at HHS, we can’t believe that a year has passed. Amidst our other work, the blog has been such an alive and vibrant platform. In the past, we had tried different ways for people to [...]

April 23, 2008

Taxing the Taxed: The Case for Differential Taxes

WORLD OVER, tax is the highest source of government revenue. Even as the finance minister in India was raising the ceiling on taxable income for women, there was a petition in the Madras High Court questioning this. The petitioner alleged that the provision of taxing women less violates men’s constitutional right to equality. The HC, [...]

February 01, 2008

Shedding the Ghunghat

THIS REPUBLIC DAY, newspapers and TV channels said with much elation that the first Indian woman President was taking the Republic Day salute. But the image of the president in ghungat (veil over the head) itself was disturbing. (Ironically, Prathibha Patil kicked up a controversy during the run-up to the presidential election by commenting against [...]