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…

March 01, 2010

Marriage and Feminism

By Sreeparna Chattopadhyay
OVER THE LAST FEW decades, sociologists and economists have been exploring the consequences of marriage for men and for women. Many of the studies indicate that married people are happier, healthier and richer than single or divorced people. Sometimes this masks the fact that marriage has more advantages for men than for women [...]

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 [...]

September 14, 2009

Two Poems by Aditi Machado

Iris and the sun
Iris thought of the sun as a stain
on the sky; it spread so keenly
when it set, perhaps the lake
was blotting paper.
Why she paid to sit in a boat,
no one knows. The oars scratched
at the surface — relentless nibs –,
disturbed the hulking dusk-yellow
ever so minutely, and nothing
was written that night.
*
Ragini to ex-lover
I am [...]

August 28, 2009

They must’ve known my grandparents

By Divya Rajan

I drive by narrow lanes called eda
in colloquial malayalam, the walls hoarded with large
posters of Mohanlal and some teenager heroine
(who won the National Award for Best Actress,
I’m told, for carrying on precariously well
as a mother of an eighteen year old, when
she herself had but known eighteen mango- textured
summers) with wisps of curls over [...]

August 13, 2009

What is it that offends you?

RECENTLY, OVER AT at Feministe, guest blogger Ren did some frank speak about being a sex worker:
Well, personally, I am fond of the money and the way it allows me to set my own hours.  I generally like most of my coworkers.  I do dig my work attire way more than business casual (except the [...]

July 09, 2009

Laughable Loos

By Rakhi Pande

***
Rakhi Pande is a commerce and management graduate who has worked with a leading brand marketing consultancy for 5 years. After moonlighting briefly with a media firm, she has been home tutoring school children for the last 2 academic years. She is proud of their great scores and that they show up for [...]

October 07, 2008

Because, of course, you must teach us our place

TWO WEEKENDS AGO, my cousin and I had a girls’ night out and ended up watching the late night show of Rock On. After the show ended, we hailed a cab, hopped in and sang like wannabe rock stars all the way home, between squabbling about who was the hottest man in the movie. She [...]

July 10, 2008

Scavengers As Models: Exploitation Chic or Empowering?

I FOUND this news story about Indian “sanitation workers” (scavengers, if we avoid the euphemism) modelling in New York pretty bizarre. I do hope you’ll read the article before proceeding to comment, but in a nutshell: 36 Indian sanitation workers were invited to a conference as part of the UN’s International Year of Sanitation. In [...]

June 23, 2008

Taking the Stitches Off

THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT in my grandmother’s book was “What a sweet girl! She keeps her mouth stitched up.” Of course, in Bengali, this has a nicer ring to it but it essentially means a girl who keeps quiet, who is silent in the face of adversity (and torture and ill-treatment), who endures. I grew up [...]

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, [...]