South Asia Citizens Web

A TV discussion on Indo Russian relations: Alexander M Kadakin (Russian Ambassador to India) ; Rajiv Sikri (Former Secretary, MEA) ; Prabhat Shukla (Former Indian Ambassador to Russia)

The cheap mobile unsettles long-standing gender relations because it introduces a means of autonomy that was not present before. The sociologist Manuel Castells exquisitely captured the essence when he wrote that, “mobile communication is not about mobility but about autonomy.” It’s autonomy that makes a personal, private communications device so disruptive of old social structures.

It is not the rebellious highlights of left history and thought but the paradoxes and conundrums that have most to say to us today. The need for reflective engagement being most pressing in the case of terrorism as well as privatisation of higher education

The pattern, over a period of more than two decades, is unmistakeable. Women and girls are seen, and treated, not as persons in their own right but as sexualised embodiments of their community’s honour, and consequently deliberate, systematic sexual assaults are carried out against them as a way of destroying their community. In each case, the attacks are accompanied by arson, looting, massacres and ethnic cleansing, the refusal to let survivors from the minority community return to their homes, or allowing them to return only on condition that they convert to Hinduism.

This reading of the BJP’s attitude to women is confirmed in a very different context: the Delhi gang-rape in December 2012. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj referred to the victim while she was still battling for her life as a ‘zinda laash’ (living corpse) and demanded the death penalty for the rapists, with feminist activists objecting to both