Dilip says – today gives reason for every Indian to celebrate:
Well, the best news of I don’t know how long is what transpired in the Delhi High Court today. The judges there did overturn Section 377. No longer are our gay brothers and sisters breaking the law by doing what the rest of us do [...]
Author Archive for kuffir
Today is our heritage..
Published by July 2nd, 2009 in Gender & Sexuality, History, Human Rights, India, Justice, LGBT, Prejudice, Regulation and Religion. 4 CommentsProud of the Statues
Published by July 2nd, 2009 in Dalit, Government, History, Justice, Politics, Prejudice and Society. 2 CommentsPrabin tells you why he is proud of Mayawati’s statues:
So I believe, what is disconcerting to the political parties about the statues that Mayawati unveiling and the Memorials she is constructing is not the wastage of precious resource - there are a lot many instances of govt. squandering revenues and tax payers money- but the [...]
Petition for Patients’ Rights
Published by July 2nd, 2009 in Activism, Health, Human Rights and Justice. 0 CommentsJan Arogya Abhiyan, an NGO working to defend and foster people’s right to health care in Maharashtra addresses a Petition to the Minister for Public Health and Family Welfare, Maharashtra, urging the Maharashtra government to adopt the Standard Charter of Patients’ Rights:
We believe that in Doctor-Patient relations, patients are inherently vulnerable. Hence they need to [...]
E-Campaign for Patient Rights
Published by June 30th, 2009 in Activism, Democracy, Health, Human Rights, India, Justice, Policy, Recommended Links, Regulation and Society. 1 CommentAditya’s 3 year old son was prescribed a drug overdose by a pediatrician for the recurring fever. This led to very severe consequences and the child needed ICU care for 3 days and a painful process of recovery due to this excessive medication. Aditya wanted to register his complaint against the pediatrician and the hospital [...]
LGBT issues
Published by June 28th, 2009 in Gender & Sexuality, Human Rights and Prejudice. 0 CommentsGaybombay is happy that India media is focussing more on LGBT issues- find a compilation of recent news stories in this post.
Two interesting poetry blogs: Khahish-E-Sang is Raza Yaseen’s Urdu ghazal blog and The Tree of Voice features his English ghazals. An excerpt from one his English ghazals:
I FEEL THAT DEATH WILL TIGHTEN ITS SKIN
WAITING FOR ME TO SHAVE THIS WORLD
FOR GOD’S SAKE DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD
OR ELSE HE WOULD ENSLAVE THIS WORLD
WHEN YOU LEAVE [...]
Different schools for different classes
Published by June 26th, 2009 in Business, Children, Education, Policy and Politics. 0 CommentsAvinash thinks Kapil Sibal is progressive:
Kapil Sibal, the new HRD minister of India, seems to have taken a stand completely contrary to that taken by his predecessor, Mr. Arjun Singh - he seems to actually be interested in the development of the human resources in India… ;) I am impressed by the reforms Mr. Sibal [...]
Abi reacts to Kapil Sibal’s plans to make school level Board exams ‘optional’:
Thus, Sibal’s plan, even if it becomes a reality, is likely to benefit only a small number of students who get guaranteed seats in Class XI in their current schools. The alleged benefit of removal of exam-related stress is thus available, ironically, only [...]
Silence and resistance
Published by June 25th, 2009 in Caste, Dalit, Feminism, Gender & Sexuality, History, Human Rights, Patriarchy, Politics, Prejudice, Violence and Women. 0 CommentsAnu explains that silence doesn’t mean the absence of resistance:
This on the face of it seems like pretty sound explanation, so with a magic wand if we push the upper caste down the ladder, upper caste men lose their ‘manhood’ when their women are appropriated and humiliated, right? Any caste that finds itself at the [...]
“But the girls couldn’t have done it without a man, huh?”
Published by June 24th, 2009 in Cinema and Women. 0 CommentsVeracious finds some feminist glitches in Chak De India:
The thing is, I adore this film to bits. It’s refreshing, it’s gripping, it’s got a cast of absolutely terrific characters and some rare, fascinating female-female dynamics that are usually reserved for relations between the sexes or just between men in Indian cinema. And yes, it is [...]
Afanasii Nikitin
Published by June 24th, 2009 in Books, History, India, Language, Media, Travel and World. 2 CommentsFëanor translates Afanasii Nikitin’s fifteenth century memoirs of his travel to India (Journey Across Three Seas):
Who was Nikitin? He was a merchant of Tver, a principality abutting the Mongol domains in Russia. He set out down the Volga sometime in the 1470s with some merchandise, was robbed by Tartars, and decided that he could not [...]
Equal Opportunity Commission
Published by June 24th, 2009 in Activism, Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, Policy, Prejudice and Religion. 0 CommentsTarunabh, of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, writes to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, to further the public debate on equality of opportunities.
Seems to me more like an attempt to start a private, exclusive debate among a select group of elites in the academia, lawmakers and the enforcers, among others.
Unveiling martyrs
Published by June 23rd, 2009 in Culture, Human Rights, Racism, Religion, Secularism, Women and World. 0 CommentsAlankrita doesn’t understand why a democratic nation would want to impose a dress code:
The veil , however confuses me. I find the basic idea of covering up to prevent others from getting tempted, unadulterated nonsense. But there are those who choose to. I might find that choice stupid, or ill-informed or even regressive. But then [...]
The biggest problem of a woman entrepreneur is the social attitude and the constraints in which she has to live and work. Despite constitutional equality; there is discrimination against women. In a tradition-bound society, women suffer from male reservations about a woman’s role and capacity. In rural areas, women face resistance not only from males [...]
Ordinary crime
Published by June 22nd, 2009 in Democracy, Human Rights, India, Justice, Media, Policy, Politics, South Asia and Violence. 0 CommentsAjay Govind spends what seem to be ten not-so-ordinary days in Kashmir:
But the words that caught my attention were from the title of that piece. ”I’ve learnt how ordinary crime becomes an issue”. Here were his ‘exact’ words from the interview itself “…It’s a case study for me to understand how if not handled right, an [...]
Child labour- a timeline
Published by June 22nd, 2009 in Children, Education, Human Rights, Policy and Poverty. 0 CommentsKeshaw Bhardwaj has jotted down some interesting notes on child labour in India.
The Case of the Missing Servant
Published by June 22nd, 2009 in Books, Fiction and India. 0 CommentsAparna reviews Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant:
The Indian class system and treatment of servants, rural poverty and the exodus to urban India, the stark contrast between slums and gleaming urban palaces, the tortoise-like pace of the Indian judicial system - all these become part of the case of the missing servant, Mary, [...]
No poverty of contempt here
Published by June 22nd, 2009 in Blogging, Cinema, Media, Poverty, Religion and Society. 0 CommentsChurumuri follows the angry public exchange of notes that started between Amitabh Bachchan and Jug Suraiya, across the media, after the success of Slumdog Millionaire. Select portions from the post:
Bachchan:
I accuse the journalist Jug Suraiya of failing his professional ethical code of conduct by means of wilful error in the collection of facts…. He should [...]
Adnan learns about the tradition of chillas:
I was surprised and asked him to wait for a while so that I could take a look at the chilla. The gate had ‘Ya Ghaus dastgir‘ written in nastaliq Urdu. I sensed that it was Sufi-inspired shrine a la mazaar though of a different kind.
And there were dozens [...]
Right to Indifference
Published by June 20th, 2009 in Democracy, Development and Government. 0 CommentsQuirky Indian feels that the Indian bureaucracy has a sense of humour: while everyone from international watchdogs to the Maoists give them a bad rating, the babus think they know better.
Lalgarh, like Nandigram and Naxalbari, has become another addition, courtesy West Bengal, to our socio-political lexicon. Here’s an article where one of the Maoists has [...]
Anuraanan doesn’t resonate with Banno:
“But why does resonance happen only between two intellectual souls? Why can’t Amit and Nandita resonate? Why does the businessman necessarily have to be unfeeling towards nature? Or relationships? Why can’t the poetry spouting architect actually be cold and cruel to his wife, as in many instances of real life? Why [...]
Prithvi opines that the State is withdrawing in West Bengal:
This is reflected in the conditions leading to the Shalboni attacks on the CM’s cavalcade: while the government did nothing for years to counter Maoist infiltration into Lalgarh and the surrounding areas, it reacted with brutal, and terrorising, force against local tribals following the incident. The [...]
Lohia and the ‘People’s Movement Left’
Published by June 18th, 2009 in Activism, Capitalism, Caste, Democracy, Development, Economy, History, Politics, Science & Technology and Theory. 0 CommentsAmit Basole evaluates Lohia in a ‘time of crisis’ in the Indian left movements:
Along with the question of Eurocentrism, the question of the type of economic development was Lohia’s most fundamental theoretical challenge to Marxism. Marxists have been by and large unwilling to confront the possibility that industrialism and not capitalism may be the primary [...]
Memsaab discovers the ‘wit and humour’ of Baburao Patel:
From the players, Raj Kapoor as Raj Kumar Saxena thrusts himself on the screen most of the time obviously presuming too much attraction in his antics and outpourings. With the exception of some scattered pieces his clowning falls flat and where he tries to ape Charlie Chaplin [...]
The terrorist in Hindi cinema
Published by June 17th, 2009 in Cinema, Culture, Geopolitics, Government, Human Rights, Politics, Prejudice, Religion, Society, South Asia, Terrorism and Violence. 0 CommentsPurdah is trying to figure out ‘the shifting figure of the terrorist in the Hindi language film industry’:
The military events at Kargil in 1999 launched a slew of Indo-Pakistan war films. A few were romance films on patriotic steroids like Anil Sharma’s Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara, and Kunal Kohli’s bizarre Fanaa. The [...]
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