On Topic: The September Review

September has been an eventful month, from Gauri Lankesh’s murder, to the setbacks in the countries harassment laws, to the police brutality faced by BHU student protesters. Most of the month was pretty awful, making us truly wish we could sleep through it all. But now September is over, and it’s time to wake up. Here are the highlights of the good, but mostly bad things that happened this month.

Law and Society

September began with the death of prominent journalist and social worker Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead near her home in Bangalore. Gauri Lankesh was known for her secular politics and criticism of the right-wing nationalism. Her death raised questions about the freedom of press, and led to protests in several cities across the country. This coincides with the United Nations reporting increasing harassment and violence towards human rights activists in 29 countries, including India. Meanwhile the debate over the fate of 40,000 Rohingya Muslims seeking asylum in India still continues. The centre had moved to deport the refugees citing ties to terrorism, facing heavy criticism from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Now another PIL seeking shelter and a petition supporting the centre’s claims have been filed in the Supreme Court, and will be heard in October. This article provides an interesting legal perspective on the issue. India’s sexual harassment and rape law has also taken a step back with the recent judgement on Mahmood Farooqui’s rape case. Not only was Farooqui acquitted by the Delhi High Court, but its judgement thoroughly dilutes the importance of consent through statements like ‘no could mean yes’. Similarly, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has granted bail to three men convicted of gang rape while blaming the victim’s mind-set and a culture of sexual experimentation.

Education

Protests broke out at Banaras Hindu University after the molestation of a female student outside her hostel. The incident turned ugly when the protestors were baton charged by local police, causing widespread outrage. Several student organizations in Delhi also protested the violence against BHU students. As the VC and state officials continue to trivialize the incident, inquiries are being made into the people responsible for the violence. Meanwhile, Jawaharlal Nehru University has dissolved its 18 year old Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH), and replaced it with an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), facing heavy criticism from students, faculty, and independent women’s groups. The new ICC will have lesser faculty and student representatives, and have more nominated than elected members. On a positive note, Dr. Menaka Guruswamy is now the first Indian female Rhodes Scholar to have her oil portrait hung in the Rhodes House at Oxford. This should have happened a long time ago, but the first portrait of a woman Rhodes Scholar was hung only in 2015, even though women have been receiving Rhodes scholarships for the past 40 years.

Cinema

The Malayalam movie ‘Sexy Durga’ has been denied clearance by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for a screening at the upcoming Mumbai Film Festival. The film deals with the violence and misogyny faced by women every day, and has received acclaim at international film festivals. But the ministry thinks that the film’s name might hurt religious sentiments. Seeing this as the government’s attempt to censor film festivals, an online petition has been started to allow the film to be aired. A new biopic has been announced by Viacom18 Motion Pictures on the life of Mithali Raj, the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team. Mithali hopes it will encourage more young girls to take up sports.

Sports

September has been very good for badminton player P V Sindhu, the first Indian woman to win an Olympic silver medal. She became the first Indian player to win the Korea Open Super Series title, and has now been nominated by the Sports Ministry for the Padma Bhushan award. India won 40 medals at the Asian indoor games held in Turkmenistan this month. P.U. Chitra won gold in 1500m women’s race after being excluded from the London World Championships for being ‘unfit’ by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI). Deeborah Herold from Andaman and Nicobar islands won three silver medals in track cycling sports. Other notable victories include Purnima Hembram winning gold at the pentathlon event, Sanjivani Jadhav winning silver in women’s 3000m race, and Neena Varakil winning bronze in women’s long jump.

In International News

While the NFL and NBA protests against racial discrimination and police brutality in USA have been at the forefront of international news, the WNBA’s protests spanning over a year have not received much coverage. More protests are expected at the WNBA Finals starting on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia has passed a law “allowing” women to drive from June 2018. Whether the law is actually enacting, and translates into real empowerment is yet to be seen.

September at Zubaan

We were interviewed by Artistik License! Find it here. The seventh edition of Zubaan’s ‘Cultures of Peace’ festival celebrating Northeast India is underway; this month we held a panel discussion on ‘Queer Identities in the Northeast’ in collaboration with The Delhi University Queer Collective (DUQC) and the Gender Studies Cell at St. Stephens College. Panelists Diti Lekha Sharma, Pavel Sagolsem and Dona Marwein spoke with Gertrude Lamare and video and written coverage of the event is up. The next ‘Cultures of Peace’ event will take place on 14^th October at the Asian Confluence in Shillong. We are also organizing events at TISS Guwahati on 12^th and 13^th October. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for more details. Our E-essays project released three sets of essays this month – on violence against women, health, and trauma. This month our book club discussed a TV show for the first time – “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” by Issa Rae. In our next meeting we will be discussing “Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran” by Shahrnush Parsipur.