Contesting Culture: The Grammar of ‘Kaala’

Cinema as an art form vividly captures the aspirations and everyday life-worlds of the people in India. In more contemporary times, suffused with the global language of desire, popular Indian cinema has sought to project the nation as a global power, while invisibilizing the faultiness of caste, gender, race and ethnicity. The films are increasingly shot in exotic locales with the lead characters leading enchanted lives. Innovative technology is utilized to narrate stories in which the farmer/worker/maid/other laboring people are conspicuous by their absence. Very few films possess the courage to buck this trend to recount tales of struggle entwined with the language of rights and justice. My article focuses on one such film—Pa Ranjith’s Kaala (Black). The film interrogates the muscular religiosity, caste and patriarchy on which the nation state is tethered. The cinematic journey also infuses the locale of Dharavi in Mumbai, home to thousands of migrant workers, with an agency of its own.

Political Movements and Forgotten Women of Telangana

Telangana became a separate state in 2014 with a lot of sacrifices from women The article provides a brief histography and revolves around those women of Telangana, who actively participated in different political and social movements of Telangana or India as a whole.

Counter-Hegemonic Visions of Self-Respect in a Novel: Ramamirthammal’s Challenge to Indian Nationalism

Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement challenged the ideological hegemony of the Indian Independence struggle by demanding that equality between sexes and eradicating caste be put on an equal footing with national liberation. The author analyses a chapter in a novel written by Muvalur Ramamirthammal, a reformer from a devadasi community, who joined the Self-Respect Movement and became an ardent abolitionist of the devadasi system. In a dialogue between an ex-devadasi, who is represented as a Self-Respect activist, and a Brahmin man with Indian nationalist views, the former devadasi highlights the Self-Respect Movement’s definition of modern citizenship based on the principles of self-respect and dignity of all beginning with women. The article concludes by discussing the novel's wider connection to the Self-Respect Movement and why further research on both respectively is crucial.

Not All Time Is Money: Women’s Burden of Unpaid Work

Since the 1990s, India has been witnessing a downward trend in female labour force participation (FLFP). Feminist economists have argued that the invisible labour of unpaid household work is quintessential for the social reproduction of the labour force. Time-use statistics can be useful for estimating the value of unpaid work and lead policy responses towards increasing FLFP. This study analyses the report on Time Use in India-2019 to draw insights from data on women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid domestic and caregiving services. It is argued that this has implications for their participation in the labour market. The patriarchal structure of the family pushes the onus of domestic labour on women. This confines them to home-based, poorly remunerated and informal work, or excludes them from the labour market. Interventions in the form of generating non-agricultural job opportunities in rural areas, establishing infrastructural support mechanisms in workplaces and encouraging female education and employment can not only stimulate FLFP but also help to address the crisis of jobless growth.

A Review of Bride Trafficking in India

Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that affects people of all ages, races, gender and ethnicities. Bride trafficking is one of the worst forms of human trafficking. Many other social evils such as child marriage, domestic violence, bonded labour and prostitution are linked to bride trafficking. Bride trafficking is rampant in India since eons. Hence, there is a need to understand the underlying causes, consequences, effects and repercussions. This article explores the phenomena of bride trafficking within the larger framework of human trafficking and the available legal provisions to address it.

Acid Attack: A Devastating Violence Against Women

This article will explore the problem of acid attack as a gender-related crime. We analyse the socio-legal status of this crime as a form of violence in comparison of other forms of violence in the Indian context with the help of secondary data. The patriarchal notion of women is that the body is her only respect, and its violation is ultimate punishment. The number of acid attacks is increasing every passing year. The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2016 recorded 283 incidents under the section of acid attack (‘Living in the shadows’- A project for acid attack victims by Haryana State legal Services Authority). It revealed that the most of the reported acid attack cases are due to refusal of marriage or rejection of romance. We discuss the consequences of acid attack and the legal framework available to address this problem.

Prostitutes of Kabari Bazar, Meerut and the Bachchra Community in Neemuch

Prostitution is currently a contentious issue in India where they are estimated to be in the range of over 2 million female sex workers. Majority of them venture into prostitution due to lack of resources to support themselves or their children. Most do not choose this profession out of choice, but they do it due to necessity. Such is a case in Meerut Kabari Bazaar, that is, Junk Market where people trade in all kinds of goods from spices, clothes, grocery and also sex.

For the Sake of Family and Tradition: Honour Killings in India and Pakistan

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide number of honour killings is as high as 5,000 women and girls, though some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimate as many as 20,000 honour killings annually worldwide. Despite limited statistics, research shows that honour killings occur amongst women of different ages, religions, and social status, wealth, education, and location. The limited understanding of each country context, combined with scarce data on honour killings, has contributed to the continued hidden nature of this shocking form of violence. In this article, we seek to address this gap through a descriptive analysis of honour killings in India and Pakistan. In the absence of other data, we conduct a content analysis of media-reported honour killings in these two countries to examine key similarities and differences in the motivations, types, and other characteristics of honour killings across these countries and highlight any key risk and protective factors that emerge.