Jahez or Dowry: Both are Evil for Muslims
By Kouser Fathima
If the prophet wanted, he would have conducted the wedding on a very grand scale. He refrained from doing so because he wanted to set an example for Muslims.
My Fair Lady
By Kouser Fathima
Laila, from the legend of Laila-Majnu, written by Amir Khusrau, was one of the few who was described as brown-skinned but with time even her description changed: beautiful became synonymous with fairness. However, the word, ‘Layla’, in Arabic means night or dark and hence she was named so after her dusky/dark complexion.
Do Muslim Women Need a Feminist Revolution?
By Kouser Fathima
Muslim feminist revivalism would imply that women must press against regressive patriarchal practices and reclaim their rights within the progressive framework of their religion.
Two poems dedicated to women
By Lopa Banerjee
Don’t tell me when you come back to me
Frost-bitten, smitten with the wind-drift,
Bespattered with mud, and slain,
That I did not wait for you long enough.
The Mars Club Member’s Daughter
By Achyut Dutt
Jyoti Singh’s rape hasn’t changed anything in India. There is that Guinness Book record that India still holds and will continue holding – of being the place where every 20 minutes, there is a rape. That works out to 72 rapes a day, a nice round figure.
First Impression: Leslee Udwin’s “India’s Daughter”
By Riti Das Dhankar
“India’s Daughter” does nothing but act like a mirror and by boycotting and banning it, we Indians are doing nothing but giving a loud and clear message that we don’t like to see what we have become.
Persephone
By Rita Bhattacharjee
It was the night when men turned into beasts – lurking at street corners, hiding in plain sight.
Gargoyles clawed out my guts with steel-tipped talons, feasting on flesh,
each of my wounds, a vagina oozing blood.
Young and Divorced: Escalating divorce rates among young in Nepal
By Neha Basnet
All things considered, the rise in divorces should not necessarily be viewed as a breakdown of social fabric and weak legal provisions; it might in fact be an indication of a dramatic transformation of realizing rights. The rate of divorce is likely to continue its rise in conjunction with increasing equality between the sexes.
River Deep: The Pain and Dance
By Lopa Banerjee
She floated alone like a weightless bubble in space. The moon became her pilot light; she danced to the softest of music, a quiet, unperturbed dance in her dreams, hand-in-hand with her unloved little girl. Together, they swirled and twirled, a wild fury of light, till the wake of daylight burned their fire away.
Haan, Main Savitribai Phule
By Mary Ann Chacko
Sushama Deshpande has been performing this play for over 25 years. Hence, there have been occasions when someone who had first seen the play in her adolescence was now the mother of an adolescent herself. Once in a village a lady came and told her that she had decided to educate her daughter despite all obstacles after watching the play.
Have women been excluded in the conceptualization of ‘Youth’?
By Neha Basnet
Young women contribute greatly to the youth initiatives, specifically in freedom struggle, but they are conspicuously absent in the conceptualization of ‘Youth’. Drawing upon youth initiatives during the freedom movement in India and the post-conflict context of contemporary Nepal, this piece questions the limited participation and conspicuous absence of young women vis-à-vis young men.
Reyhaneh Jabbari: How media underplayed the story
By Abdul Hafees
Reyhaneh had confessed that a third person was with them at the time of the murder but she never revealed his name. What was his role in this murder? Both remain still unanswered. Quite interestingly, no one covered an objective, unbiased and two-sided crime report in this case.
