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Lady Shri Ram College’s (LSR) Dramatics society on 9th March, Sunday performed their annual street play production, “Jahaan Neelaam hai Insaaniyat” at G.B Road, New Delhi’s largest red light area. The play revolves around prostitution and talks about the rights of prostitutes and how it should be recognized as a profession and not looked down at with disgrace.

The performance was scheduled with legal police permissions with help of Khanabadosh – a theatre group of ex-Delhi University students who do street theatre only for public awareness.

At 12:30 PM, LSR Dramatics Society and Khanabadosh made a common call in the area before starting the performances. ‘Demo-crazy’ was the first play presented by Khanabadosh on politics. It talked about how democracy isn’t only the matter of voting and is formed by people and not politicians.

This was followed by ‘Jahaan Neelaam Hai Insaaniyat’ by LSR girls. The play had many spectators from all over the area. Chandu who was present there to watch the play said, “Hum zyadatar dukaandar log hai yahan jo dekh rahe hai, jinn log ko aap dikhaana chahte hain unhe koi baahar aane nahi deta.”

Performance attracted various actors from different college societies of the University. Members of an NGO, Kat-Katha which works towards the welfare of children of prostitutes were also present. Mr. Sandeep Rawat, founder of Samarth – an organization that does theatre with blind students of Delhi University was also part of the audience.

On asking about the security issues, Aishwarya – a student of LSR who had come to watch the play told DU Beat, “Yes, I had some fear in mind while coming to this area. But there was this nervous excitement as well. Theatre in the university is a mere source of winning competitions nowadays, but this step is very rare. This is where this play belongs.”

The play talked about the problems a woman in this profession has to face and how the men in our society are the leading force. It highlighted that most of the women are trafficked in our country and they don’t choose to be where they are. The play was written using various slogans that left the crowd teary-eyed like “Kya yehi vo duniya sanskari, jahan ghat ghat pe bikti nari” & “Woh auzaar thi, auzaar hai aur auzaar hi rahegi.” The play projected that the public does nothing for a woman who undergoes such trauma. “Hum to aaj ki janta, humein vaishya ki haalat se koi farak ni padta.” According to people in the audience, a small drawback for both the plays was that they had few dialogues in the English language. The message may not have been clearly delivered.

Talking about why a topic like prostitution was chosen, Nishtha Pandey – the society’s president said, “There are many preconceived notions about this matter. The incorrect fact with people is that 15% of the women choose this work on their own, whereas this percentage is only 2%. Myths regarding this subjects are not really myths. It is true that 60-70% of the women who are prostitutes are affected by HIV AIDS. Their condition is horrifying. Ours is a small step towards this.”

The president of the society also feels that addressing prostitutes as sex workers only glamourises the name and doesn’t gurantee any rights or respect. Hence the play used the term ‘prostitutes’ against ‘sex workers.’ The act also provided solutions in the end by mentioning that unionisation should be undertaken for these prostitutes to protect their rights as being done at Sonagachi, one of the biggest red light areas of Kolkata. The members of the society also said that they feel that finally the motive of making this play was achieved. Mr. Siddhant Sharma, the leading person behind organising this all also congratulated the artists from LSR.

But the most important question that arises here is that was the target audience actually targeted. As commented by a localite of that area the women are not allowed outside the brothels for any such happenings. Ramlal said, “Isse farak bohot kam padega. Aisa kaam jaari rakhna hoga jiske chalte logo ko zyada se zyada pta chalta rahe.” Due to this very fact, no questions were raised by people from the local audience during the question answer round. The team promised that they will try making efforts in this regards in the future as well.

“Kal ek vaishya ne kaha, ki aaj mujh par jung lag gya hai,
Kal tak jo mere dar aata tha, aaj wahi mujhse darr gaya hai.
Koi dalal ko kyun nahi tokta, kyun ilzaam mujh par hi lag gya hai,
Kal ek vaishya ne kaha, ki aaj mujh par jung lag gya hai.
Jab tak hum andekha karenge, tab tak chalegi haiwaniyat,
Mitta do unn hawaalon ki, jahan nilaam hai insaaniyat”

The final day of Lady Shri Ram College’s Genderknowledge started as brilliantly as the previous ones, with a visual presentation of the Representation of Gendered Identities and Sexuality by Vidya Shivadas, art intellectual and Director of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, moderated by LSR professor Jonathan Koshy. The presentation carried throughout John Berger’s theoretical framework of the ‘ways of seeing’ as defining and shaping the ways of being. Shivadas started her presentation with a quote from George Baselitz, an acclaimed German artist who said that the biggest problem with women artists was that none of them could actually paint! She then took the audience through both Indian and European works of art throughout history that showed how gender has been structured. The works she displayed also reflected the reciprocal nature of vision, and raised questions of nude paintings, women artists and feminist art.

Following this was a performance that is difficult to capture in words, a performance that had to be seen to be believed – Mallika Taneja’s ‘Thoda Dhyaan Se’. A one act play that captured the entire culture of victim blaming, it was described aptly by Mr. Ravinder, LSR professor as an ‘act of epic proportions’. It also reflected the power of mediums like theatre and art in expressing and showcasing the issue of gendered violence.

The first plenary ended with an overwhelming panel discussion on masculinities – the distinguished panel was moderated by Karuna Rajeeva and Sameer Chopra, Professors of the LSR English Department, and consisted of eminent filmmaker Rahul Roy, professor and poet Akhil Katyal and PhD student Vikramaditya Sahai. The idea that masculinity ‘demands’ of men to never speak about what it is to be men, or how one feels if one is a man and the intrinsic connections between masculinity and violence were deconstructed by Rahul Roy, and drawn on by Akhil Katyal who put several questions of sexuality in South Asia in particular historical contexts – speaking of how India has always had ‘same sex desire’ but the word ‘samlaingikta’ is contemporary, and can therefore, not be used to describe all same sex desire that has ever existed on the subcontinent. He then spoke about the various terms used to understand homosocial behaviour in popular hindi porn culture – gaybaaazi, laundabaazi, and ‘gandi aadat’ and how they influence perceptions on homosexuality. The most lively, though, was Vikramaditya Sahai – identifying as queer and having draped a saree on male body. The use of the body as a symbol of resistance, a mark of protest as well as critiquing the queer movement from within were some poignant and important contributions Vikramadtiya made not only to our understanding of masculinity, but also queer theory and politics.

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Plenary two, or the afternoon session was themed ‘The womb and beyond’, and started with a panel discussion on gender and health, moderated by Parul Bansal and Priyanka Banerjee, consisting of Dr. Anoop Dhar (who beautifully decoded the perceptions of mental health and gender throughout the centuries believing that what we see today is the ‘Mcdonalidization of Mental Health Institutions), Gynecologist Dr. Puneet Bedi (who complicated the idea of reproductive freedoms that come with safe abortion and contraception and linked them to the still prevalent practice of female feticide) and Deepa ji ( who gave us an insight into the tabooed practice of surrogacy, the objectification of women’s bodies that it leads to and the general stigma around the practice.)
This was followed by the screening of Vani Subramanium’s ‘It’s a boy’ which brought out interesting contemporary patriarchal practices and modern technologies being used for the patriarchal agenda (sex selective abortions, MMS scandals etc).

dastan

The congress came to a close with “Daastan Goi: The Lost Art Form of Urdu Story-Telling” which was performed by Manu Sikander Dhingra and Nadeem Shah and directed by Mahmood Faroogu. Ms. Sonali Mishra, Assistant Professor of History at LSR, introduced their session. It consisted of the narration of an Urdu ‘dastaan’ called Chauboli about women, wit, and standing up for one another in an oppressive system.

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This was followed by the final performance by Asmita theatre group, “Dastak: Voice against women atrocities” directed by Arvind Gaur  highlighting the heinous violence and harassment against women in public and personal spheres.

Image Credit: Sahiba Chawdhary for DU Beat

The second day of Genderknowledge, the LSR Academic Congress saw yet another set of fantastic panels, lectures and performances, and yet another smitten, awed audience.

The first plenary of the day was called “Humari Awaaz Suno: Gender and Marginalized Voices”, which started with distinguished a panel of distinguished filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and exemplary scholar Gopal Guru, moderated by Dr. Sunalini Kumar, LSR Professor. Prof. S Thoarat, Chairman of the ICSSR was also to be there but could not make it due to ill health. The panel discussed in depth the operations of caste and gender in India – with Gopal Guru speaking about the institution of marriage (something unique to the human species) as performing almost arbitrarily, the function of reproducing caste. Anand Patwardhan showed the caste and gender nexus differently, but equally powerfully – through clippings of some of his most beautiful films – Waves of Revolution (Kranti ki Tarange) and Father, Son and Holy War (His famous film Jai Bhim Comrade has already been screened as a pre-congress event a few days back).

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Session two gave us a different way of looking at gender and marginalized voices, with a panel consisting of renowned feminist writer and publisher Urvashi Butalia, Sunita Choudhary – north India’s first woman to become an auto rickshaw driver, Meenu Vadera (Secretary, Azad Foundation and Director, Sakha Consulting Wings Pvt. Ltd.) along with three women who drive Taxis at Sakha – Shanti, Saroj – the guest of honour though seemed implicitly to have been Baby Haldar, a domestic worker whose three books have been translated in multiple languages and read across the world. The session was moderated by LSR professor Dr. Nayana Das Gupta. Each of these women spoke of their lives, their experiences and many in tears.

The first half of the day also had a musical interlude by Azaad Parindey, a choir from Azad foundation. Azaad Parindey is a choir formed by a group of trainee drivers at Sakha. Their music was filled with inspiring lyrics, which the audience enjoyed a lot. The first half ended with the screening of the documentary “Fragments of a Past” by Uma Chakravarthy. Uma Chakravarty is a feminist historian. The documentary focuses on the life and works of a woman political activist. The screening was followed by a round of questions with Uma Chakravarty. The session was moderated by Bindu Menon.

The afternoon plenary was moderated by the Principal Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath and started with a lecture by the acclaimed Feminist theorist Mary.E John – her analysis on issues of violence and sexuality in India – especially discussions on the Ramisabi Case and the Mathura case were extremely intriguing. Further, she gave us a sense of the violence of exclusion in the Indian workspace – where only 15% women are getting paid for work.

This was followed by a documentary screening by filmmaker Shikha Trivedi, called Safe City Dialogues, which touched on many issues of how we look at safety, security, violence and gender.

March 6th also saw two round-table conferences on ‘Redefining Responsibility: Beyond Glass Ceiling’ with the first panel consisting of Mr. Pramod Bhasin, Former CEO, Genpact; Ms. Reema Nanavati, SEWA; Ms. Mitu Samar, CRISIL; Ms. Renu Kakar, Apeejay Surendra Group and Mr Ravi Mohan Sethi, Stellar Group of Companies. The second panel included Ms. Shahnaz Hussain, Shahnaz Herbal Inc.; Ms. Chavi Rajawat, Sarpanch, Soda Village; Mr. Rajnish Dutta, Yes Bank; Mr. Manav Subodh, Intel Corporation; Geetanjali Ghate and Ms. Jasmeet Kaur Srivastava, The Third Eye. The panel was moderated by Ms. Shweta Rajpal Kohli, Economic Affairs Editor, NDTV.

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 Ms. Kohli sparked of the discussion by asking the students for the meaning of “glass ceiling” in the corporate sector. With this definition, Mr. Bhasin claimed that these constraints exist while Mr. Sethi advised the girls to be realistic about their aspirations, at the same time, Ms. Chavi blamed the education system for the restrictions on women. Ms. Mitu Samar mentioned that some companies are moving towards the change. Ms. Reema from her experience of working for SEWA explained that with appropriate facility and availability, women prove to be good risk takers.

The concluding panel of the day however, was most apt to end a discussion on violence – we had Bhawari Devi (a rape survivor from Rajasthan) tell us her story, giving us a sense of how much we do have today thanks to women like her who chose to fight it out. Dr. Gopinath beautifully introduced her with the words “Inhone apni awaaz uthai, isiliye humne apni awaaz paayi”. Kavita Srivastava from Vishakha, an NGO in Rajasthan that played a vital role in the Sexual Harrasment at the Workplace law spoke next, explaining the intricacies and complexities of Bhawari Devi’s story.

Image Credit: Sahiba Chawdhary

Lady Shri Ram College For Women is set to begin their Academic Congress titled “Genderknowledge: Understanding Gender: Questions of Justice and Freedom” on 5th, 6th and 7th of March 2014.

The academic congress started its buzz with “Pre-Academic Congress” events and workshops conducted by various departments of the college.

lsrbodyim1
Body Image Workshop at LSR

Mirror on the Wall: Am I the Loveliest of them All?
Dr. Kanika K Ahuja, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Lady Shri Ram College for Women conducted a body image workshop, ‘Mirror on the Wall: Am I the Loveliest of Them All?’on 28th February as a pre-event to the academic congress.  It was an experiential workshop that challenged popular notions of beauty and the ideal body. A striking feature of the workshop was the Mirror Assignment, which required the participants to stand in front of a mirror, observe themselves and write down at least 6 positive qualities about themselves. In the words of Neha Yadav, a second year student, “It made me appreciate those qualities that I normally don’t care enough to notice.”

One Directional Woman and the Feminization of Labour
Dr Nandini Chandra, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Delhi University, in her session titled, ‘One Directional Woman and the Feminization of Labour’, succeeded in giving a new perspective to feminism. Quoting from important Hindi texts like ‘Naukar ki Kammez’, she expressed the power dynamics that earlier worked, and still prevail in the bourgeois Indian families. In a society that exploits both men and women, she discussed how men are counted as ‘living labours’, with specified working hours and holidays while the women are treated no more than ‘dead labours’, machines that have to work endlessly. This was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Dr. Chandra engaged with the students and faculty.

Workshop on Sexuality
The Political Science Department hosted a workshop on “Sexuality” on 1st March. The workshop was conducted by CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action), which is a feminist-human rights organisation based in New Delhi. It is one of the few international women’s rights organisations based in the global South, led by Southern feminists, which works at the grassroots, national, regional, and international levels. The workshop focused on the sexual and reproductive rights of women and investigated the links between sexuality, rights, gender and health and their interface with socio-cultural and legal issues.

self defense
Image Credit: Meenakshi Pahuja

Other academic congress pre-events include a “Self Defence Workshop” a five day workshop facilitated by the Delhi Police and Ms. Meenakshi Pahuja from 3rd-7th March. On the workshop, Ms. Pahuja says, “The purpose of this workshop is to empower young women especially those who travel alone in Delhi. Our aim is to emancipate women to at least help protect themselves if they are unable to help others.”

On 3rd March, the Journalism and Mass Communication Department organized an interactive session with women journalists of “Khabar Lahariya”, an Indian newspaper published in certain rural dialects of Hindi, including Bundeli and Awadhi. This session was facilitated by Nirantar, which trains and provides ongoing support to rural women journalists publishing the Khabar Lahariya newspaper in local languages.

Khabar Lahariya
The Journalism department hosts a session with women journalists of Khabar Lahariya.

The pre-congress event schedule also boasts of a creative touch to the conference with “Occupy Wall Street” where we will display graffiti art work of the students on the theme of the congress.

With that the pre-events came to end on 4th March with parallel sessions of a special lecture by Professor Jayanti Ghosh on ‘Gender and Globalization’, screening of Jai Bhim Comrade’ followed by discussion with Anand Patwardhan and ‘Paper Presentation on Gender and Sports’ by Meenakshi Pahuja.

Jayanti Ghosh concluded her talk stating, “I always enjoy coming to Lady Shri Ram College. It is always nice to interact with an intelligent bunch of girls who make me feel positive about the future.”

Patwardhan’s analysis of caste on the other hand helped reflect the gendered caste nature setting a theme for the “GenderKnowledge” with special mentions like the brutal Khairlanji Rape Case.

Bilingual knowledge was also witnessed with a Special Lecture by Dr. Kanchana Natrajan on “The Question of Gender in Hindi Literature” giving a perfect prelude to the academic congress.

The pre-events ended with the declaration that the United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon will be sending his message of solidarity through Ms. Kiran Mehra-Kerpelman, Director of the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) tomorrow for the Gender Congress on the occasion of International Women’s Day!

On Friday, 9th January, the DU Queer Collective organised a non-violent protest against the upholding of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code outside the Faculty of Arts at the University Campus.  Demands ranged from putting a stop to the increasing number of security and police personnel on campus, to the onslaught of gender studies programmes and graduate and undergraduate levels, especially with the coming of the FYUP. The protest also aimed to voice united concern on issues of discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexuality that exists at various levels of the university.

Section 377, that deems consensual sex between two adults of the same gender as unconstitutional was reinforced and gay sex was criminalised on 11th December, 2013.

Some brilliantly nuanced arguments were made by eminent speakers like Nivedita Menon, Kavita Krishnan and Apoorv Anand as the small, but spirited gathering cheered them on.

Image Credit: Pallab Deb for DU Beat

Those unfounded concerns of homophobes around the country, who suddenly were facing growing discussions on Queer Rights after the SC judgement, finally have an answer. Known for their quirky sense of humour, All India Bakchod (AIB) came out with a new video featuring Imran Khan. Loaded with wit, the video answers concerns ranging from Indian culture to how gays drink coffee. Yes, the very same AIB that had previously made rounds around social media with bangs of sarcasm to advocate the reasons why women get raped.

Bani adds: One major element of the video is the message stated clearly at the end – ignorance is a choice. A choice many Indians make everyday – a choice our highest judicial body made some time back.

The recent Supreme Court judgement turned millions of Indians into criminals, something which took the Queer rights movement in the country 377 years backwards. Amongst all the heartbreaks and outrage, social media also teemed with an unprecedented number of non-queer allies voicing their disgust at their compatriots being stripped of their dignity.

When in 2009, the landmark Delhi High Court judgement gave the non-straight part of the population the legal protection to love who they wanted to love, the halls of social media were still not ringing with as much support from those who did not directly benefit from the ruling. But this time round, tragedy did what triumph of reasoning and Human Rights could not do and the queer community gained more visible and vocal support from its straight allies. This video is not the only example. A married, heterosexual man started the Gay For A Day campaign, which even though was criticised by a few commentators, showed just how much support the queer rights movement has garnered throughout the years. Another example of how much has changed was the number of politicians coming out in opposing to the upholding of Article 377.

If there is one institution that people see as something that is truly beyond reproach and has the integrity to do what is right, it is the Supreme Court. The hallowed chambers of this court are a place where the right to equality is truly sacrosanct. In light of the media spectacle surrounding the verdict on Section 377 and the condemnation of the entire world that accused the Supreme Court of being out of date, the court decided to answer its critics. The SC has decided to do away with standards of reasonable doubt and remove conventional defenses such as self defense and the insanity plea. In the spirit of equality however it has decided to impose these on everyone equally. The court believes that this move ensures that nobody can now claim that the moves of the court were illegal or against the notion of equality.

1)      The ‘it is not natural’ defence

The idea that anything or anyone unnatural go scot-free is something that the courts are not okay with. Hence they have decided to crack down on all those who defy natural and stray from the natural order. Under this, all individuals with hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, breast implants and artificial joints can now be prosecuted. This is a bold move that ensures that individuals do what is natural and avoid any sort of deviant behaviour.

2)      The ‘it is against our culture’ defence

The SC believes that we must hold our culture on the highest possible pedestal and the law must take the backseat. With the cultural fabric of this nation withering away and the youth getting drawn to the ways of the west, the courts decided to take a stand. So people can now be held criminally liable for listening English music, going to modern hospitals rather than babas who practice ayurveda, not wearing ghoonghat or putting sindoor and commiting any other act that is not compatible with Indian culture.

3)      The ‘Baba Ramdev said it’ plea

This in essence is the replacement for the ‘Insanity Plea’. It’s not just limited to Baba Ramdev, rather all Yoga teachers turned moral experts turned political activist preachings are admissible in a court of law as evidence.  In accordance with this all schools shall no longer be teaching sex education, rather Yoga education is going to be the way forward. As per this law everything any baba says is true and sacrosanct and forms the fabric of our otherwise immoral society. As a result of this plea, Asaram Bapu and his son have just been released from jail. Also the system of community service has now been removed and all homosexuals can go to Baba Ramdev who claims to have found the cure for this deviant behaviour.

4)      The ‘religion’ appeal

The SC believes in equality and upholds the idea of secularism. In keeping with this spirit the SC decided to bring back the ancient religious laws. The first step was a historic one and ensures that all atheists are now criminals that can be imprisoned for life. All views that defy religion like abortion, use of condoms, committing one of the seven sins and many other such views are now regarded as illicit and criminal views that go against the state. Also the punishment for these acts will be decided by religious leaders and not the SC , so sharia law, crucifixion, sati are now all fair play.

5)      The ‘it is a disease’ defence

Many opponents of the LGBT community felt that not being straight is a disease and hence it should be criminalized. So in keeping with the court’s strong belief in equality it has decided to criminalize all people that are sick. Basically all individuals that are disabled or terminally ill can now be sent to jail.

These moves by the courts will surely make a statement. The SC also felt that people are actually getting more offended by the tag of being called a Criminal. They feel that many great leaders are criminals in this country and they continue to live their life normally. So why is the LGBT community getting so offended by the criminal tag. It’s time that they take inspiration from the many criminals of this nation like Salman Khan and live life to the fullest because all men are equal in the eyes of the law, even criminals.

Editor’s note: Bazinga is DU Beat’s fake news column. This piece is supposed to be a satire and is not aimed at offending supporters of the LGBT community. If in case you are not a supporter,  it was surely written to offend you.

The sixth Delhi Queer Pride 2013 was conducted on Sunday, 24th November 2013 at 3pm. People assembled at the Corner of Barakhamba Road and Tolstoy Marg basking in the glory of the rainbow colors! With shouts of “Hum Anek Hai” and “One India”, people joined in to celebrate the diversity within the gender spectrum fighting for the cause of gender equality.

Here are a few pictures that demonstrates in city in spirit of the rainbow colours!

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Women’s Studies and Development Centre, University of Delhi is offering a PG level certificate course in “Gender and Society”. This course has a three month duration starting from August 2013 to October 2013.

The Eligibility criteria set up by them is having at least 50% marks in B.A., B.Sc. or B.Com but the admission will be taken on the basis of Interviews of candidates registering for the course.

The registration fee is an amount of Rs.1500. While the last date for submitting of applications is 9th August, 2013, the tentative date decided for interviewing the candidates is 13th August, 2013. The candidates will have a last chance to get admission in the course by 16th August, 2013.

The Course consists of broadly 5 units. The first unit is named “Theoretical Challenges” and consists of challenges faced in the Indian Society in a theoretical manner. The second unit is named “Women in Indian Society” and as the name suggest, it consists of a detailed explanation of the condition of women in the Indian Society. The third unit is “Women in Cultural and Literary Paradigms” and this unit deals with Models of women who have been known in Cultural and Literary aspects of the Society. The fourth unit is “Gender and Social Change” and talks about the various changes in various aspects of the society as well as the changes in respect to gender. The fifth and last unit consists of Project work.

All interested candidates are required to fill in the application form, but only in the hard copy along with duly attested Mark Sheets of graduation and other testimonials. The application forms are available at the Delhi University website as well as the Women’s Studies and Development Centre, Academic Research Centre, Opposite Khalsa College. Any queries can be mailed at [email protected].