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Since 2011, The YP Foundation has been meaningfully delivering pleasuring affirming, rights-based and youth centric information through Comprehensive Sexuality Education across geographies of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi-NCR.
To address the needs and concerns and provide stigma-free and pleasure affirming information on changes during adolescence, TYPF has created an intersectional queer-feminist and pleasure -centric curriculum on Comprehensive Sexuality Education for adolescents aged 14 years and above. This has been successfully implemented with more than 13000 young people from across schools and community settings in diverse geographical locations. Acknowledging the demand for CSE, we are making this curriculum and toolkit available for others who wish to implement or adapt this intervention and approach.
This curriculum brings together the cumulative experience and work of young people who have co-journeyed with us as participants and leaders to translate the vision of youth led access to information and rights on ground. It is built upon the evidence that has been generated and collated by different organizations with extensive experience of working in the field of Comprehensive Sexuality Education with young people. It follows a rights-based and pleasure affirming approach and the overarching principles to Comprehensive Sexuality Education as outlined by the Revised Edition of the ‘International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach’ (UNESCO, 2018) and the IPPF Framework for C.S.E. (2010). The content of the C.S.E. curriculum aligns with the age-appropriate content and learning outcomes that are listed down by both UNESCO and IPPF.
It also stands on the shoulders of partner organizations and activists who did pioneering work on sexuality and gender issues as well as youth leadership and rights that we have learnt and drawn from heavily. We also acknowledge the support of our donors and partners who have made this work possible.
In addition to this curriculum, a shorter and simpler curriculum on comprehensive sexuality education has been designed to break the stigmas and taboos and provide pleasure affirming and rights based information to adolescents aged 9-13 years.
The Know Your Body Know Your Rights (KYBKYR) programme works to empower adolescents and youth by delivering stigma-free and rights-affirming information on issues of health, sexuality and human rights, and enables them to advocate for their well-being at the personal, community, state and national levels. A key component of the programme is the delivery of a Comprehensive Sexuality Education curriculum for adolescents and youth led by a team of young programme staff and fellows. The programme is implemented with adolescents and young people across locations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi, NCR.
In 2018, the KYBKYR programme launched a specific curriculum for young adolescents between the ages of 9-13 years. This has been successfully implemented with more than 350 young people from across schools and community settings in Delhi from. Acknowledging the demand for CSE, we are making this curriculum and toolkit available for others who wish to implement or adapt this intervention and approach. This curriculum brings together the cumulative experience and work of young people who have co-journeyed with us as participants and leaders to translate the vision of youth led access to information and rights on ground. It also stands on the shoulders of partner organisations and activists who did pioneering work on sexuality and gender issues as well as youth leadership and rights that we have learnt and drawn from heavily. We also acknowledge the support of our donors and partners (link to donors and partners page) who have made this work possible.
We are grateful to the TARSHI team for their review and providing critical inputs for reflection and improvement in the curriculum as we share it with the world.
In a world that has been obsessed with young people as a large demographic — as consumers, beneficiaries, as disruptors and innovators — the pandemic suddenly rendered them invisible. As a group that wasn’t particularly vulnerable to the disease, the shift was understandable as well. However, the pandemic’s debilitating impact can’t be seen only in terms of death tolls or infection rates; the long-term impact of global shut-downs have to be accounted for too. For the 365 million plus adolescents and young people, this means a disruption to education, SRH services, mental health, and dignity and livelihoods, among others. This anthology shines the spotlight on young people not just as the ones affected by the pandemic, but also the inheritors of its aftermath. It presents personal narratives as representative data and a window into the lives of young people in lockdown.
Find our campaign resource kit here, which answers all kinds of questions – from why access to Sexual and Reproductive Health information is important, to how to begin talking about sexuality with important people in your life!
Mardon Wali Baatein: A Research Project on Men, Masculinities and SRHR
With the hope of informing SRHR programming for men, both organisationally and within the sector, this exploratory research project asks how masculinities are constituted and expressed by young college-going men in urban Uttar Pradesh. Conducted across three locations with 80 young men (18-26 years old), this qualitative research explores the intersections between gender, sexuality, caste, class, and religion in discussions on masculinities, with a specific focus on sexual health, contraception, and violence. Mardon Wali Baatein further explores the impact of social media and technology on masculinity.
Audit Report and Study Design – The Access Project
Building off the findings of Seen, Not Heard, The Access Project expanded the audit of health services to two districts in Delhi and one district in Varanasi, with the support of two partner organisations in Uttar Pradesh. This report documents the findings of the audit, as well as the process of training researchers and developing a prototype of youth-led research on access to health services. As a conclusion, the report outlines our policy asks, directed towards policy makers, health system officials, front line health workers, and researchers working at the intersection of human rights and youth rights.
Seen Not Heard: Youth-Led Audit of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Lucknow
While as a country we continue to highlight the large numbers of young people and claim to make investments in them as the future of the nation, there are few attempts to include young people’s voices in policies and programmes that address their health. This youth led audit of health services in Lucknow highlights this very gap in sexual and reproductive health service provision for young people. The research report presents insights into young people’s experiences of accessing health care and youth friendliness of existing services.
Campus Caravan- A Journey from Research to Intervention Design
The Campus Caravan Theory of Change is a youth-led intervention design aimed at building feminist youth leadership on college campuses for addressing gender-based violence issues. The document captures the findings from a study conducted in campuses in Jaipur, as well as the collaborative co-creation process with students, faculty, and civil society organizations.
Flipping the Narrative: Media Guide for Abortion Reporting Abortion
In India, access to safe and legal abortion is a critical aspect of reproductive rights. However, even with relatively progressive laws and rulings in place, abortion-seeking remains debatable and presents itself in the form of a moral and ethical dilemma. The taboos, stigmas, and myths that have been associated with abortion remain rampant and get exacerbated when mass media, a powerful and reliable source of information, is not intentional about covering the topics of abortion from the lens of choice, and bodily autonomy.
With this context, The YP Foundation (TYPF) in collaboration with Feminism in India (FII) has developed ‘Flipping the Narrative: Media Guide for Abortion Reporting,’ for journalists to provide them with a handy manual on how to report and cover abortion and its intersecting topics, sensitively. This guide can also be used and put into practice by abortion advocates, activists, and allies while developing media products on abortion.
Assessing Youth Friendliness of Abortion Services- Audit Report
The negligence of abortion service delivery and low quality of the service is a major challenge for accessing abortion in India. Many service providers deny abortion service due to stigma, lack of knowledge and personal morality and beliefs. ‘Accessing Youth Friendliness of Abortion Services’ is an analysis of youth-led audits of 48 abortion facilities across 2 states of India conducted at 2023 by SAFE youth leaders as part of the program. The analysis is prepared based on the data collected by 8 youth leaders using mystery client methodology in Assam and Kerala.
Towards Choice Autonomy and Rights: An Action Agenda for Abortion Rights
The Guide for Safe Abortion Rights has been developed through a rights-based lens, which can be used by abortion advocates to hold on ground and digital campaigns. It is designed to act as a step by step guide for young advocates to generate awareness on the legal and medical aspects of abortion in India by foregrounding bodily autonomy and tackling abortion stigma. The guide also comprehensively covers the know-how for youth advocates to conduct media and policy engagement at their respective state/district levels.
The guide was translated into three regional languages – Assamese, Hindi, and Malayalam to increase its accessibility among the youth advocates across the regions in which TYPF operates. The toolkit will be useful for designing, disseminating and participating in campaigns and to advance rights based messaging through printed information, education and communication (IEC) materials such as leaflets, posters and information sheets. This guide can be referred for developing thematic press releases, holding dialogues with peers and collectives, social media engagement, generating support and allyship from service providers and for seeking accountability from different stakeholders who can ensure stigma free access to abortion care.
Generation Equality and Accountability for Feminist Futures
This report combines the insights we received from over 100 feminists, youth leaders, grassroots activists, CSOs and UN representatives over three consultations and the Feminist Accountability Framework survey with our analysis of the commitments made under the Generation Equality Forum for India. These insights establish the work already done under the GEF, the challenges it has faced and charts a path forward. With a focus on actionable movement building , this report contains our recommendations on how the Generation Equality Forum can be made more accessible and better reflect the needs of marginalised communities in India.
While a vast amount of research on understanding abortion stigma has been conducted globally, there is limited existing work on stigma in the Indian context. A majority of current research in India continues to focus on understanding the laws, policies, and access to abortion services. But abortions stigma leads to discrimination against women in every sphere of their lives, including socio-economic, political and even accessing medical spaces and services.
The ‘Abortion Stigma in Delhi NCR’ study was conducted to address this gap and explored abortion stigma through a socio-cultural lens. This study was a qualitative exploratory study to understand the perception of abortion stigma particularly among young people in Delhi NCR. The research aims to understand young peoples’ perception regarding abortion, their awareness of abortion related services and laws, prevalent myths and misconceptions, and sources of stigma around abortion.
The Masculinities Workshop Handbook consists of a set of session designs meant to create fun and safe spaces for young people, including young men and boys, to bring about reflections on their identities and relationships. The TYPF team has been implementing and evolving these designs to not only talk about masculinities to unpack power and violence but also re-imagine expressions like masculine and feminine as pleasure-affirming.
In 2022, 26 young people across 19 states got together as part of TYPF’s EQUAL (Expanding Queer People’s Access to Leadership) Fellowship, through which they built their capacities and knowledge on legal rights and entitlements to negotiate with multiple stakeholders to ensure the safety and protection of queer-trans* people. This document illustrates the fellows’ journeys and the social action projects that were undertaken by them throughout the course of the fellowship.
Artwork by Taranbir Singh Sawhney.
This handbook is a useful resource for young development sector practitioners, activists, students, researchers, or anyone else with an interest to build their understanding on the basics of gender diversity. The handbook is easy-to-read and lucid, taking us back to the very foundations of our fight for trans* and queer rights.
This comic was conceptualised, designed, and curated by our very own EQUAL fellows Lucky and Kalki as part of the Loud and Queer programme at TYPF. The comic is a useful resource for trans* persons navigating the legal process of changing their gender identity markers on official documents.
Although abortion is largely legalised in India through the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP) 1971, it continues to be underpinned by religious, moral, ethical and socio-cultural concerns. Fear of judgement from service providers, ambiguities of medico-legal restrictions, lack of privacy and confidentiality in health facilities can, however influence young abortion seekers to opt for unsafe methods of abortion. This report aims to analyse the evidence on the status of abortion services for young people generated by ten fellows from seven states in India.
After three years full of rejection, sexual violation, ghosting, and romantic cynicism from different failed pandemic situationships, I’m convinced that the only disability affirmative sexual experience I’ve had is the one I have every night – with my vibrator. There’s something about the isolation that makes you feel comfortable with being completely alone. In a way, I’m glad I’ve been single these past three years, ever since the pandemic began. I’ve been in love once, and it was good while it lasted, but none of my average ex-lovers embody the energy of this hot pink pocket vibrator that fits so perfectly in my hands. The vibrator has 5 speeds, and at each speed, I imagine a different person – a future lover perhaps. That’s the thing – such a situation leaves plenty of room for imagination – to imagine future lovers I’m yet to meet, to free myself from past abusive experiences in relationships, and to convince myself that I’ll finally meet someone that doesn’t have all the red flags that my exes had. To imagine that I’ll finally break the pattern.
Or maybe I’ll die here, in this bed, beside this vibrator, as I see the abled queer community – another community I don’t feel like I fit into – laugh about queer references, reminisce about queer bars in parts of the city that I haven’t even heard of, and die before I reach my ultimate level of queerness.
The only reference point that I’ve had my entire life is that of able-bodied gender. I perform able-bodied gender everyday. Queer icons on screen have taught me how to be queer in their way – an able-bodied way. They’ve taught me how to strut, except that I can’t strut with my Forrest Gump shoes. They’ve taught me how to dress up, except that many clothes are inaccessible for my physically disabled queer body. Hence, I’ve learnt to be queer in an uncomfortable way. Not my way, but their way.
As I watch Euphoria and see Jules and Rue kiss, I bury my head deep inside my pillow and hug my vibrator. I want what they have, but what is it about this bed and this vibrator that makes me think that this is enough? That I’ll never need partnered sex again? That I could spend my entire life in this bed with my vibrator, my favourite book, and of course, my favourite chaotic gen z television show?
Oh my god I’m going to die alone.
The pandemic forced me to become productive in isolation – to become something other than an average student with abandonment issues and a traumatic past, to make something out of my trauma and to carve out an identity. Otherwise, of what use are marginalised identities in a capitalistic world, unless they make art out of their trauma, right? They don’t let their trauma just be. Instead, they make their trauma useful and worthwhile, they make their trauma work hard so that it satisfies the Diversity and Inclusion world which rewards only certain identities whilst shunning away others. The world wants to know – in heavy detail – the intricacies of the sexuality of a marginalised person. The world expects us to be open books – to put our sexualities out there. Somehow, we owe the cis hetro-patriarchal ableist world all these answers.
How has my pleasure travelled, evolved, or remained static over the years? How has my access to pleasure as a disabled queer woman changed? Why do I ask so many questions?
To dream of an alternate gender reality, different from my current circumstances, to look at and affirm myself in the mirror, to put my sexual needs first, to have the space and agency to dream of my utopia, to have the resources to capitalise on my trauma – these are all privileges I possess.
As I stare at my crutch, I remember the access it has given me – to explore the city, eat my favourite meal at my favourite restaurant, or go shopping for lingerie alone. It has also given me access to bad, awkward dates, but that’s no one’s fault. If you asked me to draw my pleasure portrait, my crutch would be the centre of attention.
Recently I started illustrating my ideal partner – in a world which is not designed for me or my codes of intimacy, how exactly do I give myself the space to dream and hope for love? How exactly do I identify and acknowledge my needs? How do I know the next person I’m going to talk to on a dating app isn’t going to be an absolute asshole? Or even worse, an abuser? Every night, I sleep cuddling my copy of “All About Love” by bell hooks. Sometimes my cuddling partner is my vibrator. I don’t really like sharing the bed with anyone as I’ve been sleeping alone for the past 24 years. So do I actually really need partnership?
As I wash my vibrator in warm water, I wonder – is this the extent of intimacy that I’ll get in this lifetime? What about all those great love stories that I see on television as I eat my 8th cup of ice cream? Will I ever fondly remember my relationships with other people, or will they just be memories of abuse, despair, and disappointment?
My disabled fingers get fueled by my singlehood and create imperfect, chaotic art. I write countless narratives of loneliness and peace. I don’t feel like going on dating apps nowadays, I’d rather be alive for my work, my friends, and my colouring book. But sometimes, I reprimand myself – “I need to atleast get laid and enjoy my 20s” (a lesson I’ve clearly learned from romcoms in the 2000s) – and then I cringe as I realise the world wasn’t designed for a disabled woman’s needs, even if that need was just casual sex.
Disabled intimacy during a pandemic is so paradoxical, and yet ever so present. I call up my ex at 4am and we have car-park conversations, except we aren’t together in a car, we’re on a phone call. Sometimes I pleasure myself and think of no one in particular. I’m still learning how to be perfectly single, but what is perfectly single anyway? What is perfectly disabled anyway? What is perfectly queer anyway?
Yes, I need someone to help my disabled limbs go to the movies. So I must take a friend. Oh, I need a partner to support me physically and emotionally. Oh, I must dress in a way that is attractive to him, behave in a way where he thinks of me as the ideal able-bodied wife. I must disregard my queerness and adhere to his standards. Dependence belongs in my nature, I must get used to it, but at the same time, feel guilt and shame in my disabled bones. I must please a man, endure his abuse because otherwise he’ll go away and I’ll have no one anymore. I must base my entire identity on being, loving, living with him.
It’s an important decision to be absolutely alone. To relieve yourself of the pressure of being wooed, of being adored, of taking comfort in the grief and of getting used to comments saying you’ll either die alone or become a lonely cat lady. Loneliness has always been a dominant word in my life.
Being a lonely isolated body is uncomfortable. Nobody likes being one. Everything happens in pairs, how does anything get started with a single person? What about the pop songs and movies that have deeply been ingrained in my brain? What about my dreams that have been built around finding “the one”? What about my favourite Taylor Swift songs? Were they all wrong?
But I refuse, I disrupt, I rebel, I relax in my loneliness, in my solitary, in my yearning. Communication and intimacy have always followed able-bodied codes for me which has been terribly discomforting. I’m no longer waiting for pleasure, waiting for that holiday, waiting for a person to go with, waiting for the recognition of “the one”, waiting for a destination. I’m rioting, and I’m gone.
This article was written as part of TYPF’s digital campaign for Pride Month in 2022. The #PrideInPleasure campaign highlights experiences of pleasure that do not find representation in mainstream media, and amplifies queer voices from the margins.
Since the beginning of my dating life, I struggled to understand how people find sex pleasurable. I had no idea that asexuality is a thing until I studied more about it during my second year of college while simultaneously reading about the queer community online. I wish I knew sooner about asexuality as it would have saved me from a lot of harassment and heartbreak. A lot of partners would often ask me why I do not want to get sexually involved. I had no answer to it. Being a sex repulsed asexual (not all asexuals are repulsed by sex), pleasure looked different for me than my partners, who were mainly heterosexual men.
There is a power dynamic in heterosexual relationships which I realised while being the asexual party in these setups. Women are often told to have sex for the pleasure of their partners, regardless of how they themselves feel about it. I felt that it was an undeniable fact that I will eventually have to have sex just for the sake of my partner. But because I refused to bow down to this power dynamic that is established in heterosexual relationships, I faced many years of abuse. If I knew at that time that I were asexual, I wouldn’t have dated these people in the first place.
The abuse could easily have been avoided if the abusive person would have understood asexuality and its vast spectrum. While writing my research paper on the impacts of patriarchy on asexual individuals, I discovered that this was a shared experience among those asexuals who are sex repulsed as well as those who simply choose not to have sex. For instance, I learnt from various case studies of asexual women that they are often forced to have sex with their partners. Women are told that it is necessary for them to procreate. But this is toxic and causes real harm to them. On the other hand, for asexual men, the pressure to have sex is associated with notions of masculinity. Men also faced virgin shaming and felt emasculated by other men for not having sex. This included both homoromantic and heteroromantic men being shamed for not having sexual attraction or simply avoiding sex.
I suffered enough to understand that sex for many people is not only about pleasure, but also about overpowering someone. Especially in the case of men, who sometimes tried to force me to have sex so that I could ‘become’ heterosexual. For them, sex is a treatment and asexuality is a disease, a phase, or a lie. It is everything except a valid sexual orientation in their eyes. Dating apps have added ‘asexual’ as an option but people still refuse to accept it. We need proper awareness about not only asexuality but the whole LGBTQIA+ community and the nuances of queer identities.
I still struggle in my love life due to the stigma and lack of awareness around asexuality. There are instances where my former partners who knew about my orientation agreed to date me and later started invalidating me by trying to initiate sex, emotionally blackmailing me, or pestering me to have sex. One person went too far when he asked to have sex while I was severely injured. It made me realise how much women have to endure, asexual or otherwise. These experiences were detrimental to my well-being but I overcame them by working on my mental health.
I once dated an asexual man and felt a wonderful kind of peace. It was so soothing and was the kind of relationship I had always craved. There was no underlying pressure to have sex, no manipulation, just pure care and affection. We parted ways due to cultural differences and because he wanted to get married sooner than I did. But I wish him the best and I still hope to find a relationship like that in the future with someone who understands me.
Pleasure has different meanings for different people. For me, pleasure comes from food and other things rather than sex. For example, a cuddle gives me more joy than the act of penetration. I grew up discussing sexual pleasure with my heterosexual friends. It was during my teenage years when I felt that I was a late bloomer, somebody who might find sex fascinating after a certain age. But I was wrong. When I entered college, I still didn’t feel sexually attracted to anyone. I found people beautiful and cute, and I enjoyed the company of men while going out on dates, but whenever the sex bit cropped up in a relationship, I was hesitant. It was my second year in graduation when I realised that I am a sex repulsed asexual – and this realisation changed my life for good.
I was able to connect the dots with my feelings and understand why I refused to have sex – I simply did not desire it. I also realised that sexual attraction and romantic attraction are separate ideas, but which are often used as interchangeable terms, hence leading to the confusion I felt when I was younger. I understood this during an ace meet and by my personal experiences where I would crave romantic love but not sex. For me, pleasure comes from spending time with my loved ones, from trying different cuisines, from reading books, from listening to music, and much more. But never from sex. It was something I loathed.
People exist all along the asexual spectrum – asexual, graysexual, demisexual, and more. And asexual people experience different kinds of romantic attraction, including homoromantic, panromantic, and aromantic. This entire spectrum needs to be understood by allosexuals for awareness because there exist many myths related to asexuality. For example, asexuality is often used interchangeably with celibacy, even though celibacy is a choice and asexuality is a sexual orientation.
I derive pleasure from living life on my own terms. This is more pleasurable than any act of sex for me. The fact that I can read a book, enjoy being alone, drink coffee, or try different foods is pleasurable to me. I hope one day people understand that there are different orientations and a wide spectrum and there are different ways to experience pleasure. Some asexuals who have sex may find it pleasurable and I am happy for them. People all along the spectrum are valid, as identities and beyond. I wish more asexual people get to know about asexuality sooner than I did because I spent eight years in absolute confusion, abusive relationships, and a mess of a love life. I came out as asexual publicly in the hope that fellow asexuals would know that they are just as valid as everyone else.
This article was written as part of TYPF’s digital campaign for Pride Month in 2022. The #PrideInPleasure campaign highlights experiences of pleasure that do not find representation in mainstream media, and amplifies queer voices from the margins.
The SAFE Resource Hub is a one-stop-destination for all your abortion related information needs! Created by The YP Foundation, the aim of the Resource Hub to demystify abortion by providing essential and contextual information, deconstruct myths and misconceptions, and suggest approaches to position abortion in an evidence and rights-based manner.
The hub can be explored through the lens of various characters that represent the diversity of abortion seekers and abortion advocates. We believe that an intersectional approach to abortion is essential in creating an engaging, relatable, and safe space that enables our audiences to gain a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of abortion issues.
We created this hub based on literature reviews and contextual exploratory research, drawing from a wide array of existing resources. Making an accessible online repository of this nature is essential as it serves as an important resource in the advocacy training and youth-led actions as a ready reckoner to consult as well as disseminate. We hope that this increases understanding of abortion issues for a wide range of important stakeholders and serves as a relevant repository for abortion advocates in India.
My early articulation of pleasure revolved more around absorbing joy through identity-affirming experiences within sexual-romantic relationships rather than sexual intimacy itself. Now, as I facilitate sessions on pleasure and love with adolescents, I have started looking at pleasure more holistically in cohesion with desire, feelings, love, and also recognising pleasure as a right. Many of my articulations are also shaped by the givings of bell hooks. In her book ‘All About Love’, hooks talks about how we don’t have a shared language for love — this often makes it difficult to comprehend the commonality of our experiences around love. Similarly, we don’t have a shared definition or language for pleasure, which I look at as an opportunity to imagine and reimagine it as we want.
Conversations around pleasures are often tricky, complex, and messy — especially when we look at pleasure not only personally, but also objectively. Many of us who are Dalit and queer, have migrated to urban spaces and achieved some extent of social mobility through university education, speaking English, and pop culture awareness—we now find ourselves in spaces that have otherwise been unwelcoming — spaces that offer love, dating opportunities, and desire.
Often Dalit-queer experiences are consumed as theory and not as day-to-day praxis. I love how journalist Dhrubo Jyoti says ‘I don’t think there is any intersection. Caste is sexuality and sexuality is caste.’ Dhrubo’s article ‘Caste Broke Our Hearts And Love Cannot Put Them Back Together’ is one of those rare writings that I read in times when I needed solidarity, resonance, and solace. Even within queer spaces, experiences of people from marginalised caste locations are often distant from the dominant narrative of queer-affirmative pleasure-desire discourses. As many of these discourses centre around shaping language above everything, trying to create vocabulary that is shared and homogenous, let’s not forget queerness has always been about bodies — as sites of curiosity and explortion, and as tools to claim visibility, respectability, education, employability, desirability, and pleasure. Hence, it is impossible to initiate a conversation around Dalit-queer pleasure without understanding the positionality of Dalit bodies within queer spaces.
Body as a site for pleasure
Bodies of Dalit people are more often seen as sites of oppression rather than pleasure. Even when regarded as sites of sexual pleasure and entertainment, a certain amount of impurity, illegitimacy, and stereotyping is associated with them. More often than not, this gaze is internalised by Dalit-queer people that shapes their own perceptions around their body and desirability.
At times like this, how do we move away from this understanding and locate the possibilities of pleasure that our bodies and minds are capable of creating? Our bodies experience pleasure in complex ways. Many of us also have a complex relationship with our bodies given years of social-institutional-systemic conditioning around beauty standards, oppression, and stereotyping.
While thinking about the body and the spaces we occupy with our physical bodies, Megha*, a bisexual Dalit cis woman living in Delhi, reflects on how she doesn’t looks at herself in the mirror in separation from all the gaze that she has consumed over the years. “The only compliment I received as a child was ‘Your features are amazing, if you would have been fair-skinned, you would have killed it.’ This one statement by a neighbour aunty still haunts me — once I dressed up in a pretty fluorescent yellow skirt and she said ‘If you put this girl in the dark, her skirt will glow with her invisible body.’
‘Now, my wardrobe consists entirely of black or pastel-coloured clothes because I was made to believe bright colours aren’t for me. This, for me, is how the world censors our access to consume pleasure.’
Christina Thomas Dhanaraj, a Christian Dalit woman from Chennai/Bangalore, India, writes about the experiences of urban Dalit women in dating spaces in her article ‘Swipe Me Left, I’m Dalit’. She talks about how Dalit women are often seen primarily as victims, unfeminine, and promiscuous. The lighter-skinned, savarna woman that is pure, quiet, and delicate versus the dark-skinned Dalit woman that’s polluting, loud, and tough—the dichotomy is quite prominent — even in mainstream pop culture media such as the recent short ‘Geeli Pucchi’ by Neeraj Ghaiwan from the anthology Ajeeb Dastaan, it fosters this dichotomy. It perpetuates the idea that our caste is often ‘how we look’.
Kush*, a young queer Dalit trans woman, says ‘There are typically some dominant-caste markers – for example, having fair skin, caucasian features, perfectly cut hair, well-groomed, clear skin, etc. When I am intimate with people having those markers or even surnames that give away their caste location, the way I perceive them is that they are such well-groomed people but that my body probably isn’t groomed enough. Despite me taking a lot of painful efforts, such as hair removal or moisturising — my body can never be cleaned.’
Apart from these insecurities around our bodies, there is a long-lived history of queer people and/or Dalit people being at the receiving end of sexual violence that further complicates our relationship with our bodies and how we access pleasure. We are often conditioned to believe that our bodies don’t deserve dignity or care. Our pleasure isn’t the priority in a sexual setting.
Kush shares, “In my first year of college, it was apparent I was a non-city person struggling with navigating urban spaces. I used to dress up and appear in a way that might give away my social location. During that time, I was often desired by rich men. They would pursue me and send cars to pick me up. But in intimate settings, they would be extremely disrespectful and coercive. Often they would slap and choke as a part of the sexual act even without my consent. I couldn’t help but connect these instances with my caste location. It almost felt like my body didn’t deserve dignity.”
Adding to this, Kush also shared how the dynamics change with contexts. “Post COVID, my beard line is almost always covered by my mask, I have long hair and I often wax my full body — these all mimic the ‘upper caste cis woman’ image and allow me to access certain spaces. Because I live in a locality with a prominent presence of the Dalit population around, I often ended up hooking up with someone from my own community. I noticed that if they had more apparent Dalit markers than me, they didn’t expect me to treat them with a lot of dignity. Similarly, when I hook up with someone who is – or who I perceive to be – upper caste, I don’t expect them to pleasure me. It’s interesting how in both settings our years of conditioning unfold.”
Dignity is deeply intertwined with how we experience pleasure – as a source or as a resource. Megha shares, “’As a survivor of sexual abuse, my initial experiences of intimacy – even those where I had consented and exercised agency – were devoid of orgasms. I didn’t think of them as something that I could have. I grew up believing that my body is only a resource of pleasure, something that other people could access from me.”
But our bodies are also sites of euphoria, affirmations, and joy. Many of us do reclaim our bodies and the spaces we physically occupy. So what happens when we are desired because of our bodies and identities?
Moving Away and Moving Into fetishisation
“OMG! You are a Dalit person! Yet so strong, courageous, and confident!’ I hear this regularly. But it is a very romanticised and sexualised perception of me, and one that is not always true. We are more complex, nuanced, and messy than that. The idea of a Dalit woman showing her cleavage, speaking in English, and occupying cis-het upper caste supremacist spaces invites a certain kind of gaze. My idea of taking up space always has been through situating and accessing affirmations within these gazes. I have also sexualised myself — it might appear morally corrupt on the surface, but the deeper you look, the better you understand why some of us might do it. From a person who has never understood what it means to be desired or what it’s like to get this attention — why would I let it go?!
I have never checked the box of a conventional ‘pretty woman’ or had a body that is conventionally considered beautiful. So when I get this kind of validation, I take it at face value without politically, morally, or ethically examining it. If showing cleavage brings me validation, I will do that, but I am also aware of the labour I need to do to ensure acceptance and safety. So now, I also know when I need to detach”, says Megha while talking about being profiled as a Dalit-queer woman living in a metro city.
She also added, “Me taking up space also comes with the cost of profiling me as a character for the easy comprehension of the people residing outside of my lived experiences. The times I try to be otherwise — silent, less-opinionated, vulnerable — I feel invisible in both physical and virtual spaces. This restricts my mobility across sections. In my queer relationships, I always end up taking the dominant role both responsibility-wise and sexually, almost as if it’s a default setting.”
This phenomenon where apart from all the marginalisation Dalit people experience within queer spaces, they are also fetishised for their identities, presents the opportunity to discuss if we move away from or move into fetishisation? There’s a thin thread between preference, prejudice, and fetishisation. If someone’s desire is solely influenced by a person’s single identifier, and they refuse to see anything beyond that, that perpetuates a certain kind of discrimination. This fetishisation often comes from the assumption that all Dalit men are working-class people and hence muscular, manly, and rough-dark-handsome. Dalit women are thought to be unfeminine, strong, and bold. Dalit transwomen are reduced to the “status of beggars or sex workers.” This often evokes a certain amount of desirability amongst non-Dalit queers to fetishise them without any accountability.
In my recent experiences, I have come across dominant caste queer men explicitly writing on Grindr ‘Looking for SC, ST’ or my date telling me ‘Dalit and communist is my type’. That got me thinking – is this desirability a new acceptance? If yes, then what is this unknown crawling discomfort followed by it? When someone says ‘I like your skin tone’ – when our skin carries generations of oppression – isn’t romanticising that also romanticising the years of oppression? But then why do I also feel immediately elated and thank them for complimenting me?
As a transfeminine person who has also socially transitioned, Kush looks at pleasure beyond physical intimacy and feels it is more psychosocial in nature. She says, “When someone fetishises me as a transwoman, I am euphoric because this person is thinking of me as a woman. It affirms my identity.”
There are large numbers of men who like going down on transwomen but not on cis men. It might be because the feeling is strange, new, thrilling. For a very long time, I had this fantasy of somebody going down on me while I wore sexy stockings under my skirt. In my mind, the image is that I am a beautiful girl and this guy is going down on me. And this is why I perhaps look at being fetishiszed as a manifestation of my fantasy.
The larger notion is such that chasers might want sexual intimacy with you but might not want anything romantic or serious. I have come across such chasers who have also become lovers. So I don’t have a binary opinion of fetishisation.
While talking about being fetishised, Megha says, “I look in the mirror, and I don’t like my body. I go to this person. This person fetishises my body, my dark skin tone, my pigmentations, my septum ring, everything, my entire character. If I take that away from them, are they going to look at me the same way? My fetishisation by both men and women as a ‘black, fat, bold’ woman is the only thing I have. Am I ready to give up on that? Perhaps no. Even if I want to give up on playing this character and become submissive, become vulnerable, it’s often followed by the fear of my identity crisis kicking in. My entire identity has been shaped around my marginalisation and my response to that marginalisation. Who am I if not this character? More than my lovers, do I even want to look at myself in my most authentic state which has a long-lived history of self-hatred, rejection, and not being desired?”
Inviting vulnerability as a practise of pleasure
We don’t talk enough about vulnerability and marginalisation.
Being vulnerable is about being our authentic selves with all our realities, histories, flaws, — and sharing that with lovers, talking about fears, expressing discomfort.
Often when marginalised people show their vulnerability it is seen as cribbing or weakness. Over time, many of us also have acquired the skill to censor the parts of our beings that might be discomforting for people at positions of power. Instead, we mimic a certain kind of caste-class-gender performance to gain acceptance. While at it, is it possible to experience pleasure without being vulnerable?
Megha reflects on how she hasn’t ever been completely vulnerable with anyone while being intimate with them. She says, “I enjoy sharing a space with someone, being intimate, talking, but at the same time I have also noticed a pattern where I consciously make a choice of being with my lovers for some hours and not throughout the day because I am afraid of them seeing me completely — all my flaws, emotions, vulnerabilities, and ‘not so strong’ aspects.”
Though the outside world might look at Dalit-queer issues as focus areas, we the people who are navigating within the spaces, breathing within our realities, and figuring out day-to-day praxis, know our lives aren’t only about raging, educating, and articulating our feelings in tangible statements for the perusal of people residing outside of our marginalisation. Our lives are also about pleasure, euphoria, rest, and joy. We also exist beyond and between Dalit suffering and Dalit resistance. It is exhausting to look at ourselves only through the dichotomy of undesirability-fetishisation.
Kush says, “The structures have conditioned me. Change the structures. If you want to fight the fetishisation, first fight the dehumanisation of caste and gender-sexual minority groups.”
These structures aren’t created by us, so the primary responsibility for dismantling them should also stay with people in positions of power and privilege. Equally, the creation of spaces that allows us to be vulnerable should be a collective responsibility. We can’t self love our way out of systemic oppression. Many times, idealistic behaviour is expected from marginalised people, but that takes away the tenderness that realistic behaviour could offer. Vulnerability allows us to bring our imperfections, mistakes, insecurities, and anxieties around our bodies and intimacy with us. It helps us connect to our gut feelings while being present in our physical bodies and in the moment. Vulnerability helps us shift from fear to security. It fosters collective healing. Vulnerability affirms identities, bodies, and experiences.
As we think of vulnerability as a practice to experience pleasure authentically, Megha says, “The day my two experiences — when I am alone, having wine, touching myself lying on my bed as well as when I am with my lover — will mirror each other, I will call it a day!”
(*Names have been changed to ensure anonymity.)
This article was written as part of TYPF’s digital campaign for Pride Month in 2022. The #PrideInPleasure campaign highlights experiences of pleasure that do not find representation in mainstream media, and amplifies queer voices from the margins.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with sex.
In October 2021, The YP Foundation and Agents of Ishq organised the Love, Sex and Data conference to advocate for a pleasure positive approach in research, programmatic interventions, or artistic work with young people. After three days of being behind the scenes and in front of screens talking about all things pleasure at this conference, I lay next to my partner in bed – mildly inebriated and deep in thought. As a masculine person attracted to women and feminine persons, my questions about pleasure and sex are similar to those of cis-het young men and boys – How do I pleasure my partner sexually? What do women like in bed? Can women have multiple orgasms, and if yes, how can I help?
As a sexuality educator, I’ve observed that young men’s concerns about their partners’ pleasure are often intimately tied to concerns about the status of their own masculinity. For instance, in male friendships and peer networks, the ability to pleasure cis-female sexual partners is traded as useful currency to establish their own status and popularity. Alternatively, if young men are not sexually active, desirable, or good in bed, they stand to lose respect, power, and authority. In this context, articulating one’s desires and needs – especially if they deviate from mainstream (read: patriarchal) norms of masculinity is totally unacceptable.
But it’s not just about cis-het boys. This relationship between masculinity, pleasure, and power can leave all masculine persons wholly confused and unprepared to deal with often conflicting experiences and thoughts on sex and desire. There is no space for socially frowned upon sexual desires – like receiving anal sex – without experiencing some form of stress, anxiety, bullying, or violence for young men in this context. But this could be particularly egregious for young transmasculine persons like myself, whose identities and desires are barely addressed, whether in conversations among “men” or in development or sexuality education interventions. Spaces for transmasculine persons to articulate their own relationship to masculinity and pleasure are either mired in stigma or completely absent.
So, that fateful night when my partner turned to me in bed, stroked my cheek, and gently asked me, “what brings you pleasure?” I began to think.
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As a transmasculine person, I find pleasure in sexual interactions that affirm my gender and masculinity. Therefore, whenever I find myself unable to “fit into” dominant masculine norms and expectations, I become anxious. For instance, a casual remark by a partner about my lack of interest or initiative in sex recently sent me into a depressing spiral. I worried that my lack of interest in sex would mean that I was not masculine enough in a culture where men are always and highly sexual. Combined with my trans* identity, this would further lead to a devaluation of my self determined gender in the eyes of others. These dominant notions of masculinity around sex and pleasure – while already problematic – are particularly harmful to marginalised masculine persons like myself. My relationship with sex and pleasure is complicated by experiences of bodily discomfort and incongruence which can often discourage enthusiastic participation in sexual activities. So while there is a need to challenge dominant masculine notions around sex and pleasure within cis-het masculine spaces, having conversations on pleasure and desire within trans* spaces – which may or may not relate to sex or sexuality at all – is also highly urgent.
But why pleasure? Pleasure is diverse and expansive. Even as I write about my own experiences of sexual pleasure, I recognise that pleasure is neither a homogenous experience tied to sex, nor is transmasculinity a monolith. I spent years looking for resources on sex and pleasure which would support me in navigating my sexual interactions and experiences of pleasure. What I found was either too alien from my own context, not pleasure-affirming, or only focussed on transitioning and STI/STD related information – which, although life-saving and important – does not and cannot encapsulate the diversity of transmasculine experience and desire. Transmasculine persons are not homogenous; and the more space we accord to sharing diverse experiences of sex, sexualities, and pleasure amongst transmasculine persons, the more space we can make for challenging and questioning mainstream discourses of masculinities that focus only on trans* trauma and deny our pleasures, happiness, and humanity.
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While the inability to fit into dominant masculine norms depressed me, the dovetailing of sexual pleasure that I experienced within dominant masculine notions also, excuse the metaphor, left a bad taste in my mouth. After years of engaging in feminist politics, I felt guilty and anxious that my sexual desire seemed to replicate models of “toxic” or “bad” masculinity in bed. This is why, when I tried my first strap-on after ample encouragement from a partner, I felt liberated and conflicted at the same time. The years of trying to unlearn that only penetration is pleasure caused a rift between what I experienced in my body and what had espoused in my mind. Am I being toxic if penetrating my feminine partner is the only thing that gives me pleasure? As a transmasculine person, must I subscribe to the same kind of reflection and unlearning that is expected out of cis-het men? Is that the only way to move towards more affirming and enjoyable sexual relationships for all genders? How do we even define affirming and enjoyable relationships? Is penetrating by virtue tied to dominance and power, and subordination and receiving to a lack of agency? Is that even fair, or accurate? I continue to reflect on these questions, even as I write this piece, and even as I firmly believe that penetration is not central to sex and that penetration is not a pre-requisite to being masculine in bed. It has also prompted more careful introspection on my part into the balance that I, as a transmasculine person, need to have between my relationship to – and internalising of – dominant understandings of masculinities, as well as the acknowledgement of my own vulnerability and marginalisation.
But most importantly, this rumination has led me to ask myself – isn’t pleasure inherently feminist? And if it is, then what would applying a pleasure-affirming lens to self acceptance as a trans* person mean to me? Is it possible to make space for experiences of pleasure like mine, that both challenge dominant notions of masculinity, but also escape prescriptive ideas of what one is supposed to or allowed to enjoy as feminists or people committed to the goal of gender equity? Ultimately, what does it mean to have #PrideInPleasure?
…
I remember the first pair of boxers I ever bought. I touched them at the store, felt them against my skin, and thought about the shape they would take on my bedroom floor when I would take them off. I remember the first time I got a haircut that affirmed my gender, that enhanced my sexual confidence, and led to a barrage of selfies I took to put up on my shiny new Tinder profile. I remember the post-orgasm tingling I felt in my toes, the way I giggled in excitement for weeks, looking at my own reflection in the mirror. I remember the first time I had sex, and wondering later whether it even counted as sex, and knowing I had to do it again and again, just to be sure.
I remember these moments as my moments of pleasure.
This article was written as part of TYPF’s digital campaign for Pride Month in 2022. The #PrideInPleasure campaign highlights experiences of pleasure that do not find representation in mainstream media, and amplifies queer voices from the margins.
Fifty years into enacting the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971, abortion continues to be a contested topic in India. The several myths and misconception around abortion reinforce the stigma that further poses a barrier for pregnant persons in accessing safe and comprehensive abortion services. While there are no exclusive studies conducted on such myths and misconceptions, however, research on abortion providers, unmarried and married abortion seekers in urban and rural spaces have documented statements reflecting them. This document consolidates such statements, and also provides scientific responses against them.
TYPF’s Statement on The MTP (Amendment) Bill, 2020
Rajya Sabha Passes The MTP (Amendment) Bill, 2020 But Have We Made Considerable Progress?
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Bill, 2020, introduced by the Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, was passed in the Rajya Sabha on March 16, 2021. The Bill is primarily aimed at increasing1 the upper limit for undergoing abortions in India. Prior to this, abortion was legally allowed within 20 weeks of gestation. With the passing of the Bill, abortion-seekers who come under the purview of ‘vulnerable women’ — either with ‘foetal abnormalities’ (‘anomalies’ being the non-discriminatory terminology) or with a pregnancy caused due to sexual violence — can now opt for an abortion between 20-24 weeks, under the authorisation of two doctors. This Bill was earlier passed in the Lok Sabha a year ago on 17 March 2020. Despite evidence-based inputs proposed by various civil society organisations as well as other key stakeholders including Members of Parliament, no changes were made to the Bill since the judgement passed a year ago. Like the Lok Sabha debate, any changes or provision of sending to a select committee weren’t considered in the Rajya Sabha debate either.
The Safe Abortion for Everyone (SAFE) programme at The YP Foundation (TYPF) supports the passing of the Bill and believes that this is a welcome change for ensuring better abortion services for some women in India. The (conditional) increase in the gestational limit for an abortion would certainly help women who fall under the ‘vulnerable’ category defined by the MTP rules. While earlier abortion seekers had to receive an authorisation from two doctors, the 2020 Bill requires the approval of only one doctor up to 20 weeks of gestation and would only require two doctors for abortions carried out between 20-24 weeks. Furthermore, the Bill has also replaced the word ‘married woman and her husband’ with the phrase ‘women and her partner’ which for the first time acknowledges the abortion needs of unmarried women, although they are2 still required to specify relational grouds while seeking an abortion.
As pointed out by various researchers and abortion advocacy groups, the Bill has several issues that hinder access to safe abortion for all and has a strong scope for further improvements.
Amendments made to Section 3 of the MTP Act, 1971 now allow ‘special categories of women’ defined by the MTP rules to opt for abortion services between 20-24 weeks, under the authorisation of two doctors. For abortions beyond 24 weeks, a medical board comprising of a gynaecologist, a paediatrician, a radiologist, a sonologist, and other members will be set up to deliberate on the feasibility of the abortion. Both these clauses over-medicalise and pathologise abortion by centering the doctors’/medical board’s opinions, rather3 than prioritising the bodily and decisional autonomy of the pregnant person. Assembling these medical boards might become an access barrier to timely abortion services due to the lack of medical professionals in the country, especially in rural settings.
It is also important to note that the language used in the Bill is exclusionary and patronising towards abortion seekers. Phrases like ‘pregnant women’ rather than ‘pregnant persons’ and ‘vulnerable women’ ostracise transgender, intersex, gender diverse, and nonbinary people from seeking abortion services, create a paternalistic hierarchy of victimhood, and offer no provisions for women who do not have medical complications or a history of sexual violence. The Bill further assures privacy and confidentiality of identity of the pregnant women, the defiance of which caused by any individual shall be punishable by law. However, the same Bill allows disclosure of the pregnant person’s identity to a person ‘authorised by law’ which violates the right to privacy and confidentiality of the abortion seeker.
The above-mentioned issues compromise on an intersectional, feminist, and rights-based reproductive justice framework on the legal provisions of abortion in India. Access to timely and comprehensive abortion healthcare and services must be recognised as a basic human right. But the MTP (Amendment) Bill, 2020 continues to perpetuate ableist and heteropatriarchal ideas around abortion.
The YP Foundation believes that centralising narratives and experiences of people who are directly affected by the law can help make the available abortion services more inclusive, especially for abortion seekers from marginalised communities in India. We also believe that the absolute right to terminate one’s pregnancy must be of the abortion seeker, rather than it being a decision of third-party authorisation. TYPF also insists that the government address the conflation with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act,4 2012 which is in direct conflict with the confidentiality clause of the MTP Act as survivors of sexual violence who are minors require guardianship through the process, which might in turn deter them from openly seeking abortion services. Lastly, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare must try to mitigate bureaucratic delays in accessing abortion services and work towards improving public health infrastructure both in rural as well as urban areas. Such a model can be formulated by incorporating the propositions made by feminist organisations and abortion advocacy groups which are directly associated to, or work with, key stakeholders within the reproductive healthcare sector.
The On-ground Reality of Gender-Inclusive Healthcare
By Simran
What are some barriers gender-queer people face while accessing reproductive healthcare in India?
While abortion is legal in India, it is currently accessible by a very small bracket of pregnant people. The Trans Act 2019 also makes it harder to clarify how queer people could access legal and safe abortion services if they fit the criteria stated by the new MTP Act 2021. Protestors have criticised the Trans Act for having the capability to increase oppression, marginalisation, and transphobia. Trans individuals assert that the Act directly breaches the 2014 NALSA judgement, which embraces self-identification of one’s gender. To have one’s identity recognised, trans people must be ‘certified’ by the district magistrate. Due to the extremely exorbitant costs charged at private health centres and the dearth of consideration at public hospitals, gender affirming surgeries continue to stay a distant hope for several transgender people that wish to undergo surergy.
Most healthcare professionals also only receive medical training which is centreed on the binary sex-gender framework and thus do not know how to treat trans people. They are also exceedingly prejudiced and often let it affect their level of care and professionalism. As a result, there have been accounts of doctors refusing to make contact with trans patients or asking them to undress in order to present their body parts as human specimens for their workmates. Apart from a few legislative developments, the de facto journey of trans people encountering the health system continues to remain detrimental, creating a tremendous obstacle to seeking health care.
According to a youth-led evaluation of sexual and reproductive health services in Lucknow, the public health sector severely lacks the infrastructure needed to deliver reliable sexual health services to young adults. Service practitioners are overwhelmed with labor and are extremely traditional once it gets down to delivering sexual health data and facilities. This encompasses emergency contraception, HIV consultation, and abortion facilities. When young adults attempt to utilise such facilities, they are frequently forced to answer intrusive inquiries about their personal lives, such as their marital status and sexuality. It is not only demeaning for them, but it also hinders their health-seeking tendencies.
Are people of varying sexualities able to access these services?
When it comes to sexual healthcare facilities; lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals encounter stigma and discrimination. This is due to cultural and societal perceptions, as well as prejudice associated with sexual actions involving LGB people. Traditionally, health care providers and physicians question women on whether they are married instead of whether they are sexually active. Even when a single cis-woman seeks healthcare, she has to think of the potential consequences such as facing embarrassment, slandering, or bewilderment by service providers.
The circumstance of lesbian and bisexual women who are not married to men is aggravated in this frame of reference, as it becomes unsafe and challenging to divulge that they do not have a male partner. They are also subjected to discriminatory practices due to how they choose to look or dress.
Furthermore, all domestic laws and policies reaffirm a cis-heteronormative family and societal framework, making same-sex relationships unavailable and thus unconstitutional. It, therefore, renders the simple act of seeking healthcare services exceedingly challenging for LGB people who openly express their sexual orientation. It further promotes an environment of exclusion, discrimination, and anxiety, which scars people’s identities and self-esteem and also has a detrimental influence on their overall well-being.
Queer people require access to equitable healthcare services, policies, and research that address their needs. While engaging with medical professionals, gender-queer individuals have encountered and reported various patterns of aggression, prejudice, stigma, and inequitable obstacles in an attempt to access safe healthcare services. As a result, it is imperative to readjust the current sexual and reproductive health structure and facilities in order to provide more equitable, inclusive, and discrimination-free healthcare services.
What are some risk factors India should be focusing on more?
The lack of focus on sexual and reproductive healthcare for people in India becomes apparent with the absence of recent research and attention being paid to the rising issues pregnant people face. While India has announced its aspiration of meeting United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) that help curb India’s maternal mortality rate, the focus still remains only upon women. Additionally, the MTP Act is extremely restrictive; it doesn’t allow every pregnant person to avail of safe abortion services in India. Even with the special clauses placed, pregnant people seeking abortion under the clauses of being minors or being sexually assaulted can be refused by the doctor since each state has the jurisdiction to overlook such cases.
Abortion has been legal for women in India since the early 1970s but rural women are especially at risk of undergoing an unsafe abortion. While privacy is ensured for women over 18, those under 18 are not provided the confidentiality clause, which puts young women (aged 15-19) at the highest risk of fatal consequences from an abortion-related complication. This poses a bigger risk for queer people who may come from queerphobic families or may not wish to come out to their parents yet, since it could invite the risk of violence and even homelessness. The MTP Act is also extremely ableist in nature by allowing no upper gestation limit for the cases where the fetus has an “anomaly”.
Other issues with the MTP Act and its implications on under-served communities:
The MTP Act disproportionately impacts people from marginalised castes (such as Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi folks) and people from rural backgrounds, by mandating a third-party authorisation for abortions after passing a 24-week gestation period. Such authorisations require varying expenses for services and travel which most marginalised communities cannot afford. There are also very few public health centres that provide the necessary facilities to trans folks undergoing transitions through hormones and surgeries, which can also be incredibly expensive. This adds to the barriers queer individuals face while trying to access safe and equitable healthcare facilities in India.
With the current exclusive healthcare practices and use of the language of laws and policies governing our country, it is important to remember that any individual with a uterus, not just a woman, should have safe access to reproductive healthcare facilities.
About the Campaign
This article is a part of a campaign that highlights the various barriers queer-trans* individuals face in accessing basic, abortion-based healthcare services and the role the MTP Act plays in it. It also speaks extensively of how these challenges affect the Indian demographic and the country’s current healthcare framework.
This campaign has been created by Simran, a Media Campaign Fellow with The YP Foundation.
About the author
Pursuing their Master’s degree in Applied Psychology, working as a Content Writer at The Swaddle, Copywriting at Lekh Haq, and graphic designing on the side, Simran (they/them) loves dipping their toes in every opportunity they can find. They were inspired to participate in TYPF’s SAFE Campaign to bring more attention to queer reproductive health issues.
How the Trans Act and MTP Amendments 2021 Interact
By Simran
What is gender-inclusive healthcare?
Gender-inclusive services make it possible for individuals in need of sexual or reproductive health services to feel at ease and protected. Gender-neutral washrooms, forms and paperwork including columns for ‘preferred pronouns’ instead of the two binaries, and adding gender identity to the non-discrimination policies are a few examples of inclusive healthcare practices that have helped queer people. Recognizing the person as a whole is at the heart of the development of patient-centered care. When we speak of such services, we do not simply focus on the design of the intervention and affirmative action strategies. These are necessary to ensure the integration of inclusive programmes into the developmental efforts that encompass every gender identity. We also focus on re-examining existing fundamental social structures and institutions that uphold exclusive services of healthcare and reforming them. This results in loss of power through various agencies of caste, class, race, sex, socio-economic backgrounds, and more.
The discourse surrounding gender-inclusive services have historically progressed in binaries, where we discuss men and women instead of the individual. Recently, there has been a growth in perspectives that focus on an unsexed discourse, keeping in mind the history of dissimilar societal positions for men, women, and queer identities. The discourse still refrains from using terms such as ‘citizen’ and is hesitant to use the term ‘individual’ as they are stereotypically considered to be male-oriented in its implications among traditional societal contexts. There is an urgent need to reform gendered systems that we have embraced since childhood and later realise are concepts we want to unlearn and relearn in our efforts to be inclusive and equitable.
A glimpse into India’s inclusivity in healthcare infrastructures:
When we look at India’s gender-inclusive health programmes, Tamil Nadu and Kerala stand out as one of the first states to have introduced comprehensive transgender welfare policies. In 2015, Kerala conducted a survey to map out the issues trans people face in their state and implemented a rights-based policy to comprehensively approach issues of healthcare, employment, education, violence, and political participation.
In 2016, Himachal Pradesh moved to set up medical boards at the district and state levels for supporting transgender folks. The same was then followed by Jammu and Kashmir, but they faced vehement backlash on the existence of a medical board to determine an individual’s identity by offering ‘transgender certificates’.
How does the Trans Act fit into all this?
Equality in its widest context is frequently substituted for a narrower, more limited interpretation. Communities with varying interests frequently use the notion of equality abundantly while advocating for their personal agendas. This holds the potential to hinder the work done to support queer people in obtaining an equal position in society. Queer activists have been very vocal about how the central government’s Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act 2019 does not comply with the NALSA judgment’s unique benefits.
The Trans Act calls for the formation of a District Screening Committee, that will include a medical officer and a psychiatrist, to identify an individual’s trans identity. The act denies self-determination of gender identity by stipulating a medical screening, which is deemed “progressive” but instead stigmatises trans issues and treats gender identity as a subject of external verification by District Screening Committees that encompass medical branches on the board.
It infantilises trans people and pushes them in more vulnerable positions by asserting that if a parent or immediate family member is “unable to take care of a transgender”, with no age requirement specified in the law, they should be transferred to a rehabilitation center. The law further neglects to administer affirmative action to rectify historic oppression and exploitation.
The law itself has often been called transphobic and discriminatory by various trans individuals. It neglects to address the institutionalised oppression faced by trans people in India through a rights-based attitude. Instead, the law suggests rehabilitation as a guideline, which in itself is completely discriminatory to transgender and intersex groups. This Act was widely protested against throughout the nation until 2019 and its repercussions further blur the guidelines and laws under which a trans person may avail of healthcare services.
Reproductive healthcare and the MTP Act.
Another concern for genderqueer people looking to avail of gender-inclusive reproductive healthcare facilities is the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. It is important to note that the amendment to MTP Act (2021) uses the word “women” throughout, although access to abortion services is critical not only for cisgender women but also for transgender, intersex, and gender-diverse persons.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act states that the pregnant woman has to get the consent of one medical practitioner for pregnancy up to 20 weeks, two medical practitioners for pregnancies up to 20-24 weeks, and a medical board for pregnancies more than 24 weeks. Therefore, medical service providers have the power to make the final call on administering the abortion. Several accounts have been documented where the doctor has refused to let a woman obtain an abortion, whether it be for religious purposes, their personal bias, abortion offered only if the woman agreed to contraception or sterilisation, or demanding the spouse or parent’s consent.
While the MTP Act specifies that women don’t need consent from their parents or spouse to obtain an abortion, this is still practiced by various healthcare professionals. In many cases, informing a spouse or parent can put pregnant women at risk of violence. Requiring a doctor to authorise an abortion instead of allowing it based on the pregnant person’s consent is a violation of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of reproductive autonomy by the healthcare professional.
The MTP Act is exceedingly cis-heteronormative. There is no clarification provided for how queer individuals can access abortion services. It is incredibly concerning how women themselves face numerous issues while trying to access safe abortions in India; the reality of such is far worse for queer people. It raises various questions and concerns regarding how doctors would be trained to understand queer requirements and handle cases with sensitivity if they are trained at all. Several health care services, practitioners, and insurance providers do not offer gender-inclusive care, which would aid in closing the accessibility gap.
Conclusion
When we get down to understanding the implications of normalising the use of exclusionary language in public policies, it can lead to various detrimental consequences. While it may not be explicitly transphobic or hateful, it does equate to marginalised and oppressed individuals being further denied access to resources and safe healthcare facilities. Healthcare professionals are not only misinformed and prejudiced in their practice due to lack of training and cultural norms, but medical centres are also not equipped with proper methods to help queer people get the correct interventions they require.
Transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and other genderqueer individuals need access to comprehensive reproductive health care as much as anyone else.
About the Campaign
This article is a part of a campaign that highlights the various barriers queer-trans* individuals face in accessing basic, abortion-based healthcare services and the role the MTP Act plays in it. It also speaks extensively of how these challenges affect the Indian demographic and the country’s current healthcare framework.
This campaign has been created by Simran, a Media Campaign Fellow with The YP Foundation.
About the author
Pursuing their Master’s degree in Applied Psychology, working as a Content Writer at The Swaddle, Copywriting at Lekh Haq, and graphic designing on the side, Simran (they/them) loves dipping their toes in every opportunity they can find. They were inspired to participate in TYPF’s SAFE Campaign to bring more attention to queer reproductive health issues.
In Safe Hands: A Resource Guide Towards Inclusive Healthcare
This handbook is intended to guide healthcare professionals in providing rights-affirming access to health services to LGBTQIA+ young people. There is enough evidence and lived narratives of persons from the LGBTQIA+ community that shows how they often experience higher rates of health disparities. Their experiences of seeking health services are tenuous and fraught with the possibilities of discrimination and violence.
Centered around building a comprehensive approach to close the gap between the service provider and queer-trans* service seekers, this handbook illustrates the unique concerns, vulnerabilities, and needs of queer-trans* youth when it comes to access to healthcare services. It also helps healthcare professionals comprehend different terminologies and answers FAQs relevant to queer-trans* identities. As a conclusion, the handbook also outlines some possible and tangible recommendations that can be inculcated in healthcare practice and institutions.
A pair of thought provoking, yet fun bingos for men to reflect and analyse the ways in which toxic masculinity, and deep rooted misogyny & transphobia manifest. These were created as part of a campaign for International Men’s Day on November 19th 2020.
This set of thought provoking illustrations created by Smish Designs address societal stigma around abortion and advocate for access to reproductive rights. They can be utilised to challenge abortion stigma and create conversation around abortion from a rights-based perspective.
Listening to Women: Impact of COVID-19 on Abortion Services in India
In a world trying to cope with a pandemic with unprecedented speed of spread, the health systems of individual countries on the throes of complete breakdown had far reaching impact on people’s lives. As governments with single minded focus tried to contain the pandemic, the collateral damage done to reproductive health of the most vulnerable sections of population such as marginalised women was completely overlooked. There was a need to explore, understand and document women’s need for and experiences with accessing time sensitive and highly stigmatised and misunderstood abortion services.
Prompted by the need to build programme designs that address the intersecting and diverse realities of young men and boys, the Mardon Wali Baat programme undertook a research study to document and analyse the impact of COVID-19 on 17 development organisations engaging young men and boys on issues of gender, livelihoods, health, education and WASH in Uttar Pradesh. This was followed up with a consultation anchored by TYPF, attended by 15 organisations working on diverse themes of gender, livelihoods, health, education and WASH with young men and boys in Uttar Pradesh. The following reports detail the findings of the research and the recommendations arrived at through the consultation to improve programming for engaging with young men and boys in the context of crises and disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Report: Informing COVID-19 relief and response with young people’s experiences
The insights collated are representative of diverse communities of adolescents and youth including informal labourers, tea plantation labourers, marine fisher-folk, gender and sexual minorities, tribals, sex workers, people living with HIV, substance users, Dalit, school-goers, medical students and those in alternative care (shelter homes, correctional homes).
By Manjima Bhattacharjya, Jenny Birchall, Pamela Caro, David Kelleher, and Vinita Sahasranaman
Social justice movements are able to generate deep and lasting changes that policy change and development interventions alone cannot achieve. However, in many cases, women’s rights and gender justice remain low on the priorities of movements, even when women are active members. This article offers a preview of three case studies developed as part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge programme on gender and social movements, which aims to inspire and support the inclusion of gender equality principles and practices in social justice mobilisation. The case studies feature the global human rights movement (with a focus on Amnesty International), the CLOCVia Campesina movement in Latin America, and the Occupy movement in the United States. We summarise some of the strategies each social movement has used to encourage the integration of women’s rights and gender justice in both internal and external-facing work; discuss some of the challenges that the movements have faced in implementing these strategies; distil common lessons from the three experiences; and end by suggesting some prerequisites for positive gender transformation in social justice movements.
Vinita Sahasaranaman worked with The YP Foundation as the Director of Programmes and Advocacy.
“Occupy” is an international movement that protests against current economic structures that distribute wealth unevenly. It advocates the creation of an alternative economic paradigm that will be fair in its distribution of wealth and economic power. Occupy’s powerful slogan, “We are the 99%”, succinctly captures the concentration of power among the top 1% of corporations and billionaires who dominate political and economic discourses. Some of Occupy’s key demands include ending the corrupting influence of corporations on politics, penalising the financial fraudsters of the 2008 crash, and creating a truly participatory democratic processes. Although women are everywhere in the movement, there were no specific demands related to women’s economic rights.
Has the feminist and queer agenda, questions of the poor, homeless, people of color been included in Occupy? The following case study looks to feminist perspectives on Occupy to answer this question.
“Who is the 99%? Feminist Perspectives on Occupy” was written by Vinita Sahasranaman, who worked with The YP Foundation as the Director of Programmes and Advocacy. It was originally published as part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge programme on gender and social movements in April 2013 under the creative commons license.
This publication was written by Esther Moraes and Vinita Sahasranaman as a part of their research work at The YP Foundation.
The study analyses the intersection of youth movements and feminist movements that has emerged in India since the 2010s. Focusing on 5 movements and campaigns, the study analyses the commonalities across them in terms of their of mobilization, methods of protest, and their goals. With their sites of mobilization spanning online and offline spaces, these movements have had significant impact on public discourse on women’s rights and bodily autonomy, and systemic inequality and discrimination against women in university spaces. The study argues that we are currently seeing the real-time development of a wave of young feminist movements in India that is distinct in its methods and spaces of mobilization, protest strategies, and membership, and has rapidly grown from feminism ‘lite’ into one that is highly political and conceptually nuanced in the face of significant backlash from oppositional forces as well as potential supporters.
This report was written by Rachel Murro and Elizabeth A. Sully, both of the Guttmacher Institute, and Rhea Chawla, Souvik Pyne and Shruti Venkatesh, all of The YP Foundation. It was edited by Haley Ball, and figures and tables were designed by Louis Guzik and Michael Moran, all of the Guttmacher Institute.
Crisis of Tamizh Identity Politics and What This Means for Women
By Manasa PV
The article was first published on Hidden Pockets.
Who am I? I am a Tamizh woman. I was born in the capital city of Chennai and I spent 20 years of my life there. I am characterised by that typical Tamizh Pride that India knows too well and, like every other one of my fellow Tamizhs, I hold my language and culture in the utmost regard, wear my identity on my sleeve and do not hesitate to school anyone who dares to pronounce ‘Dosai’ or other references that are stereotypically associated with Tamizh culture, incorrectly. It has been endearing to witness youth in Tamizh Nadu, lead the movement and claim the shores of Marina in peaceful and organised protest; It was elevating to see youth categorically refuse to accommodate film stars or politicians lest they dilute the debate with their side agendas; It was heartening to see the shared accountability of the protestors as they tirelessly clean up public space even as some others retire due to physical and mental fatigue. Despite the violence that ensued on the 23rd of January, we must sustain the momentum of our solidarity. There is much to take away from the movement against the ban of Jallikattu: but there is as much to interrogate, as much to transform and so much more to be brought into similar, if not more critical focus.
In the last couple of weeks, our own articulation of our identity politics has been reduced to a dismal state of impoverishment. Granted, there is a trickle of emergent discourse that has efficiently utilised this opportunistic moment to both: critically reflect on the practice of ‘Jallikattu’ as well as deepen the imaginary of “Tamizh” identity: subtle but deliberate efforts to subvert an increasingly monolithic rendering of Tamizh culture, in an effort to widen, even diversify, the floodgates of Tamizh compassion. However, the dominant discourse of dissent seems to be in diametric opposition to this trend. For instance, in the past week, there has been a selective privileging of issues that were raised against the sport. As a result, one now finds – scattered across the interwebs – numerous counter-arguments that go out of their way to clarify our love for the native breed, our staunch compliance with the safety regulations mandated by the Act of 2009, the great goodness of A2 milk etc. However, in stark contrast, there has been an insidious lethargy to address questions around the missing women and Dalits from the primarily male caste-exclusive sport of Jallikattu. I will attempt to wrestle with the former question, as I am unconvinced that my theoretical knowledge or experiences equip me to effectively address the latter.
One only has to look as far as the language of the plaquards, speeches and the sloganeering on ground to detect the secondary status that the sport accords to women. Young girls are spotted carrying banners bearing slogans that reinforce passive femininity – “Kaalaiyai adakkunaatha, Kalyananam kattikkuven” (“Only if the bull is tamed, will I marry”) – and younger boys in turn carry posters sporting slogans that enhance their machismo and strips both women and bulls off all agency, in the same breath – “Kaalaiyai adakkurom, Kalyanam panrom” (“We shall tame the bull, we shall marry”). The symbolism of the imagery evoked is stark in its irony. Women calling upon men to evince their capacity to ‘subjugate’ another being, after years of women having been ‘subjugated’ at the hands of men, themselves. The imagery is further disturbing as it points to the ominous indoctrination of the unsuspecting present and future generations into a culture, which is in dire need – not of banning – but of critical self-reflection and transformation. Meanwhile, news narratives that huff and puff to highlight the ‘involvement’ of women in the primarily male sport of Jallikattu are essentialist to say the least, as they persist to unquestioningly recast women in the stereotypical mould of the domestic ‘nurturer’ whilst reinforcing men as alpha ‘conquerors’. Women nurture the bulls, just like women nurture the man, nurture his family, their children and then, if energy permits – themselves. Evidence suggests that a healthy percentage of the household budget (sometimes 4500 INR, sometimes more) is dedicated towards the maintenance of the stud bulls who are well nourished and cared for, which is more than can be said about the plight of too many women across the country whose health is barely budgeted for: by neither patriarchal state nor family.
The online public sphere is just as lopsided. Social Media is rampant with images of male icons conquering bulls accompanied by text that appeals to a narrow vision of #TamilPride: “Veeram engal thaai thantha thaalattu, maranam engal veera vilaiyaattu” (We derive valour from our mother’s lullaby, and death from the brave game). But, what happens if the bull conquers the man? (‘aanal, kaalai aalai adakkunaa?’) What happens if the man dies like Karupaiyya from Kalathipatti ? Were a man to die a hero, what becomes of his family? Does the legend of his virility or bravado serve as sufficient compensation for the family? Or does the demise of the primary wage-earner thrust additional burden on the woman of the household? These are all critical questions to raise – fundamental even, to the foundations of ‘Tamizh identity’ formation. Yet, we find that such questions have been tactically circumvented, lest they disrupt the ‘solidarity’ of the recent protests. Dalit scholars and activists who have formally highlighted the sport’s exclusionary designs have been written off by citing meagre instances of tokenistic participation. There is generous guilt being meted out to even the most cautious of critiques being offered on social media, which comes in the way of directly challenging this hegemonic hyperbole, which is fast spiralling out of control.
It is worrying that a staggering majority of the Tamizh public are geared towards reclamation without simultaneous introspection: a resolute regurgitation of history, of cultural practice, in the name of ‘conservation’. Let us take a moment to reflect. Why is it that we resist critique so? Does critical self-reflection diminish our collective identity or lend strength to it? In critically examining ourselves, do we diminish or in fact, resuscitate? Is not resuscitation essential to evolution – to retain relevance in, or correspond to a constantly changing context? In fact resuscitation, can be crucial for a culture to become more inclusive. Time and again we find that any critique posited on the identity debate has been indefinitely parked, and marginalised identities have been told to wait their turn. Until when will ‘being Tamizh’ mean usurping the experiences of multiple cross-cutting identities who constitute the state only to forge a singular myopic narrative? If a movement fails to integrate the experiences of women, transgenders, Dalits and other marginalised groups interpellated by multiple subordinate-group identities – what kind of ‘solidarity’ is it really achieving? As long as ‘we’ conveniently unite against the external ‘other’ whilst simultaneously turning a blind eye to the ‘othering’ that ‘we’ perpetuate from within, than ‘we’ cannot sustain. Let us be the authors of our own critique, so that we can reflect and transform towards an intersectional, inclusive and sustainable Tamizh Identity.
Manasa PV was the Programme Manager of the Know Your Body, Know Your Rights Programme at The YP Foundation at the time of writing this article.
Gender at Work Podcast, Episode 05: #MeToo on College Campuses
Esther Moraes from TYPF was part of a group of individuals from across the globe who were interviewed for the Gender at Work Podcast on #MeToo, with specific focus on sexual harassment in college campuses. In light of recent events in India and elsewhere, we’re re-sharing the podcast here.
International Conference on Population and Development: Past, Present, and Future
Aditi Mukherji contributed to articles about the ICPD’s successes and its impact on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, while working as a Policy Coodinator at The YP Foundation. These articles were published in a special supplement issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health dedicated to the ICPD+25 anniversary. The articles can be found at the following links:
India is one of the pioneering countries which legalised abortion way back in 1971 and the law is often referred to as being liberal. Abortion is legal up to 20 weeks of gestation under a number of clauses. But one must consider the liberal nature of the law with a pinch of salt, as the statements in the law are very subjective to interpretation. With no words changed, the law can become restrictive as well.
Unlike most countries where legalisation was pushed by strong feminist movements, in India it was mainly brought in by two major groups – pro-population control demographers and medical professionals. This led to the lack of a rights perspective in the law and women’s autonomy over their fertility not being central to the abortion debate. The inherent medical bias means that health providers are the deciding authority. They often put a condition on an abortion service which is not actually required by law – such as only providing abortion if the woman accepts a contraceptive method (usually sterilisation or an IUD), or if she has her husband’s consent. Despite not being law, health providers have been known to deny abortion services without a husband’s consent, in order to avoid any backlash from the husband at a later date.
The societal stigma around the issue of abortion being linked to immorality makes it more difficult to talk freely on the issue. Religious influences also play a significant role.
Ignorance and myths regarding abortion among the masses is fairly prevalent. Misdirected campaigning to curb pre-natal sex selection has further muddled understanding about the legality of abortion and has adversely impacted second trimester abortion provision.
All these issues contribute towards deterring access to safe and legal abortion services. Hence, India’s abortion situation translates to ‘legal yet unavailable’.
Abortion is a universal phenomenon occurring throughout recorded history and presumably even beyond that. Thus, abortion is quite a common phenomenon across the globe. When performed safely, it rarely has any complication but when done unsafely, often leads to much morbidity and mortality (every 8 minutes a woman dies of unsafe abortion related complications in the world). Knowledge about safe abortion and contraception along with sex education plays a crucial role in determining the level of interventions applied to avoid unwanted pregnancies and safety of the method women resort to when the need of abortion arises. The entitlement to proper information in this regard has been bolstered in the ICPD (International Conference on Population & Development) Program of Action.
Now let us look into some of the underlying principles for right to information.
First, is the principle of neutrality. It reflects the non-judgemental stance about the issue irrespective of social or legal environment. This is essential in restrictive settings. In liberal settings, the information should emphasize the legality as well its safety and efficacy.
Second, is the humanistic principle. It reflects the concern for health and life beyond any moral or legal implications. This aspect needs to be maximised irrespective of legal status of abortion.
Third, is the pragmatic principle. It implies two dimensions- it is unrealistic to eliminate the need for abortion; safe abortion is a time tested cost-effective intervention. This too needs to be focussed irrespective of the legality in a setting.
Fourth, is the human rights principle. It mandates a state responsible to address issues which create or exacerbate situations which are harmful to health as well as look into the effective implementation of the interventions. In a restrictive setting, it can support ‘harm-reduction’ models but in the long run needs to reiterate to eliminate the causality also i.e. the illegality of abortion.
Thus, right to information is a very strong tool to empower women about ways to control their fertility and enable them to make an informed decision, which is very crucial. It is also the state’s responsibility to ensure realisation of this vital right in its enactment so that it doesn’t end up being only an empty rhetoric.
Reference:
Erdman, J. N. (2011). Access to information on safe abortion: a harm reduction and human rights approach. Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 34, 413-462.
Right to health is a utopian dream where everyone deserves to be healthy and has the right to live in an environment which ensures a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just an absence of disease or infirmity. In the context of abortion, it implies to eliminate all predisposing factors, which lead to unsafe abortion; such as lack of knowledge about pregnancy and contraception, lack of accessible, safe and affordable abortion services and post abortion care.
Though addressing these issues and progressive efforts to fend off patriarchal influences over women’s sexuality and reproduction should remain as the vision, a more immediate endeavour should be to ensure the right to comprehensive healthcare which vis a vis abortion translates into access to safe abortion services devoid of all barriers and stigma routinely faced by women across the globe like legal (restrictive laws, other’s opinion/authorization), physical (poor availability and uneven distribution), social (abortion stigma for both seeker and provider), financial (procedural and associated costs).
Abortion enables women to have control over their bodies and in order to make this a reality it is imperative to strive for the right to abortion within the ambit of the right to health as a fundamental women’s health right.
OBVIOUSLY it is… Does anyone still have any doubts?
It is very important to understand the hypocrisy of the so called ‘pro-life’ ideology where the quality of life of a living human being (read the mother) is sidelined for the yet- to- be- a- human- someday-maybe. There is also no concern of that ‘yet to be’ human’s quality of life if born in an unwanted social space.
Well, if the foetus is a human, why doesn’t the census count them???
Respecting the human rights of the woman should be prioritized. After all it is her body, her right’. Who are we to stand on judgement about somebody’s right to make a choice about her own bodily integrity ?
Since it is only women who suffer when safe abortions are denied, it is form of gender discrimination and should be fought against. Has any father died during a delivery ? Or had bleeding, pain, trauma, depression ? As long as it is only women suffer during a pregnancy and labour, and who risk their health and life to continue a pregnancy, it should be only their decision to make about continuing it or not.
We celebrate Human Rights Day on 11th Dec, but really, every day is Human Rights’ Day and I pledge to uphold a very debated though very important human right-“The Right to Safe Abortion”.
A myth is a widely held but false idea or belief. Abortion myths hurt women and often obscure important facts related to abortion. They further lead to deepening the stigma around abortion. This unscientific and deceptive misinformation greatly deters provision of and access to safe and legal abortion services.
In order to gauge the presence of some common abortion myths among netizens and their perceptions about abortion, we (ASAP) conducted a small online survey. A questionnaire with 10 abortion myth statements was created using Google forms. The survey was launched on 31st July 2016 and was closed on 3rd September 2016. The link of the survey was promoted through Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP) webpage, ASAP’s social media profiles and in personal networks of few of our youth champions. It yielded 257 responses. Weighted scoring of ‘2’, ‘1’ and ‘0’ was done for ‘False’, ‘Don’t know’ and ‘True’ response respectively to each of the myth statements and a total score was calculated for each respondent. So, the score could vary from 0 to 20.
Participation was purely voluntary and there was higher proportion of females (77.8%) over males (22.2%) and majority (77.8%) were Indians. Mean score of females (15.02) was higher than males (11.65) and of atheists (16.9) higher than those with any religion individually or even combined together (13.23). Mean score increased with the increase of educational level of the respondents that gives cues better education and information may help in removing the prevalent myths.
The myths of ‘mandatory parental consent in case of teenage abortion’ and ‘contraception eliminates the need of abortion’ were the most prevailing while ‘abortion is only done due to gender biased sex selection to eliminate the unwanted female foetus’ was the least existing. Only 8.5% of the respondents could identify all the statements as myths. The myth of ‘Abortion is illegal in India’ was considered true by 22% of the Indian respondents and this is the scenario even after 45 years of legalization of safe abortion in India.
Responses to the open-ended question of ‘Thoughts on abortion’ were analysed and categorized into three overarching stances: ‘supportive’, ‘conditional’, and ‘opposing’. Those who believed abortion as right of a woman were labelled ‘supportive’; those who considered abortion provision under selected conditions were labelled ‘conditional’ and those who were against abortion were labelled ‘opposing’. Both the proportion and mean score of each category were in descending order, which hums a positive story.
The survey reiterated the pervasiveness of abortion related myths. Though many had positive attitude towards abortion, myths still prevailed largely. All these were in spite of the inherent limitation of ‘self-selection’ bias in this study. Thus, there is a pressing need to spread evidence based abortion related awareness in order to thwart the perpetuating myths around this important public health as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights issue. We believe with concerted efforts this can be made possible.
The Queer Muslim Project – An interview with its founder Rafiul Alom Rahman
Rafiul Alom Rahman is the founder of The Queer Muslim Project (2017) of the Delhi University Queer Collective (2014). In an interview with Avali and Arunima from The YP Foundation, he talks about the challenges of organising around queer issues and politics within university spaces. He discusses the problem of non-recognition by university officials and the difficulty of having a space to hold discussions. He also reflected upon the queer movement in India where due to its restriction to urban spaces, it becomes representative of people with certain privilege, creating a wall. However, he is happy about the intersections that are coming up and demanding inclusion, for instance, Dalit queer rights. Rafiul also talked at length about the importance of The Queer Muslim Project – not only in the lives of Muslim-queers, but also in the larger socio-political context of the country.
Pride and Poetry – In conversation with Akhil Katiyal
In his interview with The YP Foundation, Akhil talks about poetry and politics. He also talks about the differences within the queer movements in the country, the change in student politics around queer rights and issues, as well as the organisation of Pride in Delhi.
Akhil teaches creative writing at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions at Ambedkar University Delhi. He is the author of ‘How Many Countries Does the Indus Cross’ and ‘Night Charge Extra’, and is also known for his book ‘The Doubleness of Sexuality: Idioms of Same-Sex Desire in Modern India’.
Pride and Poetry – In conversation with Akhil Katiyal
In his interview with The YP Foundation, Akhil talks about poetry and politics. He also talks about the differences within the queer movements in the country, the change in student politics around queer rights and issues, as well as the organisation of Pride in Delhi.
Akhil teaches creative writing at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions at Ambedkar University Delhi. He is the author of ‘How Many Countries Does the Indus Cross’ and ‘Night Charge Extra’, and is also known for his book ‘The Doubleness of Sexuality: Idioms of Same-Sex Desire in Modern India’.
Pride and Queer Movements in India – An interview with Debolina Dey
In this with The YP Foundation, Debolina Dey, a professor of English Literature at Ramjas College in the University of Delhi talks about pride, and the diversity of queer movements in India. Debolina further discusses about the importance of the participation of young people in queer movements, as well as the importance of the presence of older queers. She addresses the need to address mental health issues and the importance of safe spaces, and also comments on intersectionality and the need to form solidarities and alliances with other movements. Lastly, she also reflects upon her experience of teaching at Ramjas College.
Youth Unlocked: Interview Series with Young People
For this interview series, The YP Foundation talked to seven young people from different regions across the country who shared their experiences and challenges they faced due to the lockdown.
Krishneshwar from Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands shares the impact on the education of children as there was no proper internet facility available. They were sent notes through their teachers on phones, with some classes on television. This would lead to a lack of practical knowledge. Being a part of fishing community, their families also faced a lot of stress.
Upasana shares her experience of lockdown and it’s impact on her education. Not everyone is the home owns a phone and adding to that, there’s societal pressure as a girl using a phone might be perceived as a spoiled child. A study by Center for Budget and policy also found that during COVID-19, access to mobile phones by girls was lower than that to male adults and boys. She says that there shouldn’t be any discrimination between boys and girls.
Meena recounts her experience of COVID-19 and the lockdown that followed. People with a job had some relief but Meena’s husband, who is a taxi driver faced difficulty in making ends meet. Her kids kids had to study through one phone of her husband, which meant that one or the other had to miss their classes. They received help of ration through Sahyog NGO. However, the impact of the lockdown was far reaching.
Gita shares her experience of how lockdown impacted her education as her family had to come back to her village from Mumbai during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gita shares her experience of how lockdown impacted her education as her family had to come back to her village from Mumbai during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ganga shares her experience of working with Jatan Sansthan and providing Sexual and Reproductive Health Information to 600 adolescent girls and boys where she also taught the them the process of making sanitary pads. She provided emotional support to adolescent girls who weren’t able to access sanitary pads during to the lockdown. Since subsidized sanitary pads are provided at schools and government schools at times acts as the only means of access for many low-income adolescent girls, the closure of these caused huge gaps.
Lakhan shares his experience of the hardships he struggled through the lockdown. He had to suffer through mental stress and also the difficulty of earning money. Due to closing of schools because of the lockdown, it was also hard to concentrate and excel in studies. He wishes to become a police officer and serve the nation.
This International Safe Abortion Day, TYPF in collaboration with Leeza Mangaldas took to busting myths about abortion. In the video, Leeza provides answers to common questions about abortion in India such as : Is abortion legal in India (it is, but the law has stipulations worth understanding, which we explain), can you obtain an abortion if you are unmarried, how safe is abortion, what do safe abortion procedures entail, how common is abortion, why we need to advocate for the right to safe abortion, and more.
This is a set of thirteen illustrated posters designed to cover thematics that are often shunned and never openly talked about because of their tabooed and stigmatized position in the society. The direct brunt of this taboo is faced by young people, who have limited access to the information which the system is denying them. The idea behind displaying these posters in healthcare facilities is to destigmatize sexual health information by providing complete information to every person who reads them.
The set of thirteen poster covers the following nine broad topics:
Submitted by Denise Matias from the Philippines:
This is Captain Nieves Fernandez, a guerilla woman from the Philippines, who fought against Japanese occupants. She was a teacher before and after World War II.
Here, she is seen demonstrating to a US soldier how she used a long knife to kill Japanese soldiers.
National Women’s Protest, South Africa 1956
Here we see women demonstrate against the Pass Laws in Cape Town on August 9th 1956, on the same day as the massive national women’s protest in Pretoria.
The pass laws were a type of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, which severely limited the movements of the black African citizens.
Before the 1950’s it was largely applied to African men, and attempts to apply it to women was met with overwhelming protests.
Image source: www.overcomingaparthied.msu.edu
Women chain themselves to the bars in Australia, 1965
In this photo we see Rosalie Bognor and Merle Thornton chain themselves to the bar at Brisbane’s Regatta Hotel. Why?
Well, many pubs across Australia had a special ‘ladies lounge’ for women to drink, as they were banned from entering public bars. And even then, sometimes women were allowed in the lounge only if were they accompanied by a man.
The feminist movement was not willing to back down on this. These ladies defiantly left the lounge in pubs, marched into public bars and demanded drinks. Chaining themselves to the bars was a popular form of protest to get their point across.
Eventually the the government relented and passed a legislation allowing women to drink at any public bar they wished to.
Marsha Johnson, USA 1969
Submitted by Anushka Aqil from the US:
Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, a Black transwomen, was a gay rights and transgender activist.
She is most known for her work during the Stonewall Riots in the 1960’s and 70’s, as well as founding STAR: Street Tranvestite Action Revolutionaries, alongside Sylvia Rivera, a transgender rights group and a shelter for homeless transgender teens and drag queens.
Marsha brought visibility to the work of Black transwomen and is a beacon for all she did for the rights and safety of transgender people and especially, transgender youth.
France, 1970’s
Submitted by Juliet Dixon from France:
The struggle for the right to contraception and abortion was at the heart of feminist struggles of the 1970’s in France. Here we see women demonstrating for the right to abort.
A manifesto written by Simone de Beauvoir (the most iconic feminist by far, and companion to philosopher Jean Paul Sartre) called the “Manifesto of the 343 Bitches” was a declaration signed by 343 women who admitted to have had abortions when it was illegal in France. This list included actresses and prominent women figures of the time.
Punk Anti-Capitalist Feminism, France 2010’s
Submission from Juliet Dixon from France:
FEMEN is a feminist protest group, one that is quite controversial and doesn’t quite have consensus among feminists [but feminist streams are diverse, rich, and beautiful right?] They are most known for demonstrating bare-chested anywhere they see fit.
The top left image is a protest against Marine Le Pen, the candidate for the far right in the North of France.
The bottom right image is from a protest against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the prior IMF head, who assaulted a cleaning lady in his hotel in New York a few years earlier.
Three Remarkable Women win the Nobel Peace Prize, 2011
Tawakkul Karman [seen holding the award in this photo] is a leading women’s rights and democracy activist in Yemen, so vocal in her stance that she has been targeted by government. She is also the first Arab women to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and compatriot Leymah Gbowee shared the award with Karman. They mobilised fellow women against the country’s civil war, including organising a sex strike.
This award is seen as significant recognition in favour of the empowerment of women, especially in the third world. [Sourced from abc.net.au]
Euromaidan Revolution, Ukraine 2013-14
Submitted by Tamara Martsenyuk from Ukraine:
Events in central Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, became famous as a so-called “Euro Revolution”, better known as “Euromaidan”. Protests by Ukrainian citizens against their government commenced in November 2013, when President Yanukovych announced a decision to turn Ukraine away from the EU, and continued for about three months.
Unlike previous “revolutions”, the Euromaidan revolution was marked by – as was visible in the media and public discourses – diverse women’s participation, through which women challenged traditional gender roles and reclaimed visibility, recognition, and respect.
Cabinet of Canada, 2015
Submitted by Brittny Anderson from Canada:
Canada is now represented by 15 female and 15 male appointed cabinet members. 2015 marks the first time gender parity has been achieved among ministers at the federal level. Previously, the closest the country had reached to equal representation were the cabinets of 2003 and 2008, with women making up 29% of the total. Before this landmark election, only approximately one in four cabinet ministers were women.
Pakistan’s First Transgender Model, 2016
Submitted by Anushka Aqil from Pakistan:
In 2016, Kami Sid made her debut as the Pakistan’s first Khawaja Sara (transgender) model. While modelling is what brought Kami nation-wide visibility, her work as an activist for gay and transgender rights in Pakistan has been on-going and influencing culture for much longer.
Khawaja Saras have been a part of the South Asian continent’s history since the beginning of time, yet, transgender individuals continue to face extreme discrimination and have to fight to survive.
Kami’s photo shoot is one step on the way to increase positive visibility and acceptance, but we have a long way to go.
Latin American Women Resist on International Women’s Day 2016
On International Women’s Day in 2016, thousands of people across capital cities in South America took to the streets to highlight a number of human rights issues ranging from gender equality, violence against women, women’s rights and abortion laws.
Many of the protestors used their bodies as a canvas to fight for their cause, some walking topless with slogans painted across their chests and stomachs. The following is a series of photos from South America. In this photo, demonstrators march in Buenos Aires to highlight the issue of femicide- the murder of women due to their gender.
In this photo, thousands of activists marched in Rio de Janeiro, demanding rights including a change in Brazilian law which only allows abortion in cases of rape or dire health threats.
In this photo, a demonstrator wearing make up to resemble assault marks holds up a sign that says “They are killing us” in Santiago.
Women take part in a Slut Walk across Bogota.
A woman holds up her baby and a sign that reads “My body is mine, I decide” in San Jose.
Women from different feminist and human rights organizations march in San Salvador.
Demonstrators and feminist groups fill the streets of Caracas.
In its celebrations of Women’s History Month, TYPF conducted an interview-series called “Movers and Shakers: In Conversation with History”. By engaging with feminist individuals from across the country, we hope to revisit significant moments and gain new perspectives on our understanding of history through the experiences of these remarkable women.
Manasi Pradhan is an Indian women activist and author, hailing from Orissa where she has done extensive work. In her early days, she founded OYSS Women with the motive to help girl students achieve higher education and develop them as future leaders in the society. The organization undertakes numerous activities and events and is widely credited for pioneering contribution in empowering women. The organization is also spearheading the ‘Honour for Women National Campaign’ – a nationwide movement to end violence against women in India. The movement has recently constituted the ‘Nirbhaya Vahini’ with over 10,000 volunteers across the country to take on the fight for women’s rights and oversee the implementation of its Four-Point Charter of Demand to tackle violence against women.
-This interview was conducted in Hindi and has been translated to English–
What made you start the Honor for Women National Campaign? What was your journey like up until that point?
I had this one ambition since I was a child. The village I was born in, I had observed that the women would always be very troubled, and there was a lot of domestic violence. These ladies were just not getting the respect they deserved at home; because of this, they would be resigned to being the food-makers, to being the baby-makers. And the area I came from, there were no schools close by, and levels of education for girls was very low. So I had this bug in my mind that if I ever get the chance, I would work for women, to develop and improve their conditions. Ever since I was a child, my one aim was that women should get honour, and that they should get respect. And that continued when I reached college – where I started actively working for women empowerment – in ’84, I started OYSS Women.
What all did you have to do to achieve this ambition of yours and further the cause you were working for?
Actually, I had some familial pressure on me. When I was doing my post-graduation – in the second year of my LLB – my mother got diagnosed with cancer. And at that time, my younger brother and sister were extremely young, and my father was bed-ridden. So the responsibility of taking care of my family fell on me. I was thinking that I would take up a job to provide for my family, but I couldn’t do all the work at home and outside. See, I had my own ambitions too, that of doing something for the society and for women. So any job that I would take up, I would put all that into my family, but I would still pursue my own ambitions side-by-side. So I started my own little industry [the Josodhara magazine], and I got a printing press, which I struggled and did on my own. I managed to start my printing and managed to be successful, and I got a lot of financial benefits from it. And then I finally made the decision to do some NGO work. And I got the support from a lot of young people – like writers, officers, and other highly educated individuals – and started an organization. You can only do so much alone, and I required the support of young people to build the organization.
So as I was going through your body of work, to see the kind of initiatives you’ve led. You’ve even been called a pioneer of the 21st century feminist movement. And you’ve been recognized for your work not only in India, but globally too. To have these expectations of you, does it motivate or inspire you work harder?
See, when you’re working and you get respect for what you’re doing, and you’re being told that you’re doing good work – and they want to reward you for your efforts – it is nice to be recognized like that. I didn’t start doing this work to get awards, but to get recognized that “yes, I am doing something impactful” gives you mental satisfaction; it inspires you work even more.
The fact that the public is so accepting of me, and my work, that is the biggest inspiration. Yesterday, I had gone to Bhagat Singh College as a keynote speaker for a Women Development programme. It felt so wonderful that as I was talking, they were really listening, responding, laughing, and learning. That’s it, I don’t need anything else. I don’t have some goal of being a rich woman; if I’m getting food, and I have a roof over my head, that’s more than enough. I’m just happy that I’m getting the opportunity to work. For example, you shouldn’t be thanking me for doing this interview, I should be thanking you for wanting to hear me talk. The fact that someone is listening to me, that’s all the satisfaction I need.
Your outlook is very refreshing.
See, when I was growing up, my father couldn’t afford educating me further. So I took it upon myself to educate myself and my younger siblings, and help them settle their lives. Even when my mother died, she left my brother in my left hand, and my sister in my right hand. She had so much faith in me and that was the biggest thing; my mother believed that her daughter could do it. If someone has placed their faith in me, then I will never break that trust. For me, my work is my god, and the faith to do work is my dharma.
When you put forward the four-point charter as a part of Honor for Women, this demand was made to the state governments?
So, when I made the enquiry in Orissa, it was unheard of because it was so dangerous; no one was willing to take it up. Even with the Munirka case – with the bar dancer – I had taken up that case. A lot of people told me not to because it would be dangerous, and all I could think was “So what if it’s dangerous? I have a duty to fulfill. What happens after that, I don’t know”. Then they told me that I have a little daughter, and that I should be thinking about her. To which I said “Yes, I have a daughter. And she is strong.”
So these four points that I had put forward to the Orissa government, one of them was to teach self-defense so that women can be strong physically too. I put it forward to the Government of India as well – four or five years ago – to put a ban on the liquor trade, institute fast track court, special protection for [vulnerable] women. I made this demand on the national level as well. Obviously, it hasn’t happened completely, but it’s happening in steps. Orissa has set up fast track courts, and there’s been much improvement otherwise too. I’ve been putting pressure on the government to get these things done. At the Mahila Vikas Samiti, there was a gathering of 4000-5000 women, many of them uneducated, who came together to talk about very important issues. For example, here you have these uneducated women whose husbands are daily wage labourers who earn maybe 200-300 rupees – most of which they spend on liquor – leaving some hundred rupees to run a household of four or five people. And when they’re not able to manage, they get beaten up. They get so disturbed that sometimes I get calls in the middle of the night asking me to help them, asking me what they are supposed to do. They say that their husband is doing this, their son is doing that, and about how they’re selling off her utensils to pay for more alcohol; they trusted no one. Now, when they start talking to someone about this, it shows that they are placing their trust in them. And then when someone does something – anything at all – to help them, that’s when they feel that they themselves can also alleviate their situations. It will take time, but it’ll happen. If the government helps, for example, by setting up fast track courts, and getting Special Investigation Teams, then it will create an environment where domestic violence can also reduce.
Another reason why I’ve been putting pressure for the four-point charter to be enforced, is because one of the points is of teaching self-defense to women. If they don’t get that training, how can they protect themselves? And once they are able to help themselves, they will be able to help others around them too. I cannot stress on the importance of being both mentally and physically strong. And the earlier you introduce it in their lives, the more effective it will be.
Do you think that in a few years all schools would have a self-defense curriculum?
I am hopeful. It is happening. But the speed at which it should be happening, that’s not there. It happens on pen and paper, sure, but that doesn’t matter. It needs to translate in practical terms. If it can start as early as school years, then it will have so much benefit.
What I really want is for there to be more awareness. The instances of high awareness that there is, is mostly in the cities. But Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore – these do not represent all of India, right? India has primarily rural and tribal areas, and there is less awareness there. When you have women stepping out, they are told “What are you doing? Your place is in the kitchen!” When their surroundings view women like this, how will the women view themselves? They worship all these devis, but they forget, that they have devis at home who they need to revere. You have the woman who comes to clean your house, why can’t you respect her too? She doesn’t come for two days, and the house falls apart, right? All us women – the ones who work inside the house and outside – we’re not asking for a lot. We’re toiling through the day, at least recognize that; recognize us as equals and give us some respect. That’s all.
“Dekho ki woh kitna devi ko puja karte hain. Maa kya hain? Woh toh mere ghar ke devi hain na? Pehli unki puja toh karo.”
In its celebrations of Women’s History Month, TYPF conducted an interview-series called “Movers and Shakers: In Conversation with History”. By engaging with feminist individuals from across the country, we hope to revisit significant moments and gain new perspectives on our understanding of history through the experiences of these remarkable women.
Chayanika Shah has been involved in the autonomous women’s rights movements since the late 1970’s. She started off by actively campaigning against hostel regulations for women students while studying in IIT Bombay, after which she joined the Forum against Oppression of Women. Since then, she has been an active participant in various significant protests, campaigns, and national conferences. She joined Stree Sangam, which is currently is known as LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT Collective. Currently, she has taken voluntary retirement from teaching Physics at a college in Mumbai, and is still active as ever in women’s movements across the country.
Shannon: What led to you getting involved in the women’s rights movement?
Chayanika: I always feel old when I have to talk about things like this, which is why I’m smiling! I think that I have known of women’s groups and been a part of them since 1979, which is when the first round of groups started getting formed in Bombay. So I was a student at that time, studying in Bombay, and the first women’s march I remember was in 1980.
Chayanika: Yes! So by then Forum against Rape had already formed. And I remember seeing their poster in our campus. One of my first memories of being part of a protest demonstration is from 1981 or ’82 when a young kid had been raped by a policeman at one of the local stations here. But outside of that, I think one of the first campaigns that we did was on campus, which is much like the Pinjra Tod that is happening today, which was about changing the rules in our hostel.
I studied in IIT and the hostels were named Student Hostel 1, Hostel 2, up to 9, and then there was the Ladies Hostel. The first fight we had was in ’78 when we said we wanted the hostel to be renamed Hostel 10, which we managed to do. Then, we also had this curfew time where we had to be back inside by 10:30pm, I think. And we just decided that we didn’t believe in any of these rules, and we broke them! And the inter-hostel movement was another thing we fought for, and we managed to implement it too.
The first campaign I remember that was feminist in character was in ’78 or ‘79. And then subsequently, the groups had started forming in the city, and I joined the Forum around 1983. So I’ve been around since then, and so is the group and we continue to meet even now.
Shannon: So you have actually seen the entire movement from its very genesis to its growth over the past couple of decades.
Chayanika: Almost 4 decades now, so most of my life actually. It was also post-Emergency, so many other things were also happening, and not just the women’s movement. There were many other struggles that went on alongside the women’s groups, and many of the people in the women’s groups came from those movements. However, I joined the women’s groups and then went on to other movements from there.
Shannon: And movements regarding LGBTQ issues?
Chayanika: For me, the articulation of the queer voice within women’s movements dates back to ‘87 as a campaign issue. But conversations around being lesbian, and the knowledge of lesbian women within the groups was there even when I had joined. For example, the Forum would meet in a household of two women, who we all knew were a couple. And for me the fact that they met in a lesbian couples’ home made me think that this group is welcoming to lesbian women and that all was fine. My understanding at that time was also that we didn’t need to be very open and out, and that I don’t need to label myself; I can be in a relationship with whoever, it really does not matter. But there was a lot of conversation, and there was a feminist understanding of sexuality and of relationships. Though there was an acceptance of being lesbian, there was no foregrounding of issues. So one felt that there was space within these groups to be who you are to a certain extent, but there were no campaigns that were being taken up.
“My understanding at that time was also that we didn’t need to be very open and out, and that I don’t need to label myself; I can be in a relationship with whoever, it really does not matter… there was a lot of conversation, and there was a feminist understanding of sexuality and of relationships.”
The first discussions that I remember were in ‘82, when at a meeting in Delhi there was a creative workshop called Kriti and there was a closed-door meeting of lesbian women. So within women’s groups you always knew who they were and what conversations were happening, but the public face of the women’s groups never spoke of lesbian issues. These issues came up in ‘87, when a couple got married and were thrown out of their jobs. That was the first time that, as women’s groups, we wrote that it wasn’t alright and that people should not be losing their jobs because of relationships. That was the first public conversation on this issue. And for the Forum, amongst us there has been conversation in the context of personal laws. So when you talk about laws around marriage, we have constantly spoken amongst ourselves about all kinds of relationships; relationships as a part of heterosexual marriages, as well as lesbian and gay relationships. These conversations have been a part of our understanding of marriage, family.
Shannon: So, what do you think led to this space being created, where these issues weren’t just talked about amongst people who were actively affected by it, but was being put out on to a public platform?
Chayanika: I think that in the history of the autonomous women’s movement, we have had about 7 conferences. In the fourth conference in Calcutta in ‘89, there was a meeting of single women. These non-married women got together and spoke, and in this meeting some lesbian women also came out to each other in a larger unknown group… At the Tirupati conference [in ‘92], there was a session on sexuality, where there was a lot of discussion on lesbianism. But there was a separate meeting for ‘women who loved women’ – that’s the term we used then. So ‘women who loved women’ met separately, and that was the first time that we were saying to a larger audience of women’s movements that there is a presence of women who love each other, who want to find a space for themselves. It wasn’t very easy, we faced a lot of backlash for doing that in that conference… but there was also support. And I think that started off a discussion.
Also, in the 90’s, two things happened. One was HIV AIDS and the groups that were organizing campaigns, and conversations about sexuality were opening up due to work around this issue. Second was that a lot of queer people were coming back. This was unlike the earlier years when many left the country because they found that they could not live as “lesbians” in India. In contrast in the 90s, younger people who came out while studying outside came back to India and said that ‘we are here and we don’t want to lead hidden lives, we want to be out there in the open’. And so for the first time in the early/mid 90’s, women in the Forum started saying that they are lesbians and were open about it outside of the group. Organizing of groups of lesbian women for lesbian women by lesbian women pushed the women’s movements to be more open about it.
“…in the 90s, younger people who came out while studying outside came back to India and said, “we are here and we don’t want to lead hidden lives, we want to be out there in the open.””
From then to now, I also find a lot of people have actually shifted somewhat in their understanding of sexuality. And not just around sexuality, but on issues of genders as well, to talk of non-binary genders and so on.
Women’s movements have their blind spots, like all of us do, but there has continuously been pressure from within and outside to keep moving in our understanding. It doesn’t come easy to everybody but at the same time I think that if I look around and see other movements, I find that the women’s movements in the articulation of morality has shifted quite a bit, and moved quite a bit on the issue of different and diverse sexual orientations. And I think it’s starting to move on diverse gender identities as well.
Shannon: So that was going to be my next question; the entire discussion of homosexuality began with ‘women who love women’. How did it grow from being about ‘women who love women’ to a wider umbrella of issues?
Chayanika: So the issues of all queer people, have become issues of the women’s movements. But the women’s movements itself has not really opened itself up to talk of all genders. So men, as in cis men, are not really a part of the women’s movements in the same organic manner as women, that is cis women, are. In the sense that when we talk of homosexuality, we primarily reach out to lesbian women, not gay men.
As far as issues go, I think for LABIA itself, it has been a learning curve. Because while we have people amongst us who do not feel like women, we didn’t have the language of how to articulate it. I think in some way our feminism also restricted us. I mean, feminism allows us to be any kind of women right? So then if somebody is not fitting in, the older feminism taught me to say that I’m a different kind of womaen. But now, it has pushed us to start looking at gender very differently. So with LABIA, we learned over the years the image politics of non-binary genders. From seeing different kinds of women to seeing gender beyond the binary has come from meeting people who are different and learning from them. Today I would say I feel ashamed to say that as feminists we never looked at transwomen as women, and that was our mistake, our narrowness of vision. We saw them all the time (at least as hijras) but never saw their issues as women’s issues. And I think that it finally happened because they told us that “you are not looking at us, look at us”.
“…I feel ashamed to say that as feminists we never looked at transwomen as women, and that was our mistake, our narrowness of vision. We saw them all the time but never saw their issues as women’s issues. And I think that it finally happened because they told us that “you are not looking at us, look at us.”
Shannon: At this point, do you think there’s a space where trans-issues are maybe seen at the same level as issues that concern cis women, or is there some sort of disconnect between the two?
Chayanika: At one level there’s no uniformity, I think. A person can make comments making distinctions between trans and cis women. Some might say that trans-women have had the experience of male privilege, and that cis women are ‘real’ women, and so on and so forth. But for us at LABIA, when someone says that they are a woman, they are a woman. It doesn’t matter, because they are all equally women. If someone says they are a man, then they are man. If someone says they are neither, they are neither. Nobody has any business to then rate their experiences in a hierarchy. Yes, our experiences of the patriarchal world are different; it’s different for a Dalit and for a Brahmin woman. And I don’t think difference means hierarchy. There is a difference in our experiences, but that doesn’t make one real and the other unreal; it doesn’t make one intense and the other less intense. I don’t think that’s how one understands it.
“…when someone says that they are a woman, they are a woman… If someone says they are a man, then they are man. If someone says they are neither, they are neither. Nobody has any business to then rate their experiences in a hierarchy. ”
Shannon: So has intersectionality made it easier for everyone to talk about their own issues? Because one is aware of the fact that even as women, one experiences patriarchy in different ways.
Chayanika: We have learned intersectionality through doing this work. I say that because in this conversation I took only the track of cis women, of homosexual women, and of transgender women. But it was in our work within the women’s movements that issues of all like tribal, dalit and Muslim women came up, and the issues of women coming from marginalized groups and from conflict regions. Each one of them has told us that all women are different. And in my experience of being a woman, there are commonalities but there’s a vast amount of difference too. I think that the richness of listening to all these experiences has taught us intersectionality. That we today cannot speak of women as singular category is something that we have learned through all of this. And then in that narrative, trans-ness and disability is adding layers to see how complex every woman is, or every man or every person is. And how everyone’s gender is constructed by all of these together.
But then to say that we cannot talk about women, but talk of persons, is not the jump we make. And that is the difficult terrain; that you recognize that there is a gendered hierarchy in this world and there are still people who are being marginalized merely because of gender, but at the same time, marginalization has many other layers as well. So you are trying to work through this very messy terrain of seeing how to build solidarity between cis heteronormative women and the very marginalized women from all these other various categories. How to build solidarity across intersections is the real struggle. I think, that’s the most challenging bit.
Shannon: Do you think there is a connect between the digital space, where women’s and LGBTQ rights movements have gained ground, and the physical space where issues around these areas manifest or transpire?
Chayanika: I don’t know how much I understand of the digital space because it keeps transforming so fast. But I do feel that there are a lot of younger people today who have benefited a lot from having the internet and social media, to reach out and meet people and feel agitated in different ways. So if I look at the 80s, I think that ‘who did anyone really have to turn to?’ And I know that in 2015 they can find someone. I don’t know if it’s enough or if it reaches everybody, but there is a large chunk of people who are able to reach out to each other and also build a community. So that I recognize as a contribution of the digital age.
At the same time however, I don’t know if this is what makes communities. When I am this individual who is struggling to make sense and fight my battles within the isolation of my family or in a village, I don’t know if this kind of [digital] community helps. You need to have physical community. I put myself in the category that can manage without having my family or community support me; I don’t need that validation, as I am privileged enough to be autonomous. Autonomy itself is a privilege. And if I’m autonomous, then the digital community is enough for me and I can survive because I know that there are many people like me. But if I’m not able to do this transition – and I speak specifically about people from marginalized sections – I think when there is a larger maligning of community, then I seek to remain in it and if in that community I don’t find support, then this ephemeral support from the virtual does not really cut it. We need to do more, and there’s no getting away from doing more. It has become easier to reach out to a larger section, but even then, I think that a physical community is essential, and we have to spend more time building on it.
Shannon: So I had read this somewhere and I wanted your opinion on it:
“Younger Indians tend to be more tolerant towards gays. These twenty-somethings are a part of an emerging urban middle class that is connected to the rest of the world. Their numbers are not large enough to make a difference now, but half of the population is under 30, so in the long run, the demographics are favorable for the LGBT movement.”
Do you think there is truth in this statement?
Chayanika: I do think that younger people are more open. Younger people of a certain class, or from a certain region – say in a city like Bombay or from the middle and upper middle class – are growing in a neo-liberal world, where they believe in the concept of choice and think that it’s cool to be able to make choices of this nature. So I would agree with the first part of the statement; they are more tolerant. But at the same time, I think that difference is not really tolerated. For example, I may be tolerant of gays but I might also ask them not to show their gayness too much. I’ll tell them not to be so outwardly gay, to not flaunt it. We see young people looking the same across the board – where they have similar clothes or the same hair – so of course when someone is different, it stands out. So I don’t know how much of it has to do with tolerance. I mean, you do what you want to do in the bedroom but when it comes to the outside, or walking with me, or me welcoming you into my home, I don’t see that tolerance. I feel that the tolerance is very superficial. They might say yes to gay marriage, but if tomorrow I say that the meaning of being queer also includes toppling monogamy, then I don’t know how many people will agree. If I keep my public image of queerness like a heterosexual married couple, then yes, I am welcome. But if I will overturn any of these assumptions, then maybe not. Let’s see.
Shannon: Thank you, this has been incredibly insightful. Would you like to say some closing words?
Chayanika: Some words of wisdom? Well, I do think that the times we are in today are very challenging. If I look back and see the past 40 years, I feel that this is the most difficult time in terms of bringing about change. Even though I was too young to participate in any movement, I did witness the Emergency. And I think that these are tougher times than that and I think we all know the reasons why it is worse. I do feel that the voice of the margins is more strident at this time, and that is a cause of hope. My concern in these days and times is purely of how to build solidarity across differences. We may not agree with each other but we have to make it work so that society doesn’t move backwards. But I do feel a lot of hope.
In its celebrations of Women’s History Month, TYPF conducts an interview-series called “Movers and Shakers: In Conversation with History” where we engage with feminist individuals from across the country. We hope to revisit significant moments and gain new perspective on our understanding of history through the experiences of these remarkable women.
Saba Dewan is a documentary film-maker based in New Delhi. Her work focuses on communalism, gender, sexuality and culture. Her films have been screened extensively across India and at international film festivals. Her most recent work has been a trilogy of films focusing on stigmatized women performers. The first of the three was ‘Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi’ (2006) on the lives of bar dancers; the second being ‘Naach’ (2008) which explores the lives of women who dance in rural fairs. The final film of the trilogy is ‘The Other Song’ (2009) about the art and lifestyle of the tawaifs or courtesans. She spent eight years researching and gathering information for making The Other Song, and the film has gone on to become a pioneer in a space hitherto forgotten. The film portrays poignantly the story of a tradition and a community lost in history.
Shannon: To start off, what got you interested in documentary filmmaking? And why did you chose the topics you did as the subjects for your work?
Saba: Well, my parents are journalists, so while growing up it was assumed that I would follow them. But I decided I’d be wiser off not going into that field, which is how I guess young people can be sometimes! By the time I was in high school, I was passionately interested in cinema and film. I could see myself communicating through images, so I took the entrance exam at the Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia and got through! Of course, I didn’t know at the time that the specialization at Jamia was documentary filmmaking because I was too young to know those differences, so for me ‘films’ meant feature films. But I got interested – passionately interested actually – in something I didn’t know much to begin with. I just wanted to do films and as luck would have it, I ended up specializing in documentary which was a genre in which I felt I wanted to express myself. It’s not that I chose documentary, but it was rather destined that documentary chose me.
And as far as the kind of subjects I’ve chosen goes, I guess it’s because I think that film work – as I would think all creative work – is a reflection of one’s own concerns. So my work has focused upon issues of gender, sexuality and culture of course, and also issues of identity politics or what we in India call communalism. And I think that is because those are issues that I, as a person, have been engaged with. They interest me and so they find a reflection in the work I do.
Shannon: So you’ve been making films for the past three decades?
Saba: I graduated in ’87 after finishing my masters. So yes, of course, it has been thirty years! Exactly thirty years, in fact.
Shannon: In that case, happy thirty years in the industry!
Saba: Thank you! But mercifully, documentary filmmaking in India isn’t quite an industry. When we talk about industry, we talk about big capital. In that sense, documentary has been largely independent of industry. You know, the initial years are of trial and error and of trying to find one’s own language. Every filmmaker has to have her or his own personal language. And for many of us, that takes a long time to find. But yes, they were exciting years, and ones that define me as the person I am today.
Shannon: So how would you define your personal language as a filmmaker now?
Saba: That is a lot of reflecting to do so early in the morning! You see, I am spontaneous and I do things through impulse. And so, stylistically, my filmic language is very diverse; it’s the way a story tells itself to me, which makes the films take very different shapes. Foremost, I am interested in the lives of women. And if you’ve seen my work, it is a documentation of understanding women’s lives. Each time I explore someone’s life with them, it not as if someone is my subject; the thing about documentary filmmaking which excites me is that it’s a participatory process. But what I’ve now begun to understand is that what I’m looking for as a filmmaker, or what intrigues me about someone’s life, is often about understanding myself. And I think that’s true for many of us, not specifically for me. In some way, these are issues that we’re exploring within ourselves or that are important to us. Even though I’ve done so many films about other women’s lives, one is seeking certain [personal] answers. Perhaps it has added a layer of certain reflection in my work, where there is a recognition of my subjectivity that’s coming to play.
So I think my films are very personal, in the sense that it is very close to the bone. The aim is to get close to the people I am working with, to be true to their lives, and to reflect it in the measure that I have understood them. And in some process, they start reflecting parts about me or my concerns. That would be something that I have understood most about my own work. But it’s always a process, no? It’s the most difficult to reflect upon yourself and figure out why you do what you do.
Shannon: Coming to the trilogy you made which focused on stigmatized women performers, was that an impulsive decision or something that came after years of thinking?
Saba: Actually, years back I had started off with research in the 90’s on HIV AIDS. It was through that research project that I got a chance to visit a lot of red light areas, where I had my first encounter with sex workers. I was in Ujjain as a part of the project, and there the meeting with the sex workers was attended by these women who were tawaifs. And believe it or not, I was really shocked! Somehow, I had assumed till then that they were a figment of our imaginations; that they had essentially come down through Hindi films, and were creatures of cinema. I knew that tawaifs had existed at some point, but not that their families still survived. For many of them, they themselves were not in sex work but were the landladies of the sex workers. And then I realized that these were pretty well-off women – women of substance in fact – who owned property. And the kind of culture capital they came with was very different. It has obviously accumulated over generations, in terms of a certain refinement and sophistication in the way they spoke and conducted themselves. That was my very first encounter with a group of tawaifs, which interested me enough to start reading up on them and the courtesan culture.
In the meanwhile, I was very interested in doing a film about my own family, and reflecting on the lives of educated middle class women who had started working outside. My work is very historically researched, and it was while I was researching on 19th century educational reforms, I found further references to tawaifs. At one time, they were the only educated women in society, apart from the few from aristocratic families. So while I was working on my own family, who are kind of the opposite of the tawaifs in the sense that they were respectable women moving out into the public, I realized that the histories of women are very intertwined with each other. I guess when I finished working on “Sita’s Family”, it was the natural trajectory to move on to the tawaifs. And while I was researching, I came across the bar dancers and nautanki dancers too. So I hadn’t planned on a trilogy, but then the project just grew and grew.
Shannon: So with all three of these films, there’s a discussion on how the regulation of their sexualities possibly led to their marginalization.
Saba: The fact is that the tawaifs as a group have always existed on the margins of patriarchy. It was not as if they were considered respectable, and then suddenly that changed. They were highly skilled and educated women of means, they were the lovers and companions of the elite in the area, and they were sought after as entertainers and artists. Though they were not considered quite respectable because of the stigma attached to women being ‘outside’, they were not pariahs either. Till the early 20th century, you have accounts of the most elite courtesans, say from Varanasi, invited to preside over discussions about literature, because they were so educated. It was a very interesting, fascinating state. But with the coming of colonialism, that delicate balance really shifted. In the pre-1857 period, the Evangelists were very active with this very repressive Victorian morality. Where did the tawaifs fit in? Their presence was appalling because they don’t quite conform to the notion of Victorian morality. Then after 1857, there was the added need to justify colonial rule. There were various tropes that were used as arguments to show that Indians were inherently decadent, steeped in ignorance, and barbaric. And the tawaifs became a very convenient beating stick. The fact that they were very active in public life and in so-called ‘respectable’ spaces, meant the Indians were morally compromised. In that very narrow Victorian morality, the courtesan sexuality could be only understood as prostitute sexuality. So the tawaifs start getting painted in that way.
In the subsequent rise of nationalism, the nationalists themselves – who were English educated ironically – were part of the new middle classes and were imbibing in large measure colonial mentality as far as morality of sexuality was concerned. And so within that narrative too, the tawaifs become an issue. India had to be rid of evils, you see, of many evils including them, to reclaim the original glory. So within this span of time, you see the demolition of tawaifs. And then post-independence, that process got accelerated when the anti-prostitution laws targeted the sex workers, and in turn the tawaifs as they were put in the same category. There was also the question of their contribution to the arts, to Hindustani music and dance, which the nationalists wanted to “reclaim”. And it was argued that the tawaifs had to be cleansed out, to cleanse music, dance, and the heritage of ancient India. The practitioners themselves were thrown out, and their art appropriated. So it happened on many levels; many ways in which they got marginalized.
Shannon: Do you think it was perhaps easier to use them as a scapegoat due to their association with the Mughals?
Saba: I don’t think so. I think the reasons are even more basic than that; it’s patriarchy. Look at the devdasis in the south, they weren’t connected to the Mughal dynasty. Yet, they were treated much in the same shoddy way. They were custodians of the temples and were part of the temple rituals, and even they, more or less, suffered the same fate. And it’s not even like they were autonomous women; they were there because they were needed to serve certain sections of the elite men. See, the men had it all; they had the mistress and the wife. But the mistress was allowed more space because she had to be skilled in certain arts. That’s what the men came looking for- not just sex but for cultivating conversation and for entertainment. So she played a certain role, she fulfilled a certain need.
See, patriarchy and patriarchal norms never remain the same. It’s not as if pre-colonial patriarchy was more liberal, but it did have a space in it for women like tawaifs or devdasis. What happens is the way patriarchy gets restructured. It’s not that it got dismantled; it got recalibrated with the colonialism. With colonialism, the whole narrowing of the concept of the family took a very Victorian form, where the father was the head of the family, and there was the wife and children. The tawaifs did not conform to the narrow vision of being a wife. So it was the redefining of patriarchy in a very monogamous family system.
Coming back to your question about the Mughal association, though the tawaifs origins actually predates the Mughal dynasty, it is true that in North India they were associated with a certain “Muslim-ness”. I don’t think their association was the primary reason, but I will add two points. In addition to the restructuring of patriarchy, there was also the proximity of the tawaifs to the local aristocracy. Not just the Mughals, but rajas and nawabs too. The tawaifs became a convenient trope because the colonial rule was delegitimizing the local princes, many of whom took part in the 1857 revolts and had to be shown as being morally compromised. The tawaifs became symbols of that, which suited everyone. “Oh look, these guys are morally compromised! What are they fighting the British rule for? Fighting for the survival of their decadent, corrupt, immoral lifestyle. Look, they have these women, these prostitutes, who they keep openly!” So that was also there.
Then there was a certain nationalist discourse which was looking at India in a great Hindu civilizational glory. That narrative equated the Mughal and the Muslim rulers before them as invaders. Here it suited the narrative of equating the tawaifs with the Mughal rule in the north, by saying that they got involved in corrupt practices and that the sacred music also got compromised with involvement of the tawaifs and Muslim ustads. Those kind of narratives were also there.
But the primary narrative that remains was the reconsiderations of patriarchy. And it was not just the tawaifs, but other communities like the devdasis, who got disenfranchised. What was seen as an aberration was seen as a morally corrupt.
Shannon: Like you had said earlier, whatever we do know of tawaifs comes from how we see them portrayed in Bollywood movies. So after interacting with them in such close quarters and getting to know them, do you think there is any truth to what we see on screen or is it not true to reality?
Saba: See, the women I have met with are the first to admit that the profession continued well past its expiration date. You see the last of the tawaifs in my film, and even the ones I’ve worked with had long since retired and are not in the field anymore.
In Hindi films, it’s very common to show the tawaifs waiting for the hero to come and rescue her. The ones I met, they weren’t waiting for redemption. I mean that they had a very clear idea of what men were and of what use they were, which is fair enough because these are self-made women and patriarchy hasn’t treated them very well. They know their survival is dependent on certain things. So while they are extremely feisty and autonomous, they were clear that they weren’t waiting for some man to come, redeem them and lead them into a life of respectability. Of course, there is a need for companionship, of love and intimacy, but not in the way Hindi films show a male protector coming and making a wife out of her. I didn’t find anyone who saw herself as a fallen women; I didn’t find anyone who was dying to be made into a wife.
The kind of agency they possess is also missing from the movies; their agency gets vanquished when it comes to being victims of circumstances. Of course as women, we know that there isn’t any such thing as true agency for women in South Asia, where caste, class and even sexuality starts defining how much autonomy you can exercise over your lives. But these were women who, even with these constraints, exercised a great deal of autonomy. Unlike in the films, where you see them as cowering women who have some male figure towering over them or exploiting them, they are women who were heads of their households. This was an inversion of patriarchal household which was very refreshing, where authority passes from mother to daughter, or from aunt to niece. For me, coming from a [hetero] normative patriarchal household, the experience of seeing a space where you saw women being decision makers, where the money is controlled by them, and all the things that the male head would be responsible for are the responsibilities the tawaif head of the household enjoys – it is very different. Though I’m sure it’s changing now as the norms are changing, where the boys are becoming the breadwinners and the girls are being married off. And once that starts happening, authority itself will change hands. But these were the women who symbolized that way of life.
In reflecting the women centered places, where I thought the primary relationship these women shared were with other women, not with men. And I don’t mean solely sexual relationships, I mean it in emotional terms, the ones that sustained. The only film I feel comes closest to showing that sense of community would be Umrao Jaan, the Musaffar Ali one. And oddly enough, even Pakeezah. Although the whole narrative is about redemption, from the detail to the milieu itself one was able to get the sense that the director had some knowledge of elite tawaif families. The story itself is very much the stuff of patriarchal narrative, where the girl has to be morally reclaimed.
“I didn’t find anyone who saw herself as a fallen women; I didn’t find anyone who was dying to be made into a wife.”
In 2002, commercial surrogacy was legalized in India. Over the next decade, the industry grew tremendously, estimated to be a $2 billion a year business. However, a number of incidents between 2002 and 2015 highlight the absolute disregard for the rights of the surrogate mother and child, the lack of comprehensive laws related to surrogacy, and the exploitation of loopholes within the already existent ones.
Consider the case of Baby Manji Yamada in 2008. In 2007, a doctor working at an infertility clinic in Gujarat, arranged for a Japanese couple to have a child through surrogacy. The surrogate mother was impregnated using a mix of the father’s sperm and an anonymous Indian woman’s egg. However during the course of the pregnancy, the couple filed for divorce, and there were no laws in place which covered whose child the baby would be; the women who donated the egg or the surrogate mother or the father. In the wake of this, a petition was also filed against the doctor stating that he was running a child trafficking racket by taking advantage and making money off the lack of surrogacy laws. The case of Baby Manji was resolved when her grandmother took her in, but by then the question of the ethical violations of the booming surrogacy industry had already entered the public arena.
In another instance, in 2012 an Australian couple had twins by surrogacy, but took only one home rejected the other. Then there was the case of a single mother from Chennai who opted to becoming a surrogate in the hopes of using the payment to start a shop of her own; however, she received minimal financial remuneration as the autowallah who acted as the middleman took 50% of the cut. In 2014, a 26-year-old woman died after complications from a surgical procedure to harvest eggs from her body, as part of an egg donation programme at a private clinic in New Delhi.
In addition to the series of PILs that emerged which sought to ban commercial surrogacy, the 228th report of the Law Commission recommended prohibiting commercial surrogacy and allowing altruistic surrogacy. The exploitation of women who became surrogates due to a paucity of employment options, and the easy abandonment of the children born under these situations led to the Union Cabinet approving the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill of 2016, which effectively banned all forms of commercial surrogacy. Altruistic surrogacy refers to an arrangement between a couple and a surrogate without any transfer of funds, except for the payment of medical expenses. Altruistic surrogacy is practiced in some centres in India, but a majority of centres are primarily for commercial surrogacy.
Though the intent of the bill was to curb the exploitation of women, there seems to be more wrong with it than right. It shows a shallow understanding of how to deal effectively with issues, where outright prohibition is chosen as a solution, as opposed to delving deeper into the intricacies of the problem and instituting issue-specific policies and regulation. The medical community, and even some factions of the general public have criticized the bill for being discriminatory and draconian even while it has been understood as necessary in curbing the ‘baby-making industry’. The health minister has said that the bill is open to improvements, but the clauses detailing the exploitation of the surrogate mother and child will not be compromised on.
While the bill bans commercial surrogacy and institutes heavy penalties and jail time for establishments found indulging in it, it also heavily regulates the conditions that a couple must fulfill to be able to opt for surrogacy. The couple must have been married for a minimum of 5 years, and at least one of them proven infertile. The couple must have Indian citizenship, with the female aged between 23 and 50, and the male between 26 and 55 years. Due to these strict conditions, homosexual couples, single parents, unmarried couples and couples with children (biological, adopted or surrogate) do not qualify for surrogacy under the new bill.
The bill also heavily regulates the role of the surrogate. For a women to be a surrogate she must be an ‘altruistic relative’ which means she must be a close relative of the couple and must be between 25 and 35 years of age. She can also act as a surrogate only once in her lifetime. The child born through surrogacy will have all the rights of a biological child.
There has been extensive debate on the stringent criteria the couple and surrogate mother must meet in order to go through with the surrogacy. The necessity of the surrogate being a relative and then being a surrogate only once severely limits the options the couple has, with adoption being the only other alternative. A reason given for these strict conditions has been for the promotion of adoption, but that itself comes with a whole slew of problems. Adoption regulations are themselves equally stringent (again, excluding single men, and various other kinds of atypical family set-ups), and processes are hardly streamlined, among other issues. Adoption, then, is hardly a plausible alternative.
Another point of contention is the issue of the surrogate’s consent. After the boom in the industry post-2002, surrogacy came to be stable source of income for many women. If a woman willingly consents to being a surrogate, is assured of a safe medical environment and the child is assured of a safe home, then why should commercial surrogacy be banned outright? Of course, exploitation is a continuing threat and a legitimate issue, akin to the threat of exploitation in the case of sex work. But, like sex work is recognised, regulated in many countries and sex workers given full constitutional rights, surrogacy laws should be put in place to regulate policies and not to institute a blanket ban. Laws need to be implemented in a way that the rights, livelihoods, and decision-making power of those most vulnerable are protected.
One of the most criticized aspects of the bill is the prohibition of anyone other than a heterosexual married couple opting for surrogacy. To exclude single parents, or couples who do not fit a hetero-normative mold, furthers a patriarchal understanding of what constitutes the ‘ideal’ family, and, in other ways, further embeds homophobia into our legal system.
We need to accept that these issues are never black or white, nor can they ever be, and that it’s about time we learn how to navigate this grey expanse. It is hard to paint commercial surrogacy as ‘evil’ or ‘bad’ when it does benefit some people and is often the sole option available for both couples and surrogates. Similarly, altruistic surrogacy at its core is non-exploitative but still proves to be extremely restrictive. Some key points to keep in mind are the benefits of restructuring versus outright banning, and the question of consent versus exploitation. If one if able to assess these issues pragmatically, then the solutions that are offered may truly have positive on-ground impact.
I learned about Shanar revolt back in 2009 from a small section in my 9th grade History textbook under the chapter “Caste Conflict and Dress Change”. The 19th century Shanar Revolt is a significant moment in history as it is a milestone victory of subordinate groups in breaking social hierarchies and rules of caste identity. And like any other revolt, it is important for students to be taught about the historical struggles that have paved the way in establishing current social status quos.
I still remember how exhilarating it was to read about it. It was there that my reverence for the NCERT history textbooks began. If you know me, you know that I absolutely loved our history textbooks, because simple as the language may have been (something my ICSE peers always scoffed at), it was beautifully formulated. So the minute I decided to write about the Shanar women, my immediate thought was to go back to the source. Imagine my surprise when I read that the CBSE issued a circular ‘asking’ all affiliated schools to omit the entire chapter from the curriculum, with effect in 2017.
Now, this is not due to any opposition from students or even teachers. In fact, the coordinator of the book, Professor Kiran Devendra, has gone on record to say that the section is factually correct and that there have been no complaints regarding the contents of the section from school students or teachers.
But for now, let’s put that debate aside, even as it continues to be a relevant and important conversation to have in our present context. Let’s also look at the role of clothing as an instrument of patriarchal control.
“Nowhere in India was the Hindu caste system more clearly defined and more meticulously maintained than in Travancore… It is one of the sacred countries of the Hindus, having been reclaimed from the sea… for the sole use of Brahmans. The Brahman is regarded as a foreigner but nowhere in India holds a higher rank than here. He is considered by the orthodox to be the actual lord of the soil. The Nayars are next to the Brahmans; below the Nayars, and classed among those outside the pale of orthodox Hinduism, are the two great classes called Shanars and Iravars, the former of who are found in the south.”
In Travancore, there were numerous restrictions imposed on the Shanar women (now called Nadars). These included maintaining a stipulated number of paces from the various upper caste groups, remaining barefoot, not wearing gold ornaments, and not building homes with more than one storey high. Two conditions particularly enforced were to carry water pots only on their heads as a sign of subservience, and not being allowed to cover their chests. Caste laws forbade both lower caste men and women from covering their upper bodies – a sign of respect to the higher castes.
In the 19th century, many Shanars converted to Christianity primarily due to their social status, which often required them to work for little to no wages and pay exorbitant taxes. Their conversion helped the Shanar women to extricate themselves from the oppressive system and began to advance economically, to the continues anger of the higher castes. From this clash arose the Shanar Revolt or the breast cloth controversy of the early 19th century.
The Shanar women successfully campaigned to be allowed to cover their breasts, and in 1813 the British dewan in the Travancore court issued an order granting the Christian converts permission to cover themselves. This order was later withdrawn when members of the council of the Raja of Travancore argued against the order, saying that it would destroy caste differences and pollute the state. This did nothing to deter the women from continuing their fight for their right to wear upper body clothing.
By the early 1820’s, violence against the Shanar women escalated. Schools and churches were burned down, and in 1822, Nayar women attacked the Shanar women and who tore off their upper clothes. Numerous complaints were filed in the court against the Shanar women’s dress change. They retaliated to by refusing to give free labour to the higher castes. In 1829, the Travancore government ordered Shanar women to abstain from covering the upper parts of their body. But the Shanar Christians, joined by the Hindus as well, continued to adopt the blouse and upper clothing.
In 1858, when an official of the government along with the higher caste women attacked and stripped the revolting Shanar women in the marketplace, it sparked 20 days of rioting. Later the military was called to quell the rioting, and once brought under control, the dewan issued a public warning against violating ancient customs, and promised swift and severe action against those who takes law into their own hands.
The spirit of the Shanar women refused to be extinguished, and by 1859, the government relented and issued a proclamation permitting Shanar women of all faith to cover their upper bodies, as long as it was not similar to the way upper caste women did.
The importance of learning about this struggle is not limited only to the knowledge of history, but to recognize that even today, a women’s right to choose how she clothes her own body continues to be dictated and regulated by patriarchal institutions.
Some religions, for instance, have a particular set of clothing requirements for women. In some sects of Hinduism, women are expected to cover their heads and/or faces with their dupatta or pallu, especially in temples. Within some Muslim sects, women are expected to cover their head, face and/or body by wearing a burkha, hijab or niqab. This has led to the evolution of this attire in a more modern set up as well, where we have seen innovations such as burkinis, and specially made sports hijabs for Muslim athletes. These often become issues of contention as well when the law, in an effort to liberate women, still impinges on their freedom to make their own choices.
But regulation of women’s attire does not exist solely in religious set-ups. Educational institutions impose highly restrictive dress codes on female students, an issue that has begun to be highlighted and challenged across the world in the recent past; professional workspaces sometimes have mandates directing women to wear high heels, or even specific types of dress.
Though the definition of ‘appropriate’ attire for women has evolved (or devolved) over time and varies from culture to culture, its regulation by external authorities is something that has stood the tests of time. Thus between questions of morality and law, women’s rights often become political or social issues, as opposed to being a matters of personal choice.
I read somewhere (and I paraphrase) that unlike their counterparts in other nations, Indian women did not have to struggle for the right to reproductive rights. My immediate response was one of extreme skepticism. But upon extensive reading and researching, I was surprised to find that there was some truth to this statement. We are all well aware of the stigma that comes attached with topics of sex education, use of contraceptives and abortion, to name a few. But what most of us don’t know is that India’s history with sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) began roughly 60 years ago, and was way ahead of its time.
When we think of ‘Planned Parenthood’, our immediate response would be to link it to the USA. Perhaps secondarily, we may remember them due to the new US administration’s plan to cut their funding. What does not come to mind as a second, third or even fourth thought, is India. But here’s the thing – it was at a conference in Bombay in 1952 that the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), of which the aforementioned Planned Parenthood is a founding member, was launched. That’s right, the birth of the worldwide movement that provides reproductive health and family planning services (currently active in over 170 countries), was in India. In fact, the oldest IPPF clinic in the world is in Bombay, and functions to this very day.
India is called the “land of-“ many things, but we can agree that the ‘land of contrasts’ is perhaps the most apt. India is simultaneously traditional and modernized, conservative and progressive. And yet these two diametrically opposite worlds had to meet in order to address two large challenges the country faced: population stabilization and improving human development indicators. To address these issues in a way that has actual on-ground impact, it was important to enact a practical system of policies that did not undermine the traditional cultural foundation of our society but upheld it.
In the 1930’s, India pioneered family planning in Asia by introducing one of the first birth control clinics. This movement to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity was led by two dynamic women Avabai Wadia and Dhanvanthi Rama Rau. The duo met while in the All India Women’s Conference and went on to found the Family Planning Association of India (FPAI).
FPAI worked closely with the Government of India in helping shape policies and reforms, where they jointly advocated strengthening safe abortion services and expanding contraceptive choices. In fact, the FPAI was instrumental in getting family planning included in the first 5 year Plan in 1951. This made India the first country in the world to adopt family planning.
In 1952, backed and funded by the Indian government, FPAI organized the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Bombay and gave the opportunity to eight international associations working in the field (including Planned Parenthood USA) to come together. Renowned women’s rights activists from all over the world attended the conference, including Margaret Sanger and Elise Ottesen-Jensen. It was here that the delegates unanimously voted for the formation of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which came into existence shortly thereafter.
FPAI has been at the forefront of promoting SRHR in India, having reached out to millions, both women and men. In the 1970’s, FPAI drew women out of the confines of their homes and gave them the opportunity to get involved in Mahila Mandals or women’s collectives. These co-operatives empowered women by encouraging them to take part in literacy and income generation programmes, where they worked as peer educators on family planning methods, keeping stocks of contraceptives ready for easy access.
An important mission of FPAI is to equip young people with information about their bodies, sexuality, responsible sexual behavior, marriage, parenthood, contraception, and prevention of STDs. Sex Education, Counselling, Research and Training (SECRT) Centres provided easy access to this information in a friendly, judgement free environment.
The more I read about the FPAI, the more it felt like an alternative history written by an idealist dreaming of what India could have been. But it is very much a part of our history; and yet, with respect to women’s reproductive rights, our country’s trajectory seems to have taken us in a very different direction.
Women’s groups, however, continue to fight the good fight, and insist that women’s reproductive rights account for only one aspect of the control a woman can exercise on her own life. They are themselves mired in the complex realities of a society where political, economic, cultural and social factors come together to influence a women’s bodily autonomy.
In a situation where women often do not have access to clean drinking water and basic facilities (health care and education); where society decides how women will live, where they live (and sometimes even how they die), who they will marry, and whether they will study, it is apparent that the struggle for Indian women’s reproductive rights needs to go further than reproductive freedom, and enter the arena of social, economic and political rights.
But this fight has to be fought on two fronts simultaneously – even while campaigning for their right over their bodies, women’s groups argue severely against population control. Is that a contradiction in terms? It is crucial to understand, as Saheli aptly puts it, that “birth control is an individual woman’s right to control her fertility, and at most, a couple’s attempt to determine family size, while ‘family planning’ or ‘population control’ is the government/states’ attempt to limit the numbers of its citizens.”
A case in point is the 1971 decision by the Indian government to reconsider the abortion laws in the IPC. This was not rooted in the belief that women are the final (if not sole) decision makers when it comes to their own body, but in the idea that abortion could be used as a method to control the country’s exploding population.
While there are so many reasons to celebrate the foundation on which family planning in India stands, there are an equal number of factors that should remind us that only half the battle is won. This is but one aspect of a larger movement. We have still to continue Avabai Wadia and Dhanwanti Rama Rau’s efforts, until each and every one of us say that exercising control over our own bodies is a right, and not a luxury.
In 1972, Mathura, a 16 year old tribal girl, was raped by two policemen in a police station in Maharashtra, while her relatives stood outside, consumed with frustration and hopelessness at their inability to reach her. An already growing feeling of discontent with the police and state authorities escalated to a national outcry upon the verdict given by the Supreme Court on this case.
The women’s rights movement gained unexpected momentum with a nation-wide anti-rape campaign being launched in the wake of the Mathura case verdict, which reverted the judgement that called for their imprisonment. But what was it about this verdict that served as an ignition point to a movement which spread across the country like wildfire? What set the stage for this unprecedented proliferation of autonomous women’s organizations across India?
The genesis of this mobilization was rooted in the excesses committed by the state machinery during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977. In post-emergency India, civil liberties organizations took up the cause of highlighting the rape of women in police custody, the mass rape of poor and minority women during caste and communal riots, and the sexual molestation of tribal women by para-military forces. The issue of custodial rape had already started mobilizations beginning in 1978. It was in this atmosphere of disillusionment with state institutions that the public outrage and the widespread press coverage, the Mathura verdict proved to be a tipping point. A nationwide anti-rape campaign was launched in 1980, which demanded the reopening of the case and for amendments to be made to the existing Rape Law, which was heavily skewed in favour of the rapist and placed burden of proof on the victim.
An open letter written to the Chief Justice by four law professors served as a catalyst for nationwide mobilizations. Roused by this letter, Forum against Rape (now called Forum against Oppression of Women) invited countless other organizations to coordinated protests. On March 8th, International Women’s Day in 1980, a formal demand was made pushing for the retrial of the Mathura Case.
The year 1980 saw coordinated activism take place across Delhi, Bombay, Nagpur, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Joint Action Committees formed in Delhi and Bombay comprising students from feminist groups, which invited socialist and communist parties to help coordinate the campaign. This period saw the emergence of organizations such as Saheli and Stree Sangharsh in Delhi, Forum Against Rape and Women’s Centre in Bombay, Chingari Nari Sanghatan in Ahmedabad, Vimochana and SJS in Bangalore. Autonomous research organizations also came up, like Center for Women’s Development studies, and women’s magazines, like Manushi, were established in Delhi. Externally, this nationwide mobilization paved the way to faster legal redressal, while internally the organizational structures of these groups evolved to accommodate growing participation from not only women, but men as well.
Additionally, protests against the growing incidents of police rape took place even in areas that did not have organizations to spearhead it. By mid-1980, even political parties could no longer distance themselves from the growing discontent.
The debates on the large scale rapes and atrocities against women reached the Lok Sabha in 1980 itself. The Law Commission consulted with women’s groups and came up with recommendations to amend the criminal law, which was codified in the Law Commission Report of 1980. This bill was presented in Parliament in August 1980, but recommendations made in the report were very selectively accepted. There was a constant tussle between the women’s rights organizations and the state institutions regarding certain clauses (concerned with, among other things, burden of proof, concept of consent, types of rape) which neither side was willing to compromise on. In the three years that it took for this effort to materialize into actual legal reform, the movement had lost its momentum and the energy that fueled it had dissipated. According to Flavia Agnes “by the time the amendment was passed, the campaign had virtually died down”.
Keeping in mind that the movement was never centrally planned, but spread spontaneously from one place to another, this was a watershed moment in feminist activism in terms of the level of coordination displayed for such spontaneous mobilizations. While reflecting on the campaign, commentators agree that the principal gain was that rape, hitherto a taboo subject, came to be discussed openly. Custodial rapes especially now emerged as a major civil rights and women’s issue, and public was far more aware of the power they possess to affect change. Previously, rape misjudgments or acquittals would go unnoticed, but in the following years, women’s movement against rape gathered force and organisations supporting rape victims and women’s rights advocates came to the fore.
Although there were differences in the approaches taken by these different organizations in terms of internal structuring and outward functioning, they continually played complementary roles in each other’s development. The process of these organizations coming together to work was not smooth, but an overarching solidarity based on the assumption of a certain level of commonality in women’s experience transcended any internal variance.
There is no doubt when it comes to the sheer bravery these women displayed by assembling together and standing up against a seemingly unbeatable force. The strength in their numbers and the relentless hope they had in their cause is something that did not fade away into the annals of history. In fact, we continue to reap the benefits of their persistence and fearlessness because many of these autonomous women’s collective continue to stand tall today, keeping the fire burning even decades later.
In collaboration with UNFPA, TYPF has created Handbooks for ASHA workers and other Front Line Service Providers to understand and practice youth friendliness while providing counselling or other services to youth and adolescents. TYPF is committed to ensuring that young people have affirming and happy experiences when seeking sexual and reproductive health information, services and products. A key aspect of this work is to create resources and work with service providers who work with young people to improve their perspective, practices and skills to engage more sensitively with youth and adolescents. This kit is a part of this commitment and work. It includes training manuals for those who want to work with ASHAs or other service providers to enhance their service quality as well as handbooks that can be used by the service providers themselves. These are made in collaboration with the UNFPA India office and we acknowledge their support, partnership and guidance in this work.
The dominant discourse and context in India, in which contraceptives have been located, promoted, and disseminated has been that of population control and family planning. Consequently, it has overlooked a whole gamut of issues as well as the needs of large groups of populations who have been denied relevant access and information. They include: the pursuit of sex for pleasure beyond procreation; the needs of young and unmarried persons; the unique contraceptive needs of trans and non-binary persons; sexual and reproductive health issues of persons with disabilities; the issues of access and gender discrimination; and contraceptives as a way to protect against sexually transmitted infections. One of the core influencers of the ecosystem determining information, access, and design is the policy of the government and the programmes that flow from it. To change the reality of contraception and ensure it meets the needs of all, there is an urgent need to advocate with the government to change its approach and policy.
The Performance of Caste – An Interview with Jyotsna Siddharth
Jyotsna Siddharth is an actor, artist, activist, and writer. She is also the India Lead for Gender at Work, a feminist network of organisations working towards institutional change. Her work is based on using multiple forms and formats, an integrated approach to look at the intersectional issues of caste and gender, queerness, and politics. Jyotsna is a founder of several projects on Instagram like Project Anti Caste Love, a community that focuses on narratives, discourse, and consultations on caste, gender, religion, love, and relationships; Sive which is a transdisciplinary collective, building caste-gender dialogues through creative and community pedagogies; and JS Attic Studio, her personal page as an actor.
You have a very interesting performance piece called “Janeu Prompts” on your Instagram handle. Would you like to tell us about it?
Sure. This is a new project that I’ve begun to work on this year. This idea started by responding to caste based and sexual violence, through body and body movement. I’ve only posted one video yet, but I think the scope of the project is very large. It addresses the apathy of the state towards marginalised communities while using ‘janeu’ as a symbol and marker of Brahmanical patriarchy. The case I started with is the incident that happened in Gujarat, where four Dalit men were tied to the car and beaten up in broad daylight. I think I’m going to continue working on it. It’s also really difficult. I created a small database to track from 2000-2021 the cases of caste based violence and the sheer number was so overwhelming.
Theatre is accused of being an upper caste, upper class space. Do you agree with that and if yes, how do you hope to change the meta-structure of theatre to make it more inclusive?
One of the things that I have been trying to do is exactly that, changing the space instead of simply placing marginalised communities into it. While there are several playwrights who have actively addressed caste based issues like Vijay Tendulkar, the representation has always been very one sided and linear. Who is representing whom? When I do theatre, I feel like there are still very few people who are open and vocal about their caste identity in the theatre space. It’s not like there are no Dalit women or Dalit trans folks in the space, but not everyone is open and ready to talk about this because the space itself is so exclusionary. The idea is to break that.
Another project that I am trying to work on with a few actors and theatre directors peers is to bring the conversation of intersectionality into the cinema and theatre space. We are a group of 8-10 people who are deliberating and working towards making theatre a more inclusive and intersectional space. While the process is slow, we have been addressing these questions through the process of discussions and looking at casting calls etc – really trying to question the nitty-gritties and create a nuanced, sensitive discourse about the same. It goes beyond acting, it’s about the caste and class privileges of the people involved in the theatre making process.
These are the two ways that I have been using to change theatre spaces. Additionally, physical theatre is very niche and not a lot of people in India are aware of it. There has not been any project that has used embodied practice to do a play on caste. I’m currently working on a solo piece where I will be playing with my body to explore caste and its intersections with gender, aesthetics, and desire. This is in fact the first physical theatre piece on caste in India.
“It’s not like there are no Dalit women or Dalit trans folks in the space, but not everyone is open and ready to talk about this because the space itself is so exclusionary.”
When talking about performance and caste, it is impossible to avoid the question of representation – a topic which continues to be contentious. I’m curious about where you would place yourself in that debate.
For me, representation is not an issue. We are always representing people and ourselves everywhere – in our lives, in our work. We can’t be everywhere so we need allies. But I think here what becomes important is the context in which certain things are represented and who is representing them. It does not mean that a particular person of a particular identity always has to be represented by a person of the same identity. We have to consider questions like – What is the motivation? What is the context? When talking about representing marginalised communities, I think it is very important to ask ourselves – Am I the right person to play the role? If yes, what am I bringing by approaching or by embarking on this issue or direction? If you are able to answer these questions and are able to create a space where you are creating genuine solidarities, representation is fine. We cannot reach a point where we exclusively talk about people we know because in that case, we would be able to do very limited or almost no work. We cannot reach a place where one can say, “I only want to be represented by a Dalit person” or that an upper caste person should only be represented by an upper caste person. That is impossible to do logistically, practically, realistically all the time. What needs to happen is that we need to do the work, we need to understand our motivations towards representation. Thoughtful representation, in my opinion, is the way forward.
Also, thinking that the caste system exclusively impacts Dalit people, is a very limited understanding of the system. Caste affects everyone and the experience of each part of that system needs to be taken into account.
“What needs to happen is that we need to do the work, we need to understand our motivations towards representation. Thoughtful representation, in my opinion, is the way forward.”
Right, and how does one execute that without watering down the efforts of Dalit activists? How do you keep the movement intact and still address the caste experience of each individual?
There are several layers to this and therefore it requires a nuanced understanding of caste. It is impossible to simplify. Yes, Dalits are the people who have to bear the brunt of the caste system the most and their lives have been adversely impacted by it. The caste system however, was not started by Dalits. Dalits cannot do away with the system because they were not the initiators of it. We have to address this issue from the point where it emerged. Which is why I think that the onus of this does not solely fall upon the shoulders of Dalits.
Talking about COVID-19 in India, Dalits are the ones who are working on the frontlines. They are the ones who are cremating the bodies. In situations where even families of upper caste people don’t want to touch the bodies because they are scared, Dalits are cremating them. But, when it comes to rituals and ceremonies, a pandit or a Brahmin are called upon to do last rite ceremonies. Which is why I circle back to the point that it is a system of oppression. The system always works in a dynamic and not in a vacuum. A lot of Dalit activists may not agree with me, but this is a position I continue to hold. I repeat, it is not just the prerogative of the Dalit community to annihilate caste. The accountability mostly lies on the upper caste people because while the dissent of the Dalit community is critical, upper caste involvement in an empathetic, sensible, and humble way is vital.
“The caste system was not started by Dalits. Dalits cannot do away with the system because they were not the initiators of it.”
Do you think the political left of our country is ‘caste blind’?
I completely identify myself as a leftist and also as an Ambedkarite. I don’t find refuge in one identity exclusively. That being said, it is important to criticise the left. The situation that we are in at the moment, politically, is a result of the left refusing to recognise caste as the fundamental structure of Indian society. What is often missed out is that Marx was not writing in the context of India. The failure of the left in South Asia is tied in with their refusal to move beyond the class aspect. They didn’t want to question their own caste privileges. Most of the leftists in the country are largely upper caste and upper class, therefore, questioning caste would make them question their own intergenerational privileges and benefits.
I also want to point out that the leftists’ belief of themselves being intelligent is shattered by the fact that they haven’t been able to extend their discourse to the grassroots. The inability of the left to penetrate ideologically to the common person is telling of their failure in the country. We also have to laud the right wing for their usage of different strategies to really get to the grassroots of the country. In fact, I believe that the left can learn a lesson or two from the right in this aspect.
You see, even in the NRC-CAA protests that took place in the last two years, there was suddenly a lot of evocation of Ambedkar. Why did that happen, now? Because ultimately you realise that unless you have constitutional rights and duties, you won’t even have the right to be alive. That is where I feel that you need to push more. Regardless of your ideological standing, it is vital to understand that by the virtue of simply being humans, we have certain rights.
“Most of the leftists in the country are largely upper caste and upper class, therefore, questioning caste would make them question their own intergenerational privileges and benefits.”
The left has also been accused of fetishing Muslim women while completely turning a blind eye to Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi women. Do you think there is some truth to that?
Yes. Caste discrimination is not limited to Hinduism; it is prevalent in most mainstream religions, be it Sikhism, Islam, or Christianity. This understanding is obviously limited to India and South Asia. We are of course questioning casteism in Hinduism, but as a society we still are not ready to talk about caste discrimination in the rest of the communities.
I have been in Shaheen Bagh since day third. We have seen the amount of books, projects, and content that has emerged from that one political site. Artists, activists, writers who were there for even two-three days have come up with so much content. In contrast, some of us were there for the entire duration and have still not been able to write something. As a matter of fact, I’m still processing those months we spent with women, children, and people of Shaheen Bagh. The culture of instant consumption in the left, that everything has to be consumable, has to be shown in a particular way. If you’re not immediately producing a book or a write up, it puts you in a difficult position. A lot of work is just being produced without much recognition or cognition in a sense, without thinking, without being in it.
I have constantly refused opportunities to speak in Shaheen Bagh, not because I did not belong there, not because I couldn’t have spoken, and not even because of my identity. I simply didn’t do so because for me it was important to be a part of it, amplify it, and create solidarities as opposed to simply occupying space. Who am I to talk to these women who on their own accord have started a movement like that? What do they need to learn from me? We, in fact, have to learn from them. The movement broke several stereotypes about Muslim women and our contribution had to simply come from our roles as allies and amplifiers of their voices. What everybody did, was to take up that space and appropriate it, as if those women had to learn from celebrities, artists and woke people.
I believe there is a fetishisation of bodies of Dalit, Adivasi, Bahujan, and Muslim women. Unless we learn to widen our scope of anti-caste and our solidarities, fetishisation, appropriation, and misrepresentation will continue to be rampant.
“A lot of work is just being produced without much recognition or cognition in a sense, without thinking, without being in it.”
Do you think there has to be a debrahminising of queer discourse in India like there has been an effort to decolonise queer discourse?
Absolutely! In the context of India as well, these heteropatriarchal ideas come from Victorian notions of morality. This has completely messed up our (South Asian) understanding of our sexualities and sexual identities. South Asian societies have always been queer. We have undone and removed our own culture of queerness and intimacy. There has in a sense been an erasure of all of these aspects because of the colonisation which continues till date.
If you witness queerness in the Dalit community vis-a-vis a dominant caste community, the fundamental difference is that marginalised communities have always been queer. Queerness is not for them to “discover” or embrace. Queerness is very much part of their assertions and the way they have lived their lives. Having same sex relationships and intimacy of that kind is not out of the ordinary. We are therefore, nowhere close to decolonisation and I assert that we are reliving colonisation in a very different way today.
“South Asian societies have always been queer. We have undone and removed our own culture of queerness and intimacy. There has in a sense been an erasure of all of these aspects because of the colonisation which continues till date.”
Are you referring to neo-colonialism and capitalism when you say that?
Yes! Now what has happened is that capitalism is not just capitalism. It is extremely intertwined with caste, religion, and gender, in addition to, of course, class tensions. It is extremely nuanced, especially in our (South Asian) context. All aspects of our identities exist in tension with each other and are very important realities that need to be addressed. This is evident even today, in the context of COVID-19. The entire discourse and practice of vaccination and cremations – it is all a manifestation of capitalism in intersection with caste and class.
There have been various standpoints about the comparability of race and caste. Where would you place yourself in that context?
Firstly, yes, they are both systems of oppression. Yes, they are parallel to each other and there are several lessons to be learnt about the oppressive tactics at play to learn about both the systems. But I think caste and race are absolutely different. In India we see that it’s not just casteism and caste, we also see racism and colourism.
Caste is not intrinsically linked to colour; it may be in some cases, but it is not necessarily the case. You cannot look at a Dalit and be able to identify them as Dalit, until and unless you know other factors like their surname, profession, etc. Race on the other hand is linked to colourism and therefore, creates the scope of differentiation. Even then, we can grossly misidentify a person’s racial identity. It is important to understand both the systems independently, and then perhaps find interlinkages. It is difficult to understand caste and race independently, and it gets complicated because we don’t understand caste on a global level yet. The only present way to understand caste is always in comparison with race which in my view a very myopic view.
Could you please elaborate on what you mean by caste on a global level?
In the context of South Asia, we are quite aware of how caste plays out. But when you consider this internationally, an Indian overseas will firstly be seen as an Indian and not from their particular caste identity. This is, of course, changing with the anti-caste discourse spreading globally. But earlier, people who migrated to the West were largely upper class and upper caste, that is, people who had the resources – social or cultural capital – to immigrate. This meant that they could reproduce the South Asian cultures in the West. The anti-caste discourse was therefore always missing as the upper caste and upper class Hindus almost never talked about caste but also invisibilised the Dalit identity for decades. We are therefore still very new to forming an understanding about caste and its global effects. The Cisco example and the California textbook controversy, where they are trying to remove caste from the textbooks – all of these examples point to this phenomenon.
Another aspect that is interesting is that all the people who were talking about Black Lives Matter in India – you know, celebrities and the privileged – were almost never talking about Dalit Lives Matter.
“Earlier, people who migrated to the West were largely upper class and upper caste, that is, people who had the resources – social or cultural capital – to immigrate. This meant that they could reproduce the South Asian cultures in the West. The anti-caste discourse was therefore always missing.”
That was very insightful! Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share before we wrap up?
I think we need to focus on building genuine authentic solidarities, not just performance that a lot of people are engaging in. I don’t see any hope or scope for this country until and unless we learn to form authentic, compassionate. and generous solidarities. Love has to be the centre of our lives. Love beyond binaries, identities, beyond a normative understanding of what love means. We need to recenter that in our assertions – love for our parents, families, country, communities, for the collective. That is one tool we have and I continue to push for it. You know it’s like love in the face of hate. Love as a radical, political tool to come together to build better individuals, relationships, communities, and society is a thought I would like to leave you with.
This interview was conducted in April 2021 as part of TYPF’s digital campaign to commemorate Dalit History Month. The conversation was led by Aparna Agarwal, an intern with TYPF’s Communications team.
The YP Foundation conducted youth-led audits of healthcare services in partnership with Asian Bridge India in Varanasi and Action India in North East Delhi. 30 youth leaders audited 63 health facilities on youth friendliness and co-created these comic strips and posters along with recommendations for multiple stakeholders through the Audit Report.
Let Manu take you on his journey of touch from naive bodily explorations with his male friends to the electric, experiences with the opposite sex, and along the way understandings about consent, mutuality and the simple pleasures of pleasure!
This podcast was created in collaboration with Agents of Ishq as part of the Mardon Wali Baat workshop.
When Rohit’s crush writers her cell number on a form he quickly memorises it. Then it’s love in full gear. They act like strangers in the coaching class and spend hours on the phone. And then, one day, there’s a cross-connection and the line goes dead. Did love have to turn into hate? Listen to this podcast and see what you think.
This podcast was created in collaboration with The Agents of Ishq for the Mardon Wali Baat workshop.
Rudraksh, a young man from Lucknow, longs to delve into the pleasures of sex. But what’s holding him back? Listen to his experience as he explores the meanings of sex, consent and self-love.
This podcast was created in collaboration with Agents of Ishq as part of the Mardon Wali Baat workshop.
The Mardon Wali Baat programme enrolled 13 young men and boys as youth leaders who developed innovative communication materials on masculinity and gender using their own photos and developed post cards and posters. These posters were utilized in community engagement efforts that reached out to more than 500 young people across campus and public sites in Lucknow city to challenge dominant conceptions of masculinity and address gender based violence.
The report shares the experiences and recommendations from a state-level consultation held in 2011 that engaged with 52 youth activists and leaders in Uttar Pradesh. It has been designed as a tool for young people to advocate with state and national level policymakers and government officials for the inclusion and/or strengthening of CSE within existing policies and programmes that address adolescent and young people’s sexual and reproductive health.
This is an in-depth analysis of the conditions of safety in the Sunder Nagar Nursery (SNN), an urban slum community in New Delhi. The report was co-created by the youth leaders of the community in collaboration with Safetipin, a mobile app. The report points out the lacunae within security measures in SNN and urban slums around the world. It is an effort to bring the missing lens of children and youth to urban safety in the context of the larger debates on urbanisation and the rights to children to the cities of the world. The report contains large scale data analysis of safety audits, recommendations of change, and the community’s interaction with government stakeholders.
The publication was compiled and published in September 2019, marking one year of the historic Supreme Court judgement on Section 377 decriminalising homosexuality. The anthology aims to bring together a range of voices critiquing the judgement for the political possibilities it offered, while also reflecting on the many ways in which the judgement fell short.
Stigmas attached to trans people’s identity make them vulnerable to harassment and violence in their homes, schools, workplaces and in public. Instead of protecting their rights, existing laws not only ignore their needs and realities, but also criminalise them. With a conservative estimate of 4.88 Lakh transgender persons in India (as per the 2011 Census), these violations affect a large number of people.
Written by Gee Imaan Semmalar and illustrated by Kruttika Susarla, with support from Choice, the brief has been published in the light of the hugely problematic Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016. It can be used by anyone looking to expand their knowledge on laws and policies for the transgender community, or by trainers in gender workshops and trainings to further dialogue and action to expand rights provision and violence prevention in different ways.
This set of graphics highlights women’s lived experiences of facing violence as domestic workers, sex workers, as people living with HIV, as people living with disabilities, and as students.
The Dalit History and the Dalit Present – An Interview with Christina Dhanaraj
Christina Thomas Dhanaraj is a third generation Christian Dalit woman from Bangalore, India. She is the co-founder of the Dalit History Collective and a volunteer for #DalitWomenFight. She currently works as a business analyst and, by background, holds a master’s degree in chemistry from the National University of Singapore.
What led to you starting the Dalit history month collective?
We started this off sometime in late ’14, when we were trying to articulate what it would look like to have Dalit History Month. Our objective was to just have an all-in-one place of Dalit history, which didn’t exist at that time. There were bits and pieces of our history, most of it authored by non-Dalits. The primary objective was to have this one repository where we could go to have an account of our history, and to create a historical timeline of various events from across India and elsewhere.
We wanted bring out what’s been happening to us as a community, in terms of violence, discrimination, oppression, and marginalisation. But at the same time, we also wanted to highlight the work of our leaders and movements, and really bring to focus the resistance and resilience of our people. We’re talking about a 2000-year old oppression. But the fact that I am here talking to you about it, being very well aware of my identity as a Dalit, speaks a lot to the resilience of my forefathers and foremothers. We wanted to bring that out – that it is not just a story of victimhood, but of resilience.
In the long term, we aspired to have a product of participatory scholarship, which is to have in place a body of work that’s not just a product of a savarna looking inside our community and writing about us, but a body of work that is authored by ourselves, and not just written by someone who’s supposed to be a scholar or an intellectual. We’ve had such examples all the time, where you have white researchers, savarna researchers writing about us. We still have people getting into research institutes and leveraging our experiences to make a research career out of it. That is something we wanted to challenge. We wanted to have a body of work that is completely Dalit owned and authored.
Did you ever imagine that this project would gain such traction, to the point where we now recognise April as Dalit History Month?
Yes and no. Did we know it would catch fire like this? No. Did we know it had enough substance to catch fire? Absolutely. There are a number of opportunities that exist within our community, and it’s only a matter of us coming together; it’s only a matter of us finding the network, time, effort, and funding. We didn’t quite have fame in mind, because that’s not our objective anyway. Our objective was to basically get people to talk about Dalit scholarship and the Dalit movement in a different light. Because, as you might be aware, every time you bring up the question of caste in these so-called modern, urban, corporate, or academic circles, what gets spoken about is reservation. That’s one of the stories we wanted to break.
Dalit History Month is a participatory radical history project. “Our goal is to share the contributions to history from Dalits around the world. We believe in the power of our stories to change the savarna narrative of our experience as one solely of atrocity into one that is of our own making. Our story may have begun in violence but we continue forward by emphasising our assertion and resistance.”
How did the team behind Dalit History Collective come together?
Thenmozhi [Soundararajan] and I had gotten connected earlier, sometime in 2013. At that time, she was also getting involved in the #DalitWomenFight campaign, which had started off at All India Dalit Mahila Adhikaar Manch (AIDMAM). In 2014, my day-job took me to the US, and later that year Thenmozhi, Vee, and myself got together to kick off Dalit History Month. Now as part of the #DalitWomenFight campaign, we already had a very strong network of women in India, including Sanghapali, Manisha, and Asha. So although initially it was just the three of us who had articulated the timeline and gathered data, by April 2015, all of us started posting, writing, and translating.
Coming to a more personal note, being a woman in India has its fair share of problems. Adding to that the layer of being a Dalit individual, how does one grapple with what comes with these two identities?
I cannot speak for all of my women. It goes without saying that I am not a representative of all of my Dalit sisters. But I can tell you how it feels for me given the privileges I have and given the challenges I’ve faced. For me, it’s been a layered journey. Initially, I hadn’t even come to terms with my Dalit identity; it was only in college that I heard the word Dalit in that sense. I’m from a Christian family, the kind where there was not much politicisation. I had very limited knowledge of what my people did for the movement. All I knew at that age was that I’m a feminist. So I guess I had come to terms with that aspect much earlier than my Dalit identity.
Much later, I realised the complexity of being both a Dalit and a woman. Particularly, when we talk about sexual violence, one cannot just talk about it the way we did when Nirbhaya happened. Being a woman, you obviously feel very enraged, and your heart goes out to the victim and her family. But at the same time you realise that the response Nirbhaya received is a lot more than your sisters typically do. Every time it happens to them – and it is that frequent – we never see the kind of response that it demands; we never see the kind of traction the way we do for non-Dalit women. One part of me wants to ask myself, “Why would you want to compare something as heinous as that?” But another major part of me thinks, “If I don’t talk about it at this point, when do I get to talk about it?” How do I get my non-Dalit savarna women to ally with me, and fight for my sisters as well?
“Much later, I realized the complexity of being both a Dalit and a woman.”
To a large extent, I am very disappointed with the feminist movement in India. I really do hope that they don’t see this just as a matter of intersectionality; that they don’t see this as a matter of the women’s movement needing to accommodate Dalit women, but to really call out their own caste privilege and start looking at this the other way around. It’s urgent that you start working with and for Dalit women. And it is under that umbrella that you need to be talking about other crimes.
Having said that, I’m also appreciative of the likes of a few publishing houses and movements that are vocal about our issues. And I hope it doesn’t just stop with talking about it or having a few articles, but really looking into the questions of caste a lot more deeply and introspectively, and that is the only way we can have a more stable allyship.
In terms of where you place yourself, would you think you have more of a space within the women’s or the Dalit movement? Or do you think the Dalit women’s movement is in itself running parallel to these two?
I think there are two answers to this question. One, I think the Dalit women’s movement is stable, and it has all the resources, love, and bonding to run on its own and be independent. But like any other movement – like any other struggle – there need to be allies. And these allies will come from everywhere. They could come from the women’s movement, the larger Dalit movement, the Roma Sisters in Europe, the black women’s movement in the US, and the First Nations women’s movement in Canada. So as far as allyship is concerned, anyone and everyone committed to the cause is welcome to be an ally, and should be an ally.
Secondly, I without a doubt place myself within the Dalit movement. It will always be my people. And within my people only can I talk about my sisters. Unless savarna women are willing to talk about their caste privilege, I don’t see myself collaborating with them.
Do you think that is something that will be addressed soon? Or is it something that will be glossed over or brushed under the carpet of intersectionality?
Right now, I feel like there a few [who address it], but there are also instances where you see people trying to compete with us for ‘visibility’, and I think that’s really sad. Because unless you see issues in India through the lens of caste, we’re getting nowhere. We can’t have intersectionality just for the sake of it. We have to look at everything through the lens of caste, because it is why we are where we are. So I think I’m in a place where I choose to be inspired by people who are beginning to be vocal but I’m also kind of disappointed by what’s happening on the other side. Hopefully in the long run, the ones who are brushing it under the carpet will be fewer, and people like us will be more in number. That’s my hope. And the fact that I have hope speaks to the fact that it is possible.
“We wanted to bring that out – that it is not just a story of victimhood, but of resilience.”
The interview was conducted in English by Shannon Mathew. She studied History at the University of Delhi, completing her Bachelor’s from St. Stephen’s College in 2016. She is currently working with The YP Foundation.
In this video Dr. Nafis Faizi (Assistant Professor, Aligarh Muslim University) is conducting our Field Facilitators from FAYA Districts on COVID-19 precautions and myths.
Shareer Apna, Adhikaar Apne: A Policy Brief On Comprehensive Sexuality Education
At the time of writing this report, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was under review in the Supreme Court, which led to stories of the stigma and discrimination faced for decades by many people in India becoming more public. This moment also gave us pause to reflect. Why is public education, particularly government programmes that provide information on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) still reinforcing similar systemic discrimination or indirectly contributing to advancing the same?
The Woke Vocab is a pocket-sized dictionary that lists out and explains some basic but essential terms related to themes of gender, sexuality, sexual health, and feminism. Along with a definition, each term
also comes with data, case studies, or dialogue examples. We hope this helps our readers expand their understanding of these often complex and confusing words!