Articles by Ritu Menon

“India’s Daughter” reflects asymmetries of power and access, and of where and how discourses are generated and directed. Who represents whom, and how they do so, reflects many of these asymmetries and exposes many complicities. As to the question of why “India’s Daughter” was not made by anyone in India, this is a question is best answered by those who were most vociferous in their denunciation of the “ban”.

In Palestine, the word "Occupation" hits you smack between the eyes, trips you up, ties you down. You can never get enough distance between it and yourself. It is hard, when 90% of your land is under the Israelis, and only 10% can be claimed as your own - with their permission. When the colour of your Identity Card - blue for Jerusalem, green for the West Bank, brown for Gaza - determines your mobility within your own country, when there are 570 checkpoints controlled by the Israeli Defence Forces in the tiny area of the West Bank. A reflection on land, the Wall and country on the occasion of a visit to Palestine for the Palestine Literary Festival that was held between 1 and 7 May.

Amrita Chhachhi, Farida Khan, Gautam Navlakha, Kumkum Sangari, Neeraj Malik, Ritu Menon, Tanika Sarkar, Uma Chakravarti, Urvashi Butalia, Zoya Hasan THE Anveshi article (Anveshi Law Committee, is Gender Justice Only a Legal Issue? Political Stakes in the UCC Debate', 8, 1997) criticises tendencies within the 'Indian women's movement' that, in its opinion, have focused very narrowly and exclusively upon legal reform. The main thrust of such reforms, moreover, is described as a monolithicising intention that would like to erase all plurality of caste and community, custom and practice in the name of abstract, universal gender justice, thus denying women as well as a range of marginalised communities the right to autonomy. The universalising tendency of this version of gender justice betrays a biological essentialism that fails to take on board other aspects of women's social existence. Such tendencies are most evident among feminists who, according to Anveshi, are termed as 'upper caste, Hindu and urban' in other words, they share some social characteristics of the hindutva politics that they otherwise criticise. However, presumably because of shared social space, they 'unwittingly' lapse into some of the language and agendas of their political adversaries: the demand for a uniform or gender just civil code would be one such instance, the campaign against obscenity would be another. As examples of such immature and politically naive feminist thinking, Anveshi has singled out Forum against Oppression of Women from Bombay and Working Group on Women's Rights from Delhi.