Nivedita Menon

We stand by Nivedita in claiming the space within the University campus to freedom of speech and debate and discussion.

Eminent academicians express their indignation at the vicious campaign against the well-known feminist scholar

Whenever we forget who we are, we remember Nivedita Menon's grit, her passion and most of all, her integrity. It has never failed us

Caught on the back foot by the humiliating backfiring of their fantastical Meerut scenario, it is now the turn of unethical media and ‘social science’ votaries to pitch in

Despite a fevered and fervent communal campaign, ‘The Meerut Girl’ shines a light on the fact that there’s only so much The Parivar—whether biological or Hindutvavaadi—can do.

A Guide for the Perplexed

This does not purport to be an objective account—unlike journalists’ accounts of the ‘Modi wave’, which do claim to be purely factual.

A response to Nivedita Menon. L'affaire Doniger is not about ‘free speech’ but about going beyond the colonial ‘scholarly’ tradition.

Jakob De Roover’s empathetic account of the imagined ‘Hindu boy with intellectual inclinations’ born in the 1950s needs to be read with another imagined growing child: the

The massive mobilization of public opinion around the issue of sexual violence has reopened the question in familiar and unfamiliar ways

The relentless attacks on JNU seek to deter the young people resisting this regime’s agenda of establishing a Hindu Rashtra

The criminalisation of triple talaq is part of the Hindutva strategy of further criminalising Muslim men. Gender justice needs legal pluralism, fine-tuned judging practices, writes Nivedita Menon

Nivedita Menon in Kafila:

... the sharp opposition to the Bill cannot simply be dismissed as anti-women. Take for instance, Sharad Yadav’s much reviled comment, derisively referring to “short-haired women” (par-kati mahilaen) who would overrun Parliament. This has been widely attacked for its misogyny, but we do need to see it as expressing a legitimate fear that the composition of parliament would be radically altered overnight, in favour of upper classes and upper castes – the image of women with coiffed short hair drawing upon a common stereotype of westernized and elite women. Now, of course this stereotype is misogynist, or anti-feminst, or both, but as a feminist I do insist that this is not the point here, for no feminist can be under the impression that all the support for women’s reservations comes from strongly anti-patriarchal sources...

...What I fail to understand is why the “quotas within quotas” position is so unacceptable to progressive people. After all, surely the idea of reservations for women in Parliament is not based on the understanding that the biological category called “women” needs to be represented? If we are arguing that the social experience of being positioned as “women” within current economic, cultural and political arrangements is disadvantageous vis-a-vis men, and needs to be reflected in Parliament, then we need to accept that this experience is inflected differently by caste and community – that is, the social experience of being an upper-caste, urban Hindu woman, while definitely shaped by one kind of patriarchy,  is nevertheless different from the experience of being an OBC or Muslim woman. Why should not the latter also have representation in Parliament?

Read the full piece at Kafila

Incidentally, Mr Sharad Yadav has also been demanding a quota wihin quota for the women.