Brown is beautiful. It took a while for this popular adage to latch on to someone like me who had been completely brainwashed by absurd advertisements of Fair and Lovely. As a brown person, my childhood memories, on the one hand, are laced with carefree days and on the other, they are strewn with frequent chaffing from relatives who kept reminding me I was not fair. It was only on the verge of finishing my schooling that I gradually began undoing the problematic notions of beauty that I was soci

On November 18, hundreds of students from Jawaharlal Nehru University marched towards parliament to oppose the draft hostel manual approved by the university’s administration. The manual was approved without the popular consensus of the students and has been slammed as a draconian measure to make education ‘exclusive’ and ‘discriminatory’. The proposed hike in JNU has spurred protests for the last three weeks. Those opposing the manual argue that a hike would make quality education at JNU unaff

Jean said the pamphlets have their own “pamphleteer logic”. He explained, “Through a pamphlet, you pitch an argument in a certain way that you can grab the attention of someone else. It is vituperative in scope which makes it interesting, not just in content but it also serves a social purpose in the sense that it enables you to talk to other people and reach out to them. At the end of the day it enables ideological and social transformation because through the activity of pamphleteering, ideas

Internationally, the search results for LGBT-friendly hotels, either for individuals or couples, are in abundance. Websites like Expedia, Worldrainbowhotels.com, feature a list of LGBT-friendly hotels spread all across the globe. But why is it that despite the decriminalization of section 377 in India and the ad-campaign by StayUncle, companies like OYO, Trivago, Booking.com, have kept mum on their stance of providing Queer friendly hotels, especially for same-sex couples in India? In September

The Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, announced in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that the special status granted under Article 370 has been revoked through a Presidential order. According to clause 3 of the article, the President is empowered to declare the article inoperative anytime by seeking due recommendation of the constituent assembly in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the constituent assembly has ceased to exist in the state since 1957 and there is no legislative assembly since the imposition of P

Growing up, I was oblivious to the life situations of the marginalized. I remember mocking those belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community, even before I’d reached the 10th grade. The term “lesbo,” commonly used as an insult for lesbian women, found its way into my vocabulary, and I and my friends used it to make fun of lesbian women and each other. My prejudices continued as I entered my final year of senior school. We would mock a boy we knew for his stereotypical “feminine” nature, and often used