The mind-numbing story of the brutal rape and murder of a young doctor at RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata has left us all aghast! Colloquially being called Nirbhaya 2.0, people, especially women, hitting the streets at midnight under ‘Reclaim the Night’, is all but a sombre reminder of history repeating itself.
When my Welsh friend who spent years teaching high school in Vietnam, suggested I Dreamed of Peace, I didn’t hesitate to pick it up. He spoke of it not just as a book but as an experience—a way to truly understand the Vietnam War from the inside out, through the eyes of someone who lived it every day. That someone was Đặng Thùy Trâm, a young North Vietnamese doctor whose diary survived long after she didn’t.
The recent Kolkata rape case has reignited discussions around the safety of public spaces, particularly for women and girls, in India. The brutal nature of the crime has left the nation grappling with the pervasive fear that drives families to confine their children indoors in the name of protection. But this confinement, while intended to keep them safe, may expose them to another set of dangers in the digital realm. I wonder what kind of future we are crafting for the next generation—a future where their access to physical spaces is restricted due to safety fears, and where their increasing reliance on digital spaces exposes them to the predatory practices of big tech?
We have built a society where ‘the common man’ is the general applicable standard. In our society, the women and their voices are often invisibilised and unheard, at both individual and collective level, on an everyday basis.
So while women suffer in silence, there is no platform for them to stand in their own power and be heard. It is in the light of this, that ‘The Womb’ has decided to launch a new vertical – ‘The Common Woman’.
If you have a story that deserves to be told, shared and mulled over, write to us. Pain and joys when shared, multiplies. It is time, that we get over the taboo and talk about issues that matter, stories that women actually live, stories which are suffocating under the pressure of emotions such as guilt, shame, fear, vulnerabilities.
यूपी के फर्रुखाबाद में दो दलित लड़कियों के शव पेड़ पर लटके मिलने की घटना ने एक बार फिर पूरे देश में डर का माहोल पैदा कर दिया है। कोलकाता में ट्रेनी डॉक्टर के साथ हुए दुष्कर्म की घटना पर पूरे देश में आक्रोश का माहौल अभी शांत ही नही हुआ कि यूपी से एक ओर दिल दहला देने वाला मामला सामने आया है। बीते 26 अगस्त की शाम को दो सहेलियां जिनकी उम्र 15 वर्ष और 18 वर्ष थी, पूरे उत्साह से जन्माष्टमी का कार्यक्रम देखने मंदिर गई परंतु फिर वापिस अपने घर नहीं लौट पाई।
Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh witnessed a chilling site as two young girls were found dead, hanging from a tree the morning after Janmashthmi. Belonging to the Dalit community in Bhagautipur, close friends and neighbours aged 15 and 18 years went missing from their homes on Monday after coming back from the celebrations at their village temple.
On 31st October 2022, in its recent judgement titled The State of Jharkhand versus Shailendra Kumar Rai @ Pandav Raidated (Criminal Appeal No 1441 of 2022), a division bench of the hon’ble Supreme Court comprising of hon’ble Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli has equivocally pointed out that “whether a woman is “habituated to sexual intercourse” or “habitual to sexual intercourse” is irrelevant for the purposes of determining whether the ingredients of Section 375 of the IPC are present in a particular case.” The Hon’ble Bench further objected to the insensitive and unscientific practice of conducting a “two-finger test” and declared that “any person who conducts the “two-finger test” or per vaginum examination while examining a person alleged to have been subjected to a sexual assault shall be guilty of misconduct.” The Hon’ble justices went on to observe that “this so-called test has no scientific basis and neither proves nor disproves allegations of rape. It instead re-victimizes and re-traumatizes women who may have been sexually assaulted, and is an affront to their dignity…….. The so-called test is based on the incorrect assumption that a sexually active woman cannot be raped. Nothing could be further from the truth – a woman’s sexual history is wholly immaterial while adjudicating whether the accused raped her. Further, the probative value of a woman’s testimony does not depend upon her sexual history.”
In ICC Annual Conference on Tuesday at Birmingham, BCCI has successfully bid for the mega event “Women’s 50-over World Cup ”. India will host the Women’s 50-over World Cup in 2025 which will be after 12 years.