Gallery of Moments

Protesting Pervasive Misogyny: What Lies Ahead for India’s Women?

Written by Akanksha Mehta, Contributing Photojournalist | 16 March 2013

Portraits from India On December 16, 2012, a 23-year old female student was gang raped and brutally assaulted with an iron rod in a moving bus in Delhi, the capital city of India. Nearly two weeks later, she succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in Singapore. A male friend, who was accompanying the woman that evening, was also assaulted and injured by the assailants. The incident sparked protests and outrage all over the country, with thousands of protestors, young and old, male and female, gathering in various spaces, including the centre of the city of Delhi. Demanding various changes, from death penalty and castration of the guilty to a change in a ‘societal’ mindset and ‘cultural’ value system, protestors withstood the government’s efforts to silence and disperse them. While this might have been one of the largest mainstream populist mobilizations against gender-based violence in recent times, violence against women is an ‘everyday’ reality, pervasive in its several manifestations across all spectrums of society. Therefore, mobilizations and protests must continue in various forms, addressing and engaging with the layered discourses and practices that define women’s lives, actions, and roles in the country.

Carnival Beckons

Written by Skip Kaltenheuser, Guest Contributor | 26 February 2013

Since ancient times, new beginnings–that’s carnival. It’s our craving to shuck memories of the slings and arrows that paralyze us. New Year’s resolutions disappear in the first head wind, but carnival has been serious about new beginnings since the Greeks partied to praise Dionysus and the Romans thanked Bacchus for wine and flora, fertility heavy on their minds.

Murdered by Titans, Dionysus/Bacchus was reborn. His worship generated irrational exuberance, frenzied revels by women, and much early theater and standup comedy. When condemned by Rome as a sinister source of vice and revolutionary unrest, the frolic was periodically rejuvenated by slaves and poor free men.

These traditions—celebrating man as a free being without hierarchy—blended easily with the various pagan rites of spring practiced by Germanic and other tribes. The Church tried to suppress carnival but ultimately decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, layering on compatible beliefs as they co-opted the locals. Carnival, or carne vale, comes from Latin, and means “flesh, farewell,” as Carnival heralds in the Lenten fast that leads to Easter. The mix with local and aboriginal beliefs creates an amazing array of traditions, extending to the New World and locales as far flung as India.