This is My Truth: Personal and political writings by Dr Sanjukta Basu, Feminist Scholar, Journalist, Lawyer, Photographer and more.
My work on Gender and Space (the travel and photography project I did in five Indian Metro Cities which was published by Firstpost) was mentioned in an EPW Engage article titled, “How Do We Help Women Navigate Cities Designed by Men?” When your work is referred to in academic texts, you are part of the…
In 2017 Varnika Kundu, a Panchkula-based disc jockey and daughter of an IAS officer registered an FIR against Vikas Barala, the son of the Haryana BJP president and his friend one Ashish Kumar. She alleged that they stalked her on Chandigarh roads by chasing her car and also tried to kidnap her. She called the…
Rajiv Gandhi was not the monster he is made out to be for passing the Muslim Women Bill in response to the Supreme Court verdict in Shah Bano case, it wasn’t the greatest disaster India has seen, the shame and blame must stop now. After almost of a year of on the ground protests by…
This is an assignment on the topic of semiotics, study of signs, which I completed during my MA in Women And Gender Studies. I have briefly mentioned Ferdinand De Saussure’s work on semiotics, followed by feminist analysis and interpretation of the print advertisement by the brand brand ‘Trussardi My Name – The new fragrance for…
In the month of August 2021, Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders Twitter accounts remained suspended for a week, and was restored only after Rahul Gandhi broke his silence and released a powerful video on YouTube where he accused Twitter of interfering in nation’s politics and democratic system. “By shutting down my Twitter, they are…
I shared the preliminary findings of my PhD research at the Indian Association of Women’s Studies National Conference in January 2020. The topic of my PhD research is Indian Women’s Political Space And Gender Trolling. I am sharing below the power point presentation I used to present my paper at the conference. This autoethnographic research…
She may be a NASA scientists but she is still hyper emotional getting crazy in the middle of her work and getting herself in trouble and needs to be saved by Alpha male robots.
Rahul Gandhi has shed light on the core problem why women are not treated equally. Simone de Beauvoir called it the ‘othering of women’.
A full version of my latest column is available on Daily O titled, ‘Sakshi Mishra hounded: How the society controls a woman’s sexual, matrimonial and reproductive choices’. On the same day that Sakshi posted her video appeal to her father, media reported the killing of Haresh Solanki a 25 year old Dalit man in Gujarat…
There are about 437 Google Email Alerts so far since 2017 with reports of honour killing which I am in the process of compiling for an empirical research. Meanwhile, I have made the database public here. Anybody can take a look at it. I also regularly share information on ‘honour killing’ cases in India on…
I saw Westworld Season 1 back in December 2016. Planning to now catch up with Season 2. I wrote the summary below on Facebook after binge watching the first five episodes. This is incomplete of course, just a glimpse of how my mind works when I start watching a TV series or film. Binge watched…
I was interviewed by Pitamber Kaushik for Counter Current, an award winning renowned progressive media platform with an international audience. Most of the questions posed at me gave me an imposter syndrome as I don’t really consider myself so important and successful. But I guess some people see me in that light. So, anyway, you…
As my 42nd birthday approaches, a letter to my four year old niece. Life is not a project, make mistakes.
I recently appeared as a guest on the Al Jazeera English program AJ Stream talking on the issue of Honour Killing. The program was in the context of the 2016 Tamil Nadu Honour Killing case in which Kausalya’s parents brutally attacked her and her husband Sankar because she married a Dalit man. Sankar was killed…
Can we not accept that she must have had the agency to decide for herself what kind of lifestyle she wanted in her 50s? Can we not accept that if she did go for various surgeries to look less than her age, that must have been what she really wanted out of her free choice?
This is my published column. An edited version first appeared on Firstpost on 13 Jan, 2018. All my previous Firstpost columns are here. In the United States, January is the month of Cervical Cancer Awareness. Countrywide efforts are made to raise awareness about the disease which affects 13,000 American women each year. In comparison, approximately…
Today’s Indian Express Newspaper’s biggest headline was “Economics with Politics” meaning that BJP’s Budget 2018 is more a political strategy with eyes on the forth coming general elections. BJP has learned a lesson from recently held Gujarat elections where it lost quite a few seats to Congress. To course correct, the budget has a lot…
Award winning actor Swara Bhaskar’s extremely well crafted hard hitting feminist critique of Padmavati (in an open letter to Bhansali) has gone viral. It is heartening that an industry insider said what needed to be said, and if anybody really have a 56″ chest that is not filled with hollow pride but bravery and integrity,…
The Session Court has found all three Dalit men accused in Kopardi rape case guilty. The quantum of punishment will be given on 21st Nov. In July 2016, a 15 year old girl in Kopardi village, distt Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra, was brutally gang raped and murdered. The rape and murder gave rise to statewide protests by…
In 2011, I started the project Single Woman Budget Travel, a travel and photography research to find out how safe or unsafe it is for a solo woman to travel in India on a budget. As part of this, I traveled to many places (it is still ongoing project) gathering first hand information, and documenting …