Politics

Interview – Tishani Doshi
Photograph of a woman with long hair in red sari, sitting with a brown dog against a background of bushes with vines and pink azaleas. The woman is resting her chin on one hand and petting the dog with the other.

I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.

By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Interview – Tishani Doshi
Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing
An illustration of four people on a beige background. Each person has multicoloured bouquet of flowers instead of hair, and flowers wrapped around different parts of their bodies. Each person is performing different acts of self-love - the one on the far left is applying is shaving flowers from their forearm, the one next to them is hugging themselves with their eyes closed, the next one is looking into a round hand mirror and the one on the far right has one leg on a chair and is shaving flowers from their leg. A branch of thorns and flowers threads through the background.

My body presented to me the first paradox in my feminism that I would encounter. How could I claim to be a feminist if I was not proud of the body I was born in? My advocacy as a sixth grader seemed to fail when it came to my own self.

By Feminism in India
March 15, 2022
Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing
Negotiating Expression
An abstract painting of teal squares with splashes of orange, white, blue and yellow.

I am still coming to terms with my own femininity, as with new learnings I find myself regaining many facets of my personality which were lost while trying to ‘act like a man’ and ‘act tough’.

By Ambica Naithani
March 1, 2022
Negotiating Expression
Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about
A photograph of a person's arm and hand. The background of a couch with a blue duvet is blurred, and the focus is on the person's hands, with brown nail-paint, and a blue pen in their hands. They are writing in a spiral bound notebook. Beside them is a black cup.

My journal has many entries that are speculative and fantastic. Writing about the mundane leads me to question the way the world operates and from there I frog-leap into a world of ideas where I imagine a radically different way of being. In my journal, I imagine a politics of care, community, and compassion. I become grand, valuable, and unstoppable, even in a world where I am sometimes made to feel small.

By Sheena D'Lima
July 5, 2021
Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about
Video: Explained: Transgender Act and how it affects the community
A screenshot of the video. It shows trans rights activist Kanmani Ray on the right side and on the left, a green-board design with the typography: TRANSGENDER ACT EXPLAINED, CHEATSHEET

Trans rights activist Kanmani Ray succinctly lays down the concerns around the Act, points out how its language reinforces the gender binary and highlights the fact that while seeking to protect the rights of trans people, the Act in fact discriminates against them.

By Curated Content
September 1, 2020
Video: Explained: Transgender Act and how it affects the community
Editorial: Literature and Sexuality

As we see through this issue of In Plainspeak, stories have in them the power of exposing brutal truths about society and therefore also bring with them the possibility of reform, change, and hope, and when not possible, temporarily escaping into other worlds.

By TARSHI
March 16, 2020
Editorial: Literature and Sexuality
Community and Sexuality: Learning a Politics of Unbelonging
winds of change in communities

After writing the words “Community and Sexuality” as the working title of this piece, I attempted to begin writing many…

By Chayanika Shah
July 1, 2017
Community and Sexuality: Learning a Politics of Unbelonging
Brushstrokes: Alok Vaid-Menon’s Stunning Trans Attire
A right profile of Alok Vaid-Menon with a stub, wearing red lipstick, yellow nosering, big golden and black earrings, and hair parted by the side - with right side "manly" hair, and left - longer and curlier.

Alok Vaid-Menon is one half of the trans South Asian performance duo from New York, DarkMatter. Vaid-Menon was gender-assigned male at birth, identifies as transfeminine (that is, identifies with femininity to a greater extent than with masculinity) and prefers the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘their’.

By Curated Content
August 2, 2016
Brushstrokes: Alok Vaid-Menon’s Stunning Trans Attire
Positive Power!
Professionals standing in a row on stage. They join their hands and raised them up in celebration. The poster on the wall behind them reads, "Positive power".

On the occasion of World AIDS Day 2015, I could not help but ponder on what the day means to…

By Curated Content
December 15, 2015
Positive Power!
An Artist Demands Civility on the Street With Grit and Buckets of Paste
Artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh stands infront of a wall that has a mural painted on it. She has short hair and is wearing a simple top with trousers. There is also a poster behind her that says "stop telling women to smile"

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh Takes Her Public Art Project to Georgia By FELICIA R. LEE APRIL 9, 2014 Tatyana Fazlalizadeh pasted her self-portrait Friday…

By Curated Content
July 15, 2014
An Artist Demands Civility on the Street With Grit and Buckets of Paste
Interview: Sunil Gupta (Part II)
Artist Sunil Gupta stands infront of a wall which has two framed photos of his family. He has greying hair and is wearing a patterned woolen sweater.

Sunil Gupta is an artist, activist, and a curator, based in London UK. In this interview, he talks to Manak…

By Manak Matiyani
July 15, 2014
Interview: Sunil Gupta (Part II)