Hosted & Edited by: Sneha Visakha
Intro Music: Wehrmut by Godmode
Outro Music: Ophelia’s Blues by Audionautix
Assisted by: Ranu Tiwari

TW – References to male violence against women, hijab ban, hindu supremacist politics

In part 1 of the first episode of Season 2 of the Feminist City podcast series, Sneha Visakha is in conversation with Kavita Krishnan, noted feminist activist and author of Fearless Freedom. They discuss the question of women’s freedom, a decade after the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder that saw massive country-wide protests, which Kavita was a part of. They talk about women’s autonomy, in the backdrop of the recent hijab ban in Karnataka’s educational institutions, situating it in the context of far-right Hindu supremacist politics and anti-Muslim bigotry. In the first part of the conversation, they explore topics such as feminist negotiations with the politics of dress, Hindu majoritaritarianism, links between social conservatism and neoliberalism, and the importance of safeguarding constitutional values of secularism in India’s heterogenous, multicultural and pluralistic society. 

Kavita Krishnan is a communist feminist activist and author. She is the Secretary of All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) and politburo member of The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. She completed her B.A. from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and M. Phil in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (JNU). Her first book, Fearless Freedom, was published by Penguin in 2020. You can follow her on twitter here.

For background reading, we recommend perusing the literature provided below.

On Women’s Freedom:

On Hijab Ban:  

Want to get in touch? Email sneha.visakha@vidhilegalpolicy.in or reach out to her on Twitter, @magicanarchist.

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