By: Divina Mathur

Feminism is defined as ‘the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’ or ‘Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the genders.’ This basically means that feminism is an ideology, as well as a movement to accomplish a goal – which is women getting equal rights and opportunities as men do in today’s day and age. Feminism doesn’t mean a battle of the sexes – it means that all genders get equal rights.
Many women worldwide are oppressed, solely based on their gender. This is
upsetting, because in numerous cases, men are given the upper hand, purely
because they are men. Men are often preferred over women, because they are
considered ‘strong’ and they are allegedly don’t show any emotions, where as
women are known to be weak and the ‘damsel(s) in distress.’ Men are supposed to be the one’s earning the money for the family, where as women are supposed to cook, clean, and look after the children. This gets on my nerves because I know numerous women who have taken care of their entire family – they had a job, earned enough for their family, cooked, cleaned, and looked after the children.
One of these women is my grandmother. When my father was in the 10th grade, my grandfather passed away. My grandmother was broken, but continued living her life. She was her children’s backbone, and her children were hers. Now, my grandmother didn’t just get a job because she didn’t have the financial support. She had one even before the incident took place, and despite the fact that her life was a mess, she continued earning for her family, and was successful in raising 2 strong and accomplished children. This is just an example of why women should have equal rights as men – and that depriving someone – let alone an entire gender – of their rights based on something that isn’t even remotely justified is purely illogical.
Another thing that deeply angers me is that women aren’t given proper
education, because people believe that they’ll just be married off and then
completely forgotten about – hence education won’t be necessary. My helper faced something very similar. She was only permitted to study till the 4 th grade, and then she was sent off to become a maid. She has told me quite a few times that her dream is to finish her education, and one day, I hope I can fulfil it for her.
Coming back to feminism, many people believe that the idea of it is to give
women more rights than men – which is not true! The idea of feminism is to have equal right for all genders, not for one gender to have more than another. These mislead ideas cause confusion, thus resulting in pushing feminism further away from achieving it’s goals.
Women are slowly, yet surely getting the rights they deserve. It’s a slow
process, but it will take over the world, and inequality based on gender will
surely go down. And I truly hope it does, because the future generations will be brought up in a fair world – a world they deserve.

Mr. Dev Joshi, the Logi for the HSC Committee who showed up in jeans and a plaid shirt for MUN, looked “more like a chaiwalla than a logi.” His swoopy, Justin Bieber- styled hair was one of the highlights of this weekend. He seemed to be the only person in the HSC to be enjoying his duties to the fullest. He seemed to be watching something on his phone while committee was on and communication lines were closed. Many of the updates in committee were accompanied by media, in which Joshi was an extremely appreciated model. He wore slightly more formal clothes on Sunday, however maintained the body language and attitude of a chaiwalla rather than a logi.

By Divina and Nayantara

  India has always been incredibly diverse in terms of race, religion, and culture. India has a lot of minority groups, one of them being Muslims (who make up 14.2% of Indian population.) Most Muslims haven’t had an easy life living in India. They have been discriminated since partition in 1947.  In fact, during the battle for independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (leader of the Muslim League) actually thought of India as “two nations”- the Hindus and the Muslims. So much so, that he feared that his coreligionists would be permanent minorities in a Hindu dominated country.

  Muslims have suffered in India throughout history because of media, some of our past ruling parties, and Hindu-Muslims disputes.

   Islamophobia in the media refers to the occurrence or perception that media outlets tend to cover Muslims or Islam-related topics in a negative light. In a lot of articles/ videos, the Indian media tries to link Muslims with crime. Attempts are being made to create fear, hatred, and prejudice against Islam. For example, in the beginning of 2018, there was an attack on a school bus in Gurgaon. The attack was widely condemned in India. Muslims were dragged into this, because those spreading Islamophobia were up to their usual antics. A couple of anti-Muslim people started spreading a message, which blamed 3 Muslims for the attack (without any evidence whatsoever.) Because of this, those Muslims were held responsible for something they didn’t do, even after the police clarified that no members of the Muslim community had anything to do with the event. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcn8yYPZ4A)

  Many social scientists feel that a lot of the acts of violence against Muslims are institutionally supported, particularly by political parties and organizations. In particular, scholars fault the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena for complicity in these incidents, and of using violence against Muslims as a part of a larger electoral strategy.  For example, researches done by Michael Biggs (an Associate Professor in Sociology) and Raheel Dhattiwala (an author, who writes about ethnic violence, specifically the Hindu-Muslim violence in India have stated that killings are far higher in areas where the BJP faces stiff electoral opposition than in areas in which it is already strong. In 1989, the north of India saw an increase in orchestrated attacks on Muslims, and the BJP had further success in the local and state elections. 

  There has also been violence against Muslims. There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since Partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks Muslims by Hindu mobs that form a pattern of communal violence between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982. 

  Religious minority groups are amongst those who encounter severe exclusion, discrimination and oppression. In case of Indian-Muslims as a religious marginalized community, these two concepts overlap. However, concern with ‘marginalization’ is relatively recent, and it is crucial to check the development on the marginalized groups. As considerable evidence exists, the process of ‘marginalization’ of minority communities exists in almost all societies and nothing shows that the same is not true of Muslims in India to a greater or a lesser degree. 

  None of this is justified. Muslims, or any other group for that matter, shouldn’t be oppressed because of their religion. However, one could say that Muslims are discriminated only to a certain extent. It must be considered that the Indian prejudice against Islam is not absolute. If there was 100% Islamophobia in India, then there wouldn’t have been a Muslim President of India – Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam – in the past. A lot of our famous Bollywood actors (such as Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, etc.) who are Muslims wouldn’t be apart of the Indian film industry. Yes, there have been numerous instances of violence and discrimination against Muslims  in the recent past, but it is also important to take into account the cultural and political importances the Muslim community has held in India.

A lot of ways to combat this have been tried in the past, but not all of them have been successful. As educated individuals, we can teach the coming generations about Islamophobia, and how it is unfair and unjust to oppress an entire group of people just because of the beliefs of others. Another way to combat this would be to remind people that India is a secular nation, which means that we aren’t connected with religious or spiritual matters. This is important to remember, because it reminds us of what we truly believe, and what we should continue believing to make India, and the world a better place.