The authors are peddling views which are in line with similar discussions in Pak media. So – I hate when they try to broad brush under ‘the Sub-continent’ garb. If they have any concerns -hope they do understand that this was a political messaging – which is relevant to the society it originates from. Simply writing from a Swedish desk – however polished and agonized – still seems very much irrelevant from Chandni Chowk!!
Here comes the “Concerned Indian”. An Indian (hard to verify, might as well be a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi) whose sole “concern” is about Hindutva dominating over other ideologies. An idiot who thinks that sindoor is “state-sponsored gendered metaphor tied to marital sacrifice, widowhood, and Hindu religiosity, effectively flattening India’s cultural and religious diversity under a saffron-tinted banner.”
Such morons can be found in abundance in the social science and humanities faculties of Western universities. These are the ones who take out pro-Hamas rallies and celebrate the October 7 attacks on Jews.
In India too, enjoying the patronage of the Congress government for the better part of independent India’s history, these lunatics came to occupy senior academic and research positions in almost all central and state universities. Professors like Nivedita Menon and Ira Bhaskar at JNU are exemplary members of this tribe. The hallmark of this tribe is their absolute silence on Islam and it’s depredations on Muslim women and non-Muslim communities. They do not speak a word on the atrocious treatment meted out to Muslim women in Islamic communities. Or the medieval and bestial rules imposed on non-Muslim communities in Islamic nations.
This tribe thrives in the academic ivory towers of liberal-secular democracies and it feeds on it’s own. It feasts and scavenges on it’s very own people – be in India or in Western nations.
It gives Islam and it’s adherents a free pass. These clowns rant and rail against the custom of “purdah” in certain Hindu communities but gleefully defend the burkha as “a matter of individual choice”.
Ms. Shilpi Hazarika has rightly observed that these people are insufferable self-righteous idiots.
Thanks & Regards,
Prof. Amita Giri
ECE, IIT Roorkee
I have had the misfortune of being acquainted with Swedish Intersectional Feminists. They are a bunch of insufferable self-righteous idiots. Their holier-than-thou approach towards every single socio-economic issue and hankering for attention turns off even the most genuine believer of their causes.
If Sweden is suffering nowadays from illegal immigration related crime, drugs and violence, it is due to idiots like these. The beautiful country is just overrun with morons like these.
This article delivers is a troubling synthesis of token feminism, cultural nationalism, and selective postcolonial guilt-washing & an attempt at building Hindutva inflected state action as feminist resistance, and to delegitimize anti-caste socialist and liberal feminist critiques by calling them insufficiently nuanced or overly Western. These are the issues I have with this article:
1. The authors insist that sindoor has “multifaceted significance.” While it may hold personal or regional meaning for some, using it in the naming of a state-led military operation aimed at retribution does not pluralize its symbolism: it codifies it. In this context, sindoor becomes a state-sponsored gendered metaphor tied to marital sacrifice, widowhood, and Hindu religiosity, effectively flattening India’s cultural and religious diversity under a saffron-tinted banner. Feminists have long critiqued such symbols for their role in upholding patriarchal control over women’s bodies and identities. This is not cultural nuance, it’s gendered nationalism in disguise.
2. The article highlights women officers like Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi as symbols of gender progress. But showcasing individual women in uniform, without reckoning with the deeply masculinist structure of the military, amounts to tokenism. Real feminist engagement would interrogate the gender hierarchies, exclusions, and abuses that persist within these institutions. Visibility alone is not justice, especially when used to shield the institution from critique.
3.By framing feminist critiques as insensitive to “national trauma,” the article falls into a familiar rhetorical trap: branding dissent as unpatriotic. This strategy is not new, nationalism frequently uses emotional appeals to unity to discredit those who question the state’s gendered violence. Suggesting that feminist analysis must defer to national sentiment, especially after terror attacks, is a form of tone-policing that undermines precisely the kind of critical inquiry feminists bring to militarism and security discourses.
4. The article makes a baffling move by invoking the Ramayan, particularly the version by Tulsidas , a 16th-century Bhakti poet known for reinforcing caste hierarchies and patriarchal norms. This selective invocation of scripture, paired with the use of sindoor (a Hindu, Hindi upper-caste word & symbol), aligns more closely with Hindutva cultural nationalism than with any intersectional feminist tradition. Feminism, especially in the South Asian context, cannot ignore the caste and religious politics embedded in these cultural references. Using these symbols uncritically, and then shielding them with academic posturing, is not just poor scholarship, it’s ideological obfuscation.
5. The authors fall back on a tired postcolonial reflex: blaming colonialism for gendered oppression while ignoring the Brahmanical and patriarchal structures that predate and outlive it. Feminist critiques of nationalism, militarism, and cultural symbolism are not simply colonial leftovers, they are rooted in longstanding radical, Ambedkarite, Marxist, and Dalit feminist traditions. To suggest that such critiques lack “local authenticity” or postcolonial sensitivity is not only dishonest but deeply exclusionary.
6. Perhaps the article’s most significant failure is its refusal to meaningfully address how militarism itself is gendered. Military institutions are built on hierarchies, domination, and violence, values that are fundamentally at odds with feminist visions of justice. Romanticizing a military operation through the lens of widowhood and sacrifice merely reinforces the idea that women’s value lies in their capacity to mourn, wait, or avenge. This isn’t empowerment, it’s aestheticized grief, co-opted for nationalist ends.
This article presents itself as a complex, thoughtful engagement with gender and statecraft, but ultimately it offers cover to a deeply regressive politics. It hijacks the language of feminism and postcolonialism to sanitize Hindutva inflected nationalism, tokenism women’s military participation, and dismisses radical feminist dissent as unsophisticated or Western. This is not intersectional feminism. It is intellectual camouflage for cultural authoritarianism, and it deserves to be called out as such.
Because nothing screams intersectional feminism like repackaging Hindutva nationalism in sindoor, silencing liberal & socialist feminists with ‘postcolonial nuance,’ and calling it ‘diversity of thought’ while marching to the drumbeat of bigotry. Love how this is written by two academics sitting in the West & enjoying the perks of a liberal society that challenged such bigotry & repugnant nationalism, while they help dismantle it in Global South, with the help of racist whites who like nothing more than collecting brown & black friends & have them tell them how evil they are, so they can feel superior about their continued power chokehold over rest of the world.. Lol!
The Print’s stated narrative has been to find holes, and magnifying them, even if such holes are non-existant. It tries to be objective in its reporting, but slyly inserts certain statemenrs or observation or reporting that certainly are biased & unfounded. Remarkably pseudo
These guys don’t get tired of being ridiculed in the comments section. Women are from Venus is an outdated trope, but these woke fundamentalist do behave like they were born and brought up on Another planet, maybe Venus. Being progressive does not mean totally sideline ones cultural roots and slander everything that a culture inherits. It means work diligently to pull traditional cultural aspects towards a modern world whilst maintaining the essence of the thought behind it’s genesis. Woke fundamentalists want to reject everything from the past and build a whole new world with rules which they get to define.
Pseudo-feminists like Ms. Vaishna Roy (Editor, The Hindu) are the problem here.
They do not have the ability or even the honest intent to solve a problem. But they are forever aggrieved about perceived slights and insults. Their understanding of “feminism” is far removed from the genuine struggle for equality and empowerment the word embodies and is deeply perverted. Such perverse conceptualization of a genuine quest coupled with the upper class and upper caste privileges gives birth to a weird philosophy of life. One that can thrive only within the confines of centrally air conditioned homes and offices.
Ms. Vaishna Roy and others like her are the flag bearers of this unique and perverted ideology which masquerades as feminism.
The authors are peddling views which are in line with similar discussions in Pak media. So – I hate when they try to broad brush under ‘the Sub-continent’ garb. If they have any concerns -hope they do understand that this was a political messaging – which is relevant to the society it originates from. Simply writing from a Swedish desk – however polished and agonized – still seems very much irrelevant from Chandni Chowk!!
Here comes the “Concerned Indian”. An Indian (hard to verify, might as well be a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi) whose sole “concern” is about Hindutva dominating over other ideologies. An idiot who thinks that sindoor is “state-sponsored gendered metaphor tied to marital sacrifice, widowhood, and Hindu religiosity, effectively flattening India’s cultural and religious diversity under a saffron-tinted banner.”
Such morons can be found in abundance in the social science and humanities faculties of Western universities. These are the ones who take out pro-Hamas rallies and celebrate the October 7 attacks on Jews.
In India too, enjoying the patronage of the Congress government for the better part of independent India’s history, these lunatics came to occupy senior academic and research positions in almost all central and state universities. Professors like Nivedita Menon and Ira Bhaskar at JNU are exemplary members of this tribe. The hallmark of this tribe is their absolute silence on Islam and it’s depredations on Muslim women and non-Muslim communities. They do not speak a word on the atrocious treatment meted out to Muslim women in Islamic communities. Or the medieval and bestial rules imposed on non-Muslim communities in Islamic nations.
This tribe thrives in the academic ivory towers of liberal-secular democracies and it feeds on it’s own. It feasts and scavenges on it’s very own people – be in India or in Western nations.
It gives Islam and it’s adherents a free pass. These clowns rant and rail against the custom of “purdah” in certain Hindu communities but gleefully defend the burkha as “a matter of individual choice”.
Ms. Shilpi Hazarika has rightly observed that these people are insufferable self-righteous idiots.
Thanks & Regards,
Prof. Amita Giri
ECE, IIT Roorkee
I have had the misfortune of being acquainted with Swedish Intersectional Feminists. They are a bunch of insufferable self-righteous idiots. Their holier-than-thou approach towards every single socio-economic issue and hankering for attention turns off even the most genuine believer of their causes.
If Sweden is suffering nowadays from illegal immigration related crime, drugs and violence, it is due to idiots like these. The beautiful country is just overrun with morons like these.
This article delivers is a troubling synthesis of token feminism, cultural nationalism, and selective postcolonial guilt-washing & an attempt at building Hindutva inflected state action as feminist resistance, and to delegitimize anti-caste socialist and liberal feminist critiques by calling them insufficiently nuanced or overly Western. These are the issues I have with this article:
1. The authors insist that sindoor has “multifaceted significance.” While it may hold personal or regional meaning for some, using it in the naming of a state-led military operation aimed at retribution does not pluralize its symbolism: it codifies it. In this context, sindoor becomes a state-sponsored gendered metaphor tied to marital sacrifice, widowhood, and Hindu religiosity, effectively flattening India’s cultural and religious diversity under a saffron-tinted banner. Feminists have long critiqued such symbols for their role in upholding patriarchal control over women’s bodies and identities. This is not cultural nuance, it’s gendered nationalism in disguise.
2. The article highlights women officers like Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi as symbols of gender progress. But showcasing individual women in uniform, without reckoning with the deeply masculinist structure of the military, amounts to tokenism. Real feminist engagement would interrogate the gender hierarchies, exclusions, and abuses that persist within these institutions. Visibility alone is not justice, especially when used to shield the institution from critique.
3.By framing feminist critiques as insensitive to “national trauma,” the article falls into a familiar rhetorical trap: branding dissent as unpatriotic. This strategy is not new, nationalism frequently uses emotional appeals to unity to discredit those who question the state’s gendered violence. Suggesting that feminist analysis must defer to national sentiment, especially after terror attacks, is a form of tone-policing that undermines precisely the kind of critical inquiry feminists bring to militarism and security discourses.
4. The article makes a baffling move by invoking the Ramayan, particularly the version by Tulsidas , a 16th-century Bhakti poet known for reinforcing caste hierarchies and patriarchal norms. This selective invocation of scripture, paired with the use of sindoor (a Hindu, Hindi upper-caste word & symbol), aligns more closely with Hindutva cultural nationalism than with any intersectional feminist tradition. Feminism, especially in the South Asian context, cannot ignore the caste and religious politics embedded in these cultural references. Using these symbols uncritically, and then shielding them with academic posturing, is not just poor scholarship, it’s ideological obfuscation.
5. The authors fall back on a tired postcolonial reflex: blaming colonialism for gendered oppression while ignoring the Brahmanical and patriarchal structures that predate and outlive it. Feminist critiques of nationalism, militarism, and cultural symbolism are not simply colonial leftovers, they are rooted in longstanding radical, Ambedkarite, Marxist, and Dalit feminist traditions. To suggest that such critiques lack “local authenticity” or postcolonial sensitivity is not only dishonest but deeply exclusionary.
6. Perhaps the article’s most significant failure is its refusal to meaningfully address how militarism itself is gendered. Military institutions are built on hierarchies, domination, and violence, values that are fundamentally at odds with feminist visions of justice. Romanticizing a military operation through the lens of widowhood and sacrifice merely reinforces the idea that women’s value lies in their capacity to mourn, wait, or avenge. This isn’t empowerment, it’s aestheticized grief, co-opted for nationalist ends.
This article presents itself as a complex, thoughtful engagement with gender and statecraft, but ultimately it offers cover to a deeply regressive politics. It hijacks the language of feminism and postcolonialism to sanitize Hindutva inflected nationalism, tokenism women’s military participation, and dismisses radical feminist dissent as unsophisticated or Western. This is not intersectional feminism. It is intellectual camouflage for cultural authoritarianism, and it deserves to be called out as such.
Because nothing screams intersectional feminism like repackaging Hindutva nationalism in sindoor, silencing liberal & socialist feminists with ‘postcolonial nuance,’ and calling it ‘diversity of thought’ while marching to the drumbeat of bigotry. Love how this is written by two academics sitting in the West & enjoying the perks of a liberal society that challenged such bigotry & repugnant nationalism, while they help dismantle it in Global South, with the help of racist whites who like nothing more than collecting brown & black friends & have them tell them how evil they are, so they can feel superior about their continued power chokehold over rest of the world.. Lol!
The Print’s stated narrative has been to find holes, and magnifying them, even if such holes are non-existant. It tries to be objective in its reporting, but slyly inserts certain statemenrs or observation or reporting that certainly are biased & unfounded. Remarkably pseudo
These guys don’t get tired of being ridiculed in the comments section. Women are from Venus is an outdated trope, but these woke fundamentalist do behave like they were born and brought up on Another planet, maybe Venus. Being progressive does not mean totally sideline ones cultural roots and slander everything that a culture inherits. It means work diligently to pull traditional cultural aspects towards a modern world whilst maintaining the essence of the thought behind it’s genesis. Woke fundamentalists want to reject everything from the past and build a whole new world with rules which they get to define.
Pseudo-feminists like Ms. Vaishna Roy (Editor, The Hindu) are the problem here.
They do not have the ability or even the honest intent to solve a problem. But they are forever aggrieved about perceived slights and insults. Their understanding of “feminism” is far removed from the genuine struggle for equality and empowerment the word embodies and is deeply perverted. Such perverse conceptualization of a genuine quest coupled with the upper class and upper caste privileges gives birth to a weird philosophy of life. One that can thrive only within the confines of centrally air conditioned homes and offices.
Ms. Vaishna Roy and others like her are the flag bearers of this unique and perverted ideology which masquerades as feminism.