Centre for Internet and Society

377 Bites the Dust: Unpacking the long and winding road to the judicial decriminalization of homosexuality in India

Agnidipto Tarafder and Arindrajit Basu — 2018-10-18T00:39:34Z

An informal case comment tracing the journey and assessing the societal implications the recent 377 (Navtej Johar v Union of India).

The article was published in Socio-Legal Review, a magazine published by National Law School of India University on October 11, 2018.

Introduction

After a prolonged illness due to AIDS-related complications, the gregarious Queen front-man Farrokh Bulsara (known to the world as Freddie Mercury) breathed his last in his home in Kensington, London in 1991. Despite being the symbol of gay masculinity for over a decade, Mercury never explicitly confirmed his sexual orientation-for reasons that remain unknown but could stem from prevailing social stigma. Occluded from public discourse and shrouded in irrational fears, the legitimate problems of the LGBT+ community, including the serial killer of HIV/AIDS was still relegated to avoidable debauchery as opposed to genuine illness. Concerted activism throughout the 90’s-depicted on the big screen through masterpieces such as Philadelphia, alerted the Western public of this debacle, which lead to a hard-fought array of rights and a reduction of social ostracization at the turn of the century for the LGBT+ community across western countries. This includes over two dozen countries that have allowed same-sex marriages and a host of others that recognize civil union between same-sex partners in some form.^[1]

On 6^th September, 2018, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code – a colonial era law that criminalized “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” bit the dust in New Delhi, at the hands of five judges of the Supreme Court of India (Navtej Johar v Union of India).^[2] Large parts of the country celebrated the restoration of the ideals of the Indian Constitution. It was freedom, not just for a community long suppressed, but for the ethos of our foundation that for a century suffered this incessant incongruity. The celebrations were tempered, perhaps by a recognition of how long this fight had taken, the unnecessary hurdles – both judicial and otherwise – that were erected along the way, and a realization of the continued suffering this community might have to tolerate till they truly earn the acceptance they deserve. While the judgment will serve as a document that signifies the sanctity of our constitutional ethos, in the grander scheme of things it is still but a small step, with the potential to catalyze a giant leap forward. For our common future, it is imperative that the LGBT+ community does not undertake this leap alone but is accompanied by the rest of the nation- a nation that recognizes the travails of this long march to freedom.

Long March to Freedom

Modelled on the 1533 Buggery Act in the UK, Section 377 was introduced into the Indian Penal Code by Thomas Macaulay, a representative of the British Raj. While our colonial masters progressed in 1967, the hangover enmeshed in our penal laws lingered on. Public discourse on this legal incongruity emerged initially with the publication of a report titled Less than Gay: A Citizens Report on the Status of Homosexuality in India, spearheaded by activist Siddhartha Gautam, on behalf of the AIDS Bhedbav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) that sought to fight to decriminalise homosexuality and thereby move towards removing its associated stigma.^[3] The ABVA went on to file a petition for this decriminalisation in 1994. The judicial skirmish continued in 2001 with the Naz Foundation, a Delhi-based NGO that works on HIV/AIDS and sexual health, filing a petition by way of Public Interest Litigation asking for a reading down of the Section. The Delhi High Court initially dismissed this petition – stating that the foundation had no locus standi.[4] Naz Foundation appealed against this before the Supreme Court, which overturned the dismissal on technical grounds and ordered the High Court to decide the case on merits.

The two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court held that Section 377 violated privacy, autonomy and liberty, ideals which were grafted into the ecosystem of fundamental rights guaranteed by Part-III of the Indian Constitution.^[5] It stated that the Constitution was built around the core tenet of inclusiveness, which was denigrated by the sustained suppression of the LGBT+ community. It was an impressive judgment, not only because of the bold and progressive claim it made in a bid to reverse a century and a half of oppression, but also because of the quality of the judgment itself. It tied in principles of international law, along with both Indian and Foreign judgments in addition to citing literature on sexuality as a form of identity. For a brief while, faith in the ‘system’ seemed justified.

Hope, however, is a fickle friend. Four years from the day, an astrologer by the name of Suresh Kumar Koushal challenged the Delhi High Court’s verdict.[6] Some of the reasons behind this challenge would defy any standard sense of rationality. These included national security concerns – as soldiers who stay away from their families^[7] may enter into consensual relationships with each other – leading to distractions that might end up in military defeats. Confoundingly, the Supreme Court’s verdict lent judicial legitimacy to Koushal’s thought process, as they overturned the Naz Foundation judgment and affirmed the constitutional validity of Section 377 on some truly bizarre grounds.^[8] Indian constitutional tradition permits discrimination by the state only if classification is based on an intelligible differential between the group being discriminated against from the rest of the populace; having a rational nexus with a constitutionally valid objective. To satisfy this threshold, the Supreme Court stated, without any evidence, that there are two classes of people-those who engage in sexual intercourse in the ‘ordinary course’ and those who do not- thereby satisfying the intelligible differential threshold.^[9] As pointed out by constitutional law scholar Gautam Bhatia, this differential makes little sense – an extrapolation of this idea could indicate that intercourse with a blue-eyed person was potentially not ‘ordinary’, since the probability of this occurring is rare.^[10] The second justification was based on numbers. The Court argued that statistics pointed to the fact that only 200 people had been arrested under this law, which suggested that it was largely dormant and hence, discrimination doesn’t get established per se.[11] In other words, a plain reading of the judgement might lead one to conclude that the random arrests of a small number of citizens would be constitutionally protected, so long it does not overshoot an arbitrarily determined de minimis threshold! The judgment seemed to drag Indian society ceaselessly into the past. This backward shift internally was accompanied by international posturing by India that opposed the recent wave of UN resolutions which sought to advocate LGBT+ rights.^[12]

Thankfully, there remained a way to correct such Supreme Court induced travesties, through what is known as a curative petition, a concept introduced by the Court itself through one of its earlier judgements.[13] Needless to mention, such a petition was duly filed before the Court.[14] While this curative petition was under consideration, last August, a 9-judge bench of the Court spun some magic through a landmark judgment in Just. (Retd.) K S Puttuswamy v Union of India^[15] which stated that the ‘right to privacy’ was a recognised fundamental right as per the Indian Constitution. The judgment in Koushal was singled out and criticised by Justice Chandrachud who asserted the fact that an entire community could not be deprived of the dignity of privacy in their sexual relations.

Strategically, this was a master-class. While the right to privacy cannot alone serve as the justification for allowing individuals to choose their sexual orientation, in several common law nations including the UK^[16] and the USA^[17], privacy has served as the initial spark for legitimizing same-sex relations. A year before the privacy judgment was delivered, a group of individuals had filed a separate petition arguing that Section 377 violated their constitutional rights. The nature of this petition was intrinsically different^[18] from the Naz Foundation’s, since the Foundation had filed a ‘public interest litigation’ in a representative capacity whereas this petition affected individuals in their personal capacity, implying that the nature of the claim in each case was different.

The cold case file of this petition that crystallised into the iconic judgment delivered last week, was brought to the fore and listed for hearing in January 2018.[19] Justice Chandrachud’s judgement in Puttaswamy, that tore apart the Koushal verdict, had no small role to play in the unfolding of this saga.^[20]

And so the hearings began. The government chose to not oppose the petition and allowed the court to decide the fate of Article 377.[21] This was another convenient manoeuvre by the legislature, effectively shifting the ball into the judiciary’s court, shielding itself from potential pushbacks from its conservative voter-base. However, as public support for decriminalisation started pouring in from various quarters, leaders of religious groups were quick to make their opposition known, leaving the five judges on the bench to decide the fate of a community long suppressed through the clutches of an illegitimate law.

“I am what I am”: The judgement, redemption and beyond

“The mis-application of this provision denied them the Fundamental Right to equality guaranteed by Article 14. It infringed the Fundamental Right to non-discrimination under Article 15, and the Fundamental Right to live a life of dignity and privacy guaranteed by Article 21. The LGBT persons deserve to live a life unshackled from the shadow of being ‘unapprehended felons.”^[22]

Justice Indu Malhotra summed up her short judgement with this momentous pronouncement, adding that ‘history owes an apology’^[23] to the members of the LGBT+ community, for the injustices faced during these centuries of hatred and apathy. It seems fair to suggest that this idea of ‘righting the wrongs of the past’ became the underlying theme of the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict on the constitutionality of Section 377. Five judges, through four concurring but separate opinions, extracted the essence of the claim against this law – protecting the virtue of personal liberty and dignity. In doing so, it exculpated itself from the travesty of Suresh Kaushal, emancipating the ‘miniscule minority’ from their bondage before the law and took yet another step towards restoring faith in the ‘system’ of which the judiciary is currently positioning itself as the sole conscientious wing. Perhaps the only set of people shamed through this verdict were our parliamentarians, who on two separate occasions in the recent past had thwarted any chance of change when they opposed, insulted and ridiculed Dr. Shashi Tharoor while he attempted to introduce a Bill decriminalizing homosexuality on the floor of the House.^[24]

Earlier in the day, the Chief Justice, authoring the lead opinion for himself and Justice Khanwilkar, began with the ominous pronouncement that ‘denying self-expression (to the individual) was an invitation to death’,^[25] emphasizing through his long judgement the importance of promoting individuality in all its varied facets- in matters of choice, privacy, speech and expression.^[26] Arguing strongly in support of the ‘progressive realization of rights’,^[27] which he identified as the soul of constitutional morality, the Chief Justice outlawed the ‘artificial distinction’ drawn between heterosexual and homosexual through the application of the ‘equality’ doctrine embedded in Articles 14 and 15.^[28] Noting that the recent criminal law amendment recognizes the absence of consent as the basis for sexual offences, he pointed out the lack of a similar consent-based framework in the context of non peno-vaginal sex, effectively de-criminalizing ‘voluntary sexual acts by consenting adults’ as envisaged within the impugned law.^[29] The Chief Justice went on to elaborate that the right to equality, liberty and privacy are inherent in all individuals, and no discrimination on grounds of sex would survive the scrutiny of the law.^[30]

Justice Nariman in his separate opinion charted out the legislative history behind the adoption of the Indian Penal Code. In his inimitable manner, he travelled effortlessly across time and space to source historical material and legislations, judicial decisions and literary critique from various jurisdictions to bolster the claim that the discrimination faced by homosexuals had no basis in law or fact.^[31] For instance, referring to the Wolfenden Committee Report in the UK regarding decriminalisation of homosexuality which urged legislators to distinguish between ‘sin and crime’, the judge went on to lament the lives lost to mere social perception, including that of Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing.^[32] Repelling the popular myth of homosexuality being a ‘disease’, he quoted from the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, the US Supreme Court’s seminal judgment in Lawrence v Texas^[33] and several other studies on the intersection of homosexuality and public health, dismissing this contention entirely. Justice Nariman, invoking the doctrine of ‘manifest arbitrariness’^[34] to dispel the notion that the law treating homosexuals was ‘different’. Since it was based on sexual identity and orientation, such a law was a gross abuse of the equal protection of the Constitution.

Justice Chandrachud, having already built a formidable reputation as the foremost liberal voice on the bench, launched a scathing, almost visceral attack against the idea of ‘unnatural sexual offence’ insofar as it applied to homosexuality.^[35] Mirroring the concern first espoused by Justice Nariman about the chilling effect of majoritarianism, he wondered aloud what societal harm did a provision like Section 377 seek to prevent. In fact, his separate opinion is categorical in its negation of the ‘intelligible differentia’ between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ sex, sardonically stating the perpetuation of heteronormativity cannot be the object of a law.^[36]

As an interesting aside, his judgement in Puttaswamy famously introduced a section called ‘discordant notes’^[37] which led an introspective Court to disown and overturn disturbing precedent from the past, most notably the Court’s opinion in the ADM Jabalpur,^[38] decided that the right to seek redressal for violation of Fundamental Rights remained suspended as a consequence of the National Emergency.

In a similar act of constitutional manipulation, he delved into a critique of the Apex Court’s judgement in the Nergesh Meerza^[39] case. This was a decision which upheld the discriminatory practice of treating men and women as different classes of employees by Air India, denying the women employees certain benefits ordinarily available to men. The Court in Nergesh Meerza read the non-discrimination guarantee in Article 15 narrowly to understand that discrimination based on ‘sex alone’ would be struck down. He held that since the sexes had differences in the mode of recruitment, promotion and conditions of service, it did not tantamount to ‘merely sex based’ categorization and was an acceptable form of classification. In his missionary zeal to exorcise the Court of past blemishes, Dr. Chandrachud observed that interpreting constitutional provisions through such narrow tests as ‘sex alone’ would lead to denuding the freedoms guaranteed within the text. Though not the operative part of the judgement, one hopes his exposition of the facets of the equality doctrine and fallacies in reasoning in Nargesh Meerza will pave the way for just jurisprudence to emerge in sex discrimination cases in the future.^[40]

Reverting to the original issue, the judge addresses several key concerns voiced by the LGBT+ community through their years of struggle. He spoke of bridging the public-private divide by ensuring the protection of sexual minorities in the public sphere as well, wherein they are most vulnerable. Alluding to his opinion in Puttaswamy, he declares that all people have an inalienable right to privacy, which is a fundamental aspect of their liberty and the ‘soulmate of dignity’- ascribing the right to dignified life as a constitutional guarantee for one and all. Denouncing the facial neutrality^[41] of Section 377, insofar as it targets certain ‘acts and not classes of people’, his broad and liberal reading of non-discrimination goes beyond the semantics of neutrality and braves the original challenge- fashioning a justice system with real equality at its core.

Shall History Absolve Us?

Where to from here then? Can the 500 pages of this iconic judgment magically change the social norms that define the existence of LGBT+ communities in modern Indian society? If the reception of this judgement by the conservative factions within society is anything to go by, the answer is clear enough. Yet, the role of this judgment – in an ecosystem of other enablers – might just be a crucial first step. As noted by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, law can create, displace or change the collective expectations of society by channelling societal behaviour in a manner that conforms with its contents.^[42] An assessment of the impact of Brown v Board of Education on African-Americans offers an interesting theoretical analogy.^[43]

The unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court in Brown marked a watershed moment in American history that struck down the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine which served as the basis for segregation between communities of colour and the dominant White majority in American public schools. While this ruling initially faced massive resistance, it laid the edifice for progressive legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Act a decade later.^[44] While its true impact on evolving acceptable standards of social behaviour remains disputed with valid arguments on all sides, Brown kick-started a counter-culture that sought to wipe out the toxic norms that the Jim Crow-era had birthed in the 1950s. Along with subsequent decisions by the US Supreme Court, it acted as the catalyst that morphed the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater attempted to stifle this counterculture in 1964 by undertaking a sustained campaign that opposed the dictum in Brown not in opposition to African-Americans but instead in opposition to an overly intrusive federal government that was taking away from the cultural traditions and values, particularly of the South.^[45] In the past few years, cultural apathy seems to have taken a more sinister turn as recent incidents of police violence and the rebirth of white supremacist movements indicate.

Lessons from a different context in an alternate society can never be transposed in another without substantial alterations. Discrimination is intersectional and a celebration of identity is a recognition of intersectionality. Therefore, the path ahead for the LGBT+ community lies in crafting a strategy that works for them – a strategy that can draw from lessons learned in other contexts. Last week’s judgment could morph into a point of reference for a counter-cultural movement that works to remove the stains of oppression. The key challenge is carrying this message to swathes of the populace who, goaded by leading public figures, continue to treat homosexuality as an unnatural phenomenon^[46].

Being a majority Hindu nation, one possible medium of communication could be reference to ancient Hindu scriptures that do not ostracize individuals based on their sexual orientation but treat them as fellow sojourners on their path to Nirvana, the idea of spiritual emancipation, a central tenet of Hindu belief.^[47] Strategically, using this framework as a dangling carrot for religious conservatives may be a potential conversation starter but comes riddled with potholes, as the same scriptures could be interpreted to justify subjugation of women, for example. A more holistic approach might be reading these scriptures into the overarching foundation stone of society -The Indian Constitution, which is not a rigid, static document – stuck in the time of its inception – but is a dynamic one that responds to and triggers the Indian social and political journey. The burden of a constitution, as reiterated by Chief Justice Misra and Dr. Chandrachud is to ‘draw a curtain’ on the past of social injustice and prejudice and embrace constitutional morality, a cornerstone of which is the principle of inclusiveness. Inclusiveness driven by rhetoric in political speeches and storylines on the big screen. Inclusiveness that fosters symbiosis between the teachings of religious scriptures and that of Constitutional Law Professors – an inclusiveness that begets the idea of India, which is a fair deal for all Indians.

…And Justice for all?

In the aftermath of this decision come further legal challenges. Legally, while the ‘right to love’ has been vindicated, the right to formalise this union through societal recognition remains to be established. This judgement paves the way for the acceptance of homosexual relationships, but not necessarily the right to marry for a homosexual couple. There are passages within Justice Chandrachud’s visionary analysis which directly address this concern, and advocate for the ‘full protection’ of the law being extended to the LGBT+ populace. It will certainly be instructive for future courts, and one tends to remain hopeful that the long march to freedom for the LGBT+ community and its supporters will not come to a screeching halt through judicial intervention or State action. If anything, the wings of government should bolster these efforts, in view of this verdict.

That said, social acceptance seldom waits on the sanction of the law.

The outpouring of public support which was witnessed through public demonstrations, social media advocacy and concerted efforts from so many quarters to bring down this draconian law needs to continue and consolidate. There are evils yet, and the path to genuine inclusiveness in this country (as in most others) is littered with thorns. And even greater resistance is likely to emerge when tackling some of these issues, which tend to hit closer home than others.

While this judgement entered into detailed discussions on the issue of consent, it remained disquietingly silent on a most contentious subject, perhaps because it was perceived to be beyond the terms of reference. The exception of marital rape carved out in the Indian Penal Code, which keeps married relationships outside the purview of rape laws, remains as a curse – a reminder that gender equality in this nation will only come at tremendous human cost. The institution of family, that sacrosanct space which even the most liberal courtrooms in India have sought to protect, stands threatened. Malignant patriarchy will raise its head and claim its pound of flesh before the dust settles, and in the interest of freedom, it shall be up to the Apex Court to ensure that it settles on the right side of history. Else, all our progress, howsoever incremental, may be undone by this one stain on our collective conscience.

*Agnidipto Tarafder is an Assistant Professor of Law at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, where he teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Labour Law and Privacy.

*Arindrajit Basu recently finished his LLM (Public International Law) at the University of Cambridge and is a Policy Officer at the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore

_________________________________________________________________________________________

^[1] Gay Marriage Around the World, Pew Research Centre (Aug 8, 2017) available at http://www.pewforum.org/2017/08/08/gay-marriage-around-the-world-2013/.

^[2] W. P. (Crl.) No. 76 of 2016 (Supreme Court of India).

^[3] Aids Bhedbav Virodhi Andolan, Less than Gay: A Citizen’s Report on the Status of Homosexuality in India (Nov-Dec, 1991) available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1585664/less-than-gay-a-citizens-report-on-the-status-of.pdf.

[4] P.P Singh, 377 battle at journey’s end (September 6, 2018) available at https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/section-377-verdict-supreme-court-decriminalisation-gay-sex-lgbtq-5342008/.

^[5] (2009) 160 DLT 277; W.P. (C) No.7455/2001 of 2009 (Delhi HC).

[6] Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, It is like reversing the motion of the earth, The Hindu (December 20, 2013) available at https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/it-is-like-reversing-the-motion-of-the-earth/article5483306.ece.

^[7] Id.

^[8] (2014) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India).

^[9] Ibid, at para 42.

^[10] Gautam Bhatia, The unbearable wrongness of Koushal v Naz Foundation, Ind Con Law Phil (December 11, 2013)

[11] supra note 8, at para 43.

^[12] Manjunath, India’s UN Vote: A Reflection of Our Deep Seated Anti-Gay Sentiments, Amnesty International (Apr 20, 2015) available at https://amnesty.org.in/indias-un-vote-reflection-societys-deep-seated-anti-gay-prejudice/.

[13] The concept of curative petitions was laid down in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, (2002) 4 SCC 388 (Supreme Court of India).

[14] Ajay Kumar, All you need to know about the SC’s decision to reopen the Section 377 debate, FIRSTPOST (February 3, 2016) available at https://www.firstpost.com/india/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-scs-decision-to-reopen-the-section-377-debate-2610680.html.

^[15] 2017 (10) SCC 1(Supreme Court of India).

^[16] The Wolfenden Report, Brit. J; Vener. Dis. (1957) 33, 205 available at https://sti.bmj.com/content/sextrans/33/4/205.full.pdf.

^[17] Griswold v Connecticut, 381 US 479.

^[18] Gautam Bhatia, Indian Supreme Court reserves judgment on the de-criminalisation of Homosexuality, OHRH Blog (August 15, 2018) available at http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-indian-supreme-court-reserves-judgment-on-the-de-criminalisation-of-homosexuality/.

[19] Krishnadas Rajagopal, Supreme Court refers plea to decriminalize homosexuality under Section 377 to larger bench, The Hindu (January 8, 2018) available at https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-refers-377-plea-to-larger-bench/article22396250.ece.

^[20] Puttuswamy, paras 124-28.

[21] Aditi Singh, Government leaves decision on Section 377 to the wisdom of Supreme Court, LIVEMINT (July 11, 2018) available at https://www.livemint.com/Politics/fMReaXRcldOWyY20ELJ0GK/Centre-leaves-it-to-Supreme-Court-to-decide-on-Section-377.html.

^[22] supra note 2, at para 20.

^[23] Ibid.

^[24] Express News Service, Lok Sabha votes against Shashi Tharoor’s bill to decriminalize homosexuality again, Indian Express (March 12, 2016) available at https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/decriminalising-homosexuality-lok-sabha-votes-against-shashi-tharoors-bill-again/.

^[25] Navtej Johar v. Union of India, W. P. (Crl.) No. 76 of 2016 (Supreme Court of India) at para 1.

^[26] Ibid, at para 2.

^[27] Ibid, at para 82.

^[28]Ibid, at para 224.

^[29] Ibid, at para 253.

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Separate Opinion, RF Nariman, paras 1-20.

^[32] Ibid, at paras 28-9.

^[33] Ibid. Lawrence v Texas, 539 US 558 (2003), discussed in paras 108-09.

^[34] Ibid, at para 82.

^[35] Separate Opinion, DY Chandrachud, at para 28.

^[36] Ibid, at para 56-7, 61.

^[37] Supra note 20, at para 118-9.

^[38] ADM Jabalpur v Shiv Kant Shukla (1976) 2 SCC 521. (Supreme Court of India)

^[39] Air India v Nergesh Meerza (1981) 4 SCC 335. (Supreme Court of India)

^[40] Supra note 25, at paras 36-41.

^[41] Ibid, at paras 42-43, 56.

^[42] Lawrence Lessig, The Regulation of Social Meaning, 62 University of Chicago Law Review 943 ,947 (1995)

^[43] Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483.

^[44] David Smith, Little Rock Nine: The day young students shattered racial segregation, The Guardian (September 24, 2017) available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/little-rock-arkansas-school-segregation-racism.

^[45]Michael Combs and Gwendolyn Combs, Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education: A Cultural, Historical-Legal, and Political Perspective (2005).

^[46] Poulomi Saha, RSS on 377: Gay sex not a crime but is unnatural, India Today (September 6, 2018) available at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rss-on-section-377-verdict-gay-sex-not-a-crime-but-is-unnatural-1333414-2018-09-06.

^[47] S Venkataraman and H Varuganti, A Hindu approach to LGBT Rights, Swarajya (July 4, 2015) available at https://swarajyamag.com/culture/a-hindu-approach-to-lgbt-rights.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/socio-legal-review-national-law-school-of-india-university-agnidipto-tarafder-and-arandrajit-basu-377-bites-the-dust

Indian Feminist Judgment Project Workshop

Admin — 2018-10-16T13:34:06Z

Swaraj Paul Barooah was a discussant at the Indian Feminist Judgment Project 'righting together' workshop organised in Delhi by Jindal from October 6 - 7, 2018.

Swaraj provided commentary on the re-writing of a patent application from a feminist perspective. Click here to view the agenda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-feminist-judgment-project-workshop

Networked Economies and Gender Action Learning

Admin — 2018-10-02T03:10:02Z

Elonnai Hickok, Sunil Abraham and Ambika Tandon participated in a meeting organized by IDRC for grantees under their networked economies programme to discuss gender-based outputs and development outcomes in their work. The event was held in Ottawa on September 20 - 21, 2018, facilitated by Gender at Work.

Sunil Abraham, Swaraj Paul Barooah and Ambika Tandon also attended a workshop on Gender Action Learning on September 24 - 25, 2018, which discussed strategies to work on gender under a grant for Cyber Policy Centres. Other organizations present at the workshop were Research ICT Africa, Lirne Asia, and Centre Latam Digital at CIDE, Mexico. Gender at Work facilitated this workshop as well, and will be working with all the grantees over a period of 18 months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/networked-economies-and-gender-action-learning

Japleen Pasricha - Gendered Spaces in Digital Rights (Delhi, June 02, 5 pm)

sumandro — 2017-05-31T03:49:26Z

It is our priviledge to annouce that Japleen Pasricha will be the speaker for the June #FirstFridayAtCIS event. Japleen smashes the patriarchy for a living, and is Founder & Editor-in-chief of Feminism in India. The talk will focus on her experience of working on gender and digital rights in India, the ways in which "gender" functions as a critical lens in digital rights discourse and practice in India (or not), and the gendered nature of digital rights spaces in India. If you are joining us, please RSVP at the soonest as we have only limited space in our office.

Japleen Pasricha

Founder & Editor-in-chief, Feminism in India

Japleen smashes the patriarchy for a living. Founder & Editor-in-chief of Feminism in India, she is a feminist activist based in New Delhi, India. She is a writer, educator, campaigner and researcher. She has vast experience in digital media and online publishing. Her interest lies in women’s studies, global feminism, gender, sexuality, VAW, SRHR, feminist praxis and internet as a space. Currently she is working on online violence against women and media representation of gender and gender-based violence. She’d like to use skills to intersect gender and sexuality with digital & social media and develop safe online spaces for women and marginalized communities.

RSVP

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/firstfridayatcis-japleen-pasricha-gendered-spaces-in-digital-rights-delhi-june-02

Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India

ting — 2017-05-23T11:09:23Z

Since June 2016, Ting-Yi Chang from the University of Toronto has worked with the CIS-A2K team to conduct action research on the Wikipedia gender gap in India. The research aims to improve the understanding of the gender gap (imbalance) issue in the Indian Wikipedia communities while examining local interventions.

This post is an extraction from the Wikipedia Gender Gap Bridging Toolkit - South Asia Edition which will be published on Wiki (Commons and meta) in late May 2017. The toolkit is a derivative of the gender gap research initiative.

Wikipedia has a wide gender gap in participation and content coverage. The editor survey in 2011 showed that among the active editors worldwide only 9% identified themselves as female. While research and initiatives have been proposed and conducted to “bridge the gender gap,” mass majority of these studies are done in the Western context (English/European language Wikipedias and communities). The movement dynamics and situation of other Wikipedian communities are not well explored or documented. Of the few studies that did focus on non-Western contexts, this action research is one of the few to look at the issue in India.

Due to the timeline of the research and the limitation of space in this post, we will only discuss the preliminary findings of the study, specifically for the following questions:

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ (regardless of one’s activeness in editing) experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

In Q1, we used open coding to find recurring themes in the qualitative data collected through 18 semi-structured interviews with 21 female Wikipedians, and label them to find certain patterns of answers. To answer question 2, discussion and infographics will be presented to summarize the 64 survey responses we have gathered.

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Western-based research and survey has shown that a plausible reason behind the gender gap on Wikipedia is the discriminatory and unwelcoming environment within the editor communities. Research was much needed to explore the reasons in the Indian context as we cannot simply apply the same results or rule out the possibility of the same situation. Among the 9 reasons that Sue Gardner, the former Executive Director of WMF, had pointed out in her 2011 blog post, we deem the “misogynist atmosphere” as the most problematic - it signals an unhealthy environment and structure for diversity and long term growth.

Thus, 18 private interviews were held to understand the positive and negative experience that existing female (Indian) Wikipedians have faced in the communities. In this question we are specifically looking at the interaction and interpersonal relationship between community members (editors), hence it does not include experiences like discouragement from speedy deletion or technical difficulty in editing.

In each of the two categories (positive and negative), we use three labels to cover the recurring themes mentioned. In “positive experience,” these are (a) emotional support and respect, (b) bonding and friendship, and (c) other support. In “negative experience,” the three labels are (a) neglected or belittled, (b) sexist comments, and (c) safety concern.

It is interesting to note that although in most (Western-based) research, the positive and negative experiences were in the online context, our interviewees (Indian female Wikipedians) had mostly pointed out experiences that were either offline or in non-specified context. Comments on the online interaction dynamics were fairly rare and neutral, while negative experiences mostly occurred in the offline settings.

This can indicate that the communities’ offline interaction dynamics leaves a much more significant impression (sadly, especially when it is negative) to female Wikipedians on their overall community experience. Additionally, it seems that compared to the Western/English context, Indian Wikipedian communities are more close-knit and active offline, that is, the editors are more likely to know each other personally. This dynamic is a great plus to create positive experience such as strong bonding and emotional support. However, it may also be more toxic when the experience is negative as compared to if the experience was online and anonymous. In other words, sexist comments, deliberate neglect, and safety concerns can have an aggravated effect when faced personally.

In numbers, more positive experiences were mentioned than negative ones when a neutral question was asked (such as “How do you think about the community?” / ”what is your experience in the editor community so far?”). Most negative experience were only revealed when a negative-oriented question was asked (such as “Have you had any negative or uncomfortable experience so far?”). This may be interpreted that the interviewees’ overall experiences are positive with only occasional negative encounters. However, this interpretation can still be biased if we consider the possibility that:

There is a lack of trust between the researcher and the interviewees (i.e. Interviewees may have the intention to provide a more pleasing/non-controversial answer), or
the selection of our interviewees was already biased since “existing” female Wikipedians can be those that have not experienced much negative experience (i.e. the female editors who were upset by more negative experiences and had already quit editing were not reachable when the interviews were conducted, or they might simply be uninterested in participating in the research).

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

As indicated in our last question, the offline interaction and activities seem to be very crucial in determining a female Wikipedian’s overall experience in the community. In other questions throughout the semi-structured interview, we had asked existing female Wikipedians - who had been active in gender gap bridging event conduct - to discuss what can make an event more welcoming to women. Below are some of the answers given:

A women-only event (although some also criticized that this approach often made the gender gap a “women-only” discussion)
Female tutor’s presence
Offline events where women can meet others face to face (although some had mention that they prefer to participate online - which makes them feel safer and more comfortable)
The chance for participants to socialize and make friends
Write about women-related topics (although some had argued that a gender gap bridging event should not promote the tokenizing logic that (only) women should (only) edit on women-related topics)

As you may notice, there are divergence of ideas regarding the points A, C, and E. In order to cross-check all these ideas, a survey of 11 scale-rating questions was developed to understand the new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in a gender gap bridging event) attitude and preferences. Three clusters of questions were formed - general experience, cross-checking questions, and attitude.

Below is an infographics on the 64 responses we had collected: (You may click on the image at the top of this page (under the blog title) to zoom in)

From the infographics above we can see that event participants’ overall experience are positive. However, it may still be far from perfect as there were 2 respondents who “fully disagreed” with the statement “I find the event environment safe, friendly, and welcoming.” There are still more than 40% of the respondents who thought editing is difficult (or somewhat difficult), which means improvement is needed in our event tutorship or a re-estimation participants’ skill levels is needed. Participants’ attitude towards the events was also mostly positive as indicated in the last two questions.

Cross-checking (A): Do women prefer a women-only event?

During the events, the presenters and resource persons usually encouraged male participation in the initiatives and stressed that the gender gap bridging efforts cannot be a further segregation between men and women editors. Hence, we do expect this to influence the answers given to the statement “I still prefer a women-only event.” Still, more than one-third of the participants indicated their preference in women-only events; we expect the actual rate to be even higher if the said factor was not present.

Cross-checking (B): Is the presence of female tutor(s) important? (Does a tutor’s gender matter?)

Question 5 and 6 show very interesting results. In the offline (in real life) event context, there seem to be more disagreement on the statement “I would prefer a woman to be my tutor.” These responses can be affected by the fact that majority of the tutors in Wikipedia events were still men, and if a participant had generally positive experience throughout the event, they might not be against the idea of having a male tutor again. Nonetheless, interestingly, the answer turned the other way around when the scenario changed to an “online” setting. More respondents then agreed that they would prefer a women as their tutor. This may be a sign that women are more alert and defensive when it comes to online interaction with people in the opposite sex.

Cross-checking (C) : Do women prefer offline (in-real-life) events over online ones?

Over 50% of the respondents chose “fully agree” to the statement while only 5 respondents chose either fully or partially disagree. We can conclude that women who had experience in an offline (in-real-life) event would still prefer the same setting in the future. However, of course, we cannot be sure how many women may have turned down this first event experience because it was offline. In other words, we do not know if the preference of women who had never attended any events. However, what we know is that mass majority of those who had one offline event experience would prefer the offline setting over an online participation.

Cross-checking (D): Does socializing matter to women?

Majority of the respondents fully agreed with the statement “I would like to socialize with and know more Wikipedians.” This is one of the very few questions where no one disagreed to. Although we cannot calculate the personal utility of socializing or conclude that socializing is “necessary” to make women feel more comfortable, we can assume that it will be a positive addition to the events if women can make new friends in the communities.

Cross-checking (E): Are women interested in women-related topics? Or would they have preferred to write about their expertise areas?

From the survey, we found that more women actually showed interest in writing on women-related topics than on their domain knowledge subjects. Over 80% of the respondents agreed that they were interested in writing more about women (and related topics) while slightly fewer women said the same about their expertise knowledge. Only 8 out of 64 respondents expressed a preference for writing on their domain knowledge topics over women-related topics. Hence, it seems that women-related topics are a good place to start (for one’s first Wikipedia event experience) as most women enjoyed it. One thing we are not able to estimate is how long can this interest be sustained.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/preliminary-research-result-on-wikipedia-gender-gap-in-india

Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T04:10:16Z

Japreet Grewal was a speaker at a conference on safety against online child sexual abuse which was jointly organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana on March 16 and 17, 2017 in Hyderabad.

Japreet spoke about the existing legal framework in India on online child sexual abuse and the challenges in implementing the preventive and response mechanisms to address this problem. Various stakeholders including media, police, school educators and child protection organisations attended this event.

Read the agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/conference-on-safety-against-online-child-sexual-abuse

Evaluating Safety Buttons on Mobile Devices: Preview

Rohini Lakshané and Chinmayi S.K. — 2023-03-18T04:40:15Z

Much technological innovation for women is aimed at addressing violence against women. One such ubiquitous intervention is mobile device-based safety applications, also known as emergency applications. Several police departments in India, public transport services, and commercial services such as taxi-hailing apps deploy a mobile device-based “panic button” for the safety of citizens or customers, especially women. However, the proliferation of safety apps through both public and private players raises several concerns, which will be studied through this study by Rohini Lakshané of the CIS and Chinmayi S.K. of The Bachchao Project. Research assistance for this report was provided by CIS intern Harish R.S.K. Visualisations by Saumyaa Naidu.

Download the preview document: PDF

There is currently a deluge of mobile safety apps in India: Apps run or supported by police departments, apps run by public transport services, apps endorsed by celebrities and politicians, an app developed by an entertainment television channel, and apps by NGOs and private developers. Through a public notification made in April 2016, the Ministry of Women and Child Development in India announced that every phone sold in the country from January 2017 should come equipped with a physical panic button and a GPS module 2. An international innovation award for USD 1 million was instituted in late 2016 for innovators to build an emergency alert app.

Preliminary user-testing conducted by us shows that many of these apps lack in technical quality and are prone to failure of one kind or another. There are no defined policies of privacy or terms of use, which could lead to possible data and identity theft and egregious surveillance of users.

This study will evaluate a total of 26 different apps operational in India, the permissions they use, the privacy policies and end user agreements on their websites, and will also undertake qualitative case studies of the use and deployment of some of these apps.

The questions framing this evaluation are:

What are the technical concerns (including those of accessibility and literacy) with user experience of these safety button applications being developed and deployed by both government and private agencies, especially at a moment of crisis?
How well do the widely used safety button applications in India protect the data shared by the user and the user’s privacy?
What technical and other solutions can be implemented to ensure more effective, accessible, secure, and responsible modes of communication in such a context?

We are releasing one of the datasets that logs all the different permissions sought by selected “safety applications” available on the Google Play store in India. It was compiled in November 2016.

The dataset has been released under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. All uses of the accompanying data or parts thereof must contain the following attribution: "Data provided by Rohini Lakshané (Centre for Internet and Society) and Chinmayi S K (2018)”. To request a waiver, email rohini [at] cis-india [dot] org. Data are provided AS-IS, without warranty as to accuracy or completeness.

Zenodo record: https://zenodo.org/record/3630585

Click to download:

List of permissions sought by safety applications on the Google Play Store (Excel File)
List of permissions sought by safety applications on the Google Play Store (Open File)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/evaluating-safety-buttons-on-mobile-devices-preview

Only 8.5pc of Wikipedia Editors are Women. How do we fix the Gender Gap on the Internet?

ting — 2017-02-09T02:49:47Z

Women-related articles are generally shorter, more prone to deletion, and more likely to be peripheral pieces under male-centric articles.

This was published by Your Story on February 7, 2017.

I was beginning an introduction session at a college in Vijayawada. While my audience (mostly female students) was giggling, I wrote down a simple question on the whiteboard:

“I see more men than women in _____”

The response was some more shy giggling until some students slowly raised their hands. “Sports!” “Technology companies!” “Conferences!” “In governments!” “…When I am in my class.” There is no denying that we all observe the underrepresentation of women at some points and occasions in our lives. However, it is much harder to imagine and notice that Wikipedia, the most used online encyclopaedia and the 7^th most visited website worldwide, also poses a problematic imbalance in its content and editor demographics.

In 2011, a survey carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation found that only 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors were female. Since then, the awareness has risen; many have found the editor demographic imbalance is a strong reflection of what the encyclopaedia does or does not cover, how the written language and discourse were constructed on the pages, and how discussion flows on article talk pages[1].

For example, scholars discovered that women-related articles are generally shorter, more prone to deletion, and more likely to be peripheral pieces under male-centric articles. To elaborate, in the network structure of Wikipedia articles, women’s pages lack centrality as they often provide links and mention related male figures in their writing but not the other way around. A glass ceiling also exists for the notability criteria. The threshold for a woman to be “notable enough” (from the perspective of a male-dominant community) to deserve a Wikipedia page is higher than that of male figures. Thus, the lack of women editors and an already male-centric structure pose a threat not only to the diversity of content but also to the very definition of knowledge.

But why?

For years, the foundation and local communities have tried to discover the reasons behind the gender gap and solutions to it. Former Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner posted on her blog nine reasons that are off-putting for women when they edit Wikipedia.

The non-beginner-friendly editing interface
Lack of personal free time
Lack of confidence and self-efficacy
Unwillingness to stir up or participate in conflicts and edit wars
Feeling that their edits are “too likely to be reverted or deleted”
Misogynistic environment
“Wikipedia culture is sexual”
Being addressed as male in languages that have grammatical gender
Wikipedia is not as socialising or as welcoming as other websites

In India and other parts of the world, various reasons can also contribute to the problem. Awareness, for example, is the first barrier to be tackled. Many women did not know that Wikipedia is editable or that there are Indian language versions that they can contribute to. Internet access and facilities are a couple more reasons. In case someone does not have a personal computer, a woman is usually more cautious and skeptical when using a public internet café and staying out late. Similarly, families of young women editors can be more concerned about their daughters’ participation in men-organised/male-dominant communities, especially when there are offline (on-site) activities. The roots of the issue are not merely at the community level, but also sociopolitical and cultural.

Many events and initiatives have been carried out from local to global community levels. ‘Women in Red (WiR)’, for example, is a global initiative to bring more women-related articles online. It encourages editors to turn ‘red links’ (non-existing pages) into ‘blue links’ (existing Wikipedia page). The project has helped increase female biographies from 15 percent (November 2014) of total biographies on English Wikipedia to 16.75 percent (November 2016)[2]. In March, Wikipedia communities around the globe also celebrate ‘Women’s History Month’, when edit-a-thons (marathons for Wikipedia editing) are held to help create more women’s articles online as well as to recruit more female volunteers and spread awareness. However, is this enough?

“A new debate: what matters?”

As we are raising more awareness, integrating gender gap issues into the community’s strategy plans and coming up with more intervention ideas to reach more potential women editors, it is time to revisit the meaning behind the work. In my early research time, I was to believe that ‘retention rate’ (whether female participants will stay active after an event), ‘number of articles created’, and the ‘event continuation potentials’ are the key factors in determining whether an event can be called successful. But the ideas have slowly changed as I have got to reach more female participants.

As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is about voluntary contribution and negotiating for consensus in quality knowledge creation as well as maintaining a friendly and open environment for all. In other words, we can ‘nudge’ people into Wikipedia editing but we should not (and need not to) ‘push’ them to do it. Especially in the situation of a wide gender gap, we should not make women feel like they are tokenised in the process — that we are targeting them due to their gender and that they should contribute more because they are female, the minority. When asked about the existing problems in the current gender gap interventions, an active Wikipedian once explained to me:

“Say if you are writing the biography of someone then you should be familiar with and interested in that person’s work. That’s why sometimes those gender-specific edit workshops backfire... If you are creating a bio just because this person is a woman, then I think it is missing the whole point of Wikipedia.”

In my opinion and through discussions with several female Wikipedians, I have realised that there should be a new debate and investigation on how intervention goals should be set and what these actions’ long-term results would be. While focusing on the retention rate of a new Wikipedian after an intervention, we limit ourselves in the frame of time and numbers. We should, instead, understand more about new members’ experiences and feedback to pinpoint the good motivations and expected barriers for them. With this information, we should help establish the motivation in event follow-ups and to minimise their barriers as much as the community can. Secondly, article quality should be stressed upon —even if it takes more time to publish her/his first article, it is a much more fruitful learning experience to understand the responsibility of a Wikipedian. After all, low-quality articles not only do not contribute to Wikipedia content but also lead to more deletion, which can be a discouraging experience for those who are new.

For event continuation, we should guide the participants to community engagement and support them to carry out more event ideas that can suit their interests and goals. In short, it is about creating involvement, discussion, and a sense of community instead of continuously pushing events on our end and have the women be passive participants. When asked about how one can define a “successful gender gap-bridging event,” one of the active organisers told me:

“For me, it is when conversations are happening. It is when we have both men and women, and that we can openly have a discussion about the issue and the difficulties and how we want to see changes.”

To put it simply, I believe that we should look at experiences more than numbers, focus on quality more than quantity, and try to reach people (both men and women) to stimulate discussion more than being fixated on the contents needed to balance out the asymmetry.

How to fix the Wikipedia gender gap is never an easy question to ask, but what I am sure about is that Wikipedia and its communities should be empowering rather than result-oriented and that our learning still has a long way to go.

[1] A “talk page” is attached to each Wikipedia article (found on the top-left corner of an article), where editors can hold discussions and debates or leave comments during the editing process.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/your-story-ting-yi-chang-february-7-2017-only-8.5-percent-of-wikipedia-editors-are-women-how-do-we-fix-the-gender-gap-on-the-internet

Bridging the gap: Tech giants bring the internet to women in rural India

praskrishna — 2016-10-30T07:23:05Z

This Diwali is going to be a cracker of a festival for Nisha Chanderwal, a second year BA student.

The article by KumKum Dasgupta was published in the Hindustan Times on October 28, 2016. Pranesh Prakash and Rohini Lakshané were quoted.

“I bought a bright red kurta with gold-colour zari dupatta from Snapdeal, my first online purchase,” the 19-year-old resident of Alwar’s Umren village told HT recently.

“No courier service reaches my village. So I gave my aunt’s home address in Alwar. They paid in cash…I paid her when I picked up the parcel,” she added, explaining the circuitous delivery and payment process that is common in rural India.

Nisha is elated for one more reason: She has finally got even with her 20-year-old brother, Ashok. “He has a smartphone, but doesn’t even let me touch it, saying girls should not use the Internet. But now thanks to Google’s Internet Saathi Programme (ISP), I don’t need his phone or his help,” said an elated Nisha.

In July 2015, technology giant Google launched ISP in partnership with Tata Trusts, one of the country’s oldest philanthropic organisations, to bring rural women online in India. Today, the initiative is live in 25,000 villages across 10 states with 1,900 saathis. The final mission is to reach 300,000 villages. Google is adding up to 500 additional ‘saathis’ per week. More than 100,000 women have been trained so far.

Google started this programme because Internet usage by women in rural areas is low.

“Only one in 10 Internet users in rural India is a woman,” Sapna Chadha, marketing head, Google India, told HT. “With ISP, we are creating an enabling environment that empowers them while also bridging the technology gender divide. We believe that easy access to information can transform lives. Our mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible”.

Along with access to information, getting more and more women online has other benefits: “If women are a minority online, they become vulnerable to harassment and violence. Women can’t only be consumers of the Internet but must contribute their views, and make the space equitable,” said Rohini Lakshané of the Bangalore-based The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which is funded by the Kusuma Trust.

Google and Tata Trusts are leveraging their core strengths for ISP. While Google provides the hardware (phones and tablets), training and Internet connectivity. Tata Trusts does the identification of saathis and the monitoring.

“We tie up with government departments to roll out the project. For example, in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, we are working with the rural livelihood mission. The government helps us to identify villages, set selection criteria and logistics such as venues,” explained Prabhat Pani, project director, Tata Trusts.

The programme first chooses a few women and trains them on how to use a mobile phone, shoot photos and videos and the basics of Internet. Then the women are sent out on bicycles with a smartphone and a tablet to teach others in their villages.

The programme has opened a new world for many. “Google is like a book. You can get whatever information you need. I am illiterate but I use voice search for information,” said Phoolwati, a 45-year-old resident of Nangli Jamawat, Umren.

Her friend Manju is now the village’s undisputed ‘selfie queen’. “I love taking videos and photos,” she said, adding that she also searches for information on MGNREGA or education loans for her children.

According to Google, the new online entrants are searching for news, recipes, designs for clothes, images and information on pilgrimages, farming and cattle-related information and government schemes.

For Google, it makes immense sense to get more people online. “The company is targeting huge and untapped demographics who are entry-level users. Going forward, they will have a huge first-mover advantage if there is scope to monetise Google’s services,” explained Lakshané.

By 2020, about 315 million rural Indians will be connected to the Internet, compared to around 120 million now. That’s about 36% of the country’s online population. By 2020, this share of rural India will jump to 48%, creating a huge opportunity for brands and marketers in places where establishing stores is a challenge,” says a study by the Boston Consulting Group, The Rising Connected Consumer in Rural India.

The first signs of this market potential were evident during the pre-Diwali online festival season sale. E-tailers posted growth in sales compared to last year thanks to growing smartphone penetration in small towns and villages, cheaper data tariffs and free hotspots. While Google did not divulge the exact revenues that it is spending on ISP, Chadha said it has helped the company to understand the needs of users in rural areas and what role the Internet can play.

Along with ISP, Google is also working with the Indian government on two projects that aims to give more people access to the Internet.

First, the Project Loon, which uses high-altitude balloons to create an aerial wireless network with up to 4G speeds for providing Internet access to rural and remote areas.

Second, the company is partnering with RailTel to provide free wi-fi access in stations.

“The ISP has no immediate profits for Google. The average revenue Indian per user is less than say a user in US. But getting more people online helps Google because its search engine is most used,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director, CIS, told HT. “In the long run, the company will earn when people access its services and also from advertising revenue.”

Nevertheless, the ISP is addressing a major problem. “Many are afraid to go online because they don’t know how they can benefit. While the Saathi programme is not a philanthropic effort, it’s good that Google is addressing this issue through its training programmes,” Prakash said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-october-28-2016-kumkum-dasgupta-bridging-the-gap

Not Everyone Plays by the Rules in the Digital Playground: Addressing Online Child Sexual Exploitation

praskrishna — 2016-10-05T15:08:40Z

Japreet Grewal spoke at a panel on 'Prevention through Awareness and Education' at a meeting titled 'Not Everyone Plays by the Rules in the Digital Playground:Addressing Online Child Sexual Exploitation' that was organised by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, Singapore (ICMEC) and TULIR - Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse, India on October 3-4, 2016 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

Click the links below to access:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/not-everyone-plays-by-the-rules-in-the-digital-playground-addressing-online-child-sexual-exploitation

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:54:47Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries in Wikipedia gender gap narrowing on both local (India) and global scales.

This is the third (last) part of the blog series, please see Part 1 and Part 2.

Responding to the Wikipedia gender gap problem, former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner set a target in 2011 to raise the female editor percentage to 25% by 2015. In an interview in August 2014, Jimmy Wales declared that “we’ve completely failed,” Gardner also noted that the solutions should come from local Wikipedian communities rather than from the Foundation on a macro scale.

Although the target was not met, initiatives and reforms taken places globally and locally in the past five years are not fruitless. And as mentioned in Part 2, we should not define this movement as merely pursuing a goal towards certain percentage or number. As for now dialogue has been created to include the issue into more strategic plans; collectives are established to cumulate and share resources across communities. There has been abundance of learning (and definitely much more to learn) in the issue.

What has been done?

Be it ongoing or spontaneous, international or local, there have been many interventions trying to address the gender gap in Wikipedia.

Intervention events

In July 2015, WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was launched to “turn "redlinks (non-existing pages) into blue ones (existing pages).” The project encourages editors worldwide to create (or expand) female-related pages (biographies, women’s work, contribution, issues, etc.) that fit the notability criteria of Wikipedia. WiR also picks monthly and annual topics to feature. Currently in September, 2016, edit-a-thons on Women in nursing and women labour activists are happening online. And “Women scientists” edit-a-thon is a year-long featured topic for 2016. Although WiR is still primarily an English-WP project, some communities have expanded and localized it to local initiatives.

Coincidentally, in 2013, Indian Wikipedian communities have carried out one of the biggest and most well-known gender gap intervention – Lilavatis’ Daughters. “Lilavati’s Daughters” is a book of essay collections featuring nearly one hundred women scientists in Indian since the Victorian Era. The 2013 edit-a-thon was hence to create Wikipedia pages for these biographies in different Indian languages. Collaborating with institutions and colleges, the event was greeted with high popularity and success. Similar events were also carried out afterwards, including Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon which has been held annually since 2014; the last event was held in July, 2016 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Another significant initiative across the globe and in Indian communities is the annual Wikiwomen’s history month in March along with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8^th. The initiative started in 2012, edit-a-thons, photo-thons (updating photos onto Wikimedia Commons), and meetups have been held to raise the awareness of the gender gap online, create female-related content available on Wikipedia, and to strengthen the bonding between local Wikiwomen.

Recently, Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with the United Nations to launch the one-day Her Story project Edit-a-thon on August 12^th, 2016 to celebrate International Youth Day globally. Cities in India like Chennai and Delhi also held local edit-a-thons on the day of in response to the event. With the opportunity to work alongside the UN, it is a good sign that the Wikipedia gender gap issue is drawing global attention, not just in the Wikipedian community level, but also in global institution level.

Collaborative

The Wikiwomen’s Collaborative is a global platform for female Wikipedians to share projects, insights, and support. The Collaborative also encourages participants to write blog post on the Wikiwomen’s Blog to spread more words about the gender gap issue and initiatives. A Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF) was founded in 2013 aiming to challenge the patriarchal culture of knowledge and Wikipedia. GGTF tries to fix the encyclopedia’s imbalance power structure by initiating discussion and examination on its policies and editor interaction. It has also been a place to cumulate research studies and resources on the gender gap topic. A (global) gender gap mailing list is also created to spread the news and words with more communities.

Improvement in the Interface

Aside from events and collectives organized by respective communities, the Wikipedia platform itself has also been under constant transition in the last few years, trying to create a friendlier place for women and newcomers.

Since June 2012, the new prototype Visual Editor has become available in more and more language versions of Wikimedia projects – including most Indian languages. Visual Editor enables editor to contribute without learning the Wiki markups, as it creates the “write-as-how-you-will-see-it” feature requiring only basic typing skills. Nevertheless, Visual Editor does have several limitations comparing to the traditional edit source option, including slower speed, unavailable in talk and discussion namespaces, limited template editing options, and so on. While a research in 2013 on Visual Editor’s use in English Wikipedia showed low effectiveness of the new feature in attracting and encouraging new editors, more research should also be done in the non-English (especially Global South) context. Online tutorial resources about editing are also becoming available in Indian communities.

Traditional Wiki markup editing screenshot

Visual Editor screenshot

On the other hand, mobile apps of Wikipedia has been improved in its editing function. Although the apps are still in constant development to make the function smoother and easier for mobile users, it is a great breakthrough for those who do not have personal computers to contribute in small ways (or even in great ways – some have created pages and denied the statement that mobile editing is impractical).

What’s more to be learned?

There is no denying that our Indian language communities have been putting efforts to highlight and address the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. The Wikiconference India 2016 in August also had a panel responding to this topic where panelists from both outreach and research threads proposed localized perspective and strategies to fix the problem.

However, there are still much more to be learned. First of all, we need a more organized feedback loop (a cycle of planning-executing-evaluating-sharing learning) for local interventions to learn from our success and mistakes. Secondly, the issue has to become more “public” in a sense that we are not just promoting within our own circles. Awareness-building through media coverage and institutional collaboration can bring in greater public opinions and volunteers to help the online encyclopedia become a more inclusive place. The third point is a change of mindset: women's feeling and experience should be put forward into the central of our initiatives and interventions.

“We made it clear that we were focusing on the (female) participants and their experience, the content they created online are of course important too, but that’s just the by-product.” -Wikiconference Indian 2016 Gender Gap panel presenter

In other words, as we are engaging more and more women, the focus should not be numbers but the humans. At the same time, we should always encourage women to stand out and speak out. As mentioned in the previous part, gender discrimination cases have not yet been reported in our communities, but we also have to ensure if it does happen both the female editors and the community should have a certain level of awareness (what constitutes harassment/discrimination/sexism; when and how to call out) and a report and support mechanism to the problem.

The road to a real equalized knowledge system is not easy. As many have noticed and pointed out “This is not just a Wikipedia problem!” Indeed, similar gender imbalance exists in our academies, IT industries, free and open-source software (FOSS) workplace, to name a few. Nonetheless, with the flexibility and the strong bond that Indian Wikipedian communities possess, we can be one of the pioneers in positive changes. After all, the knowledge created and action taken today will shape what our tomorrow can be like.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-3

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:55:39Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

In the last part of the blog series, we examined the definition and danger of the Wikipedia gender gap. This issue has been puzzling for many – why is there such a wide gap globally?

Why is there a gender gap?

The reasons behind the Wikipedia gender gap are complex and culturally-sensitive. Two main types of barriers are discussed as “inside of Wikipedia (internal)” and “outside of Wikipedia (external).”

Internal	External
Challenges using Wiki mark-up and its interface	Limited access to internet and facilities
(rare in India) Challenges in getting help from community members	Lack of skills
(rare in India) Being discriminated as a newcomer	Lack of confidence
(rare in India) Experience of discriminative behavior/conflicts	Limited time
The fear of becoming “visible” as one of the few female in the community	Preference to more socially interactive online activities (Lack of interest)
	Awareness - not knowing Wikipedia is editable

(From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience)

India v.s. the World

Unfortunately, most studies have been done in English Wikipedia and rarely in other smaller language communities, despite the fact that these barriers can vary a lot in different cultural, political, and economic context. In India, practitioners and researchers have identified a few potential causes of low female participation rate on Wikipedia. Contrary to what was discovered in the English Wikipedia, researchers have found that Indian female Wikipedians are generally more active and willing to participate in both online and offline interactions compared to those in the English Wikipedia community. Reports of gender discrimination cases are also fewer than those in the Western context. A possible explanation to both phenomena is that Indian Wikipedian communities are rather small and close-knitted which encourage more interpersonal networking and prevent anonymous attacks[1].

Awareness

However, recruiting and keeping female Wikipedians in India do have its own barriers to overcome. “Awareness” is discovered as one of the very primary barriers for most to start editing Wikipedia. Many did not know that the online encyclopedia is easily editable, and even more have not heard of (or are unfamiliar with the use of) Wikipedia. Outreach events are important portals for both men and women to discover and join local Wikipedia communities. And this is where weakness can be turned into strength; as most newcomers are brought in through community outreach events or personal connection, it creates a strong bond within the members and a more welcoming culture featuring collectivism rather than individualism.

On the societal level?

Although the binary categorization of inside and outside of Wikipedia is widely used, it can easily lead us to believe that we can draw a clear line in between Wikipedia and the offline world, but neglect the big picture which shapes both sides of the table. Ignoring the fundamental (societal) level of the issue and its linkage to other factors poses the risk of nurturing a symptom-fixing solution instead of a system-questioning culture.

For example, societal factors such as expectation on women’s/girls’ role and priority in her family can prevent them from the access to required facilities, internet, training, and personal leisure time for joining (or continuing editing) Wikipedia. On the psychological experience side, some women reported that they do not feel comfortable when being so “visible” online and in the community[2]; and this has a lot to do with how our online (and offline) society has been constructed and conceptualized as an “unsafe” space for women.

In fact, Wagner et al. (2015)[3] have found that a nation’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) is associated to the country’s editor gender bias on Wikipedia. Although it was a study focusing on Global North samples, the logic behind is most likely applicable in India (which ranked 130 out of 188 countries’ GII in 2014) – as the more unequally women is treated in the society, the less likely that she can reach the pre-requisite to be a Wikipedian, or even be online. For example, in India there is a much lower literacy rate for female than male – 53.7% to 75.3% as reported in the 2011 Census. At the same time, population (above the age of 25) with at least some secondary education is 56.6% for male and only 27% for female in India based on the UN Human Development Report.

All these societal factors and nuances feed into the gaps we see today – in higher academic positions, in industries, and eventually in Wikipedia. It is definitely not easy to address the macro-scale problems, but what we can do is to change it from the community level to influence individuals and the society. Hence, we are not just battling against an online phenomenon created by individuals’ unwillingness to participate, but challenging and redressing the patriarchal power while transforming the traditions of how knowledge flows. After all, bridging the gender gap should not be merely a target of “We will reach X% female participation rate by Y years,” it has much greater potential and responsibility in the long run for our generations and societies.

In the next part of the blog series, we talk about: What has been done? & What’s more to be learned?

[1] From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience and from WCI 2016 presentation:

[2] Jadine, L., (2013). Same Gaps Different Experience

[3] Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-2

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

ting — 2016-09-21T10:13:59Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

“Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors…. only 8.5% of editors are women.”

Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only 3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been silenced and forgotten?

What is the Wikipedia gender gap?

There are two main focus on the gender gap within Wikipedia – the editor demographic and the coverage of topics – which are essentially flip sides of a coin. With fewer female contributors, we are losing a more diverse knowledge platform for all. But the issue is far more complex than simply having less information about “friendship bracelets” than “baseball cards.”

Looking at the biography pages on Wikipedia, researchers found that not only is the number of female biographies much lower than males’ (due to historical factors, availability of firsthand sources, and editors’ interest), but the linguistic and topical bias within also presents a male-centered discourse. For example, on women’s biography pages, words related to one’s gender such as “women,” “female,” “lady” will be used more commonly than the counterpart words in men’s pages; and that a women’s biography will have more information about her marriage and family life than her male counterpart’s. Studies also found that female-related articles are more likely to be linked to male-related ones but not the other way around[1]. This demonstrates that the editing preference, styles, and content are closely related to the editors’ genders and how they see the world. In other words, language and knowledge cannot be separated from one’s gender – the Internet may be bodiless but it can never become genderless[2].

Wagner et al.’s paper[3] in early 2016 also confirmed the existence of a “glass ceiling” for female figures to be considered “notable” enough to have a Wikipedia bio page (or for the page not to be deleted). Who gets to decide what is “notable enough” becomes questionable when we understand the gender bias. As a matter of fact, while the difference in male and female biography numbers is narrower for globally known figures, a larger gender gap exists for “local hero(ine)s” because of the notability threshold applied. That is to say, many women and female-related topics are underrepresented (and underappreciated) on Wikipedia.

The danger and why it matters

Low awareness

The Wikipedia gender gap is problematic and deserves more attention than ever not only because gender imbalance should be tackled both online and offline, but also that this imbalance is so prevalent and has been taken for granted by most. Little do people consider, that with every single “click” on one’s google search, we can be provided with an answer from a single-gender narration. This imbalance and its problems are behind the scene – the share of male and female editors are never on the surface without a holistic survey. While gender balance has been pushed in our business, education, and government sectors, the online encyclopedia feeding billions of internet users (and over 300 million in India itself) is still constructed in a male-dominant culture with little questioning from the public.

Legacy and influence

There is the saying that Internet is changing the human default from “forgetting” into “remembering.” Wikipedia can serve as a great tool for digitization of knowledge and the preservation of languages. What is to be recorded now will become parts of (perhaps the most accessible) history in the future, and we cannot afford a history without women’s voices and knowledge. Hence, to include more women editors and women-related content is not simply out of a concern of diversity, it is to ensure that this time we can pass on the legacy in a better and more equitable fashion for the whole population.

The vicious circle

“We’ve to participate in meet ups and workshops, then question (from family members) arises like how many guys are there, is there any girl or not. In one sentence we're discouraged by our surrounding.”

– Female editor from local community

The urgency of this problem is that the lesser women are presented in the communities, the harder a motivation can be established for new female editors to join. Now that we have made this issue visible, the core mission we have is to ensure a change in the system and environment that helps women feel more welcomed and comfortable – even when they are aware that they are the minority.

In the next part of this blog series: Why is there a Gender Gap?

[1] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, & Menczer, (2015). First women second sex: gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (pp165).

Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

[2] Code, L. (2000). Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London: Routledge

[3] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-1

Wikiwomen’s Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka

ting — 2016-09-01T14:39:53Z

Karnataka is known for its diverse linguistic cultures. Aside from Kannada, many are native speakers of Konkani, Tulu, and other languages. A small Wikiwomen's meetup was held on Saturday, August 27th at St. Agnes College, Mangalore, to invite female Wikipedians from the region. Many of them were new to the online encyclopedia but demonstrated strong interest in learning and contributing more Indic language content online.

A Wikiwomen’s meetup was held at St. Agnes College on August 27^th in the hope to strengthen the bonding and communication between female Wikipedians in Mangalore. Attendees of the meetup on Saturday included five Kannada Wikipedian, one Konkani Wikipedian, one from the recently gone live Tulu Wikipedia, and Ting-Yi Chang from the CIS A2K team. Two of the Kannada Wikipedians are staff and faculty members of the College’s library and Department of Kannada respectively. Both were brought into Wikipedia by edit-a-thons held on the college campus in the last few months

The meetup started off with a round of brief self-introduction and an inspiring introductory presentation by Dhanalakshimi K T, a St. Agnes commerce student who had successfully organized the last two women’s edit-a-thons on her campus.

“Wikipedia is a great tool for knowledge sharing. When we edit in our own languages, people from outside of the city who don’t speak English can learn things more easily online.... It is the respect and passion I have for my language."

The presentation also touched upon some feasible benefits that editors gains through participating in Wikipedia/media projects: improvement in writing and research skills, nurturing a critical thinking habit when reading texts and doing research, learnings from collaborative work experience, improvement in language and communication skills, etc. One of the participants later mentioned that with the hobby of editing Wikipedia, she began actively researching in her interested topics. Even in occasions when she had no time to actually update the content onto Wikipedia, the knowledge she gained throughout the research process has already enriched her and broadened her horizon of the subject.

The second half of the presentation consists of an introduction to the 5 pillars rules and some other advice of Wikipedia editing. Participants who were newcomers showed great interest and actively raised questions surrounding the use of different editing tools including the infobox templates, translation tools, useful markups, and personal sandboxes.

When being asked about the barriers they have faced so far in editing Wikipedia, most agreed that time issues do prevent them sometimes as their offline commitments (work, family, school) can take priority over it. However, most participants also concluded that “those who are truly interested will eventually find the time.” On the other hand, access to internet and facilities has not been reported as a barrier in their cases, but all agreed that it can be for many other women. Awareness was emphasized as a crucial factor when trying to bring in more women to Wikipedia. One of the student participants shared her experience,

“Some people may have never heard of Wikipedia before; some misunderstood its use and potential… when I talked about Kannada Wikipedia with my peers, first they thought it was some website for Kannada stories writing…. But when I explained to them what it is and how we can edit, they were all very excited and very much wanted to try."

In the latter discussion of the meetup, participants talked about the tentative event plans for the next few months. Two sessions were suggested to be held by November, 2016. One as a workshop for the newcomers and the other as an editing event for more experienced female Wikipedians. All participants, old and new, are really excited to strengthen the bonding between Wikiwomens in Mangalore. Some suggested there should be more casual meetups every few weeks to help them communicate more and plan upcoming community events, including an ongoing event that can be held in March, 2017 for the International Women’s Day and Wikiwomen’s History Month.

The meetup continued with more discussion on various language Wikipedias’ development. As an experienced Wikipedian and an actively outreaching community member, participant Harriet Vidyasagar explained the complexity in Konkani Wikipedia, which contains five scripts, and the importance of those scripts in Konkani language’s history and culture. All participants agreed that seeing their mother tongues’ scripts online and creating more content to make their culture and language visible are a great source of happiness and a motivation for them to continue editing. The session ended with exchange of contacts and group pictures.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-explores-potentials-and-plans-of-women-editors-in-mangalore-karnataka

The Gay Pride Charade

nishant — 2016-07-25T01:10:28Z

For most of the milllenials, news is formed by trends, what goes viral, and often open to speculation, projection, manipulation and deceit.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 3, 2016.

The world of social media can be a minefield of misinformation, and it does get difficult to verify facts and ensure the veracity of the information that comes to us on the winged notifications of our apps. This becomes starkly clear in times of crises. Hence, when the historic and heinous shootout at a gay night club in Orlando, USA, shook the world with horror and grief a couple of weeks ago, when the first tweets appeared on my timeline, my initial reaction was denial. Instead of believing those first responders, I was already searching for more credible news lines that could confirm — or hopefully deny — the massacre. It took only a few minutes, though, to realise that #StandWithOrlando was a reality that we will have to accommodate in the story of continued violence and abuse of sexual minorities around the world.

However, not all deception is bad. One of the most fantastic responses to the shoot-out was from a Quebec-based satirical website called JournalDemourreal.com that published a photoshopped image showing the Canadian PM Justin Trudeau kissing the leader of the Canadian opposition party Tom Mulcair, with a headline that the two, despite their differences, are “united against homophobia”. I know that I liked this fake story four times on different newsfeeds, half-believing, half-wishing that it was true, before I realised that it is a hoax. Morphed as it might be, the doctored image enabled people to talk about the tragedy as demanding a personal and a policy-level action, ranging from acceptance and freedom, to control of guns and protecting the rights of life and dignity for the sexual minorities who continue to remain persecuted in the world.

The image also allowed many queer people in different parts of the world — especially in the countries where homosexuality continues to be criminalised and severely punished — to participate not only in the global grief but also to demand that their governments take more responsibility towards its queer population.

While this photoshopped picture was making the rounds, another tweet showed up on my timeline. This time it was a tweet from our media-savvy PM, Narendra Modi, who claimed that he was “shocked at the shootout in Orlando.”And further added that his “thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families and the injured”. When I saw this tweet, my reaction again, was that this must be another joke. Because even as queer rights activists in the country struggle to fight for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, through their curative petitions in the Supreme Court in India, PM Modi’s government has continued its hateful diatribe against queer people in the country. His party has called homosexuality “anti-Indian” and “anti-family”. The party’s favourite, Baba Ramdev, continues his hate speech, offering to cure homosexuality through yoga.

Ever since the current government took power, documented hate crimes against queer people have more than doubled in the country. So when the PM decided to offer his condolences to those in Orlando, I figured that either it was a fake Twitter account masquerading as the PM or it was some kind of a hacker troll — maybe Anonymous, the online guerrilla activists, who recently took over ISIS- friendly websites and filled them up with information about male homosexuality as a response to the shoot-out — had taken control of the Twitter account. But it turned out that this piece of information was not photoshopped or hacked. It was actually true, and we were to believe in earnest that while the government doesn’t care about the millions of queer people being denied their rights to live and love in their country, it is heartbroken about what happened in the USA.

It does make you wonder about the world we live in, where a photoshopped image sounded more plausible than an undoctored tweet. It emphasises why Orlando cannot be treated as one isolated instance in another country, but that #WeAreOrlando. For right now, Orlando is also in India. It is a reminder that while we have been fortunate not to have such an instance of dramatic violence, there are millions of people in the country who are forced to live and die in deception for their sexual orientation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-july-3-2016-gay-pride-charade