raveetawrites.com

11/03/2020

10/03/2020

"Equality for all women will only be achieved when we recognise the women and girls who are overlooked or glossed over by some IWD events. Women’s Day started off in America in around 1908 and is often considered an Anglocentric movement and celebration.

In fact, women of all backgrounds have contributed to this movement throughout history. Take the virginity testing on British soil of immigrant women from the Indian subcontinent as an example. Is the fight against this vicious government enforced violation of brown women known by many?"

https://www.iambirmingham.co.uk/2020/03/08/opinion-celebrate-international-womens-day-raveeta-banger/

Why do I celebrate International Women's Day? When this question was posed to me, I paused for a minute. It almost felt like a loaded question. ‘Why’ is IW

07/03/2020

NEW BLOG ALERT 🗣⚠️

https://raveetawrites.com/2020/03/06/pamli-weds-sarah-ps-love-wins/

"I think it’s important to be visible. When I came out to my parents, one of the comments I received was “this doesn’t happen in our culture”.

Maybe if I had seen couples who were South Asian or Desi and openly gay, I probably wouldn’t have hid who I was for so long. The best thing I ever did was come out…a massive weight was lifted…and I felt like I could now live my most authentic life. I could finally be true to myself no matter what others thought of me."

Pamli and Sarah are in a mixed race same-sex marriage. Sarah is British Irish Jamaican Turkish and Pamli is British Indian Punjabi. The two met in 2015 and married on the 12th of April in 2019. Soo…

05/03/2020

Trigger warning: distressing images

This is awful - Delhi police have a lot to answer for.

02/03/2020

01/03/2020

27/02/2020

27/02/2020

22/02/2020

NEW POST ⚠️

"With an interesting selection of papers chosen to both critique and celebrate a film that so many of us grew up watching, the symposium will make for an interesting day of academic discussion and debate."

https://raveetawrites.com/2020/02/22/bcu-symposium-sholay-at-45/

Following on from my blog on the iconic Bollywood film Sholay (1975), and the call for papers for the ‘Sholay at 45’ symposium at Birmingham City University (BCU), I share with all inte…

17/12/2019

As we close out the , we recognize that the defining characteristic of the last 10 years has been the rise of youth activists; in many ways, Malala Yousafzai was among the first to lead the charge. ⁣
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In 2012, when Malala was just 15 years old, an armed member of the Taliban tried to kill her for speaking out about girls' right to learn. She survived the assassination attempt and went on to become one of the most famous teenagers in the world, building a global movement to demand girls' right to an education. She cofounded the Malala Fund, wrote a book, and at 17 years old, became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. ⁣
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For our final cover of the decade, we talked to the now 22-year-old Malala about education, healing from trauma, and why the 2020s will be defined by youth change-making: http://tnvge.co/l2Mj7PZ

16/12/2019

This is doing the rounds on twitter. What an irresponsible article. Britain is home to many British muslims who have NO plans of leaving. Address the apprehensions and real concerns raised by British Muslims - yes, but don't assume this is the consensus. You think this blokes gonna push British Muslims out? It's called resistance.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/15/british-muslims-start-leaving-uk-boris-johnson-wins-election-11911078/

One Muslim father said: ‘I’m scared for my personal safety, I worry about my children’s future.’

11/12/2019

🗣🗣

Sanna Marin, the newly-elected prime minister of Finland, will be the youngest sitting country leader in the world and is the daughter of same-sex parents.

09/12/2019

By winning the Miss Universe pageant, Zozibini Tunzi became the first black woman from her country to wear the crown.

28/11/2019

Students need to be taught about colonialism's dark past.

26/11/2019

26/11/2019

GOOD!!!

Protests had an adverse affect on pupils and 21 teachers were treated for stress, a judge says.

15/11/2019

As a child, one of my grandmothers was undeniably partial to my younger brother. There was nothing covert about it. It was glaring. It was loud. It was hurtful. Before I was even old enough to form…

11/11/2019

Birmingham Library!

09/11/2019

https://thewire.in/film/review-landless-disrupts-the-popular-understanding-of-caste-and-land-relations

The film is not a mundane truth-telling exercise and does not take a moral high-ground. It is a complex telling of the struggles of landless Dalit mazdoors in Punjab.

08/11/2019

The incident took place in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.

07/11/2019

WHAT. A. HYPOCRITE.

Virginity test discussed on Ladies Like Us podcast contravenes guidelines from UN, who describe it as ‘painful, humiliating and traumatic’

07/11/2019

550 tress have been planted in Coventry to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji - the founding Guru of the Sikh faith.

06/11/2019

White people adopt black and brown kids all the time, but ok.

A British couple who claim they were advised they couldn't adopt a "white child" because of their Indian heritage have taken a council to...

06/11/2019

"Ravidasi movement did not just take off in the 19th century. Ravidas had a pan North Indian presence for many centuries and had his roots going all the way to the time of Buddha. It is just that Dalit history remains to be written."

https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/brahmanical-reporting-of-history-of-ravidas-mandir-in-tuglaqabad

In an article by Shoaib Daniyal, published in www.scroll.in under the title Why are angry Dalits recalling a Delhi sultan to protest the demolition of a bhakti saint’s temple? It is stated “They claim that the plot on which the shrine stood was gifted to the sect by Sikandar Lodi six centuries a...

06/11/2019

"The University of Birmingham refused to investigate the complaint, as the alleged incident happened off campus. Instead, they offered to send Alice’s alleged attacker a letter reminding him of the university’s code of conduct. He never faced disciplinary action from the university."

https://thetab.com/uk/birmingham/2019/10/10/i-was-r***d-by-a-birmingham-student-and-the-uni-only-offered-to-send-a-letter-to-my-attacker-42524

'The whole experience of dealing with the complaint was almost as bad as the night itself'

04/11/2019

Shocking

15/10/2019

NEW BLOG POST ⚠️

“Talking about what happened to me publicly gave me the confidence to raise the much needed awareness on sexual violence – an issue that I am starting to see a lot of people failing to understand...”

https://raveetawrites.com/2019/10/15/interview-surviving-marital-rape/

On July 15th 2019 Mandeep Hayre shared her experience of trauma incited by sexual violence. In a powerful twitter thread Mani (her preferred name) owned her voice and story by calling out her rapis…

30/09/2019

A man was brutally beaten by a gang with steel bars after kissing his boyfriend goodbye in the early morning outside his flat in Dublin.

24/09/2019

18/09/2019

Dispelling the myth that only people from 'certain castes' are the primary landowners in Panjab.

"According to the Punjab Village Common Lands Regulation Act, 1961, one-third of the common village land managed by the panchayats are reserved for Dalits. Most of this land, however, has been occupied by upper-caste landowners who allegedly field dummy Dalit candidates in yearly auctions and bid at a higher price than most Dalit farmers can afford."

https://thewire.in/video/watch-punjab-land-wars-dalit-farmers

A mass movement for land rights called the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee is gaining momentum across Punjab.

02/09/2019

NEW BLOG ⚠️

TRIGGER WARNING: SU***DE

"I saw the aftermath of su***de. The devastation it caused our family. The devastation it caused his family. Someone I loved lost their battle with mental health without ever opening up to anyone and without ever seeking professional help. I don’t think for a moment that my brother would have left this world the way he did had he known what was to come for the people who loved him so deeply: the confusion, the hurt, the anger, the anguish, the sorrow. All of it."

https://raveetawrites.com/2019/08/30/surviving-su***de-as-a-loved-one/

This blog comes with a trigger warning. For the second entry in the mental health blog series I interview a South Asian Man who tragically lost a family member to su***de and shortly after falls in…

02/09/2019

So many awesome sweet dishes from India. It's also gluten free which is great for allergens (and relatively healthy). Must add this to my 'to try' list when I visit India.

02/09/2019

So worth watching!

31/08/2019

Mia khalifa 🗣

21/08/2019

By Nadeem Badshah THE move to add more texts from ethnic minority writers to the GCSE English syllabus has been welcomed by authors and academics, who have also called for more measures to “decolonise” the curriculum. Starting next month, schools will be offered more poems, plays and novels fr

14/08/2019

THERE WAS a time when ‘Jawaharlal Nehru’ was not a bad word and changing the course of rivers was considered the acme of development. When dams were big and dreams bigger. When Mumbai mills produced cotton and women who returned after studying abroad were considered novelties. Post-independent I...

13/08/2019

Trigger warning: self harm

30/07/2019

19/07/2019

"Women, like Sakshi Mishra, who are in inter-caste and inter-faith marriages are exposed to extreme torture and coercion at the hands of their families and communities. A few months back, a newly-wed couple in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar was set on fire for marrying outside their caste. So deeply ingrained is the caste prejudice, that anyone who transgresses caste boundaries is eliminated."

We may not be setting couples on fire in the diaspora but inter-caste marriages are still frowned upon by significant sections of our societies. It is deeply engrained.

https://feminisminindia.com/2019/07/19/sakshi-mishra-infringement-right-to-inter-caste-marriage/

In the video, Sakshi Mishra, daughter of Rajesh Mishra, the MLA, alleged that her father and his goons were out to kill her because she married a Dalit man by her own will.