-The Hindu Barely days after the controversy surrounding Kamal Haasan’s movie Vishwaroopam rocked the world of cinema, a painting exhibition at the Delhi Art Gallery in Hauz Khas village here on Monday was targeted by activists of Durga Vahini, women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who disrupted the private show for sometime. Although the VHP claimed that it had stopped the show, the Police said the exhibition was very much on...

-The Hindu It has seen action on several occasions, starting in 1990 during the riots in Bijnor in western Uttar Pradesh The Durga Vahini or Durga brigade appeared in the early 1990s at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement: its objective was to band together Hindu nationalism’s female “youth.” This organisation, like the Bajrang Dal, too, stresses defence — especially self-defence — of young Hindu women, including training in the use of...

-The Hindu As Kashmir’s civil society and cultural groups remain lifeless, separatists have a field day to get the all-girl band shut Despite Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s reassuring tweets, the teenage members of the Valley’s first all-women rock band have gone into hiding immediately after receiving a threat of ‘social boycott’ from the Dukhataarn-e-Millat, a radical women’s outfit. Coming as it did after the fatwa from Kashmir’s head mufti, this...

-The Indian Express While most incidents of rapes and molestation are never reported because of the social stigma attached to the crime, these, ironically, still form a bulk of the crimes against women that get registered with the Police. The reporting of many other crimes, for example foeticide, is abysmally low. The number of cases registered for foeticide in the entire country in 2011 was only 132. In the two preceding years, this...

-The Hindu With the exception of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, hardly anyone of consequence has supported Pragaash, the Valley’s first all-girl rock band, the members of which have gone into hiding after receiving a threat of ‘social boycott’ from the Dukhataarn-e-Millat, a radical women’s outfit. Three fresh Facebook pages have come up with nearly 1,000 supportive posts in the past four days but most...