Talk:Bishnupriya Dutt
Bishnupriya Dutt is a professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University[1] as of May 2023. According to her university profile, her area of research interest is Theatre histories (modern and contemporary), Feminist histories of theatre and performance, and Marxist cultural movements. Popular culture.
In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation
"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, Adivasis, and other dissident Hindus. Women in these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."[2]
In her work “Performing Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India," she she openly declares that Hindu dharma is an "oppressive religion."
[edit]
- Dutt, Bishnupriya. “Performing Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India.” Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 25, no. 3, July 2015, pp. 371–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2015.1049823.
- In this article, the author, Bishnupriya Dutt, claims that the BJP portrays women as motherly figures and Goddesses and ignores their sexuality. The author in an out of context manner, brings up the Nirbhaya rape case, which took place in 2012 in New Delhi (2 years prior to the formation of the national BJP government) to make the case that woman should be given to power due to the sexualization of their body. She ignores the fact that law and order is a local government issue and not a national governance concern in India. Bishnupriya considers the de-sexualization of the woman's body as oppressive because (as she explains) it comes from the Hindu Ideology. She would prefer that Indian political parties let prostitutes be promoted in politics. She openly declares that Hindu dharma is an "oppressive religion". Some of her key points include:
- “communal parties, particularly the BJP, base their active propaganda on the purity and respectability of ‘Woman’. This is an aggressive mobilization around the figure and de-sexualized body of a woman, often equated as the ‘mother goddess’. Very dependent on such iconography and symbolism, the new communal groups launched a massive blitzkrieg to create ideological support.
- "Mainstream media, cinema, reality shows, and religious practices have all concentrated on propagating the cult of the woman emanating from a hegemonic and oppressive Hindu religious ideology.”
- "In the context of a capitalist society where fashion and cosmetics are important industries, even the worship of goddesses has been commercialized and turned into a way to control and commodify women."
- “Within the neoliberal atmosphere and free market economy where fashion and cosmetics are two big industries, the entire religious goddess worship cult had to be reworked within the thin discourses of commodification, misogyny, and respectability.”
- In this article, the author, Bishnupriya Dutt, claims that the BJP portrays women as motherly figures and Goddesses and ignores their sexuality. The author in an out of context manner, brings up the Nirbhaya rape case, which took place in 2012 in New Delhi (2 years prior to the formation of the national BJP government) to make the case that woman should be given to power due to the sexualization of their body. She ignores the fact that law and order is a local government issue and not a national governance concern in India. Bishnupriya considers the de-sexualization of the woman's body as oppressive because (as she explains) it comes from the Hindu Ideology. She would prefer that Indian political parties let prostitutes be promoted in politics. She openly declares that Hindu dharma is an "oppressive religion". Some of her key points include:
- Diamond, Elin, et al. “Identity Politics Forum.” Theatre Research International, vol. 37, no. 1, Jan. 2012, pp. 63–63, https://doi.org/10.1017/s030788331100085x.
Publication in context of Theatre in India[edit]
- Dutt, Bishnupriya. “Introduction.” Theatre Research International, vol. 42, no. 3, 2017, pp. 323–326., doi:10.1017/S030788331700061X.
- Anan, Nobuko, et al. “Dossier: History, Memory, Event: A Working Archive.” Theatre Research International, vol. 37, no. 2, 2012, pp. 163–183., doi:10.1017/S0307883312000065.
- Dutt, Bishnupriya. “The Unsafe Spaces of Theatre and Feminism in India.” Theatre Research International, vol. 37, no. 1, 2012, pp. 77–79., doi:10.1017/S0307883311000812.
References[edit]
- ↑ [1] University profile accessed on 2, May 2023,
- ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022