Chapter 13: Where Are the Indian Feminists? ft. Japleen Pasricha
In 2012, the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi and the subsequent protests deeply shocked Japleen Pasricha. She was 23 years old, living in Delhi, and like many women of her generation, was once again coming to terms with how commonplace violence against women had become. As women and girls took to the streets demanding justice, she found herself thinking increasingly about women’s safety and rights and why so many voices still went unheard.
Japleen felt restless. She didn’t have a clear plan yet, but she knew she wanted to do something. A Facebook page was simple, immediate and within reach. It was a way to react immediately, before she knew the impulse would develop into something much bigger.
She started a site called Feminism in India (FII), a place where women could speak honestly, name what was unfair, and not be dismissed as too much.
She started a site called Feminism in India (FII), a place where women could speak honestly, name what was unfair, and not be dismissed as too much. “I didn’t start this as a for-profit business,” she says. “I had no business plan and no source of income. Nothing. It was just an inner calling.” She then published a personal blog where she wrote about feminism, gender, and her own experiences, including the occasional sexism she experienced in relationships. “It was mostly my personal frustrations and rants,” she says.
At that time, the 23-year-old was completing his master’s degree in German at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which was supposed to be the path to a doctorate. But when she submitted her dissertation in 2014, she knew she wanted to focus on gender and women’s rights instead. She eventually found work at a nonprofit that addressed gender-based violence. One reason she got the job was the Facebook page she had already created.
While working full-time, she kept thinking about turning FII into something more substantial: a website, a proper platform, something that could transcend personal frustrations and become a shared space. She had read American feminist websites to learn more about feminism, but they felt far removed from Indian reality. She kept asking herself a simple question: Where are the Indian feminists?
She wanted to both document them and connect them. She wanted younger feminists, especially those outside traditional activist networks, to be able to find each other. She also knew that much feminist writing remained inaccessible, either hidden behind paywalls, full of jargon, or too far removed from everyday life. She wanted something simpler, more immediate and closer to lived experience.
At the time, much mainstream media still treated gender as a secondary issue, reported on episodically, often after a spectacular act of violence. What she wanted instead was a space in which feminism could live in everyday language and everyday experience without losing its political edge.
She wanted feminist writing that felt less like entering a closed room and more like listening to someone speak clearly about a life you recognized. At the time, much mainstream media still treated gender as a secondary issue, reported on episodically, often after a spectacular act of violence. What she wanted instead was a space in which feminism could live in everyday language and everyday experience without losing its political edge.
In August 2014, with little money and no formal structure, Japleen started the website with the help of a friend. She invited bloggers her age to contribute. “I said, hey, I’m starting this website.” It will be a space for all of us to write about our experiences. Would you be interested?’ People slowly came in.
That same year, while still working full-time, she led FII’s first major digital campaign, inviting women to submit personal stories of sexual harassment as part of the “16 Days of Activism” campaign. She led the way with her own account of harassment on the Delhi metro. Sixteen stories were received. In 2015, the campaign won the Laadli Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity.
The answer confirmed to Japleen what she already knew: women were willing to talk. They needed a space that took their experiences seriously and didn’t reduce them to trauma porn or proper empowerment. Where their stories didn’t have to be translated into a more acceptable language before they could be heard.
In late 2015, FII began evolving into a bilingual, intersectional feminist media platform, publishing articles, running campaigns and workshops, and leading conversations on caste, queerness, disability, mental health and gender.
In 2016, Japleen quit her job and moved back in with her parents so that she could fully focus on FII. She didn’t want to build it through advertising or pressure from investors, so she started applying for grants instead. The early years were slow and uncertain: administrative paperwork, finances, legal structures, endless questions. But the platform continued to grow. What started as a Facebook page and blog gradually developed into a real institution.
Today, FII is led by a young team and has published thousands of articles from hundreds of contributors. But for Japleen, the more important fact is simpler: the platform exists and continues to exist in a media landscape that has little patience for independent feminist work.
Today, FII is led by a young team and has published thousands of articles from hundreds of contributors. But for Japleen, the more important fact is simpler: the platform exists and continues to exist in a media landscape that has little patience for independent feminist work. “I started the Facebook page around the time I was reflecting on my own feminist journey,” she says. “Today we are a team of twelve women under thirty-five who run FII English and FII Hindi.”
This growth was not easy. Funding is precarious and an independent feminist platform is rarely taken for granted. Japleen has often found that money comes with strings attached, whether spoken or unspoken: softening politics, making it more palatable, saying less about caste, gender, sexuality and power. She didn’t want to build something acceptable at the expense of honesty. The pressure is rarely dramatic. More often it is a hint, a tone of discomfort, the suggestion that feminist work is only welcome as long as it is not too unsettling. Keeping a platform like FII alive without giving in to these pressures meant seeing survival itself as part of the job.
At its core, FII has tried to stick to that. It was never intended to be a neutral platform in the way that mainstream media platforms often claim to be neutral. Japleen recognizes that the work is political because the lives it covers are political. What women wear, where they live, what violence they are exposed to, what decisions they can make, what they should tolerate – none of this is outside of politics.
Japleen recognizes that the work is political because the lives it covers are political. What women wear, where they live, what violence they are exposed to, what decisions they can make, what they should tolerate – none of this is outside of politics.
“I would rather do the right thing than chase donors who expect silence,” she says. Japleen did not come from media, journalism or the non-profit world. Her father ran a small business; Her mother was a housewife. Most of her relatives ran small businesses. There were no insider networks, no family friends in publishing, no one to tell her how it should all work. “I didn’t have a roadmap,” she says. “I am the first in my family to go this route.”
For Japleen, building FII wasn’t just about getting the policies right. It was also about learning everything else from the ground up: how to file, how to manage finances, how to hire employees, how to apply for grants, how to keep a team running, how to keep an idea alive long enough to become an organization.
The difficulty of this path is not unique to her. Women in India are still far less likely to have the money, support or networks they need to start their own business. Japleen knew this not initially as a statistic, but as a lived fact. She had no safety net to lean on and no clear example to follow. What she had was urgency, stubbornness and a refusal to wait for permission. “I built this with my own hands,” she says. “And if we managed to swim against the tide for a decade, that’s no small feat.” “We’ll keep swimming as long as we can.”
Excerpted with permission from Why The World Needs Angry Women by Nilanjana Bhowmick, Aleph Book Company.
Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organization with the aim of learning, educating and developing feminist sensibilities and decoding the F-word among the youth in India.
