Incremental change
By Pawan Dhall
Civil rights champion, political activist and poet Irom Chanu Sharmila may have lost in the recent Manipur Legislative Assembly elections. But all is not lost. Perhaps her defeat was expected,...
Pawan Dhall is a Kolkata-based queer activist, archivist, researcher and writer. He was a founding member of Counsel Club, Kolkata (1993-2002), among India’s earliest queer support groups, and edited its house journal 'Pravartak'. He worked with SAATHII from 2002-14 on universal access to health and social justice. He is now associated with Varta Trust as Founding Trustee. His latest publications include 'Queer Potli: Memories, Imaginations and Re-imaginations of Urban Queer Spaces in India' (Queer Ink, 2019) and 'Out of Line and Offline: Queer Mobilizations in ‘90s Eastern India' (Seagull Books, 2020).
By Pawan Dhall
Civil rights champion, political activist and poet Irom Chanu Sharmila may have lost in the recent Manipur Legislative Assembly elections. But all is not lost. Perhaps her defeat was expected,...
By Pawan Dhall
State Bank of India told to include ‘transgender’ option in its examination forms. Kolkata, March 16, 2017: After the West Bengal Public Service Commission (WBPSC) in December last year, today the...
By Pawan Dhall
So the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India has launched an adolescent health resource kit that includes information on sexual and reproductive health, mental health, violence, substance...
By Pawan Dhall
I think I’m passing through a happy hours phase. No, not for guzzling beer or cheap Internet services; rather this is about being invigorated by the arts in all their...
By Pawan Dhall, Prosenjit Pal
The organizing of ‘Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk’ has often generated heated debates. These have thrown up many pertinent questions time and again on how inclusive and effective the walk is....
By Pawan Dhall
Pawan Dhall previews a choreographic presentation queer not just in content but in form too Three hundred and seventy-seven acts of intimacy between two men . . . on a...
By Pawan Dhall
A conversation with primary school teacher Atri Kar who recently succeeded in getting the West Bengal Public Service Commission (WBPSC) to include ‘transgender’ as a gender option in its application...
By Pawan Dhall
Christmas is in the air, and the New Year is nigh. Given as we are to stock taking this time of the year (as if there’s not a New Year...
By Pawan Dhall, Prosenjit Pal
Prosenjit Pal and Pawan Dhall were at the ‘Hang Out with KRPF’, a queer evening of arts and adda graciously hosted by Alliance Française du Bengale, Kolkata on December 2, 2016...
By Pawan Dhall
The West Bengal Administrative Tribunal directs WBPSC to include 'transgender' in its forms. Kolkata, December 5, 2016: Transgender rights received a strong morale booster in West Bengal today! Atri Kar, a...
By Pawan Dhall
In childhood I remember using an assortment of toys to construct entire cities complete with houses, offices, markets, hospitals and roads busy with humans, animals and cars. Some of these...
By Pawan Dhall
Spring cleaning in any season can lead to some invaluable finds tucked away in forgotten corners. The handout below – well, excerpts from a handout – is the result of...
By Pawan Dhall
Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in...
By Pawan Dhall
Come autumn and they say love is in the air. Or is it in memories and thoughts triggered by scenes in another time, another place?
By Pawan Dhall
Varta brings you the ‘Queer Kolkata Oral History Project’, an initiative to document five decades of queer lives in Kolkata (1960-2000). Our aim in this project is to go back in...
By Pawan Dhall, Vahista Dastoor
Hasn’t the subject of gender and sexuality been done to death? Isn’t it all over the media in ever more tantalizing formats?