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How Reading Indian Authors Rekindled My Love For Books

When the authors we read are predominantly white, we risk being othered, alienated, and bored even by the book in our hands.
Prem Sylvester

We Don't Need To Take Porn Away From Women To Help Them; We Just Need To Make Better Porn

"It’s not surprising that what we want to see in our porn, in the thing we turn to for pleasure, is sex that is consensual; sex in which pleasure runs both ways. And there are many people trying to create just this."
Richa Kaul Padte

A Stranger Watched Me Shower In A Hotel Room And It Could Happen To You Too

Hundreds of Indian women report being watched and recorded without consent every year. Hundreds more tolerate being stared at without saying a word. Where does India's obsession with voyeurism come from? And, more scarily, where does it lead?
Vijayta Lalwani

A Guide To Fighting Daily Casteism Around You

Here's a list of some of the stereotypical (and nonsensical) arguments upper castes put forth, and how you can counter them.
Tejas Harad

Me Too: How It Feels To Be Raped When You’re Eight Years Old

As Kathua has dominated news cycles, I've been in a psychological blackhole, getting reacquainted with memories I've repressed since I was a little girl with no words for what was being done to her.
S Qazi

By Glorifying Churchill, Britain Is Committing New Crimes Against India

In a post-Brexit cultural crisis, Britain is using cinema to glorify its past, even when that means glorifying a racist, evil man who let millions of Indians die.
Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Caste Broke Our Hearts And Love Cannot Put Them Back Together

I had been trained to know what good looks are (Brahmin) and what good queerness is (English-speaking).
Dhrubo Jyoti

What It Is Like To Live With Mental Illness In India

There is so much about mental illness that is not just unseen, but hopelessly misunderstood by the law, people, and Indian society.
Awanthi Vardaraj

How Selena Gomez’s Public Battle With Illness Helped Me Fight Mine

I was diagnosed with a life-altering autoimmune disease at 18. Every single day has been a struggle since. But whenever Selena drops a catchy new single, looking like the million bucks that she does, I find hope.
Sue Bhatt

4 Reasons Mandatory Attendance In Colleges Makes No Sense

JNU students are protesting against mandatory attendance. Here’s why you should too.
Arth Mani

What My Broken Vagina Taught Me About Pain And Sex In India

Indian women are told a lot of things about sex – when to have it, how much of it to have, who to have it with. We're just never told that it's supposed to feel good.
S. Kapoor

"Padmaavat" Is Every Upper Caste Hindu Male's Wet Dream

Everyone should be protesting the film – except the Karni Sena.
Annika Taneja

Say Hello to India’s Newest and Fastest-Growing Caste

They speak English as a first language, they're highly-educated, affluent, and urban. The Indo-Anglians are both India’s most visible and yet invisible caste.
Sajith Pai

WhatsApp Family Groups Are Keeping Indian Families Together — And Driving Some Apart

Family WhatsApp groups are now inseparable from the notion of the modern Indian family itself. But some Indians say they're also an insufferable obligation.
Pranav Dixit

You Are Not Alone In These Academic Agraharas

Some will probably label me a “non-meritorious” Dalit from the “reserved category”. But I am not ashamed of my identity and you shouldn't be either.
Tejaswini Tabhane

One Too Many Mishras: India's Supreme Court Is A Brahmin Bastion

The power tussle between the Chief Justice and his fellow judges has exposed the casteist core of India's judiciary.
Ravikiran Shinde

The Making Of A Hindutva Warrior

Kumar despised Muslims before he could count to ten. Now, having graduated from college with no job prospects, he divides his time between the offices of ABVP, BJP, and VHP. "Two hours here, three hours there. It’s how my days go."
Snigdha Poonam

How To Pitch To Dialogue

Interested in writing personal essays or cultural criticism for BuzzFeed India? Here's everything you need to know.
Visvak

Why It Is Dangerous To Be A "Chill Girl" In A World Dominated By Rape Culture

It’s been three months since I started a firestorm of sexual harassment allegations against High Spirits. Here’s what I’ve learned about how toxic spaces keep young women quiet – and coming back.
Sheena Dabholkar

My English Isn't Broken; Your English Is Brahmin

As a poet, an academic, and a Dalit, this is the story of finding myself in English and forgetting my way home.
Yogesh Maitreya

Why Film Stars Make Bad Leaders: As Rajinikanth Enters Politics, Remember MGR’s Misrule

Through his films, M.G. Ramachandran built a popular persona as a friend of the poor – just like Rajinikanth. He enjoyed political support on the strength of his personal popularity, and as chief minister, he remained above scrutiny despite creating a brutally repressive anti-poor state.
M.S.S. Pandian

What Shashi Kapoor’s Death Says about India’s Drinking Problem

It would be unfair to place the entire blame for alcoholism in India at Bollywood’s door. But there appears to be an undeniable complicity.
Trisha Pasricha

I'm Queer And I Couldn't Care Less About Section 377

There are much more pressing issues facing the queer community besides an archaic law that criminalises anal sex, and this is particularly true for women and trans people.
Meena Karthika

Older Indians Drive Millennials Crazy On WhatsApp. This Is Why They're Obsessed.

Young Indians are hooked to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. But for older Indians, WhatsApp is the ultimate social network.
Pranav Dixit

Sex, Drugs, And Illness: How Chemsex Is Harming India's Gay Men

The drugs transported me to a world where stigma, stereotyping, abuse, shame, and bullying didn’t exist. But eventually they left me shameful, depressed, and terrified of disease.
Koshan Kamesh

The Boy And The Tower: An Illustrated Journey Through Ambedkar's Life And Ideas

From a penniless Dalit with no prospects to the maker of India's constitution and the saviour of his people.
C.G. Salamander

Built To Help The Farmers, Gujarat’s Dams Are Now Drowning Them

Since the state began its battle to harness and control its water, increasingly and unforgivingly, the water has started to fight back.
Sneha Vakharia

Hope At The End Of The World's Most Heartbreaking Climate Summit

Conversations about the end of the world from the centre of the world.
Aruna Chandrasekhar

How Young Women In Indian Academia Feel About The List

A month after Raya Sarkar's list of alleged sexual predators polarised Indian academia, an attempt at understanding its origin and impact.
Ishita Tiwary

7 Vitally Important Issues Have Taken A Backseat Because Of A Movie

A fictional queen has taken precedence over unbreathable air, a dysfunctional parliament, Aadhaar deaths and many other pressing matters.
Meghnad S

What Is It Like Being Transgender On Tinder In India?

Fascinating, validating, hilarious, and sometimes scary.
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

How India's Political Parties Hijacked Twitter's Trending Column For Partisan Bickering

A BuzzFeed News analysis found that the popularity of at least 10 political hashtags that trended on Twitter in India during the last two months was influenced by organised campaigns.
Pranav Dixit

The Pillars That Hold India's Democracy Up Are Falling Apart

The 70-year-old skyscraper we live in has deep-rooted structural flaws which are preventing real change.
Meghnad S

Demonetisation: The Greatest Magic Act Ever Performed

Making sense of how Narendra Modi sold a disastrous economic policy to a spellbound nation.
Prem Panicker

The Undeniable Misery Of Being A Shah Rukh Khan Fan Today

While the world, and I, have grown up, Shah Rukh remains stuck in the regressive '90s. With more freedom than he's ever had, he continues to promote sexism, racism and toxic beauty standards with his work.
Sonia Mariam Thomas

Why Upper-Caste Men Need To Stand Up For Raya Sarkar

We have benefited immensely from a system that is skewed in our favour. If we stay silent as it crushes others, we become enablers of injustice.
Karthik Shankar

Why I Published A List Of Sexual Predators In Academia

An interview with Raya Sarkar whose crowdsourced 'cautionary list' has sparked a polarising ideological debate among Indian feminists.
Karthik Shankar

What's The Best City In India To Watch A Movie?

Analysing data for nearly 600 movie theatres across 8 Indian cities to figure out the answer to one of the burning questions of our times.
Harsha Devulapalli

#HimToo: A Reckoning

An open letter from a senior academic to some of the men in her life who abused, assaulted, or harassed her and the women who enabled them.
C. Christine Fair

The Mysterious Braid Choppers Of Kashmir

A spate of unexplained attacks on women, police and government inaction, and vigilante justice have come together to create a perfect storm of fear and unrest in Kashmir.
Adnan Bhat

My Experiments With Hash-Making: What Makes It Good Is Bum Fluff

Sometimes science reveals things you were better of not knowing.
The Happy Farmer

Caging Women To Protect Them From Predators Is Only Making The Problem Worse

Protectionist measures that restrict women's freedom in order to protect them are just benevolent versions of the same misogyny they seek to counter.
Sushmita Sundaram

How Feminist Men Have Sex

An erection is the same hydraulic event in political economists as it is in jackasses.
Manu Joseph

Modi's Unwillingness To Listen To Criticism Has Knocked The Halo Off His Head

The prime minister has gone from an infallible knight who could do no wrong to a leader under siege in a little over three years.
Prem Panicker

Newton: An Angry Young Man With A Caste Conscience

Amit Masurkar's Oscar-bound film reinvents a tired old trope by grounding it in the reality of the Dalit struggle.
Yogesh Maitreya

The Selfless Indian Woman Is Tired, Angry And Wants You To Do Your Own Damn Work

Glorifying selflessness in women is a way to make us do all the work.
Priya Alika Elias

Rishi Kapoor: The Casteist, Khandaani, Besharam Boy Of Bollywood

Why I, a female Dalit meme-maker, got an abusive message from the patriarch of Bollywood's largest dynasty.
Shivani Channan

Inside The Testosterone-Soaked Culture Of India’s Guys-Only WhatsApp Groups

In a time when it’s decreasingly cool to be sexist, some men are retreating to the privacy of all-male WhatsApp groups to validate their misogyny.
Pranav Dixit

Four Indian Athletes On The Triumphs And Challenges Of Making A Comeback After Childbirth.

What does it take to go from elite athlete to mother and back again?
Bhavya Dore

Kangana Ranaut Is A Feminist Icon, But Her Breakup Isn't A Feminist Issue

Kangana Ranaut's unapologetically progressive choices have us ready to applaud her every move. So it's disappointing that we're mostly being made to applaud the messy end of a messy affair.
Deepanjana Pal
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