Urmi

PhDing @CUBoulder
She/her
UN LAADLI Awardee, Auther Award Shortlist
Sexual Violence Reporting
[email protected]

After I Was Raped | @PanMacIndia⏬

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Dear @TimesNow @ZoomTV, below is the copy of the email I have formally written to you, complaining about your employee @TheRoySays who is a sexual predator. This man is employed in your organisation. Please take necessary action. @TheRestlessQuil @AnooBhu @divya_krthk #MeToo

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

I've been wondering this for a while. So, I interviewed, researched, wrote about it. If you have chronic pain (or know someone who do), this is crucial.

https://t.co/KIfD1sEXsA

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Where I report on marital r*pe in a locality in Bhavnagar, Guj, and how a single block is really the microcosm of India's larger marital r*pe crisis. These are heart-rending but imp stories. Reminder: India still retains its colonial-era marital r*pe exception to its r*pe law

[UNICORN RIOT @UR_Ninja]

*TW extreme sexual violence*

NEW: Local volunteers in Bhavnagar, India are working with survivors to end the cycle of sexual violence there while also pushing for legal reforms at the national level.
https://t.co/h7Hmi9OAVo

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Utter chaos has ensued. Most flights have been cancelled and passengers are stuck indoors for hours, for reschedule options. Those who'd checked in luggage, now await its return ...on single trolleys, rolled in by airport staff who don't have a clue whose bag they're carrying.

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Mere MINUTES after I walk into Ahmedabad airport, a flurry of activity, panic. One airport ground personnel member tells me about the massive, massive Air India crash. Everyone is ashen-faced, on the phone, watching out of windows. This is...insane. Some immediate visuals:

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Academia, quite simply, is the ability to bs with jargon 🤷‍♀️

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

@anyndytaghosh @EthnoMargin Thanks, re. :)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

My ethnofiction for @EthnoMargin:

"If, indeed, marital rape is such a liminal concept for law, family and society to grasp; if indeed it must be hushed, then perhaps, “fiction” – a sense of creating something “digestible”... will help."

(Aka, why I wrote fiction.)

#phdvoice

[Ethnographic Marginalia @EthnoMargin]

"What axes of citizenry do women still inhabit and claim as their own, in the light of publicly invisible sexual violence events, constrained to a space of socio-legal liminality?" @Urmi_1990's ethnographic fiction poignantly explores marital rape:
https://t.co/imQVx7lawQ

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

"I thought those fighting hard for peace in Gaza would deserve it."

Toshiyuki Mimaki, the Japanese anti-nuclear campaigner whose group, Nihon Hidankyo, won the Nobel Peace Prize, says he was surprised they won the award instead of people working to stop Israel’s war on Gaza.

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

@SnehaAnnavarapu @EthnoMargin Thank you for all the support and kindness, Sneha! 💚

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Such a joy to have written this piece for @EthnoMargin - my very *first* as an anthropologist, after 10 years of publishing as a journalist :'). Crafted ethno fiction out of field insights on marital rape. Please read?

#phdchat #phdvoice @PhDchatter

https://t.co/XRMdx0vf04

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

@Gulabi_Dori @DelhiAirport @Microsoft My Air India one is - albeit delayed. A couple of Spicejet flights around me got cancelled though.

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

scenes at @DelhiAirport post @Microsoft global outage:

pandemonium + manual announcements at "silent airport" + someone using a whiteboard in the centre of the terminal to scrawl flight times with black marker 👀

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

My DMs are open. I am available on almost all social media, and/or able to meet in person - I'd like to say, irrespective of where in the country you might be. If you think this is worthwhile doing, please feel free to circulate.
@PhDVoice #phdlife #phdchat #journorequest

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

All this to say, if you would like to add to this, to share your story or pass along my information to someone you know who might like to add their experience to this - completely anonymous & all identifiers removed but for the truth of their experience, then please reach out (9)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

For instance, many of my participants are women who currently live, post marital rape, with their parents or alone, or under the refuge of a kind NGO or shelter, adamant about changing the law...so others might not watch their rapists roam free, condoned by govt and law (11)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

...lawyers and governments might have both quantitative data but also, urgently, REAL WOMEN'S STORIES of a very real-problem so that they might change our law. Actually *be* a democracy. Elevate survivors of marital rape from being mere "half-citizens" under the Constitution (8)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

As part of my research, I have several personal experiences already - both of survivors as well as case workers on marital rape - who, pseudonimised, have told me about WHY they need this change. I need more. I'd like to eventually create some sort of archive so policymakers..(7)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

...or "destabilising families" because of a supposed "Western" concept like marital rape. All of this, and much more (largely personal anecdotes heard and recounted) make up the premise of my research. I think it's important to do this. I think it's important to change things (6)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

...of how they believed they had no language for the crime perpetrated against them - whether legal or social. NGO workers spoke of how, after hours of speaking about OTHER kinds of violence they'd faced (physical, mental, etc), married women would say they'd also been raped (4)

[Urmi @Urmi_1990]

Some brave souls continue to advocate for the amending of Section 375 of the IPC that EXCLUDES marital rape and considers it an "exception" to the rape law. Yet, to no avail. Hearings continue to drag on...and governments continue to protest "entering people's bedrooms"...(5)