YouSaid · the spoken record

Barkha Dutt

lines on the record: 54
first: 2022-06-29
most recent: 2022-06-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Women. We had the infamous Nirbaya gang rape in Delhi, the capital of India, a gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student that brought hundreds of thousands of Indians on the streets who protest. There is sexual violence within the circle of trust. There is the refusal to legalize marital rape. Those are all the big examples. But it's the small examples that really get under my skin, the way roles at home are gendered, the way that even when you're paid a compliment as a woman and presented as a superwoman, that's really code for tying you up in chains of gold. So you'll see this advertisement where this is perfectly turned out woman and not a hair out of place, a perfect shiny string of pearls, a perfectly crisp sari or pantsuit, wringing the her house from her boardroom where she's just closed like a billion dollar deal, asking the help to make whatever cottage cheese, curry for dinner or taduri chicken curry for dinner.”
2022-06-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, though, as I'm answering that, I'm struck by the fact that my nation has a much more progressive set of laws around abortion and the right to legal and safe abortion than the Americans might have soon. So that's just an illustration of what I mean by complexity. You know, when I studied at Columbia, at the journalism school, I had a flatmate and I think I write about this in the same book who assumed that because I was an Indian woman, I would have an arranged marriage, I would have no rights, I wouldn't be outspoken, and then when we got to know each other better, I found that the Western rituals of the dating scene were often much more patriarchal than anything I had experienced. That's it. Of course, I have sort of grown up and resisted entrenched patriarchy, entrenched misogyny, the expectations of what it means to be female in India come out in very sort of insidious everyday way. You know the big things, right? You know about where the public spaces are safe or not safe.”
2022-06-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say just don't go to any one source. And I think that a lot of Indians would say that the more diverse your sources are, that would perhaps be more representative. But we would also urge you to read and watch and listen to us. You know, I think there's also a sense that there have been some great foreign correspondence, and I'd like to name two who have done stellar work on India, Ellen Barry of the New York Times and Annie Gowen of the Washington Post both made it a point to do very, very textured reportage out of India. But, you know, those are individuals I'm naming and not platforms. So I don't think that there is a platform that really captures the nuances and the texture of my country in full.”
2022-06-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the West is able to see India only through certain tropes and tropes that it has gathered from newspapers like the one I write for, Washington Post, as well at the New York Times. Some of these narratives that the West understands about India are true, but they are incomplete. And therefore, the West understands India in terms of, let's say, debates around whether there is equality for religious minorities, whether there is a free press. These are valid questions. Many of them are raised by journalists like myself. But they do not tell the full story of a complex, paradoxical nation where there are multiple simultaneous truths. And therefore, I think that Indians are sometimes exasperated by the simplistic reductionist understanding of our very complicated 1.3 billion strong nation.”
2022-06-29 · Conversations with Tyler · Barkha Dutt on the Nuances of Indian Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source