India Insight

Here are some photographs from our India Insight contributors that show vigils following the death on Saturday of a 23-year-old woman after six men raped her aboard a bus in Delhi on Dec. 16. We will update this post as more photos arrive. Thanks to Soumya Bandyopadhyay in Kolkata, Anoo  Bhuyan and Anuja Jaiman in Delhi and Vidya L. Nathan in Bangalore. Apologies for any inconsistent sizing or lack of uniformity. Note for non-Hindi readers or speakers: the sign in the first photograph says: “My voice is higher than my skirt.”

Delhi (Anoo Bhuyan):

Kolkata:

Delhi (Anuja Jaiman):

Bangalore:

You can see many more images related to this story from our Reuters photographers as well.

By Soham Chatterjee

They sent out about 10,000 invitations. About 850 responded. Maybe 25 showed up.

Make that 30 if you include the press.

These twentysomethings arrived to “occupy Bangalore,” to protest India’s efforts to shut down “torrent” sites that allow file sharing — and the distribution of pirated movies and music — and to tell the public about India’s attempts to punish people who post “obscene” content on their social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Unlike the May 31 “bandh,” or “shutdown,” which forced much of the city to close as India’s Bharatiya Janata Party protested the rising cost of fuel, it seemed harder to get people to stand up for virtual rights. Internet freedom rallies don’t quite arouse people’s passions in any country, let alone one that already bans the importation of certain books. And remember: this is India’s self-styled technology capital.

“Shoe polish, sir?” That was a quote your correspondent was not expecting to record as he paced through the crowds protesting in New Delhi in solidarity with Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old poster boy for India’s fight against endemic corruption.

Among the waving flags, painted faces and punched fists of thousands of mostly students and young professionals on Wednesday, were beggars, trinket-sellers and shoe-shiners plying their trade seemingly indifferent to the din around them.

The sight gave pause for thought as to how far the spiralling protests against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s scandal-plagued government have trickled down to an underclass of hundreds of millions of Indians living below the bread line.