Outlook Magazine - Women’s Day Special - 11 March 2026 Issue

Daku-Sundari. Vishkanya. Seductress. Black-Widow. Characterless. These are not just words; but cages. For decades, whenever a woman has found herself at the center of violence, power, survival, or controversy, society has eagerly reached for a label. Nowhere is this dichotomy more glaring than the story of our cover subject, Phoolan Devi. To those who understood her struggle, she was a true 'Devi', a woman who survived unspeakable brutality and fought back in a language the system understood. But to the establishment, and the masses, she was deliberately reduced to a bloodthirsty outlaw. The media played a deeply complicit role in this framing. At Outlook, we understand the immense weight our words carry. In our pursuit of truth, we must constantly ask the ‘why’ behind the narratives and unflinchingly map the axis of power that sustains them. How a story is told determines who is afforded dignity, and who is sentenced to the court of public spectacle.For this Outlook Women’s Day Special, we are crossing out the "Femme Fatale". We are looking past the “Roop-ki-Ranis” and the “Honeymoon-Killers” to see the women buried beneath the headlines. The pieces in this issue deconstruct the biases that have painted women as either pure, unblemished victims or irredeemable temptresses, while exposing the systems that protect the men who abuse them. In this issue our reporters hold a mirror up the very industry we inhabit. N.K. Bhoopesh, Apeksha Priyadarshini, Sakshi Chavan,Mrinalini Dhyani, Lalita Iyer, Fozia Yasin, and Zenaira Bakhsh get the theme of the cover story right through. Seema Guha decodes PM’s visit to Israel while columns by Harish Khare and Arijit Sen talk about what’s happening around. Grab your copy of Outlook, March 11th issue now.