Majlis' Annual Partner Meet 2026

We celebrated how our feminist mothers taught us!

On 18th April 2026, something remarkable unfolded. Over 300 people from over 60 of our partner organisations – community leaders, social workers, lawyers, activists, educators, and allies – gathered together under one roof on the theme: Rights | Justice | Action. What played out over the next four hours was a living, breathing argument for why collective action – messy, joyful, demanding – remains our most powerful tool.

The afternoon started with the reading of the preamble of the great Constitution of India. An unflinching reminder of how each word within it is a revolutionary dream – a force that shapes and liberates the lives of the most marginalised. We were reminded that Dr Ambedkar did not see the Constitution as a gift from the elite but as a weapon to be used by Dalits, women, minorities... because in his words, political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny. We collectively committed to reading it, knowing it, using it, and refusing to let it be diluted.

And then started the Khel Mela – our partners designed and facilitated games that transformed familiar formats into radical pedagogical tools to explain gender discrimination, disability, queer struggles, and legal rights. A reimagined Snakes and Ladders mapped systemic barriers and hard-won victories onto its board – each snake a structural inequality, each ladder a legal right or community support. Other games prompted players to confront unconscious gender biases, navigate institutional indifference, and rehearse solidarity in the face of adversity. The genius of the Khel Mela was its refusal to treat participants as passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, it asked them to embody the snakes, to feel the frustration of a rigged board and the satisfaction of collective strategies. Laughter and reflection arrived together, as they so often must.

The final hour belonged to song. The room filled with feminist songs written by and for the women’s movement – songs carrying the weight of decades of resistance, struggle, solidarity, and sisterhood. There is something that happens when 300 people sing together. Music holds memory. It reminds us of where we have come from and insists, in the most immediate and embodied way possible, that the fight continues.

In an era of digital campaigns and virtual coalitions, there is a temptation to underestimate what it means to share space physically. The Majlis Annual Partners Meet reminded us why presence matters. Awareness of one’s rights is not built solely through information – it is built through encounter, through recognising oneself in another’s story, through the courage that emerges when you see so many others are carrying the same questions.

Majlis has, for almost four decades, provided legal and social support to women and children facing sexual and domestic violence. The Annual Partners Meet is not a departure from that work – it is its lifeblood. Because justice is not only what happens in a courtroom, it is what is built, painstakingly and together, in rooms exactly like the one we created on a warm April afternoon.

Thank you so much for being part of the journey! Link to the photo gallery​

Warm Regards

Majlis Team