| |
Dated : Saturday, October 06, 2012 |
| |
Think, act, build? A rainbow coalition to end violence against women
|
 |
‘Munni badnaam hui (a popular Hindi film song) reaches millions, with that one gyrating woman in the middle, surrounded by 20 men lusting after her. I see a direct link between this and what happens on the streets of Guwahati, Assam, or anywhere else where mass molestation and rape take place’
Kamla Bhasin
All unjust systems, whether based on caste, class, race, or gender, exploit oppressed people, their resources, their labour. Take the labour of women. In 1995, at the international conference on women in Beijing, China, it was estimated that the entire unpaid work of women is worth 11 trillion dollars per year. Who has benefited from this? Families, communities, society, capitalism – everybody is benefiting from women’s work.
Much of this oppression comes with violence. The dalit community, for instance, could not have been exploited for over 3,000 years without violence. Violence is integral to such oppression. I have never been violated, but I have also never been free of fear and because fear is so integrated with the oppression of women from time immemorial, it has been one of the most important issues for women across the world.
In India, the modern women’s movement began with the Mathura rape case and dowry killings. So we have been mobilizing on the issue for a long, long time and we really had this dream that such violence would end. Yet, somehow, it has only increased over the years. It has become part of the paradigm of capitalism. Over the last 40 years, pornography, including child-based pornography, has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The cosmetics industry – which continues to tell women that nothing is as important as their faces and bodies - has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The film industry, whether Hollywood or Bollywood, is also a multi-billion dollar enterprise, which makes constant use of women’s bodies.
Within the women’s movement we have tried to fight violence in many ways. We have done theatre, we have sung songs, we have used the new media. You know I write songs. My songs are popular. But they may reach only a few thousand at best. Munni badnaam hui (a popular Hindi film song) reaches millions, with that one gyrating woman in the middle, surrounded by 20 men lusting after her. I see a direct link between this and what happens on the streets of Guwahati, Assam, or anywhere else where mass molestation and rape take place. It is perhaps scenes like those shown in film songs that are playing out in the minds of the young men who assault women. We, as the women’s movement, do not have the kind of power that would end this violence, because it involves big money, big networks, powerful people.
Interestingly, I understood the power of big media when Aamir Khan contacted me to come for his show, Satyamev Jayate. I mulled over taking part, and then agreed. It demonstrated to me the power of the media and the power of celebritydom. I have worked so hard for 40 years as a women’s activist but nowhere did I get the response I got after those eight to ten minutes on that show. I was stopped at coffee shops, at airports, on the streets, everywhere. Over 22 women wrote to me to say that they were in violent situations at home. There were literally hundreds of emails. I also got responses from men. The editor of a television channel said, “Kamladi, I was sitting for a brunch on Sunday with 11 men and we watched you and I was amazed that none of us was offended by anything you said.”
All I did was to explain patriarchy as a social system that considers men to be superior to women, and in which men have more control over resources and decision making. The men who control religion have laid down that the husband is ‘lord and master’. The word in English for husband translates as “controller”, “domesticator”, “manager”. In Hindi, Bangla and Tamil, the words ‘husband” and ‘god’ are synonymous – pati-parmeshwar, swami. Every day we repeat these words. The moment a woman gets married, according to Hindu rites, she has to touch her husband’s his feet and he puts signs on her forehead - of his domination over her. In the Christian marriage, the father “gives away” the bride.
Patriarchy is about hierarchy. If a man is upset with something his wife does, he will beat her, just as a parent thinks it is his or her right to beat their child. This is basically about the powerful lashing out against the powerless in an unequal relationship. It is important to state here that there is nothing biological about it. As soon as you say men can’t help beating women, you are insulting men, because many men don’t abuse their wives. Lately, as I have become a little more inward looking, I find that perhaps men are being harmed by patriarchy much more than women. Think of the man who decides to rape a woman. What is his relationship with his body? If a man can come home and beat his wife, what is his relationship to his life partner? These are men who are dehumanised.
Today, there are also millions of men all over the world who know what patriarchy is doing to them, how it is undermining them, how it is hollowing out the best that is in them. So I would say that the women’s movement, fortunately, is no longer a movement only of women. It is a movement of men, women and children.
We need to spread that idea; we need to stand up against violence, including patriarchal violence, using all the imaginative and cultural resources at our command. There are cultural activists like Mallika Sarabhai doing just this, through her one-woman dance drama, ‘Sita’s Daughters’. Globally, there is Eve Ensler, a US-based playwright. Based on her experiences she made the word ‘vagina’ speakable by writing the play, Vagina Monologues. It became so popular that it has been translated into over 140 languages. It has been translated into Urdu and staged in cities in Pakistan. It has been staged in Dhaka. It captured the imagination of the youth, and impacted their attitudes, so that they could then say, “It is our body, what is so dirty about it?”
Ensler has supported work in the most difficult and most patriarchal of societies – in places like Sudan – for years. Some months ago she came up with the idea of a global campaign called ‘One Billion Rising’. I thought this was a great idea, because global campaigns infuse a lot of energy into movements. Normally when I work, I feel like a drop of water. But once I am part of a global campaign, I suddenly feel like an ocean.
The ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign will see women and men in 140 countries rise up together against this civil war between men and women going on in their midst, the violence against women within families, communities and countries. We in South Asia will also join in. No matter what the issue is, honour killings in Pakistan, acid throwing in Bangladesh or domestic violence in India, we will take on and defeat the forces that make such assaults possible.
We see this as a rainbow coalition. Over the last three months, we have been visiting trade unions in Sri Lanka, talking to women’s groups in Bangladesh, encouraging organisations in every country to identify and bring on board political leaders - not parties – with a record of having stood against violence, or who hope to stand against violence in the future. I was so happy to see that in the UK, the organiser for the campaign is a British labour member of Parliament, Stella Creasy.
The time has come for large alliances of people to come together and say violence against women will not be tolerated any longer.
(Women’s Feature Service) |
| |
|
Making peace with mum through a camera
|
 |
Shankar Sarkar’s is a heart-wrenching saga of reconciliation with his mother. As a toddler, Shankar lost his mother and years later discovered her working in a Kolkata brothel. It is a tale of rejection and love and is now travelling the world as a photography exhibition.
For Sarkar (21) his lens has been the tool to opening up a dialogue with his mother. His pictures chronicling the journey of a mother and a son through the ups and downs of life have been exhibited internationally.
“My pictures reflect the dialogue with my mother. I talk to my mother through my camera. We used to be at different poles. The pictures are about how a son’s dislike for his sex worker mother turns to reverence after he realises her sacrifices and struggles,” Sarkar said.
Titled Facing One’s Own, the pictures of the mother-son duo have been widely exhibited at various fora, including the Chobi Mela in Dhaka and the Guardian Gallery in London.
A native of Odisha’s Malkangiri, his mother Kavita, a teen widow, was trafficked to a brothel in the city by a relative who lured her with the promise of a job. Shankar was then only two.
He was brought up by his maternal grandmother and later accompanied her to Kolkata in search of his mother.
“She would regularly send us money, but she never wrote about her whereabouts or what she was doing. When I was five, my grandmother and I set out for Kolkata looking for her,” said Shankar. “My grandma knew she was somewhere in Kolkata. So she would search around different places. Finally grandma got hold of the man who had lured her and got to know that she has been trafficked. Then, the two of us started looking for her in red light areas. Finally, after three months we found her at Seth Bagan in north Kolkata,” Shankar said.
“I now don’t remember the exact moment when I saw her. But when my grandma used to tell me she is my mother, I would start crying. I would tell grandma, ‘Who is this lady that you have forced me to stay with?’ After four-five years, I realised that she is my mother. But I despised her as I was often humiliated by my friends who poked fun at me over the work she did,” he said.
Shankar’s tryst with the camera started at the age of ten through a UNICEF-supported project for children of sex workers.
“I still remember the very first day when the facilitator visited our area and asked me, ‘Who do you love in your family?’ I was shy and nervous in replying to his question. I took some time and hesitantly responded that I love my mother. The second question was, ‘Why?’ This time, I didn’t have any hesitation in telling him that I miss her. He handed me a small compact analogue camera and asked me to photograph my mother, family and the surroundings. That’s how it all started,” he recalled.
“The relationship with my mother till date is complicated,” he admitted candidly. “I try to capture through my images the special nature of my relationship with my mother.”
Shankar’s facilitator Suvendu Chatterjee, director of the Dhaka- headquartered Drik India, a media organization, is proud of his protege’s success.
“His single-minded pursuit of photography has taken him to where he has reached now. When we started the UNICEF-sponsored project there were more than 100 kids along with Shankar. While others gradually drifted away, Shankar’s perseverance has made him what he is today,” Chatterjee said.
Shankar’s mother, who now works at a bag manufacturing factory, is not only happy at her son’s success but also thankful to him for changing her life.
“Though he took time to accept his sex worker mother, he has been a pillar of strength for me. Now that he is successful and can take care of both of us, I feel all my hardships have borne fruit,” said 38-year-old Kavita who quit sex work a few years ago. It has been a difficult journey both for me and Shankar but now I’ve made my peace with life,” says Kavita.
Anurag Dey |
| |
|
Insensitive tourists on an 'Adivasi Darshan' in the Andamans
|
 |
The Jarawas, among the world’s oldest surviving inhabitants, have lived in splendid isolation from the rest of the humanity. Essentially hunters-gatherers, they live inside 1,028 square kilometres of the dense evergreen forests of Middle and South Andamans, also called the Jarawa Reserve. Unfortunately, these days, in a bid to capture the imagination of your not-so-average adventure tourists, many travel planners advertise ‘Jarawa tourism’. So, what happens when twenty-five diesel smoke spewing cars, packed with ill-informed tourists embark upon a journey that encourages voyeurism? This excerpt describes every last gory detail of the ‘joyride’ that puts the last of the First People on display for money.
Gunjan: Two years later, in December 2008, I returned to the Andaman Islands incognito, as a tourist. My travel agent had earlier told me that the highlight of my trip to Baratang would be the ‘adivasi darshan’. I had seen travel websites which were advertising ‘Jarawa tourism’ and encouraging voyeurism, so I decided to play along. We reached the Jirkatang checkpost at 5 am. The place was buzzing with people. There were at least twenty-five cars, packed with tourists. The entire conversation was about ‘seeing’ the adivasis. I heard many people asking their guides, ‘Bhaiyya, kab dikhenge?’ (When will we see them?) ‘Why can’t we take pictures?’
I asked my guide, a young Tamil, Sunil, the same question. He said that the AJJVS had spread rumours among the Jarawa that if their picture was taken, they would contract diseases. Now the Jarawa resist being photographed. ‘Aisa kuch hota nahi hain, Madam. Police walon ko bhi isse problem nahi hoti hain but AAJVS [Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti] ke orders hain. (Nothing really happens. Even the police do not have a problem with the photographs but these are AAJVS orders),’ he explained shaking his head at the apparent ‘unreasonableness’ of the AAJVS diktat. Resisting an urge to explain the AAJVS’ reasons, I continued my ruse as the curious tourist. I asked him how they would know if I took a photo. He said, ‘Madam, if the Jarawa complain, you will be fined.’ I asked him what the chances were of seeing the adivasi. Hamesha hi dikhte hain.’ (They are always seen.)
He was right. Fifteen minutes into the Reserve, we had our first ‘sighting’, three Jarawa tribals - man, woman and child, on either side of the road. Our car slowed down, just like all the other cars in the convoy. I saw tourists waving frantically, trying to get the attention of the Jarawa. All along the road in the Reserve area there were abandoned cans of tar, plastic mineral water bottles, bags of chips. This time, however, the ATR was not so bumpy; many labourers were inside the Reserve, trying to repair sections of the road.
The entire conversation in Baratang was about the adivasis. Various stories circulated. My driver, Mithun, was a thin Bengali in his early thirties. He told me who the Jarawas were. ‘Madam, they are ex-convicts from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, etc., who had been let loose by the Britishers in the forests. Due to the isolation, they lost their mental equilibrium, shed their clothes and became aggressive. They started killing people with poisoned bows and arrows. That is why we move in a convoy. It keeps us safe,’ he explained. Sunil, at least, knew that the Jarawa had come from Africa hundreds of years back. ‘They are junglee (wild, uncivilized). In fact, there are four other jungle tribes in Andaman and Nicobar. Some, like the Sentinelese, are dangerous. Only the Nicobarese are a little civilized, like us.’
The return convoy left Baratang at 3 pm. It was led by a tourist bus which was three vehicles ahead of us. Yet we could not open our windows because the bus was spewing black smoke. Many of us were choking. Twenty minutes into the Reserve, the car in front of us moved to the side and stopped. The convoy kept moving. ‘Wasn’t that illegal?’ I asked. Mithun and Sunil merely shrugged their shoulders. Ten minutes later, the convoy stopped. A dozen men and women got out to answer nature’s call. Strangely enough, none of them wanted to use the bathroom at Baratang! Just before the Reserve area begins, on both sides, toilet complexes which are surprisingly clean have been built. But half an hour into the Reserve, everyone had to get out and wander into the forest. A deliberate ploy to catch a glimpse of the Jarawa, I wondered? After about ten minutes, a hassled-looking constable got out of the bus leading the convoy and began to request everyone to get into the bus. A few minutes later, we came across another Jarawa. Standing alongside the road, he was signalling for the vehicles to stop. This time, however, the convoy did not stop. The rest of the journey inside the Reserve, while extremely distressing for my lungs, was uneventful. Only Mithun was unhappy. He had to adhere to the speed limit of 40 kmph. ‘Usually we don’t bother with these restrictions; 60 or 70 kmph is the norm.’
As soon as we got out of the Reserve, a local constable decided to ride with us to Port Blair. A stocky, middle-aged man, with a slight pot-belly, he had been on duty at the Jarawa Reserve for a year now. I asked him what it was like to be with the Jarawa. “Earlier it was very difficult. They troubled us. Gradually, they have started listening. But we have to constantly monitor them because they are junglees. They can attack any time. Just a few days back, some tired fishermen had landed in the forests and built a fire to cook their meal. They were hungry after working all day. Without any provocation, the Jarawa attacked and killed one of them. This is how crazy they are,’ he warned us. The keeper of law and order took a very sympathetic view of poachers! He completely forgot that the fishermen were not allowed to fish up to five km of the coastal line (from the high tide line). It was part of the Jarawa Reserve. I asked him how he communicated with the Jarawa. ‘Their kids understand a little Hindi now. We are trying to teach them.’ ...
Three years after our visit to the Reserve, the debate on the indigenous tribes of the Andamans is far from resolved. Should we preserve them as one of the most unique societies on earth or should they be integrated with the mainstream?
(Women’s Feature Service) |
| |
|
How eggs can reveal personality secrets
|
 |
How you prefer your egg cooked reveals a lot not only about your culinary taste but also says a lot about your personality, revealing secrets about social class and even sex drive, a new study has claimed.
For the study, scientists quizzed 1,010 adults and found that poached egg eaters are outgoing, boiled egg lovers are disorganized, fried egg fans have a high sex drive, scrambled egg aficionados are guarded and omelette eaters are self-disciplined.
The study for the British Egg Industry Council was carried out by Mindlab International, which researches the psychology of consumer choice.
It found that the average poached egg-eater is likely to be happier than most while boiled egg-eaters run the greatest risk of getting divorced.
Fried egg fans are usually from the skilled working class and scrambled eggs are favoured by those without children.
“It’s amazing to think that just by knowing someone’s favourite way of eating eggs, it’s possible to gauge a large amount about who they are and what they are like. But it doesn’t matter how you eat your eggs - they’re still nutritious, versatile and great value,” the Daily Mail quoted Andrew Joret, of the British Egg Industry Council, as saying. (Agencies) |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
