Lakshmi Krishnamurti

Lakshmi Krishnamurti passed away on June 12, 2009.

We had always intended to start our Oral History work with her. But that is not to be and it serves to remind us not to dilly-dally over this work, waiting for the perfect funding and the perfect moment.

The imperative of starting what we describe as the ‘Freedom Generation’ project immediately is precisely this. Those who were young women in the critical years of the Quit India// Dravidanadu// Pakistan movement years, are now in their 70s-80s-early 90s. Their stories are our true legacy and one we want to secure without delay. So if you want to help us get started on this work of recording and archiving their memories, please get in touch today: prajnyatrust@gmail.com.

We called Lakshmi Krishnamurti in March to invite her to our quiz. She expressed inability to come for health reasons and we promised to call on her but never got around to it, regretfully.

Lakshmi Krishnamurti, social activist and freedom-fighter, RIP and thank you for the difference you made.

“Why is that name hidden in my consciousness?”

I just finished reading a translated anthology of Lalithambika Antherjanam’s stories and autobiographical essays. The excellent introduction by the translator, Gita Krishnankutty, opens the evocative world of her writing. As I read these stories, I was in the villages of Kerala, eavesdropping on conversations and soaking in the smells and sounds. I might add, I have never been to Kerala.

I strongly recommend these stories. Just as stories. And then if you are so inclined, you will get a lot out of them here and there.

What I really want to share here is a short extract from one of the stories in which the protagonist is a prominent social worker. The story is called “Come back” or “Thirike Varu.”

“Whenever I think about women’s associations, Bhanumathi Amma comes to mind. Not that it is important in any way, I just think of her, that’s all. I’ve called a number of young social workers Bhanumathi amma by mistake, and then corrected myself. How forgetful I am! Why is that name hidden in my consciousness? Young girls today know very little about Bhanumathi Amma. I wonder what they would think of her?

There have been no women in our part of the country whose names posterity found it worthwhile to cherish. And even if there were, no one would ever have heard of them. A young poet once teased me, “Here they come, the great ones, claiming descent from the Rani of Jhansi and Padmini Devi! Tell me, is there a single Malayali woman who has distinguished herself for her contribution to art or literature, or social service, or even music?”

I was furious. I said, “There were mothers who bore children who did these things. Isn’t that enough?”

This retort may have been made purely in self-defense, or in utter helplessness–for I had no answer. Anyway, I didn’t bother to invent a list of names that one could conceivably be proud of. Or condemn.”

I will leave it to you to discover the rest of this story, but I was so struck by this piece. This is the way it often is when we talk about wanting to document the work of women in the public sphere.  A little mocking. A little dismissive. A little questioning: is this really necessary? And doubting for sure, like the narrator in this story: are there any women who have actually made a difference?

Of course there are. And they are often people in our own lives. Political acts are not always big acts. Public-mindedness is not always publicity-seeking. So who are these people whose names we carry with us but whose accomplishments are hidden in our consciousness? Who are these people in your life? Do write in and tell us. And send a photo too if you have one.

That could be me

 

 

The most chilling news items remind you that you had a narrow escape. “That could be me.”

 

¨      India’s declining juvenile sex ratio is a good example. Take the decade I was born. According to the 1961 Census of India, there were 941 girls per 1000 boys and by 1971, this figure had declined to 930. What good fortune made me part of the 941 and 930 rather than the 59 and 70 girls who did not survive?

¨      Most rapists are known to the victim and a horrendous number (around 75%) are members of the family or its inner circle. Most middle class Indians grow up in large extended families, open households where family and friends come and go. If we did not experience this devastating combination of violence and betrayal of trust, to what do we owe our good fortune?

¨      Marriage is all-important in our society; how many parents of brides are able to resist last minute demands for dowry? According to official records, the number of dowry deaths is actually growing from year to year. If we have not been charred by kerosene burns, what did we do to deserve that escape?

 

“That could be me” comes with two imperatives: a debt to repay and the duty of empathy.

 

Our lucky escapes create a debt to society. How do we make the world as safe for others as it has been for us? How do we show the less fortunate in our circle that we are not blind to their trauma? In a society that cloaks family violence as shame and codes violence against women in the public arena as “provoked”, what is the opportunity we make to end our silence?

 

The second imperative is to acknowledge that there is no difference between those who have become victims and survivors of violence and those who have escaped this fate. Most women anywhere can recall some day, some time, some place, some person, and some trigger, that makes them shudder inwardly at what might have been.

 

“That could be me.” And if there is no difference, then your trauma is my trauma and my strength should be yours.

 

Among activists and scholars in this area, it is a truism to say that violence follows women through their life-cycle. With pre-natal sex selection becoming more and more popular in spite of all the legal measures against it, even birth is a chancy affair. Sexual violence, structural violence and violence in the name of the community haunt their lives, making life a series of traumas or lucky escapes.

 

Unfortunately, as a society, we trivialize this violence. We are beginning to code sex selection as reproductive choice or family planning. We euphemistically refer to street sexual harassment as eve-teasing. We are unflagging in our efforts to reunite battered wives with their abusive spouses and in-laws because we tag their attempt to survive as family dishonour. We have an endless encyclopaedia of excuses for abuse—deficiencies in the wife, failure to deliver dowry, frustration at work—that are trotted out in our entertainment media uncritically as reflections of our culture.

 

The fact however is: Violence against women is violence.

 

It is not passion. It is not lust. Not provocation. Neither catharsis, nor punishment. Just brute force, coercion, violence.

 

And once we open our minds to this, we know that violence against women is one strand in a larger story. It is related to other forms of violence against those who are powerless—children and sexual minorities, for instance. The term ‘gender violence’ recognizes this interconnectedness.

 

By ‘gender violence’ we mean violence that is experienced by anyone by virtue of their being a woman, man, girl, boy or aravani. It includes sexual violence of all sorts as well as socially sanctioned practices like dowry-death, honour killings or sati. Because women and sexuality are the most sensitive markers of a community’s identity, the inclusion of these practices in such a list is contentious than the practice itself.

 

Further, gender violence is related to other forms of violence in society. Although it gives the impression of being personal, with individual victim and perpetrator, it connects easily to other faultlines of violence, such as class, caste and community. It is easier to perpetrate across these faultlines and even stands in for these, almost as if thereby limiting collateral damage! That is, it would seem easier in a riot to rape women than to stage street-fights. It would seem easier to abduct girls from refugee camps than to sit at a negotiating table. Certainly, those who would rape or molest or harass would be more likely to pick victims with less social power than they—domestic workers, poor relatives, orphans.

 

Crises exaggerate existing vulnerabilities. Thus, intimate partner violence and family violence rise with levels of militarization in a society. In times of disaster or conflict, levels of violence within the household and in the neighbourhood go up.

 

Now recognized as a public health crisis, because gender violence routinely affects those with the least power, it does not attract attention. Nevertheless, the cost to society of providing health care and counseling to victims and the cost to the economy of their lost working days mount as do levels of violence. Children are brutalized by experiencing and witnessing violence; we are raising a generation prone to violence, desensitized to it and accepting of it as one language of interpersonal and social relationships.

 

November 25 is the International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women. This year in Chennai, Prajnya and partner organizations have put together a full schedule of public education events and activities as part of the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence. A popular strategy worldwide, the 16 Days Campaign begin on November 25 and culminate on Human Rights Day, December 10.

 

Remember, this too could be you. Do your part. Speak out against this pervasive social malaise. Because gender violence hurts us all.

  

‘If Raje had any compassion like a woman, so many wouldn’t have died’

This is in today’s IE on the Gurjjar unrest; this is what some Gurjjar women said of Raje when she didn’t stop to meet them in their villages. What is the stand on this in feminist literature, I wonder. Do women politicians have double burdens when people expect them to bring what society thinks are female gender-specific attributes such as compassion and empathy to their public tasks? Are they supposed to miraculously combine what is considered of value in both men and women when they are in public posts? Is the feminist stand that it is appropriate to expect this of them or inappropriate? Just wondering…

On another note…

As we talk about women’s role in public life and politics, I’d like to suggest that at some point organizations like Prajnya begin to record how women have negotiated everyday life over the years. We don’t think about it but it’s deeply fascinating how women’s public life has also shaped their everyday social interactions, and vice-versa. By public life I mean not merely activities to do with governance, but their lives ‘out there in the public.’

Long ago I read a book Listen to the Heron’s Words which was about how women in a particular part of Afghanistan deal with their patriarchal family life. They get together regularly and have these song sessions, meant only for women, in which they basically ridicule their spouses and patriarchal tradition and it’s a barrel of laughs. The men even take them there, drop them there for their evening out, and leave them well alone to enjoy this time. The book was about the different ways in which women build community and social structures that better suit their needs.

It made me think then about all the women/girls who work as domestic help in all our homes. Have you noticed how they have an endless number of relatives? One day they don’t know someone, the next day that person is an uncle or brother or aunt or niece who’s in need of a job or plays some other very vital role in their lives. How much of this is women’s way of coping with a hostile environment (after all, however nice we think we are to them, we don’t know how we come across).

Is this their way of creating secure social structures to make it easier to cope with their public life in our cities?

Just a thought…..

Kindred spirits.. 2!

And this article by Meghnad Desai in the Daily News and Analysis: Time to give women their due, May 11, 2008.

PS: Mr. Desai has drawn my attention to this edition of We, The People that debates the necessity for reserving seats for women. You can watch it at the NDTV website, by clicking on the following links: video-prime shows-and then going to the second page which lists We, The People shows.

Kindred spirits!

Pak filmmaker to document stories of Partition, PTI, May 20, 2008

A young filmmaker has launched a project to document memories of Pakistanis, who witnessed trials and tribulations of the Partition of India in 1947.

Islamabad: A young filmmaker has launched a project to document memories of Pakistanis, who witnessed trials and tribulations of the Partition of India in 1947.

The Oral History Project by Pakistan’s non-resident filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is trying to preserve stories of ordinary Pakistanis, who lived through the pain of Partition.

Chinoy’s Citizens Archive of Pakistan has hired summer interns to meet the older generations and preserve their stories for posterity.

The interns will collect photographs, visuals and other material about the Partition.

“If you know of a friend, family member or someone in your community, who travelled from India to Pakistan in 1947, please send us their name and information,” reads a post on Citizens Archive of Pakistan’s website.

“By conducting and collecting oral histories and photographs their stories are recorded, preserved and made accessible for generations of Pakistanis to come. As with all historical records, oral histories provide important information on incidents from the past,” a note on the website reads.

Twenty-two students from Karachi’s elite schools — Indus Valley School of Art, The Lyceum and Karachi Grammar School — have been hired by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan to collect and record the memories.

The interns will interview and photograph citizens who crossed the border.

“It is very important to find people, who have lived through the Partition and record their version of history. Pakistan is more than 60 years old, so these individuals should be older; if they die a part of history will die with them,” Chinoy told the Daily Times.

This seems to be a moment in which many of us are thinking about the importance of oral history. I read this report with interest, sympathy and a certain growing sense of urgency.

Here, at PSW, as we work towards setting up the Prajnya Women in Politics and Policy Resource Centre, we know the importance of acting right away.

Women’s political mobilization in this region was jumpstarted by the anti-colonial and social movements of the mid-twentieth century. Women were foot-soldiers and leaders, but still mostly nameless, faceless and story-less. All of us know someone or the other who was in the freedom movement, and is now growing old. At PSW, the desperate desire to document their lives, their work, their stories before it is too late, motivates our decision to focus our first project on this generation of women.

Our team is growing steadily, and the fact that it is entirely a voluntary team shows a commitment that vindicates our vision. However, I read this article with anxiety because time is running out on us and while our Resource Centre can easily become a bricks-and-mortar reality next year or the year after rather than this year… with every passing day we run the risk of losing an important story forever.

We can scale back on overheads and publicity but we really need resources to get going with our oral history project, and we need them now. PSW’s volunteer team needs to be able to devote all its time to this project rather than what is leftover from full-time jobs elsewhere. We need cameras and tape-recorders. We need to be able to accelerate the process of getting background research done, to train people to do good interviews and to train people we can send out into the field.

I know exactly what Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy means when she says parts of our history will be lost if we don’t make the time to document this generation’s experiences and memories. There is a sense in which it doesn’t matter; after all, this is not a subcontinent with perfect historical records and still we thrive. In that sense, however, nothing matters. The IPL teams do not have to have designer sportswear; good cricket should be enough. There is no need to get stronger and stronger painkillers; if they work sooner or later, that’s good enough. Unilateral, arbitrary systems of justice are fine because that is how it has been through most of history. And histories that fail to notice the work of half of humanity are also acceptable, whether that half is defined by ethnicity, caste or gender.

But it isn’t acceptable. Not to us. And it shouldn’t be acceptable to you either, whether you are male or female. A strong society needs strong men AND strong women, and a strong democracy needs all its citizens to be engaged and pro-active. Our children learn to be this way by learning about those who have gone before; and our daughters need role models as much as our sons do.

Indian women poured into rallies and protests, courted arrest, sold their jewellery, fought with their families and gave up fine clothes and home comforts so that you and I could live in this India, where we can buy cars that ferry us to fancy stores to buy traditional or modern or avant-garde diamond jewellery and designer clothes. They bought our freedom to hold all kinds of political opinions with their youth and gave all their energy to setting up institutions which could help the disenfranchised and helpless. Chennai alone is home to several of these. They spoke out, whether or not they had been schooled. They gave, no matter how little they had. To those of us, who grew up in the homes of such women, India, freedom and the spirit of public service are our most precious inheritance; they made sure we grew up with that passion.

I want to stop short of making this a straight appeal for donations in cash and kind, but really that is our need now. We need to start paying salaries and ones that people can live on. We need to use some equipment to start recording and researching and we will definitely need money to pay the recording crew.

Some day, we will be like other think-tanks, no doubt, and get big money from the big grant-makers. But for now, we need to hear from others like us, who care about such matters. People who share our views and our spirit. Women professionals whose careers are possible because of the pioneers who ignored glass ceilings. Businesses whose profits come from the careful spending and the impulse purchases of women. As for anyone who has ever said that Indians respect women, in the spirit of Eliza Doolitle, I say, “Show… me… now!”

If you want to get involved, email us: prajnyatrust@gmail.com. Take ownership of the way your history is recorded. Support the Prajnya Women in Politics and Policy Resource Centre.

Why Prajnya?

As I sat across the table hearing about Prajnya (and half wishing I should have opted for a cup of chai instead of the extremely bitter coffee) I realised that this was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss out on. Knowing for a fact that my contribution would be solely on the basis of a volunteer and would require a juggling act with my regular job, I still decided to go ahead and be part of Prajnya.

The last few months with the Prajnya team has been one filled with bouts of excitement, nervousness, vigour and LOTS OF FUN.

The month of January and February saw the team put their heads together and unearth all possible questions for our first event — a quiz on ‘Women in South Asia.’

And as our ‘team leader’ rightly said, today if were to look back, its not the event as such that remains ingrained in our memories but all the ups and downs that we encountered on our way — finding a suitable hall, the technical glitches, a right sounding bell, appropriate banner, and unrelenting efforts in holding back a team member from giving out the answer (out of sheer enthusiasm) — that we’ll always remember!

Volunteering with prajnya has also reinforced my belief in team work. Here we are a bunch of women, each one as different as can be, who have come together to contribute in our own little way to see that the goals of this organisation are met. In return what we get are new friends, challenges, opportunities and ….. PRAJNYA.

young girls live in ignorance.

the last two days have been frustrating for me. i’ve been an examiner at a women’s college assessing their final projects. most of the projects dealt with ‘young’ concerns such as romance, disappointment, angst, coping with loss and an obsession with lifestyle and freedom and of course friendship. what was disconcerting for me is that across media platforms, across various genres the perspective was male, women were stereotyped as the meanies who use and throw the men who are pining for their affection and also the meek ones in a moronic fashion. the women were dressed in skimpy revealing clothes in the romantic sequences; the lyrics that were judgmental and loaded against women were sung by men, and quite often also filmed by men. women are obsessed with fashion and clothing, make up and jewelery if one sees the websites they had designed.

among 45 young women, only one had made a sensitive video that did not cater to the male gaze as we media scholars like to say. the perspective may not have been feminist but it certainly did not stereotype and left the audience to make their own judgements.

upon being questioned, the women felt there was nothing to do differently. and this, a breed of young, ‘free’ liberal minded women! they felt i was overdoing the women’s perspective angle. this worries me.

as a mother of a 10 year old girl i worry about how this generation is growing up taking the freedom and choices open to them for granted with little or no understanding of the struggle of women who made this position for women today possibe. as swarna and i discussed this morning – hillary clinton may be a toughie but she had to be that way to get where she is today. and so she loses the sympathy/support of young women who feel she is too aggressive and lacks femininity.

celebrating femininity is all ok but if one defines femininity as only being eye candy and freedom as the right to puff and drink a vodka or boogie away the night and then get married, as swarna so rightly put it, karan johar style–well, today’s young woman had better sit up and get real.

this trend could be sparked/ encouraged by media imaging tactics in their fight for eyeballs say some, well, thats fodder for another post… soon!

Prajnya and Me!

Some afternoons when I am sitting alone amidst books and articles and my computer and have a major problem in either understanding every word I read or have great difficulty in writing word, I wonder what allures me to this work.

What is the work I do? I research on ‘Women in Politics in South Asia’!!!.

I still remember the day I first heard about the project and I had to make a decision to either take it up or not. All the excitement of an impending opportunity gave me a sleepless night and I woke up the next day having decided to take this up.

I have been working on this topic for the last few months and have researched on issues and challenges specific to South Asian Countries. The countries provide an interesting spectrum with many women having lead their countries but the representation of women continues to be poor generally in politics. So the research continues….

Such interesting work makes some boring afternoons endurable and I hope I am able to continue the work that interests me and will also be useful to others