By Nandita Sengupta
Still many miles to go
New Delhi, Aug 14 : India broke into a powerful song of equality 63 years ago. It was finally time to build a brand new state, men and women together. The worst times were ‘behind them’ and they’d be equal partners in the new India. Or so women thought.
It didn’t take long for the song to be buried under the cacophony of patriarchy, caste and class. “Nationalist women were so hopeful.
But equality now is much more uncertain than it was when India became free,” says Mary John of CWDS. “Look at the tremendous opposition to women in, say, the Women’s Reservation Bill.”
In 1974, the Indian government had published a report, ‘Towards Equality’, that put the status of women forcefully on the national agenda. “It argued that the position of Indian women had declined, not improved, since 1911 (Committee on the Status of Women 1974),” writes academic Samita Sen.
As a result, she adds, development and progress became gender issues. “Data on gender discrimination in employment, education, land distribution, inheritance, nutrition, and health became impossible to overlook.
At the same time, violence against women was on the rise and widely reported in the media. There were cases of rape in police custody and sexual harassment in the workplace and on the street. Women’s issues entered the fields of culture, religion, and law; of family and community structures.”
The women’s question became entwined with problems of population, poverty, illiteracy and labour. In general discourse, and for the state, unavoidably perhaps, women were couched in victim terms. Her contribution to building the nation, from fields to factories, schools to organizations was barely acknowledged, let alone recognized.
Says John, “We have a readymade language for ‘women’s empowerment’, but it increasingly sounded hollow.”
Activist Jyothi Raj in Karnataka adds, “For too long, we have over-emphasized what others say about us. The imposed identity damaged self-image, and over time women accepted it.”
But the song never really died out. In a million ways, it was hummed, in training schools and living rooms, in villages and inside homes and kitchens. Scattered the struggles, but from Tamil Nadu to Orissa, Meghalaya to Jharkhand, Rajasthan to Karnataka, women didn’t forget “who they were” — contributors to the nation. And it was this, that activists such as Raj built on, among her dalit women’s communities.
“We are victimized, yes, but if we constantly live in victimhood identity, then we acknowledge the dominant forces are much more powerful,” she says. “We’re resilient but that does not mean suffering. It means we have the capacity to maintain peace without compromising on justice.”
In Karnataka’s district Tumkur, Raj’s Rural Education for Development Society (Reds), formed dalit panchayats in a cluster of villages where the panchayat would have “at least five women among the ten representatives”.
Recognizing that in the absence of education or welfare and in a climate of untouchability, land was both security and dignity, Raj took advantage of the Prevention of Transfer of Certain Land (PTCL) Act, to ensure dalit women are given land.
In 1,000 villages, 7,358 acres of land are back in dalit women’s hands, she says. Women are being trained in every village for leadership. “It’s not only equality or leadership. It’s also primacy of women in the community,” says Raj.
If women dalits are fighting thus, tribals from Jharkhand and the Northeast meet in Delhi to see where their issues vary, and where they can come together.
As a beginning, there’s growing demand for the implementation of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (Pesa), so that male-dominated village councils can’t hold women to ransom. Meghalaya’s political activist, Meristella Wahlang says, “In my state we keep mother’s name after marriage.
Yet, in the village council, called the durbar, we have no say. Women are not allowed. That’s not acceptable. We need to be included in governance.”
While women are “certainly more visible and effective”, says John, equality has nowhere reached where the song took shape — the Parliament. But women are circling in, and as Raj says, “We have a beautiful Constitution. We need to make it a reality.”
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