Yesterday I met Kavita Srivastava, a well-known activist in Jaipur. She was meeting a street artist, who was presenting all of his clay sculptures to us and explaining very animatedly the stories behind each piece. She is planning to help him set up an exhibition, and I offered to help with any publicity, even starting a blog. She knows so many people with phenomenal stories of human courage that it would be a pleasure to help her document them and raise awareness of her work!

She had spoken at a session I attended on Women’s Empowerment at the Jaipur Lit Fest, where she had recounted a heartbreaking story about a woman called Bhawari Devi:

Bhanwari Devi, a local woman who was working with Srivastava, was gang-raped by upper-caste men after she tried to stop a Brahman child wedding. Though the rape was witnessed by Bhanwari’s husband, the police refused to investigate, and Bhanwari was ostracized. Bhanwari eventually managed to file a police report, but the high court acquitted the alleged rapists.

One judge said simply that he did not believe upper-caste men could commit a crime so heinous. Srivastava was so shaken that she helped Bhanwari file an appeal in the Supreme Court–it is still pending–and later quit her job. “I realized I couldn’t spend my life writing reports that would simply gather dust,” she says.

It took a long time for me to process that culture shock–perhaps I am still–but one thing I know is this: The conversation is dynamic between an individual and her environment and just as it would be absolutely absurd to respond in a conversation with your friend with the same one line, it is absurd to respond to life experiences with the same old line. To be engaged in this narrative with others, our environment, our religions…requires creativity, expression, and risk. This is what I think. What about you?

Life can be so contradictory, whenever we form fixed opinions it has a way of proving us wrong, if we’re open to it. Otherwise we remain stuck and suffer.

What is required?

Fluidity. If you try to cling to your old beliefs and habits, you will end up missing all that the new place has to offer. You will close yourself to any possibilities of exploration. You will become lost in translation as you search for a meaning which computes with your preconceived notions.

Willingness to laugh at yourself. To look deeply and acknowledge that so much about you is unconsiously shaped by where you have grown up.

Listening, openness. Even if you don’t understand the what or why, acknowledging the universal humanity in others.

Appreciating the diversity of experiences. Humility in seeing that there are many rights and wrongs as shaped by place and time.

This thing we call life can be so complicated! Or so simple.

Heard it on Genvieve Tudor’s Sunday Folk BBC show from 31st August, you can still listen to the whole show until tomorrow.

Via Blank Noise.

Via Feministing.

The fact is that women in most countries are expected to be compassionate, nurturing, and to put their own needs aside on a regular basis. In most Third World countries, a woman’s primary job is considered to be homemaker and mother. Few ever have the opportunity to pursue an interest, much less a job or career. If a woman is not compassionate, she is considered a bad woman. Even in more modern societies like Japan, women are still supposed to make their husband and children the primary focus of their life. For this reason, many Japanese women are deliberately delaying getting married, since they know that once they do so they will be expected to stop their career and make homemaking their major occupation. The same is true in many Middle Eastern countries and in India.

In my practice I have worked with many Middle Eastern and Indian women whose own mothers were pressured into getting married. Far from being compassionate, they describe their mothers are harsh, critical and impatient. Sensing that they may be the same way with their own children, they resist getting married. But they receive so much pressure from their families that they usually give in. They end up not only sacrificing their own lives (many would prefer to have a career) but their future children’s lives as well since they find they cannot emotionally connect with their children or that they take their anger and frustration out on their children.

This links to my recent UV post where I referred to the idealisation of sacrifice, and when it is forced everything goes awry. In theory it sounds nice, but actually we all have hopes and dreams for ourselves which often do not fit with society’s expectations for us. So the cycle of suffering keeps getting perpetuated…

The Washington Post had an in-depth piece on Indian women’s status. It starts off discussing ‘eve-teasing’, i.e. harrassment, but then delves into the whole range of issues from dowry to sex-selective abortion:

For India’s middle-class urban women, the past decade has brought unprecedented opportunities to advance in a social order long dominated by men. But a powerful male backlash has accompanied the women’s revolution, an upwelling of resentment that has expressed itself in sexual violence and harassment.

At the same time, however, the number of reported instances of domestic violence, rape and dowry killings is spiking in South Asian cities, according to women’s groups, demographers and sociologists.

Violence against women is the fastest-growing crime in India, a recent study concluded. Every 26 minutes a woman is molested, every 34 minutes a rape takes place, and every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped, according to the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau.

Novellist and commentator Shobhaa De is quoted as saying:

“The latest statistics are terrifying. And it clearly points to male rage. Underneath our incredible social change, the Indian male is experiencing nothing short of a psychological frenzy.”

The article highlights the Smile Foundation for its attempts to address the issues through “self-respect and self-esteem sessions” and street theater.

It’s worth noting that while India ranks fifth highest in reported rapes, the United States ranks highest in the world. Yet I don’t think an article discussing gender dynamics in the US is likely to be covered by the WashPo in a similar manner.

Dr Meera Patodia, a gynaecologist of the Meera Hospital in the city has been charged with conducting an abortion without the consent of the mother in connivance with her in-laws.

The victim Renu Khediya in her complaint to the Mahila police station (East) on May 5 2006 had charged her husband Bhupendra Singh and in-laws Rahuraj Singh, Manohar Kaur and sister-in-law Anita of dowry harassment under Sections 498A and 406 of IPC for cruelty and dowry harassment. She said her in-laws took her to hospital surreptitiously and charged the doctor with conniving with her in-laws in carrying out the inhuman act.

In my own city of Jaipur, a case of forced abortion. I wonder how the procedure could have been performed though, without the patient being aware. I can hardly imagine what that would have been like. The article doesn’t mention it, but it must have been a case of sex-selective abortion (i.e. female foeticide). Rajasthan is notorious for women’s limited reproductive rights, and still has a very high rate of population growth.

The BBC has an in-depth piece on sex-selective abortion, and gender bias in India, with a short video clip from the film that shows tonight at 7:30pm.

What would you do if your husband’s family did not want you to have daughters – and insisted you took steps to make sure it did not happen?

Would you walk out or would you stay on and take a chance?

What if the bias against girls is reflected across society? Would that mean you could not make it on your own?

Vaijanti is an Indian woman who says she faces this dilemma.

Vaijanti has taken her husband to court, saying he and his family insisted that she have an abortion because a scan showed she was expecting a girl.

Having already had one daughter, she says the pressure to abort the second child was intense.

So Vaijanti moved out of the marital home and now lives apart from her husband – with her two girls.

As Vaijanti had never travelled beyond Agra, director Nupur Basu took her on a whistle-stop tour of India.

‘Grave situation’

We wanted to make this film after a leading development expert, Kevin Watkins, suggested India had a curiously ambivalent role in the globalisation debate.

Its booming economy is cause for hope, and the government is clearly concerned about both gender and economic inequality.

But if huge swathes of the populace do not share the increasing wealth, the whole Indian model of development may be called into question.

[youtube FHwm_uIXDnc]

“Yes! I also missed a lot of trains. But in those days I was a man. In fact, I’m still a man. But you are a girl. A girl alone is like an open locker.”

As I was watching the recent film Jab We Met on an international flight, the above dialogue resonated with me profoundly. There I was, ‘an open locker,’ crossing continents on my own, and hopping from one major city to the next. Over the course of my long travels, I would reflect time and again on how much I appreciated being able to venture unaccompanied from destination to destination.

Sure, it was tough to manage all the stuff that I was lugging around with me; I had to rely on the kindness of strangers to watch my bags while I when to the loo, or to explain the system of fares for the public transportation, or to redirect me when I’d lost my way. Obviously I had some help from other people, but by and large I held the responsibility for myself, that I would get to my train or bus on time and eventually reach my destination. No one else to escort, protect or even ward off evil.

But in India, I rarely venture out of my house on my own, let alone travel across the country. On my first trip here, I had some hope that I could do so. Yet I quickly came to feel that this would not be possible — there were too many risks involved. My confidence in solo voyages, regardless of whether they’re long or short, has steadily dwindled. Sure, I’ll manage the odd auto rickshaw ride, even sometimes late at night — forget Cinderella, I’m talking about 10:30 pm! Otherwise, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve bought into the fear factor and simply stay put most of the time.

I have toyed with the idea of getting a bicycle. In Jaipur I have seen just one woman riding a bicycle, and that too only a few days back. I realise that in other parts of India, women do ride bicycles and I’d love to hear some stories from you about that. In Tamil Nadu, a development initiative in Pudukkottai has been working to give women access to bicycles, which in turn promotes their empowerment. As quoted from a World Bank study:

…the author states that the primary impact of learning to cycle on women’s lives is their perception of independence in terms of their roles in the household and community; productive, reproductive and community managing roles. The second and related impact has been in terms of improvement in both their self confidence and self-esteem.

The International Bike Fund also writes:

These days Pudukottai women sing “we have learnt to cycle, brother/ and with it, we have turned the wheel of our lives, brother”.

Clearly, bicycle riding has implications, physical and emotional. More than just serving as a means to an end, the bicycle itself is a symbol of power — which is why I imagine that most women simply do not have access to them.

Unfortunately, I’m not gutsy enough to ride a scooter, though it seems the vehicle of choice for the majority of middle class young women. Happily, some women have even taken up riding motorbikes. My husband’s cousin, who has been riding since a young age, got second place in a race in Chennai. Perhaps she’s inspired by the story of Chennai’s Alisha Abdullah, who according to NDTV is India’s only female bike racer.

[youtube leFqcVL2uKc&NR=1]
While cases of female bikers may now be the exception rather than the rule, it seems the wheel of change is turning. At least among the middle class, Indian women are increasingly getting access to their own set of wheels, and with it a sense of empowerment. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll take over the roads!

Being beaten up at home could be making Indian women and children frail and undernourished. In an interesting research, a team of social scientists from Harvard School of Public Health has for the first time found a strong association between domestic violence and chronic malnutrition among Indian women and children.

Explaining the reason behind the connection between exposure to domestic violence and malnutrition, social scientist S V Subramanian from Harvard’s department of society, human development and health told TOI that two explanations could prove the association, the first relating to empowerment.

According to Dr Subramanian, perpetrators of domestic violence use different types of abuse, such as physical and psychological, to control the behaviour of their family members.
“The withholding of food is a documented form of abuse in Indian households and is likely correlated with the perpetration of physical violence. An inadequate diet resulting from this results in nutrient deficiencies that cause anaemia and underweight. Additionally, domestic violence is strongly associated with a woman’s inability to make decisions for herself including the choice of types and quantities of food that a woman prepares,” Dr Subramanian said.

He added: “The second explanation is psychological stress. Women who experience domestic violence tend to have higher levels of psychological stress. Children who have witnessed domestic violence in their homes go through the same.”

According to the team, psychological stress is a risk factor for oxidative stress, a term describing a number of chemical reactions that produce free radicals and other organic molecules capable of damaging living tissue.

This is fascinating, because it shows that it may not simply be a lack of food which causes malnutrition, but stress. A lot of research is coming out now showing how stress negatively impacts a host of bodily reactions, which contribute to making a person unwell.

For those of you unfamiliar with the research on mind/body linkages, here are some links!

Mind-Body Connection
Stress: The Mind-Body Connection

However, I don’t like the article’s opening sentence, which is as usual overly sensationalist. The point is not just about women and children who get ‘beat up’, but the more insidious psychological violence that takes so many forms and is so pervasive.