Blog – Page 10 – Anasuya Sengupta

Another Women’s Day offering…

In the continuing spirit of Women (and Men who Care about Women)’s Day, an announcement. The Gender Sensitisation and People-friendly Police Project – a joint partnership of the Karnataka State Police and UNICEF – has now got a web log of its own: http://www.peoplefriendlypolice.wordpress.com/

The site is still very much under construction, but please do drop by, give us your suggestions, and pass the message on. We hope that it will be a comprehensive resource on violence against women and children, as well as a platform for sharing opinions on the experiences that women, young people and children – in particular – have, when dealing with the police. The police need to be continually challenged as well as supported in their efforts to become more ‘people friendly’: we encourage you to share your positive as well as not-so-positive stories, as the experiences of pro-active, sensitive policing (they do exist) rarely make it to the front pages of our newspapers.

Being an ‘Action Hero’

The Blank Noise Project asked for a blog-a-thon on March 8th; a way of celebrating the strengths of those who resist, in some way, street level harassment. A great idea. Yet the words ‘Action Hero’ somehow constrain me: what is Action, and who is a Hero? This March 8th, I was in the middle of a workshop with a group of police officers from States across South India and reiterating – many times over, in different ways – that women are *not* women’s worst enemies (yes, a treatise on that soon). Was that being an Action Hero? I work with men, with law enforcers, with some of the most patriarchal structures in the world, and I do not abuse, I do not indignify, I do not violate. Perhaps more honestly, I do my best not to (there are times when I bite my tongue, hard. It hurts). But certainly I describe, I analyse, I provoke, I persuade. I challenge. Is that being an Action Hero?

Whatever the ways in which Jasmeen, Mangs, Chinmayee and Annie conceived of it, philosophical flimsies are not going to cut it. So let me remind myself – and tell others – of a couple of lessons I learnt early. One was when I was in college in Delhi. Being in the hostel, any kind of travel involved painful hours in a sweaty bus or painfully expensive moments in an auto. The choice was simple, and I learnt more about harassment on DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) buses than any hi-falutin’ economics. Perhaps (says the philosopher), I did get somewhere after all.

I learnt that anger is not always strategic. It’s a peculiar Delhi phenomenon – and I find it slowly spreading to other cities, including Bangalore – that if you raise your voice in anger against someone who’s harassing you, very few people are likely to support you. However obvious the harassment, however gruesome the details. Someone who’s not just touching you, but who’s conveniently using the lack of interstitial space to slam against every bit of you and rub himself up in perverse joy. What works? Shame. And humour. Humour, you ask in horror? Was it funny, what he was doing? No, it wasn’t. Far from. But what worked was this: I would say loudly, so that as many people around could hear me, in as bored a clarion call as possible, ‘Kya bhaiya, yeh sab aap ghar me nahi kar sakthe, kya? [Why, brother, can’t you do all this at home?]’. There would be titters, some loud guffaws and the slammer-against-body (whose face I couldn’t even see, considering the position I was in) would suddenly ease himself up, and leave the bus at the next convenient moment. Or at least move himself from the parking spot that was my body.

Another moment of self-preservation epiphany. I was travelling from Karwar to Raichur via Hubli (all in north Karnataka). I ended up being in a bus that landed up in Raichur at 2 in the morning [Note to self: try not to travel alone to unknown destinations at odd hours of the night. As far as possible]. On the bus, I had made ample and effective use of a loaded water bottle to preserve my bums from groping fingers and toes belonging to the person sitting in the seat behind me. When I got down at the bus stop, I found the place strewn with sleeping bodies and bags. Luckily for single women, very few public places in India are ‘deserted’. The trouble is, those who are temporarily inhabiting that space may not (as mentioned before) support you in a moment of crisis. Anyhow, no one was awake at the Raichur bus stop; it was deathly quiet and with only one tube light that cast a pool of light over a limited area. Some instinctual common sense made me clamber over the bodies and bags, shift a few of those around gently, and settle into a position right in the middle of the light. Not a moment too soon. A burly man, probably in his mid thirties, came up out of the shadows, and watched me for a while. He circled around the bus stop, over and over again, waiting, I feel with hindsight, for me to move out of the light. I didn’t. I was terrified, but I wasn’t going to run. So lesson number 2: running isn’t always the solution. Stay in the light, and be prepared to scream.

After about what felt like a few hours (but was probably closer to 45 minutes), he realised I wasn’t going to budge. And he left. I stayed awake, clutching my bag, clutching myself, thanking my surprisingly sharp instincts that I hadn’t done something unbearably foolish. Lesson number 3: trust that gut of yours. It is seldom wrong. ‘Rationality’ is judged by outcome.

My Indian of the Six Years

CNN-IBN is ratcheting up its focus on the ‘Indian of the Year’ award. My vote is for someone who isn’t even nominated. Irom Sharmila Chanu, the poet, the activist, the Menghaobi (what those in Manipur call her; ‘the fair one’). The woman who has been on a protest fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act for the past six years. The woman who has been under arrest and force fed through a nasal tube for almost as long. Perhaps I should call her My Indian of the Six Years.

I’ve written about her before, but two days ago, I found another appeal from a friend and colleague, Monisha Behal, of the North East Network (a women’s rights organisation) in my inbox:

We all know about Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast since 2000 against the Armed Forces Special Power Act. There are small movements in different parts of this country demanding the Centre to repeal this Act. Signature campaigns in favour of Sharmila are going on as well, especially from women’s organizations. I realized that news channels which publicized Jessica Lal’s case were unbelievably successful. NDTV conducted opinion polls through SMS on mobile phones. I never thought this new technique would work so well.

I visited Sharmila at a New Delhi hospital last evening. I conveyed to her messages of goodwill and support from friends and colleagues. And yet I knew that most do not know about her the way people know about Jessica. Just then Sharmila’s brother showed me an article about her in the Femina February 14, 2007.

I read the piece and saw a small message in the end of the final page. It says: DO YOU SUPPORT IROM’S WAY OF FIGHTING THE AUTHORITIES? SMS us your replies at 3636 (type FE [space] F0038 then your response, name and city).

I hope very much that this new technique of the media will do some magic to a woman who wants to live, see and enjoy the beauty of this world. Please, do SMS your support to young Sharmila.

Singing the dawn in…

What better way to celebrate Republic Day, than with a morning raaga?

Date: Friday, 26th January
Time: 7am (though you’re requested to be seated by 6.45am)
Venue: Chitrakala Parishad, Open Air Auditorium, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore.

an early morning vocal recital by

Pandit Sanjeev Abhyankar

with Pandit Vishwanath Nakod (tabla) and Pandit Vyasamurthy Katti (harmonium)

While early morning raagas are serene, tranquil and meditative, according to the time specificities of Hindustani classical music, we tend to miss out on them at evening concerts. Sanjeev Abhyankar is considered one of the finest exponents amongst the younger generation of musicians.

Life and Times of Bangalore – burning

Saddam Hussein is executed in Baghdad on 31st December 2006. Protests are organised by Congress-I leader Jaffer Sharief in Bangalore on Friday, 19th January 2007. They turn violent. In seeming retaliation, the ‘celebration’ of Hindu right-wing ideologue Golwalkar’s birth centenary, on 21 January, organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, turns equally violent and leads to riots and curfew in some parts of Bangalore. Doctor-turned-destroyer Praveen Togadia thankfully stayed in Mysore, sowing his seeds of discord. In Bangalore, a young boy is killed, a police constable stabbed, and public and private property damaged.

Our honourable Chief Minister, Kumaraswamy, then announces the imminent tabling of a bill in the legislature, holding organisers of rallies responsible for disrupting public peace (TOI, Bangalore, 22 January 2007, Pg. 1). Great. But hang on; his reason? “Such incidents will bring bad image [sic] to Bangalore in terms of investments.”

Politics flourishes. Bangalore burns.

Life and Times of Bangalore

Since I had such a positive response to my earlier post on old pictures of Bangalore, I thought this announcement from Jackfruit Research & Design would also interest readers:

LIFE AND TIMES OF BANGALORE AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY – a collection of postcards of the city as it was at the turn of the 20th century. Views of commercial areas, government, civic, cultural and religious institutions, parks, lakes and daily life, form an urban archive of Bangalore as imagined by the British eighty or more years ago. These souvenirs of the past provide a sense of the city as a colonial government and trading centre in the Mysore princely state.

Each set of twenty is priced at Rs.300.00 and will be available from January 22nd, 2007 onwards at:

Higginbothams, M.G. Road
Gangaram’s Book Bureau, M.G. Road
Fountainhead, Lavelle Road
East India Company, ITC Hotel Windsor Sheraton & Towers, Sankey Road
Ambara, Ulsoor
English Edition, Church Street

For further details, please call: 080 25800733 / 25469798

Beyond saying no: how to fight sexual harassment

So it’s been over a month and a half of silence. Online. A whole lot of words and work and wrath offline. Beyond the holidays and the happy happy, there were the days of listening to stories of women raging, of women exhausted of raging, the nights of waking up thinking about them. Of P who spoke to me only two days ago, from a tiny village a few hours from Bangalore, at the end of her taut and stretched tether, because her husband and his family, not content with abusing her for a mere 2 lakh rupees in dowry, had pushed her into sex work. She is now safe at home with her parents, and a case has been registered against her husband and his family. Of M, who had to suffer being married at 14, beaten and bruised by her husband for the next 14 years, and then finally had the courage to walk out of the marriage, taking her children with her. M is also a poet and a police woman. Hers is a story worth writing about, but not today.

Today’s post is for N. For being the right kind of strong. P, M and N – and all the other women whose stories I hear on an almost daily basis – made me ashamed of my awkwardness around writing about what I know and do most: working with the police (and women’s and children’s organisations) trying to make the system as responsive to violence against women and children as possible. In an earlier post, I spoke about this strange awkwardness, but enough is ’nuff. Diffidence is sometimes stupid, and sometimes it can be downright dangerous. ‘Changing the system’ is as much about changes within, as it is about making us – those without – responsive to, and informed by, these changes.

N’s story is not unusual: she worked in a multi-national corporate, well-known in its sphere. She became progressively more unhappy at work, considering that the General Manager (GM) – and therefore, but naturally, many of the staff – seemed to think that work satisfaction equated with an environment of ‘humour’, of sexual or racist jokes, not even generally directed, but specifically targeted against colleagues. Finally, when the jokes were directed against her, with the GM repeatedly offending and upsetting her, she had enough; she didn’t want to return to the office, she didn’t want to see her GM’s face ever again, she went home in a tumult of rage and disbelief at what was happening to her. What she did next is unusual: she protested.

Continue reading “Beyond saying no: how to fight sexual harassment”

On World Aids Day

From Stephanie McMillan‘s blog.

5.7 million Indians are reportedly HIV positive. Of these, nearly 40% are women. And no, they are not sex workers. They are mainly young, married women, more than three-fourths of whom have had sexual contact only with their husbands. As Breakthrough puts it: the greatest risk of HIV/AIDS for many girls and women is marriage.

More from Pandit Gangu Hangal

Gangubai once told film-maker Vijaya Mulay, in the initial years of television: “If a male musician is a Muslim, he becomes an Ustad. If he is a Hindu, he becomes a Pandit. But women like Kesarbai and Mogubai just remain Bais.”

Ustad: master/teacher, Pandit: scholar/teacher, Bai: sister.

Caste… untouched.

The horrific massacre of a Dalit family two months ago at Kherlanji. The excruciating social boycott of Dalits in Kadakol for the past four months because they ‘dared’ to take water directly from the village tank (rather than have two intermediate caste representatives pouring water for them, as they have done for centuries). Neither story made the front pages of our national newspapers.

In the midst of it all, Karnataka celebrated its Suvarna Karnataka Rajyothsava (as I’ve said elsewhere, the State’s golden jubilee celebrations), and over this weekend, I finally managed to read The Hindu‘s special issue for the occasion. In it, the first article was by Gangubai Hangal, one of the most extraordinary musicians I have ever had the privilege to hear. In a concert we organised in college, over ten years ago, I remember her voice exploding within and without me, making my fanciful imagination feel that it was capable of bringing the house down, in many more ways than one. What power, I had thought then. What unbridled, untrammeled, ecstatic power.

And yet, the story she told in ‘The Golden Song’ (Gangubai Hangal, The Hindu’s Suvarna Karnataka special issue, Pp 4-8, November 1, 2006) moved me beyond the music. Two stories. One of her mother’s, and the other, of her own.

I was born in pre-Independent India, a period when caste discrimination was rampant. Shukravarapete in Dharwad was a locality full of Brahmins. Even now it’s an area dominated by them. My mother, Ambabai, a devout woman, was conscious of this caste factor, and lived a low profile, quiet life. I still remember how one afternoon an old Brahmin mendicant came to our house asking for water. My mother was in a dilemma. She explained the predicament to him and he remarked, “Does water have a caste? Please give me water to drink…” and my mother duly gave him water and a piece of jaggery. He blessed my mother and left. But my mother reeled under the shock of having given water to an upper caste man and was gripped by fears of social ostracisation for many days to come.

The incident reminds me of another from my own life. I was a young girl and faced a similar predicament right under the nose of the iconic figure who strived to abolish untouchability from this country. It was the Belgaum Congress of 1924 and the Mahatma was to grace the occasion. I was thrilled that I was going to sing before Gandhiji, but also scared stiff that I would be asked to clear all the plantain leaves after lunch, as I belonged to one of the lower castes. I sang. Gandhiji came up to me and blessed me. Pandit Sawai Gandharva was impressed too. On the one hand I was overjoyed by their appreciation, but on the other, I was paralysed by the worst fears. I quietly walked up to my teacher and asked him if I had to sit separately for lunch and clear the leaves. He held me close, and said: “Nothing of the kind, don’t worry…”

They were difficult times. But I’m grateful to music in more than one way. It gave me a unique identity and pushed all other identities to the background.

I wonder what Amartya Sen might say about that; perhaps he needs ‘Identity and Violence – Part 2. What I surprisingly missed out in Part 1‘. There’s much to be grateful for, in that Gangubai Hangal could survive the inherent pain of her genealogy through the genius of her music, but others of more mundane identities and lives continue to struggle with the violence implicitly – and very much explicitly – still alive in the caste system. Caste… untouched?