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Welcome to Berkeley

popomartshow_sm.jpgSO. We live down the road from a Lutheran church, with a Finnish woman pastor, and services in English, Finnish and Japanese. Our block has a high end electronics store jostling with sushi, pizza, a Thai convenience store, and a deli run by a Yemenese guy who likes Indians. The way to our hearth lies between a bead store and a second hand audio equipment place (you can see why Ashwin chose to be here). But most importantly of all, we live right above Sacred Rose Tattoo, which is currently running a brilliant comics exhibition. Now you know where we live, and yes, welcome to Bezerkly. 🙂

Bartheevi, Bengaluru…

Well, we did it. Unbelievably, amazingly so. We moved. Right now, I’m sitting in our ‘cozy’ (Bay area euphemism for tiny) apartment somewhere in Bezerkly, Caaalifornia. We moved from the city that was home for so many years, home both real and imagined, home both bliss and bane. Bengaluru.

We moved for so many reasons, all practical, well-thought out, but it doesn’t help the goodbyes. Bangalore was getting really rough on my asthma (wait, the increasing pollution was actually one of the *causes* for my asthma), and the craziness of the chaos, the traffic, the change in lifestyles, in attitudes, in the Bangalore spirit, was moving beyond we-can-manage-this-because-we-love-the-city to we-might-love-it-but-we-can’t-cope-anymore. Even our time with the Koramangala Initiative (a citizen’s forum in Koramangala) made us feel that without sustained political will, well-intentioned citizens’ efforts can feel frustrating rather than empowering.

Also, it’s been ten years of working for both Ashwin and me, and we felt the need to reflect on those ten years, and to challenge ourselves in different ways for the next ten. So Ashwin chose to go back to university (‘school’ as they call it here in the usofa), and I chose to finish that darn, never-ending doctoral thesis of mine.

All good reasons. Still hard to say goodbye. So I’m going to resort to what I know to be true: misquoting Bob Dylan always works. Goodbye’s too sad a word, babe, so I’ll just say fare thee well.

Besides, as the Governor of our newly inhabited state (Arnold Shivajinagar) is fond of saying, I Will Be Back. And he’s just following namma Bharatiya samskruti, where you never say ‘I’m leaving’, you always wave tata and say, ‘Bartheevi’, ‘Aashbo’, ‘Varen’, ‘Aathe hai’. We’ll be back. Bartheevi, Bengaluru.

The feminots? The feminish? The feminitch? ouch.

Lisa Rundle wrote a brilliant column recently, reproduced in rabble.ca, called ‘The Feminots‘. She often writes stuff that I wish I’d had the gumption (or the grace) to do myself, and she clearly does it better than I ever could have.

Unashamedly, I quote:

A few weeks ago I was in the middle of a number of unfortunate situations with women, in these cases women older than I am, who identify as feminists but seemed to blithely treat other women like poop. I thought to myself: Ageism! I thought: Sexism! I thought: I’m going to write about these… these, these… feminots!

That was a few weeks ago. I tried the idea on a number of other women, older and younger, and everyone got pretty charged by it. “Yes, yes!” they’d say. “I’ve experienced that. The hypocrisy is infuriating!”

I found myself jotting notes and examples from my own life with fervour. I left myself voicemails while I was out so I wouldn’t forget. I began day-dreaming, tangentially I admit, about the sound-alike feminauts* — flying through space, boldly charting fabulous new feminist territory and wearing lots of shiny things, zapping feminots and hypocrites of all kinds with the light of truth and justice… Sigh.

But mostly I thought about the stark division between the women I know who live their politics, who inspire me and make the world better in so many quiet and unseen, super-local ways simply by the way they treat others, and those whose regular treatment of the women around them fails to live up to feminism’s most basic tenet—that all women deserve fair and respectful treatment. (And would a little appreciation every once in a while be so bad? But I digress again.)

So why is it that so many feminists don’t seem to walk their talk? Heck, those patriarchs walk their talk all the time! I mean, they don’t just walk; they strut, they swagger, they swivel their talk. Sigh…

I’ve decided now to call this phenomenon – inspired by Lisa – the ‘feminitch’. That urge to scratch away at the scabs of un-feminism, to peel away the withered wide-eyed-ness of my youth, those unsuspecting moments of being a feminist groupie… till I discovered backstage.

A friend and I spent a couple of hours the other day, standing outside a women’s shelter, feminitching away till we were bathed in a glow of righteous wrath (and pain). To be fair – both to ourselves and to those feminists we love to hate – we were honest enough to express human frailty, and to acknowledge the ultimate coping mechanism: cut and paste. Take what you will from someone’s her/history and present, admire it, learn from it, and leave the rest be. If you can.

Lisa goes on to say:

Maybe I should retract my new term. Fun as I find it, it might not be as helpful as it could be. Goddess knows I’m sick of the good feminist/bad feminist shtick. (Maybe something a little more open-ended would do the trick? Femiwhaaaat? Feminish…) I don’t want to imply that the poopers who inspired this column are all-round horrible people. Each of us can react in ways we sometimes regret. The trick, I think, is to diligently try to take responsibility for that. To question why we make this or that decision. To find out where the knee-jerk responses come from and to do better next time. To apologize.

Because our politics mean something. And the way feminists behave, particularly toward other women, has a real impact — both on what feminism is perceived to be and how women feel about themselves, which goes on to have a huge impact on this gendered world. As feminists, we need to keep opening conversations and talking about the insidious ways oppressions operate in our workplaces, families and organizations, and that includes our feminist workplaces and organizations.

And they all ain’t feminots. The person who sent me Lisa’s column in the first place was an older feminist whom I admire, respect, and… like. Enormously. As with so many others in my life. Bless ’em all. They make feminism worth living.

Lisa concludes by saying:

And, for something a little sweeter, let’s take a moment or two to really value all that unseen good work — the truly feminist workplace, the truly feminist counsellor, neighbour, friend, partner, sister. The ones who engage in those crazy ethical struggles, who own up to their mistakes, who are improving the world by the way they try every day. Here’s to you, you wonderful feminists you.

Here’s. To. You.

The fear of fundamentalisms

Open Democracy has set up a blog for women’s voices to be represented at the G8 summit, called ‘Open Summit: Women talk to the G8‘. They invited contributions (and are continuing to do so, for those who want to share); this was mine, cross-posted here.

Image courtesy Screen Sifar.

tl2hijaab.jpg

My day (and sometimes night) job is working with police officers in India on issues of violence against women and children; I coordinate a UNICEF partnership with the Karnataka State Police. One of the most critical aspects of this work is, as Anindita so succinctly described elsewhere on this blog, analysing the impact of our socially entrenched gender-based norms. The lack of value for our girl children – and if they’re lucky, for the women they grow up to be – has meant that we have lost, in our female population, the size of a small to middling European country.

But this post is not about genderocide. It is about that and more. It is about asking our governments – particularly the all powerful G8 – that in this context of ‘terrorism’, of an almost universal culture of production and consumption around ‘fear’ and ‘mistrust’, they analyse honestly and courageously their own contributions to a growing set of fundamentalisms: economic, religious, cultural, social and sexual. Women (and children) are often hit hardest by these fundamentalisms.

Identities are complex; we acknowledge that readily but seem willing to sacrifice that complexity for simplified categorisations and easy classification. More than ever, our language of ‘us’ and ‘them’ divides us over and over again, in the conversations we have, the advertisements we watch, the TV series we devour. And our politicians, our priests, our ulemas, our leaders – those who claim to represent us in all our complexity – speak the language of divisions, of fissures, best of all.

A young Muslim friend of mine lives in Gujarat, India. She explores, every day, what it means to be a woman, a Muslim, a young person, an artist, in the maelstrom of fundamentalism that is the Gujarat of today. She struggles with what it means to be a citizen: either of this country or of the globalised world. What does citizenship mean if you live constantly in the shadow of fear? Not just the fear of physical abuse, but worse still, the violence attached to labels? For her, wearing the hijaab is both an act of courage and an unintended performance: she is just never quite sure of her audience or its response.

There is complexity in hate-mongering too. In India, as possibly elsewhere, it seems as though the language of ‘empowerment’ for women has been claimed and reconstructed to mean ‘power’ rather than ‘dignity’ or ‘equality’ or ‘pluralism’. Not all our women politicians are feminist, and not all our fundamentalists are male.

These are not only issues of government. But they are issues for governments; our states are contributing, in no small measure, to these voices of fundamentalisms, of alienation. And worse still: sometimes it is they who create the vocabulary.

Breaking different silences

Friends, including those online (like the artist Raghu Menon), have been asking me about the silence on this blog. Again, as always, not because I haven’t had things to feel and words to say, but because there have been too many of those moments. And not enough time for the words…

Events have lurched between the sweeping landscapes of the political – Nandigram. Fake Encounters. Gujarat. Freedom for Art. Art for Freedom. More Gujarat. All anger-making, distress-filling. Amitabh Bachchan for President? Elections in UP. Definitely not Amitabh Bachchan for Prez. Cynical amusement. – and the small but significant mappings of the personal – Moving. When? Soon. Where? Berkeley. Why? Hmm… that’s Ashwin’s story to tell first, and he’ll tell it soon.

But in the meantime, I’ve also been working slowly, and not very steadily, at the blog for the Gender Sensitisation and People-friendly Police Project. Someone wrote in recently:

I am a victim of domestic violence where I‘ve been slapped by my brother-in law which resulted to the fracture of my jaw-bone and 11 long months of traumatic separation from my husband due to my husband’s inability and inefficiency in taking his own decisions.

Till date, I did not register a complaint against my brother-in-law for the domestic assault on me hoping, that my husband would some day realise his mistake and get separated with me from him. But to my utter grief till date neither did he gave me any financial assistance nor any mental support for his own brother’s behaviour and further did not take any step to prevent his behaviour.
Now I repent for my trust on my husband and wish to file a complaint in hope to get justice to me. what should I do? I am still yet to be operated on my broken Jaw-bone.

PLEASE HELP ME IMMEDIATELY…I DESPERATELY NEED UR HELP!!!

I replied, on behalf of the team:

We are terribly sorry to hear of your present situation, but would like to congratulate you for your courage in standing up against it. Breaking the silence around domestic violence is the first, and most difficult, step any woman can take.

What you need to do next:

1. Decide whether you would like to book a *criminal case* against your husband and brother in order to punish them for the violence inflicted on you, or whether you want to book a *civil case* against your husband and brother-in-law seeking compensation for the trauma you have undergone. You can also book both a civil and a criminal case in parallel, i.e. simultaneously.

2. If you decide to book a criminal case, please go to your local police station (PS) and register a complaint against your husband and brother-in-law. The IPC sections they would normally use would be sections for assault and grievous injury (319-327) as well as Section 498(A). Please be aware that 498(A) is about any kind of cruelty – physical and mental – inflicted upon a married woman by her husband or his relatives. This is not only in the case of dowry harassment, as is commonly (mis)understood.

3. Please make sure you keep copies of the complaint you file, and that you get an acknowledgment of this complaint, and a copy of the FIR filed at the police station. That is your right.

4. If you decide to file a civil case, under the newly enacted Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), you can go either to your local PS or your local Protection Officer (the Dept. of Women and Child Development will be able to help you with details). Under this Act, you can make sure you are given protection within the marital home, as well as ask for compensation for the violence (physical and emotional) inflicted on you.

While doing all this, try and get as many family and friends to support you through the process, as well as contact a counselling centre or a women’s organisation near you, who can help you with the process and the procedures. You can also contact your State Women’s Commission or the National Women’s Commission.

We are not sure whether you live in Karnataka or not, so we can’t give you details of organisations close to you who might be able to help. However, one of our team members will contact you separately, and try and help further if you are from Karnataka.

All the best, more strength to you.

I think to myself: someone who can surf the net. Finds our blog. Needs our help. To know what every citizen in this country should know.

Breaking the silence is also about what words you then fill it with; those of us who live on the other side, who are there in support, need to make those words easy to find and easy to understand. Then comes the hard part.

Policing Change…?

Divya, my young cousin, is convinced that I prefer the ‘real’ world to the ‘virtual’ one. Gasp. She also imagines that I can provide her with her periodic intellectual fix. Gasp and chuckle. The last couple of weeks have been hot, grimy, dusty, and extremely real. Not very intellectual perhaps (in the sense of Parisian cafes and languid philosophy), but certainly hot, grimy, dusty, and extremely thought-provoking. My team and I have been spending time in Raichur – the north Karnataka district with the dubious distinction of having the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in Karnataka – looking at how we might better create an environment of safety and protection for its women and children. As with all else in our country, it will take will to change. And the attitude to match. An attitude that will value women and children over cheap labour, easy sex and coerced money making.

Sattva, an online magazine for ‘realising equilibrium in social change’ asked me to write about the Gender Sensitisation and People-friendly Police Project, for their March (‘Women’s Day Special’) issue of the magazine. Having just watched an infuriating episode of ‘We the People’ on NDTV, with Barkha Dutt asking whether we ‘still need feminism’, I was provoked enough to write the following piece:

Policing Change: A Personal Perspective on Violence against Women and Children

A well known TV news channel in English had a Women’s Day special recently, asking the question ‘Do we still need feminism?’ As someone who has worked with the Karnataka police for the past few years on issues of violence against women and children (and is a feminist), I found it startling and disturbing, that so many participants on that talk show – including a senior woman police officer from Punjab – had no sense of the extraordinary moment of crisis we are in, as a country, as a ‘civilisation’, as a community of human beings.

India is missing from its population, over 50 million women and girl children (Census of India, 2001). ‘Missing’ because they are either killed (before birth, immediately after birth, or during their lifetime; one estimate says that 5 women die every day over dowry disputes) or trafficked (for commercial sexual exploitation, labour and other activities). 50 million is 5 crores, i.e. approximately the population of Karnataka; as I tell the police officers who participate in our workshops, there would be unimaginable world-wide horror if a bomb wiped out Karnataka tomorrow, but this ‘bomb’ of gender-based violence has been quietly exploding all over our country, in our homes or in a home near us, and there are very few who hear or see it. There is another ‘bomb’ that also exists: of those who are not killed, but who die many deaths in their every day living.

Continue reading “Policing Change…?”

A message from Avaaz.org: 2 days to stop climate chaos

In my mailbox:

On Thursday March 15th, the environment ministers from the G8, the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, will be meeting in Germany. The outcome of this meeting will play a critical role in determining the world’s response to global warming–and the fate of the planet.

AVAAZ has been invited to attend this meeting to present our climate change petition. Help seize this opportunity to shape the G8’s agenda by signing the petition here:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_germany

Continue reading “A message from Avaaz.org: 2 days to stop climate chaos”