What happens when you bring together five kindred individuals, who have extensively worked on issues related to feminism, violence against women and transgenders in South Asia to talk about the very same issues and have the indomitable
Jean Feraca moderate the discussion? A stimulating, at times freewheeling and always informative discussion of course and I am glad that I was part of that evening. Unfortunately, the event was not very well attended. It could have been the slightly abstruse and abstract title for the conference - "Transnational Feminism", it could have been the fact that it was a Friday evening and this being Madison, WI, everyone was out partying but in any case, I feel that whatever was missing in terms of count of people was more than compensated for by the genuine interest and awareness of the audience that was present.
Like I mentioned in my pre-event
post, the
South Asia Forum at the University of Wisconsin organized this event. For me, the biggest reward from attending this conference was to be able to listen to people who have done much much more than just talk about issues affecting women in South Asia today. These are the people who don't believe in merely writing papers or turning these issues into abstractions. These are the people who have spent time and energy in their respective communities, dealing with ground realities. The evening got rolling with a preview of some of the work done by Jigar Mehta, an award winning filmmaker from UC, Berkeley, who has done some excellent stories in
Kashmir and
Sri Lanka (post-tsunami). In Mr. Mehta's films (which you can watch through the links provided above) - one can see the ways in which man made (in Srinagar) and natural (in Sri Lanka) disasters have affected women from those regions. Mehta observed that while in Sri Lanka, he could see a spark of hope fueled by the aid money post-tsunami, the women in Kashmir were in a very desperate situation and many of them turned to religion in search of mental peace.
Jyoti Puri was in India recently, working on issues of violence against women and transgenders. She also spoke about the racism prevalent specially in Northern India regarding people from the North East and how some of the crimes against women from the North East are not taken seriously because the North Eastern women are stereotyped as being "loose". During her comments, a person in audience was probably not entirely in agreement with the fact that the issue of violence against women was being exclusively presented in a south Asian context. He brought out the issue of the recent duke-lacrosse team rape incident and mentioned that the women involved should realize that when they make forays into male bastions they should also accept the "risks" involved. Such a comment would bring about negative response in most settings, but in a conference of feminists, it brought a (richly deserved in my opinion) stinging rebuke from Jyoti.
Srimati Basu was in Calcutta figuring out the relationships between the myriad civil codes based on religion in the Indian subcontinent and their effect on women. She contended that while by and large, the Hindu religious law gives a fair amount of protection to women, it is not the same for Muslim women who are at a huge disadvantage because of the Muslim law that applies to them. She mentioned that the situation is reversed in Bangladesh which despite being a Muslim country has amended its laws enough to give Muslim women a good protection of law but there it is the Hindu women who are faced with a regressive penal system as based on the Hindu law. She blamed the mentality of minority appeasement in both countries for this situation because nobody wants to stir the hornet's nest. She also made the startling revelation that domestic violence against women in south asian expats in the US is much higher than other groups in the same income and education strata and a lot of this domestic violence is under-reported due to desire of the South Asian community to be perceived as a model immigrant community.
Manaslu Gurung is from Nepal and she talked about growing up in a deeply religious Hindu country where the King assumes that he is a re-incarnation of a Hindu God and all women are supposed to be submissive like Sita. I later pointed out that the stereotype of Sita being a devoted, submissive wife is a very powerful symbol that has been perpetuated by the male dominated society for a long time to further their own interests. They of course conveniently disregard the fact that if Sita was a devoted wife, then Ram was an equally devoted husband so it was a two way contract. In fact Lord Ram was so devoted that he went and fought a demon to get his wife back - so let us first see that kind of devotion from husbands and then we can talk about similar devotion from wives (maybe help in doing dishes and other household chores would be a good start - specially in North India). The second point that is forgotten about Sita is that when she was thrown out of the house on charges of promiscuity, she very ably raised her two children without the support of her husband - so we have evidence of single mothers in our religious texts. She mentioned that because of the meek, submissive lives that her mother and grandmother lived, she grew up with an assumption that a woman cannot be her role model and wanted to emulate her father in many senses. In any case, her experience demonstrates that suppression of women's right is not a prerogative of Islamic societies.
Amna Buttar as many of us know is now a legend in Pakistan and in many other parts of the world as well. She was recently in the news because she got a
death threat from Brig Shah in Pakistan because of all the help she is giving to Mukhtaran Bibi. Some of her stories about the work done in remote areas of Pakistan and the help and moral support being provided by the NY Times writer Nicholas Kristoff were amazing. She spoke about the school being run by Mukhtaran Bibi, the courage now being shown by women in Pakistan to come out and talk against a deeply entrenched feudal system and the far-reaching effects of the strict Islamic law that was implemented by Zia Ul Haq. There was also a question from the audience that since she represents the US or the West to Pakistanis and if the people with whom she worked in Pakistan ever resented that or if they said that because of the supposed human rights violations committed by the US, she did not have a right to point finger at what is going on Pakistan. Amna mentioned that people in remote places like Meerwala fully realize that the changes happening around them are due to the social conscience of an American journalist and the generosity of Americans who have donated freely whenever Mr. Kristoff talked about the plight of people in these areas. Hence, they do not care about the alleged human rights violations at Abu Gharib or the Guantanamo Bay - for them the manifest reality is the reality of American generosity.
At one point of time, Jean very aptly summed up that the one single theme coming out loud and clear from this conference was the power of voice and the power of stories. As someone once said that decisions are made by people who show up. As more and more women decide to show up, to demonstrate that they want to stand up and be counted for issues that matter to them - hopefully we will be able to move to a society that respects women. As more than one speaker pointed out that this might be a Utopian notion but at least they will rest easy with the fact that they tried rather than accepting the status-quo and generations down from them this utopia might be realized.
PS: You might ask, "Why aren't there any pictures of the event? Surely that would have been a nice thing to have". Well I agree - and yours truly was really excited to get some pictures of the event that he was covering for the first time as a blogger and hence charged the batteries of his digital camera and everything. But when he switched on the camera at the venue - the dreaded message flashed across the screen - "no memory card!". Yes, I forgot to take the memory card with me. I promise to be more careful in the future.