Confronting The Intersectionality of Oppressions

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is once again challenging the mendacity of the Indian State as it has done on so many occasions over the past three decades and as before it will succeed in holding the state accountable to a certain extent. However, this story is not so much about the tenacity of the NBA but about a person who is a shining example of one of its unique characteristics that has contributed to this tenacity. First let me talk of this unique characteristic of the NBA which has a lot to do with the character of its main leader Medha Patkar. Right from the start of the NBA three decades ago, Medha has been able to inspire young urban people to ditch their careers, for some time at least and sometimes permanently, and dedicate themselves to the struggle for justice of the NBA in particular and across the country in general. In fact the NBA has sustained itself for so long with so much energy and purpose because young people from the cities have continually come to man and woman the barricades. Given the complexities of conducting a mass struggle in the modern world against a ruthless and crooked state apparatus which is backed by the rapaciousness of global capitalism, it is not possible for the rural people in the valley alone to sustain the struggle and so tech savvy, english speaking youth have always been in demand and they have contributed their mite to keeping the fight going.

Meera Sanghamitra is one such young person. I saw her for the first time a few years back in a meeting organised by a human rights organisation in Indore and was immediately struck by her articulation and knowledge. What impressed me even more was that she is a transgender person. I had read about transgender activists who are fighting for their rights but this was the first time I was seeing one in flesh and blood holding forth with power and it was inspiring. Her presence was so powerful that it smashed the stereotypical picture in my mind of the trans-gender persons who routinely move around the town singing and clapping and asking for money on various festive occasions.

Meera is of course very active in defence of transgender rights also as will become clear by and by but her main work at that time was as an activist of the NBA fighting for the rights of the people who were to be displaced due to the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built in Gujarat.  The struggle had reached a stage where the many people in Madhya Pradesh had to be rehabilitated and for this they were fighting their individual cases in Grievance Redressal Authority. The Government continually tried to short change the affected people and so their cases had to be fought diligently and once they were awarded compensation then it had to be ensured that they did get this. Moreover, there was a big scam that was unearthed about false land registrations having been made by unscrupulous officials and lawyers to siphon off the rehabilitation money due to the affected people. Finally, there was the struggle against the sand mining mafia which was devastating  the river bed of the Narmada and its tributaries through indiscriminate extraction of sand with machines. Then, as always, there were the various mass protests that had to be organised in the valley, in Bhopal and in Delhi against the continuing efforts of the Government to cheat the affected people. Meera led all these activities with aplomb. It must be remembered that given the kind of society we have it is not easy for a transgender person to work as a normal person. That is why most transgender persons have got ghettoised into their own communities on the margins of society as has been powerfully portrayed by Arundhati Roy in her latest novel. Under the circumstances leading an active mass struggle with so many responsibilities is no mean feat. She has now moved on to being one of the national convenors of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) which is an umbrella organisation of several mass struggles going on across India against the depredations of modern anti-people development.

The immediate spur for this post, however, is a strong statement that Meera has recently made in defence of transgender rights. The other day the veteran Dalit activist from Maharashtra, Ramdas Athavale, who is a minister in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the centre, said that trans-gender persons should not wear Sarees. He said this during a workshop to sensitise people about transgenders as part of the efforts to get enacted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016 which is pending in parliament. This bill seeks to give a distinct identity to transgender persons and prevent discrimination against them. There are two important aspects of this statement that need to be discussed. The first is the patriarchal mindset that has made the minister think of transgenders as males who should not cross dress and sully the patriarchal sanctity that has been given to women with the saree being the traditional symbol of Indian womanhood. Almost certainly the minister also looks askance at women cross dressing and wearing jeans and tee shirts even though he may not have picked up the courage yet to make such a statement in line with his more patriarchal colleagues in the NDA. But the crucial point that Athavale has missed is that many transgender women feel they are women despite having male bodies and so prefer to dress as women.

The second aspect is more important as this statement shows that despite decades of struggle for Dalit rights, Athavale has little sensitivity for the feelings of another marginalised and oppressed community, that of transgenders. In recent years the intersectionality of oppressions has become the focus of activists. This is a term coined by American civil rights advocate Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw to describe overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.There are multiple oppressions and so for instance a poor black woman has to fight class, race and gender oppression while a rich white woman has to fight only gender oppression and may also be oppressing the black woman through the class and race privileges that she enjoys. Ideally true socio-economic change is possible when all the multiple oppressions are taken into account and an alliance forged to fight a common fight. Athavale had come in for criticism  from Dalit rights activists earlier for joining the NDA which is a Brahminical coalition inherently against the interests of the Dalits and now he has fallen foul of the transgender community with his uncalled for advice regarding how they should dress.

Meera normally does not wear a saree, preferring to dress in salwar kameez but to protest this outrageous statement from Athavale she has not only worn a saree but has taken a selfie of herself and posted it in Facebook. She is extremely busy now with various struggles of farmers in Andhra Pradesh and also drumming up support for the NBA but yet as a true intersectionalist she has stood up for the rights of her very own transgender people. Long years of fruitless struggle have injected iron into my soul but when I see young people like Meera holding up the torch so valiantly against the odds, I feel that despite all the many hurdles, the oppressed will one day certainly inherit the earth.

The Darker Side of the Bhils

The retrograde practice of branding women as witches is still extant among the Bhil Adivasis in Alirajpur. In one such case Keramsingh, Mathri, Tuli, Bhina, Jhetri, Bhimbai, Gyansingh, Adesiah and Kelbai of village Girala had called Ranglibai, who is pictured below, a witch.

 The perpetrators ransacked her house, looted her belongings, stole her cattle goats and children and chased Rangli away from the village. Rangli with her six children were forced to flee to her parent's house in Sorwa. The matter was brought to the attention of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath which immediately carried out an investigation and submitted an application to the Superintendent of Police Alirajpur on behalf of Rangli. This led to a meeting in the village under Police pressure and now Rangli and her family are back in their house.

Notably, women are also involved in calling Rangli a witch and raiding her house with Bhimbai playing the major role. Rangli is the second wife of Jatansingh and Bhimbai is the first wife. Bhimbai thought that if she could call Rangli a witch and chase her away from the village then she and her sons would be the sole heirs of Jatansingh's property. So Bhimbai spread the canard that Ranglibai was secretly killing people in the village by her witchcraft for the past two years and so she should be chased away. She got some other people to believe this canard and together they attacked Ranglibai. In most cases witch hunting is related to property disputes as in this one. In recent years there has been an increase in cases of witch hunting arising from property disputes and there have been a few murders also.

The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has been conducting a campaign against this malpractice. The advocacy of Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath with the administration resulted in the Superintendent of Police deciding to hold eight village level conventions in the district to spread awareness that there were no such things as witches and witch branding was a punishable offence that would be dealt with severely. Shri Shankar Tadwal was invited to lecture on the harmful aspects of witch hunting in these conventions and the picture below shows him holding forth in once such convention in Bhabhra.

The Veil that Incarcerates

The Bhils have adopted the regressive Hindu upper caste patriarchal tradition of veiling their women. Married women have to veil themselves in front of their elder male in laws. This means that whenever they go out into public places like a market where an elder male in law might pop up at any time the married women have to remain veiled all the time. Here is a picture of young married women who are out to enjoy the Bhagoria festival but from behind the veil.

During the 1990s my wife Subhadra made many efforts to fight this custom by organising the Bhil women but so deep rooted is it that she failed to make much headway. So much so that even in public meetings of the women's organisation Kansari nu Vadavnu which would discuss issues regarding the liberation of women the participants would sit with their faces veiled as in the picture below.

This was slightly ironical since it had been decided that for the women to be able to discuss these weighty issues it would be necessary for them to be free from the hassles of filling drinking water and cooking. So the men had been convinced that while the women were deliberating they would do the work of filling drinking water for them and also cooking the meals. This was a major blow on the Bhil conception of masculinity which prohibits men from doing domestic work. However, since these men were elder in laws of some of the women participants, their presence as in the picture below, which shows one of them filling drinking water, meant that the women had to keep their faces veiled. Later the men had to be told to remove the drinking water drum to a distance and fill it there so that the women could unveil themselves.

Possibly a greater spread of education and greater economic independence will contribute to this custom of veiling slowly dying away. The Bhil women settled in Indore city in its slums do not veil themselves to this great extent anymore which seems to support this.

Gender Based Violence

Today is International Women's Day and it would be appropriate to devote a post to Gender Based Violence which is quite a problem for Bhil women also. Violence against women is an ancient and universal problem occurring in every culture and social group. It originally began with property accumulation and inheritance which necessitated the strict delineation of the line of descent through male descendants and so led to control of female sexuality and the gender division of labour with men doing external work and women restricted to do home and care work. This gave rise to the institution of patriarchy or men's control of women's work and sexuality through the threat of violence (Lerner, G (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy: Women and History, Oxford University Press, New York.). Ever since then inequalities in status between women and men and a masculine culture of competition for resource and power accumulation are the major sources of this violence.
A major legal support for the elimination of this violence was provided by The United Nations General Assembly adopting the Declaration of Elimination of Violence Against Women in December 1993. Article I of that declaration stated that violence against women means - any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.
By referring to violence as "gender-based", this definition highlights the need to understand violence within the context of women's and girl's subordinate status in society. Many cultures have beliefs, norms and social institutions that legitimise and therefore perpetuate violence against women. Such violence cannot be understood, therefore, in isolation from the norms and social structure and gender roles within the community, which greatly influence women's vulnerability to violence. Violence can be physical, sexual, psychological, emotional or economic. Such violence does not only occur in the family and in the community but is also perpetuated by the State through its policies and the actions of the agents of the State like the police and the administrators.
Moreover, instead of just focusing on each case of violence or on individual men’s acts of violence against women, the entire culture that creates current male roles and identities – defined as ‘masculinity’ has to be understood. Masculinity – or masculinities, as there are different forms of masculinity that are manifest in various ways – is a complex phenomenon. Masculinity is often associated with characteristics such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, dominance, strength, courage and control. These characteristics result from a combination of biological, cultural and social influences, and constitute power relations in society as a whole. Thus men are also victims of masculinity even though women are more so. Consequently it is necessary to critique the quest for power in society as opposed to the redistribution of power if violence is to be rooted out in general and gender based violence is to be targeted in particular.