History books might not tell you about these trailblazing women but do you know who they are?
1. Everyone knows Savitribai Phule, the self-taught feminist reformer who is India’s first female teacher, fought for girls’ education, campaigned for widow remarriage and set up India’s first infanticide prevention shelter in 1853 where unmarried women could leave their babies. In 1873 she organised a marriage. What was so unusual about it?
2. Name the 14th century Bhakti saint from the Mahar community who sang of family, the hardship of daily existence and devotion to God. Her 62 surviving abanghas (compositions) speak of being served left-over food and being denied entrance to the temple.
3. This woman warrior fought alongside Rani Lakshmibai in Jhansi in 1857 and, at the height of the battle, disguised herself as the queen, giving her the vital time needed to escape from the fort. Her name?
4. Udadevi Pasi is another Dalit virangana (brave woman) who played a key role in the 1857 rebellion alongside Begum Hazrat Mahal of Lucknow. What skill did she display at the battle of Sikanderbagh?
5. Dr BR Ambedkar called her his sister and it was she who gave the title ‘Periyar’ to EV Ramaswamy at the 1944 All India Scheduled Caste Federation Women’s conference where she was president. Who was she?
6. There is no official record of her in history but legend has it that in the early 19th century, Nangeli, an Azhava woman who lived in Travancore state is said to have paid with her life by committing a radical act to challenge an oppressive law. What was the act and what was the law?
7. Shantabai Dhanaji Dani’s memoirs record poverty, discrimination and caste apartheid by dominant caste Hindus. A staunch Ambedkarite, she eventually converted to Buddhism and in 1987 received the prestigious Savitri Bai Phule award for her work in education. Name her memoir.
8. The autobiography of this writer chronicles the life of Dalit Christian women in Tamil Nadu. At 26 she joined a seminary to be a nun but left seven years later to become a writer. In addition to her autobiography, she has written two novels and published a collection of short stories. What is her name?
9. Among the 299 members of the Constituent Assembly, only 15 were women and just one of them a Dalit. Who was she?
10. An ardent advocate for birth control, she argued: “There is no use multiplying sickly, ill-fed and illiterate children at the cost of the mother’s health.” Who?
(For answers, please scroll to the end of this newsletter)
A hat-tip to @dalithistorymonth, @dalit_history, @equalitylabs, Feminism in India and Badri Narayan’s 2006 book, Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics.
A GOOD WEEK FOR…
Geetanjali Shree whose novel Ret Samadhi (Tomb of Sand) has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the first work translated from Hindi to ever be in the running for the award. Ret Samadhi is translated into English by American writer Daisy Rockwell.
WE HEAR YOU
“I know I can bring about a lot of change from my position now.”
M.Com student Damyanti Majhi who belongs to the Santhali tribe is, at 21, the youngest-ever deputy mayor of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation.
GENDER TRACKER
Atrocities against Dalit women and girls account for 15.11% of all the crimes registered under the Scheduled Caste/Schedule Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act. This reflects a 46% increase over the last six years with 10 Dalit women and girls reporting rape every day.
Source: Caste-based sexual violence and state impunity, a report released on March 30 by the National Council of Women Leaders
STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
H&M vows to end sexual violence at TN supplier
H&M has signed a historic legal agreement pledging to end sexual violence and harassment of women workers at one of its largest Indian suppliers, Natchi Apparel in Tamil Nadu. This the first time any brand has signed up to tackle gender-based violence in Asia’s garment industry.
The agreement follows the murder of a 21-year-old Dalit woman in January 2021. Her male supervisor has reportedly confessed to raping and then killing her. Her family alleges that she had been sexually harassed at work for months. Since the woman’s murder, others have spoken up against sexual abuse at the same garment factory.
The agreement comes on the heels of a hard-run campaign by the Dalit women-led Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU) and other partners. The agreement has “shown the power of a Dalit woman workforce to seek justice,” said Thivya Rakini, TTCU state president.
FIR against mahant for his rape threat video
Nearly a week after a video in which the mahant of an ashram in Khairabad, Uttar Pradesh is seen threatening to rape Muslim women, UP police have filed an FIR against Bajrang Muni Das, the mahant. “If a single Hindu girl is teased by you in Khairabad, I will openly bring your daughter and daughter-in-law out of your home and rape her,” Das can be heard saying in front of a mosque on the video. Das has alleged that the video has been ‘distorted’.
11 months after husband’s death, a baby boy for the mum
After winning relief from the Telangana high court to go ahead with the implantation of an embryo conceived with her husband through IVF , a 32-year-old woman gave birth to a boy 11 months after her husband’s death. The fertilisation process was conducted in March 2021 with the embryo preserved in a freezer but before implantation could take place, the husband died of Covid in April 2021. Medical Council guidelines require the permission of the husband before implantation, which is why the woman approached the high court.
FIELD NOTES
How media coverage has changed (or hasn’t) 10 years after the Delhi gang-rape
The gang-rape and subsequent death of a medical student in Delhi on December 2012 led to widespread public protest and a change in the country’s rape laws. Within media, it reinforced the need for sensitivity and guidelines in how rape is reported.
A study by Sweta Singh, an assistant professor at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi with consultant Sameera Khan examines media coverage of eight rape cases from Shakti Mills (2013) to IIT, Guwahati (2021) to find that media coverage has generally been nuanced and more sensitive. However, the tendency to benchmark cases against the December 2012 crime “tends of homogenise the narratives of rape…it seems as if the most brutal cases of rape with the most visible physical injuries get the widest coverage.”
Further, the lack of knowledge of newer legal, medical and forensic evidence laws hampered reporters in being able to critique police sources. For instance, in Hathras, journalists did not contest the police version of denying rape based on the medical forensic report despite the fact that the autopsy was carried out several days after the rape.
Media also tends to be blind to intersectionalities – for instance if the rape survivor is Dalit or tribal or disabled, all factors that increase her vulnerability. Less than half the stories reported out of Hathras mentioned the victim’s caste.
Read the study here.
AROUND THE WORLD
KBR smashes a 232 year old ceiling
The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court bench was announced by Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice president. Three Republican senators joined 50 Democrats in backing her. “We’ve made it. All of us. All of us,” Judge Jackson said in an emotional speech at the White House.
Transwomen in women’s sport
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson waded into the tricky area of transgender women in female sporting events saying he does not believe they should be allowed to participate. His comments came after cyclist Emily Bridges was ruled ineligible to compete in her first elite women’s race recently.
BEFORE I GO…
Answers
1. In 1873, Savitribai Phule organised a marriage that was unique because it was conducted without a priest. During the ceremony, the bridegroom took a vow to promote the education of girls and equal status of women.
2. Sant Soyarabai was the wife of the famous saint Chokhamela who is buried in front of the Vitthal temple at Pandarpur. When Ambedkar tried to pay his respects at the temple, he was stopped at Chokhamela’s burial site and not allowed to go further into the temple.
3. Born in 1830 to a Koli family, Jhalkaribai began her career as a foot soldier in the women’s wing of the army and rose to the role of a key aide. Her legend is celebrated by the Kolis at a Jhalkaribai Jayanti each year.
4. As a sniper, she hid in a huge peepal tree from where she shot British soldiers of the 53rd and 59th regiment who were resting below. Captain Dawson noticed that the bullet wounds on the dead soldiers had a downward trajectory and spotted Udadevi on the tree and shot her dead. Her martyrdom is celebrated on November 16 every year.
5. Annai Meenambal Sivaraj was the daughter of V.G. Vasudevapillai, a famous Adi-Dravida leader who was elected to the Madras Corporation.
6. Nangeli’s legend is a powerful tale of resistance and assertion against the oppressive ‘breast tax’ imposed by the state of Travancore under which women from the oppressed castes were not allowed to cover their breasts and, if they did so, were taxed. According to legend, Nangeli chose to cover her breasts and refused to pay the tax, cutting her breasts off instead and bleeding to death as a result.
7. Ratdradin Amha (For us, These Days and Nights) was published in 1990. The title is taken from a song composed by Sant Tukaram with the words, “For us these days and nights pose a warlike situation.”
8. A blend of different sounds of her Christian name, Bama is the pen-name of Faustina Mary Fatima Rani.
9. Dakshayani Velayudhan was born in 1912 in Mulavukad, just off the coast of Kochi. She belonged to the Pulaya community and was the first Dalit woman graduate in India. The only Dalit woman in the Constituent Assembly she said: “The working of the Constitution will depend upon how the people will conduct themselves in the future, not on the actual execution of the law…I hope that in course of time there will not be such a community known as Untouchables.”
10. Sulochanabai Dongre fought for birth control at a time when the reproductive rights of women were seldom discussed in public. In 1942, she raised the issue before a crowd of 25,000 at Nagpur. She advocated for educating women as future mothers as a way of overcoming caste and gender discrimination.
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| That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com. |