In the eye of the storm

GIANT STRIDES FORWARD

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore...

So begins a famous feminist anthem of the 1970s and many, many a woman has been stirred, uplifted and spurred onto transcending herself by the powerful words belted out by the captivating voice of the singer, Helen Reddy. She sang this song, I Am Woman, at a time when women were struggling to define themselves; when they were attempting to wrest for themselves their rightful place in society as one half of humankind. This endeavour had, of course, begun years ago at the turn of the 20th century, but it was in these heady years of the 70s, full of the clamour and tumult of cries for universal peace, freedom and brotherhood, that the struggle assumed a new stridency.

It has been a long walk to freedom since then, a freedom that is still not whole, one that cannot be whole while a girl child is still murdered in utero or a bride burned for the inadequacy of her dowry, yet now women are no longer compelled to define and redefine themselves, all the time. At least, not in the manner they had been forced to in the past; in a sense, they have staked out a definite place for themselves in the landscape of society. Now, very often, when they join a revolution, they throw their lot in as equals, fighting, not for their rights, but for universal civil rights, for all of humankind. Perhaps, now, more than ever, the other lines of Helen Reddy’s anthem are relevant as she sings,

I am woman, watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my loving arms across the land.

This evocative image — of loving arms spread across the land — is the key to unravelling the nature of woman, of understanding why her place in broader civil movements is crucial. As many observers and examiners of women’s studies have pointed out, it is the woman’s natural nurturing instinct, an almost visceral response to embrace and heal, that often tips the balance in situations of conflict. She often addresses issues from a radically different perspective than man, a position that leads to unexpected solutions in previously unresolved battles.

Freedom movement

Indian women have been battling alongside their men for a long, long time now. That they have fought and fought well in our struggle for independence against the British is a well-documented fact. It was Gandhiji who had mobilised the women, recognising the immense reservoir of potential that lay untapped within them. Sarojini Naidu, Annie Besant, Aruna Asaf Ali, Kasturba Gandhi — all these names have been engraved in the pages of our history. The legendary Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, who led her army into battle in the 1857 Mutiny still fires the imagination, as does Kittur Chennamma of the princely Kittur state, closer to home, in Karnataka. But these are just the visible faces of the Indian woman’s contribution to our freedom struggle; these were the leaders, but rallying behind them, in hundreds and thousands, were ordinary Indian women who fought as hard as their men folk and helped birth an independent India.

If a natural instinct to nurture is one of the characteristics of women, then the other two formidable traits — weapons, almost — they possess are tenacity and resilience. This is a vital combination: a steely tenacity balanced and supported by the wisdom of resilience. One is useless without the other; perverse tenacity can very easily be broken and resilience can prove lax, purposeless, without determination. “You can bend but never break me,” sings Reddy and how true she sings.

Mobilising support

In the early 70s, the women of the Chipko Movement in the hills of Uttarakhand, a movement that sprang up like mountainside wildflowers after a shower, illustrated this strength beautifully. The forests of their beloved hills were in crisis; they were being felled indiscriminately by contractors in collusion with officials of the State Forest Department. The women of the Garhwal and Kumaon Hills knew only too well what this meant — their lives were entwined inextricably with the life of the forest which bequeathed them a living: they foraged there for food and other necessities; the trees held the land together, keeping at bay the floods that could so easily sweep their lands, villages and lives away. Instinctively, the women rose up together. What they did was to form a human ring around the trees marked for felling; they clung to the trees with hands joined, thus preventing the loggers from harming them. The movement spread rapidly; it was a fire that raged across the hills of Uttarakhand, and it would not be quenched. Inevitably, the movement surged further south, to Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

Interestingly, the first instance of tree hugging had actually taken place in Rajasthan in the late 18th century, when Amrita Devi, a Bishnoi woman, had resorted to this to save the green khejri trees. Great leaders, both men — Sunderlal Bahuguna in the lead — and women, rose up to guide this movement, but it is worth remembering that it was the women, and women largely uneducated, who sparked off this great revolution.

Around the same time as the Chipko struggle in the hills of Uttarakhand, women were banding together in Mumbai, or Bombay in those days, to wage a war on something else that threatened their daily lives — rising prices. Women from leftwing political parties and neighbourhood groups gathered in thousands to protest the rising price situation, one that imperilled their daily existence. This Anti Price Rise Movement spread to other cities such as Ahmedabad but was snuffed out with the imposition of Emergency on the Indian state.

On the other side of the country, in the inaccessible but breathtakingly beautiful hills and valleys of the north-eastern region of India, terrible conflicts have been raging not just from the time of independence but from even before that. The Naga struggle began before we gained our freedom and has blazed and smouldered until the present day. It is here, faced with terrible violence, with fratricidal killings, as the two factions of insurgents, NSCN-IM and NSCN–K, battled each other as well as the Indian state that women decided to step in. In February 1984, Naga women formed themselves into the Naga Mothers’ Association, fearlessly stepping into the battlefield. They talked to both factions of the insurgents; they mediated with the government on their behalf. They even sat in during the ceasefire negotiations, an unprecedented act in Asia. The Naga Mothers’ Association did not sit back after this; they involved themselves in activities aimed at containing the rampant drug and alcohol abuse in their state; they worked hard with HIV victims, providing them with medical and other support. And they have been spectacularly successful in their efforts.

The Torchbearers

Mirroring the work of the Naga Mothers in the neighbouring state of Manipur are The Torchbearers, the Meira Paibis. Manipur has had a long tradition of women being active in social, economic and political life. As early as 1904 and 1939, Manipuri women fought the nupi lans or women’s wars. The first was fought to protest the use of their men folk as conscripted labour and the second to stop export of rice out of the state during famine. Carrying on this tradition, around 30 years ago, Meitei women organised themselves into Meira Paibis, in response to the swell of violence and unrest they saw around them. They took it upon themselves to patrol neighbourhoods at night, carrying flaming cloth and kerosene torches, ensuring the safety of the sleeping citizens. They have formed themselves into a human shield that acts as a buffer between the not infrequent atrocities perpetrated by the armed forces in Manipur, but they do not rest at that. They have taken on the frightening drug and alcohol problem that the state has been gripped by.

In Assam too, women came out in droves, during the troubled years of the Assam Agitation. It was not an unusual sight to see women, old and young, at the head of columns, marching for the cause.

Not surprising then that Irom Sharmila hails from this region, one with a vigorous and vigilant woman’s movement. One that extends itself to fight not just for women’s rights but also for uniform civil liberties. On November 2, 2010, Irom Sharmila completed 10 years of her fast, one of the longest in human history, and she is still fasting today and will do so until she has to. She undertook this fast to protest against the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act that has been imposed upon Manipur. She fasts then, not just for her fellow women, but all citizens of Manipur, indeed for all people under oppression. Irom Sharmila could be the woman in the song Helen Reddy sang.

If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible
I am woman.

Women are still walking on the road to freedom, the end is not yet in sight, but women have grown and grown secure enough to fight as equals, to fight for their brothers’ rights, if needed.

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