Women's Grassroots Activism and Social Spaces in Chitrakoot, India.

PART II

In Part I, I provided the background for women’s grassroot activism in Chitrakoot District, Uttar Pradesh, conducted by two organizations: Mahila Samakhya (MS) and its sister affiliate, Vanagana. In Part II of this article, I discuss how the MS/Vanagana campaign evolved.

Marked by its "primarily . . . political, often militant overtones" and its close association with left wing politics, modern street theater in India aims to provide refined entertainment, while serving as a cultural intervention that can work directly at the level of people's consciousness. Women's organizations throughout India have recognized and adopted street plays as a powerful medium to critique prevailing norms, to voice alternative visions, and to mobilize their audiences around issues such as dowry, domestic violence, women's education, and marriage.

For women working in MS Chitrakoot and Vanangana, however, street theater was a totally unfamiliar territory before 1998, and many of them had never even seen any kind of theater before. Moreover, the idea of generating a dialogue about women's oppressions in the presence of men was alien to MS' mode of functioning in which all the "consciousness raising" of women happened in women-only groups. Taking an open public stance on the issue of domestic violence, sometimes before their own kin, was neither easy nor safe for organizational workers who were themselves only beginning to get politicized about this issue. How was it, then, that these very same women succeeded in using street plays as a powerful tool in their campaign? What guided their passions, visions, stories and strategies? What made them effective?

Building a Campaign Inside the Organization

When Pushpa beats me [in the play], she does it exactly like her ex-husband kicked and beat her everyday . . . . [And] when I play Mantoria, I don't act when I cry out with pain and fury. What dances before my eyes are the faces and corpses of women I have known, witnessed and touched. My heart burns, aches, and screams in rage for them as I perform.

When Vanangana received a grant from Oxfam in 1998 to support its street campaign against violence, it hired trainers from Alaripu, a New Delhi-based NGO focusing on popular education and communication, to strategize about the crusade that was to hit the villages of Chitrakoot in 1999. When the preparations started, workers from every section of Vanangana and MS Chitrakoot were grabbed by the theme and extended their earnest support to the campaign. The supporters included teachers from the literacy centers, handpump mechanics, Sahyoginis (mobilizers), office assistants, and caterers, all being women whose own lives had been deeply touched by domestic violence.

But a few women such as Urmila (quoted above), Manju, Pushpa, Sampat, and Sunita had become immersed in the issues of domestic violence months before the street campaign began. These women, under the leadership of the campaign coordinator, Huma Khan, meet regularly to discuss the relationships among women, violence and law. They began to comprehend the multitude of ways in which the legal system marginalized women, and the manner in which rural women could be educated about the laws so that they could protect themselves more effectively against the everyday violence that engulfed them. The result of this legal training was a document, Janen Kanoon Badlen Zamana (Let's figure out the laws and change the world), which sought to educate neo-literate women about the basics of the legal scenario and their personal rights, and was circulated and read widely within Vanangana and Mahila Samakhya.

Equipped with this newly found knowledge, the women committed themselves completely to the task of removing the public silence on the matter of domestic violence. No matter what hour of day or night, as soon as they heard of any incident of violence in any village, these women rushed to the scene and interrogated the relatives and neighbors of the victim, seeking the support of police and devoting their meager personal resources when necessary. Although these women had never focused their activism on domestic violence before, their long term, hands-on experience with working on sensitive gender issues in villages ridden with class and caste-based differences, greatly facilitated the undertaking of this challenging task.

Between January and November, 1998, twenty-eight cases of dowry murders and women's suicide were reported in Chitrakoot district, all the dead women being young (18-24 years) and either pregnant or mothers of small children. In each case, the death was caused by burns, beating, strangulation, hanging, or poisoning in parents-in-law's village. Let me cite a few examples to give a name and face to some of these women. Neelam, a daughter-in-law in Bachhran Village was burned to death by her in-laws. Her father, with the help of Vanangana activists got the husband arrested. But six months later, the father struck a deal with his son-in-law and agreed to arrange his younger daughter's marriage with him. In Chamraunha Village, Nirmala, a pregnant woman from the Kol tribe, was brutally beaten and hanged from a tree by her husband. Her father was so poor that he could not pursue the case. In Taraun Village, a seventeen year old Harijan woman was burned to death. Despite her repeated pleas to not be sent back to her marital home, her mother forced her to return to her husband. After she died, her husband accused her of having illicit relations with her own father. In Bheethakhera, Gita Devi, mother of a 15-day old infant, was strangled to death and her mutilated body was thrown into the fields. Her husband and his brother were arrested and then released on bail after a few days.

In case after case, the parents of the victim showed reluctance to report the case to the police, or the husband or in-laws were arrested and then released on bail, or the police, upon receiving a bribe from the in-laws, claimed that there was no evidence of murder. It was also a common practice for the father and/or the brother of the murdered woman to "settle" the case privately with her husband or in-laws for an exchange of a sum of money, or by arranging to marry another daughter of their family to the now widowed husband at substantially "reduced" dowry.

It was these heartwrenching stories of murder, complicity, and silence that provided the material for the street campaign. To prepare themselves for the campaign, the team made a list of 30 villages in which women had been "found dead in unusual circumstances" during the last 12 months. The workers talked about the events that had happened in these villages, and also shared stories of violence that they had themselves experienced or escaped from. For example, Pushpa talked about the beatings that she suffered at the hands of her husband and in-laws, and how she persuaded her parents to bring her back to their own village, where she subsequently became involved with MS. Urmila, was loved dearly in her own natal home, but once she was married at age 11, she encountered starvation and abuse for not bringing enough dowry, and was later spurned for delivering a girl. After her daughter's birth in 1991, Urmila chose not to return to her husband and joined MS. Sampat escaped from her in-laws house after she was burned by her sister-in-law one night, while Sunita suffered beatings and sexual abuse by her husband and in-laws, along with endless humiliation for having a bad eye.

The sharing of these pains and victories was bolstered with the singing of moving folk songs in Bundeli (the local language) which vividly captured the intense pain and injustices in women's lives. Accompanying these old songs were newer chants in Bundeli, as well as Hindi songs used throughout India in women's demonstrations and street plays, that women had created and learned as part of their own training as activists. Thus, the emotional pain evoked by the more traditional Bundeli song, Kahe ko biyahe bides, ho lakhia babul more? (why did you marry me off to an alien place, my father?) was juxtaposed with another popular feminist song in Hindi, Beta pyaara, beti nahin; Mein poochhoon ji kyon? (The son is loved and the daughter isn't--I ask you why this is so?) which powerfully questioned the gender-based discrimination within parental homes.

The Phad and the Play

The making of the street play Mujhe Jawab Do and the accompanying Phad (picture story painted on cloth and enacted by two women) was shaped by all the above elements: women's shared personal pain, the unjustness of gender roles that they had learned to question as part of their work, the songs that fuelled their consciousness with a renewed passion, and fresh episodes of violence in surrounding villages that they investigated and intervened in as part of their campaign. Among the many things that this Phad and the play Mujhe Jawab Do critiqued, using rich, everyday metaphors from the local context, were the popular ideologies that a son-in-law must be revered by the daughter's family, and that "parents could befriend their daughter at her birth, but not in her fate" (janam ke saathi hain, par karam ke saathi nahin) where fate is equated with her marriage. Both stories also uncovered the ways in which the village community, the police, the administration and the family colluded to shield and encourage the atrocities against women. The routine nature of these practices imparted the Phad and the play an intensity and familiarity that was captured vividly by the performers’ passionate call to their audience, "Listen, o listeners, for this is my tale and yours."

The plot of Mujhe Jawab Do was based on a true incident, but the songs and dialogue that imparted soul and flesh to the story were products of collective labor. In the play, Mantoria, the protagonist, is heartlessly beaten by her husband but gets no refuge even in her father's home. She is repeatedly told that no one can fix her fate. When Mantoria eventually dies, there is much breast beating and her father threatens to take the matter to the police and have his son-in-law arrested. Eventually, however, "reason" and "common sense" prevail and the father, at the instance of the police and the village headman, strikes a deal with his son-in-law to protect the honor of his family and village. The father goes home richer, his conscience clear. After all, his daughter will not return, so what harm can some cash do? The policeman is content that he succeeded in resolving a case amicably and lucratively, while Mantoria's husband is a free man again--free to remarry and to bring another dowry.

The corpse of Mantoria, covered with a shroud that her young daughter has placed upon her, lies in the middle of the stage the whole time her death is being bargained over. After the bargain is struck and another shroud of silence placed over her death, this corpse rises, rhetorically demanding an answer to why her father, brother, neighbors and headman have all chosen to be complicit in her murder. Everyone, declares Mantoria--from the family and the kin to the village and the community--is a criminal. She demands of the audience:

You people of this society, answer me! Is woman a commodity--an item on auction--who is sold when she is alive, and sold at double the price when she is dead? You community members and kin, who hide women's murders to retain the honor of your village, is this the place of honor you have accorded your women? You, who label the killer of a cow to be a sinner and a criminal . . . answer me--is the murder of a woman not a sin or crime?

Saying this, Mantoria lights a torch to remember all the women who have been victimized by this conspiracy of murder and silence, and passes on the flame to all the women around her.

After campaigning in 30 villages in the first quarter of 1999, the organizers staged their performance outside the Tehsil (county) and district courts of Karvi town, the headquarters of Chitrakoot district. In addition to the ordinary folks who flocked in large numbers to participate in these highly publicized events, the performances and discussions were well attended by lawyers, constables, government administrators, school and college teachers, and students. Later, Vanangana held essay competitions and debates in local high schools on the issues addressed by their campaign. The entire campaign received a wide coverage by the local and state media and became the subject of articles in national publications.

It also shook and overwhelmed the rural communities, and the organizers were astounded by the large turnouts of women and men, by the intensity and candor with which people spoke, and by the social critiques that emerged in these public meetings. In village after village, emotionally charged women questioned the definition of domestic violence as a private affair: "Why is it," asked a woman of Village Chamraunha before her community, "that when a wife is battered you call it a private affair, but when two brothers fight it is a community affair?" In a similar vein, a woman of Village Bachhran protested, "If a policeman beats a man, the pride of the entire village is hurt and everyone rushes to save him. But when a woman is battered inside her home, the village dismisses it as an internal family matter".

Some women and men drew connections between women's lack of access to resources and their devaluation inside the household on the one hand, and women's subordination as a source of masculine pride on the other. "Until we stop treating our women as slaves and equating them with our shoes," remarked a young man from Bachhran, "nothing will change". In Chamraunha, women angrily pointed out that even though each one of them was crushed in her home in the same ways as Mantoria was, neither had the means to change the course of her life: "We do not have any alternatives, that's why we bear it." In Bachhran and Kothilihai villages, women and men identified women's inaccessibility to education and family property as the main factors behind their subjugation within the family and the hushing up of their deaths: "Corpses don't speak, so who is going to tell you about the pain of those women . . ." said a woman of Bachhran, "When a son dies, there is so much sorrow, but upon a daughter's death, there's only silence. Is she not an offspring?."

Men were critical of the ways in which they were socialized to take violence against women for granted. One old man in Bachhran pointed out how men often found it hard to tolerate wives who were educated and aware of their rights. With reference to the Harijan woman who was accused by her husband of having an affair with her father, two women in Village Taraun remarked that whenever a woman dared to speak against her situation, her voice were quickly silenced by slandering her character. Religion as well as the family, said the women, become sources of women's oppressions. When a man pointed out that most of the violence on women was inflicted by other women, others responded by suggesting that this happened only because women had no other means of achieving a social standing of their own besides harassing women who were more vulnerable than themselves.

In an intensely charged atmosphere, the people of Bachhran took a collective oath to "stop violence against women", and a young man who frequently beat his wife pledged before the village to never beat her again. In Taraun, several women along with the village head-woman, Leelawati, vouched to stop violence in their village. In Village Agarhunda, the mother of the deceased woman, Kamlesh, burst into tears as she watched the play. With a torch in her hands, she declared before her community, "I have lost one daughter, but we will see that no one else in this village loses another".

In the concluding part of this article, I will discuss Vanagana’s street performance of Mujhe Jawab Do in a marital/conjugal village (sasural) and a natal village (mayaka).

Richa Nagar
Department of Women's Studies
University of Minnesota

[This article appeared first in Gender, Place and Culture (a Taylor and Francis Group publication) in 2000.]