It was the 19th of January 1990. Days were cold and nights bitter though there was no snow on the ground. Around 9 PM, loud and thunderous slogans of Allah-o- Akbar, Pakistan ka matlab kya/ La ila ha ilallah, Islam zindabad, Pakistan zindabad raised collectively by a multitude of humans and relayed through deafening loudspeakers pierced the air. These slogans were not new to the Pandits in Kashmir. However, the odd hour, the tumultuous banging and intriguing spontaneity, besides shrieking loudspeakers, all spoke threateningly that a storm was brewing in Kashmir.

Suddenly, telephone bells began ringing loud in the houses of most of the Pandits in Srinagar. Mobile phones had not yet been introduced yet. Each caller on the other end of the line asked his relative, friend or the acquaintance whether they were all right. This question carried more meaning underneath its stark simplicity. The caller told his respondent to come out of his house in that dark and dreary night and see for himself what a strange but alarming scene was unfolding on the streets and squares (chowk) of the capital city of Srinagar.
Scenes on the streets, squares and open spaces in the city were to be seen to be believed. Masses of the Muslim population, young, old, children, and women came out of their homes in the dark night, crowded the streets, gesticulating furiously and yelling slogans like ‘aazaadi’ (freedom), ‘Pakistanzindabad’, ‘Islam zindabad’, ‘la Ila ilallah, aazadi ka matlab kya/Laila ha ilallah’, ‘Kashmir Banega Pakistan’ etc. These crowds of people carried from their homesrugs, carpets, mats and furnishing, and spread it out on the streets and squares all over the city. They brought wood and lit bonfires to keep their bodies warm. Women and children, strongly clad in winter dress, were noisier. People sat, squatted, danced, shook fists made violent gesticulation as loudspeakers were fixed and microphones blurred a mix of Quranic verses, revolutionary songs, anti-India vitriolic and the supremacy of Islamic faith… Islamism, profuse admiration for Pakistan, stories of the heroes of early Arab conquests, the paradise created by Allah for the pure (momin) and hellfire for the kafir (unbelievers) etc. were the major themes of their outpouring. The crux of these surcharged utterances was that all symptoms of kufr (heresy), but-parasti (idolatry) and dualism as with the Hindus had to be cleansed from darulsalam (the place of peace) meaning Kashmir. Spirited stories of the heroes of early Islamic conquests and adventures were recounted to convey Islam’s might of destroying non-believers. This rant continued till the wee hours. The message for Kashmiri Pandits was simple – They were in the line of fire.

Like frightened pigeons, they huddled up in their nests and kept vigil throughout the night. Not a single soul came out of his house. The night-long tirade against non-Muslims snatched whatever remnant of peace of mind was left with them. For the first time in the history of Kashmir, this open and unabashed tirade was let loose against them on such a massive scale.

The administration collapsed. Law and order were thrown to the winds. The police deserted their posts. The Hindus could not muster the courage to come out and see their close relatives. Their survival was hanging in balance.
Overnight, it seemed, their Muslim neighbourshad changed colour. It was as if the brotherhood and fraternity that had been existing for centuries, was simply a mask, which had now been cast away.In a few days, the entire atmosphere had changed and the Panditscame to be recognised as ‘the other.’

The government was knocked out by a single night of mobdefiance and revolt. Next morning, not a single policeman was visible anywhere. They had withdrawn to their barracks or were hiding in their homes. The administrative machinery collapsed, and law and order crumbled.

From next morning viz. January 20, 1990, it was the rule of the mosque, the mullah and the Islamists. Loudspeakers fixed to mosque-tops blurred uninterruptedly, cautioning the Pandits to leave Kashmir. The refrain of their slogans was: “AsihgatsihKasheerBhattavbagairbattehnew san”(We want Kashmir without Pandit males but with their women folks). This shameful and shocking slogan will shame every decent Muslim.

Hate campaign carried forward through barbaric and inhuman violence, struck fear among entire Hindu community in Kashmir to the extent that anybody prepared to show even the slightest goodwill to them was faced with the threat to life. Al Safa, a local Urdu daily minced no words in telling the Pandits to leave Kashmir within hours if they wanted to save their lives and honour. Loudspeakers fixed to mosque topsblared a profusion of warnings.

More anti-India demonstrations were staged. Demonstrators were mad with rage, hatred and revenge. Fear-stricken Hindus (Pandits) did not find any source to provide them with the safety of life. In its evening news bulletin, Radio Kashmir (a state-run organ) listed the names of the Kashmiri Pandits gunned down by the terrorists during the day. The gruesome storiesunnerved the community members. They did not reach out to the majority Muslim community for protection because their minds and hearts had gone through a metamorphic change. The dynamics of secretive militancy, so rigidly drilled into the heads of the actors was of the level that a son returning after receiving training in PoK never disclosed to his parents and family members where he had been and on what mission.

Indoctrination was of the level that even parents feared their sons. This is best explained in the television interview which Bitta Karate gave to the security officials after he was arrested and interrogated by security agencies. When asked how many Hindus he had gunned down, he said that he had “lost the count after twenty-two.”
This was the last night which the five-thousand-year-old indigenous population of Shaivite civilisation of Kashmiri Pandits spent together in their homeland. They had somehow braved the cataclysm of eightcenturies of Muslim autocratic rule but, alas,the decimation of this ancient and indigenous community happened under the benevolence of “secular democratic” India. Now, ours is a homeless community dispersed over all the four corners of the world.

Epilogue
Muslim United Front (MUF) floated by Kashmir Jamat-i-Islami alleged that National Conference had undertaken a massive rigging in the assembly elections of1986. Its candidates were manhandled and incarcerated by National Conference (NC) goons. As a reaction, the MUF pledged to avenge NC’s denial of rights and sustained oppression. It conceived the plan of fomenting Kashmir armed insurgency, something for which Pakistan and its ISI were looking for.

Between July and December 1989, while the NC-Congress coalition government was in place in J&K, there were no fewer than 1600 big or small incidents of terrorism, firing, bomb blasts etc. in Kashmir Valley. Hundreds of Kashmiri youth sympathizers of MUF and activists of Jamaat-i-Islami took Srinagar-Sopore-Kupwaraand Muzaffarabad route landing in the terrorist training camps established by Pakistan’s top intelligence agency ISI and run by the retired generals of the Pakistani army. Many of them sneaked back into Kashmir with arms, ammunition and rabid Islamic ideology. Farooq and his party NC, was fully informed about their activities. The State police had arrested many of them but in July 1989, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah issued orders of their release from the jail despite the fact that a case of keeping illegal arms and sedition against the state was pending in a Srinagar court of law. The PoK strong diaspora of nearly a million people in UK played a crucial role in propping up the JKLF. It is the same group whose early activists were charged with the crime of murdering Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre in UK in 1982.

On 13 September 1989, JKLF murderers gunned down Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, the BJP Chief of Kashmir province, in broad daylight outside his residence in Srinagar. This sent a shock to the entire Hindu community. On 4 November 1989 JKLF terrorists gunned down Justice NilaKanthGanjoo, the judge who had given death sentence to the founder of JKLF, Muhammad Maqbul Bhat for the murder of a bank officer and a CID inspector. In December, Pandit Avtar Krishen Raina, Deputy Director, Food Supplies was gunned down in his office in Srinagar because he had questioned his subordinates how a truckload of good grains was diverted to the militants.

Indications were clear that the Hindus were in the throes of destruction. Up to 19 January1990, the exodus day, as many as 20 innocent Hindus were murdered in cold blood. Sensing that situation was getting worse in Kashmir, the Central government then headed by V.P. Singh with Mufti Saeed as Home Minister, sent Shri Jagmohan as the new Governor of J&K. As this announcement was made, Dr Farooq Abdullah resigned in protest saying that Jagmohan was not acceptable to him. The crisis was deepening in Srinagar and Farooq took a flight to London to join his wife and whiled away his time in playing golf and going to clubs. The ministers of the dissolved council of ministers rushed to Jammu and occupied government quarters to which they were no more entitled to after resigning.The former ministers became key to establishing contacts with the militant leadership whose representatives kept meeting them clandestinely but regularly.

The government had been toppled, law and order derailed. In April, Mirwaiz Molavi Muhammad Farooq was gunned down in his home by two or three JKLF gunmen accusing him of having a soft corner for the Government of India. The mobs of Kashmiri Muslims brought out a huge crowd of protestors over the killing of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq. Near GawKadal, some miscreants among the militants fired some shots at the security forces moving in armoured vehicles. As a result of return fire by the security forces, dozens of protesting civilians were injured and some died.
The killing of innocent Hindus of Kashmir was accelerated by the JKLF barbarians after 19 January and in the next three or four months, about 500 of them were selectively killed. Details of these killings have been preserved.
This forced the devastated Hindu community to leave their homeland and seek shelter at a safer place.

Interestingly, while the government resigned and the administration collapsed and the Pandits were forced to flee their homes and hearths, not a single soldier of Indian army was seen on the streets of Srinagar or elsewhere. Had the government ordered the city to be taken over by the army on the night of 19 January 1990, the unfortunate Hindus of Kashmir valley would have been saved the exodus and destruction of their properties. In April 1990, Rubiya Saeed, the daughter of Mufti Muhammad, the Home Minister of India at that time, was kidnapped allegedly by the militants and released after three days. It is said that SaifuddinSoz, the Congress leader, negotiated a deal with Pakistani authorities and managed the safe release of Mufti’s daughter. What were the terms of the deal with the militant organizations has remained a mystery so far.

By the end of summer 1990, the entire Pandit community of nearly four lakh had left their homes and hearths, lands, orchards, shops, business, services, livestock and everything. In penury, they eked out a living in the burning cauldron of Jammu, some to be consumed by sunstrokes, some by the reptiles and some by drowning in the canal. The Kashmir radicalized political leadership spread the canard that the Pundits had not fled but were enticed by Governor Jagmohan to leave Kashmir so that “he would wreak vengeance on the Muslim population.” Such are the vagaries of human nature and the construct of its Satanic mind.

(Prof. K.N. Pandita is the former Director of the Centre of the Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University, Srinagar. He can be reached atknp627@gmail.com)

The Statue of Unity will inspire generations to come about the values of integrity, patriotism, honesty and good governance.

The political trajectory of the post independence era politics in India has mostly revolved around Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. The ideological and political legacy of national movement was also built around certain personalities belittling the contribution of others like Patel, Shastri and Subhash. Over the years, this school of thought neglected the ‘collective contribution’ of many leaders for the formation of modern India, at the cost of personifying Nehru. Given the context, the inauguration of ‘Statue of Unity’ on 31st October, 2018 in the memory of great freedom fighter and national leader Sardar Vallabh Bhai patel, who was born in small village of Nadiad in Gujarat, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the ‘most befitting tribute’ to the Iron man of India whose legacy continues to inspire many of the later generations in India. His contribution for the freedom struggle of India stands unparalleled. In true sense he was one of the leading ‘mass leaders’ in modern India who played his role’ as a ‘savior, builder and unifier’ of India post independence. It was the ‘political statesmanship’ and devotion to the motherland of Sardar Patel that brought up the ‘political unification of India’ post independence in the times of fragile political environment, clash of competing interests and communal disharmony.

Beginning from his early days of political activism to becoming deputy Prime Minister of India, Sardar always was a ‘potent force’ of resistance against injustices and worked for the interest of masses. His boldness and confidence of the character can be attributed to one example from his childhood when he opted for Gujarati language over Sanskrit and was scolded by the teacher to which he replied gently that, “If everyone will choose to learn Sanskrit then we will have no work”. Carrying a humble background, he used to travel long distances to attend schools in Nadiad, Petlad and Borsad in Gujarat during his childhood.
His respect for duty and adherence to the principle of ‘work as worship’ can be understood from one example when Sardar choose to put the urgent telegram of his wife’s demise in his pocket after reading it during court proceedings, only to open it again when he had finished his submission and argument before the judge. Whether ‘personal or political’ troubles never discouraged him and with his iron will and greater determination, he completed whatever task he had under taken.

Beginning his political career as an elected Councilor in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Patel championed the cause of ‘gender equality’, was instrumental in removing the provisions related to non-qualification of women’s to contest local body elections in Gujarat. The Ahmedabad municipality general board passed a resolution to this effect on February 13, 1913 upholding right to contest for all in local bodies.
As a great ‘savior of India’, it was Patel who had made it clear to the British authorities that the proposed Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) which puts forward the proposal of three way categorization of Indian states into A, B and C is more worse than formation of separate Pakistan and cannot be accepted.

Similarly, the partition of India and formation of Pakistan, which was implied in Atlee’s statement of 20 February 1947, was immediately countered by the Patel through his proposal demanding for a division of Punjab and Bengal, and thereby saving Assam for India before the formation of boundary commission. He knew well the demography of these states and was well intended and timely in his efforts to save this Hindu majority landmass areas for India.

As a great ‘builder of modern India’, it was Patel who stood firmly with a sense of political realism and statesmanship to protect the unity of India against the 560 odd rulers of different principalities who were nursing their own ambitions of becoming independent rulers. Through his sheer boldness and diplomatic manoeuvring, Patel secured accession of all states to India. His willingness for use of force to build united India, made possible the solution of challenges being offered by sates like Travancore, Hyderabad, Junagadh, Jamnagar, and Jodhpur. The political crisis of Hyderabad needed an iron man with a great vision and Patel most befittingly finished his work to the service of motherland.

As a great ‘unifier of modern India’ he was man of decisive leadership, immense courage and political will, and with the abilities to take forward and execute its action in the larger national interest. Had the accession of Kashmir remained out of the Nehru’s fold, Patel would have certainly able to manage its more acceptable and consensual integration with Indian state despite immediate challenges.

As a great organizer and leader, his contribution to the nation remains excellent and unsurpassable. A great disciple of Mahatma Gandhi he was the strong force behind all his satyagrahas. In one of his speech on his way to Dandi, Gandhi admitted: “I could succeed in Kheda (1918) on account of Vallabhbhai, and it is on account of him that I am here today.” After he successfully led the Bardoli satyagraha, then Times of India wrote that Patel had “instituted there a Bolshevik regime in which he plays the role of Lenin”. He played a ‘key role’ in the formation of interim government in 1946, and was central player to the smooth transfer of power from the British rulers to India. As the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel organised relief efforts for refugees fleeing from Punjab and Delhi and worked to restore peace post partition.

In the post-independence years, he played a very key role in the establishment of modern all India civil services in India. He was also instrumental in the formation of India Police Service (IPS) to allow better policing and security standards in our country. He realized the role of civil service in running the administration country based on institutional model of democratic governance.

Philip Mason, an English Civil Servant has described Patel as “courageous, honest and realistic and someone who can be compared to Bismarck”. The most befitting tribute to Sardar Patel was given by M. N. Roy, early Communist leaders of India, “What will happen to India when the master- builder will go, sooner or later, the way of all mortals? “.

Over the years in post independent politics of India there have been efforts to deprecate the contribution of Patel for India especially under the Nehruvian School of thought. However, under the present regime led by PM Modi there have been consistent efforts to restore the due respect and regard for all those national leaders who laid their life for the service of this nation.

Those who are critical of this statue must realize that these memorials in the name of our great leaders are visible source of civilizational and political history. These are step in right direction with no sense of revising history rather putting forward a more truthful picture about our national freedom struggle. It is an effort to appropriate the true values and principles propagated by our son of soils. It is neither a step to impose greatness on somebody nor any falsification about history. Rather recognition of Patel’s unparalleled rather lately recognized contribution to the service of nation. In addition to this, as many news reports suggest the statue is drawing huge number of tourists and revenue for the public exchequer, making it gradually a most of sought of place to be visited in India.

In no case, the inauguration of ‘Statue of Unity’, as the tallest standing sculpture in the world near his hometown, by PM Modi on his 193rd birth anniversary is the symbol of ‘true recognition and recollection’ of the ideals of unity, patriotism, honesty and good governance to which Sardar Patel stood for his whole life. In doing so, the incumbent Modi government certainly states its faith in those great ideals and values.

 

(Mr. Abhishek Pratap Singh holds PhD in East Asian Studies from JNU and teaches at Delhi University.)

Women as Leaders _ The Story of a Successful Sanitation Drive

Women in Indian culture occupy an ambivalent position. Accordingly, this article confines itself to an overview of the cultural situation of the majority of Indian women, which is to say, women in Hindu culture of which the author is personally a part. Coevally, the article consciously stays away from discussing the noticeably difficult and far from enviable position of women in non-Hindu cultures in India, lest the author be suspected of minority-baiting in these perilous times. Whereas, as a devout Hindu herself, the author can claim to speak with belonging, ownership and reform-minded good intentions from within mainstream Hindu society, not outside it.

In the traditional patriarchal Indian mind-set, the Devi or prime goddess of Hindu theology is enthroned on a pedestal to be worshipped as the sacred feminine. The position of Devi or Shakti is thus greatly exalted. She is worshipped as the Parashakti or Supreme Power, as the Jagadamba, the Universal Mother who created the male gods and their feminine counterparts.

How does this translate vis-à-vis the situation of mortal women? The reality is that Indian tradition discounts mortal women unless they deliver the goods in their prescribed role as a service sector. In particular, the position of the respectably married woman is supreme in Hindu society. As in any other transactional relationship, this status comes at a price.

Drawn from preceding centuries, the wifely virtues postulated by the sixteenth century poet Goswami Tulsidas of Varanasi went out as advice for wives given to Sita by Rishi Atri’s wife Anasuya: “Devotion of body, speech and mind to the feet of her lord, the husband, is the only duty, sacred vow and penance of a woman.” This is found in the Sri Ramacharitamanas, Aranya Kand, Verse Four; a seminal book of pervasive and lasting influence across North India.

This job description was detailed in the sub-universe of South India in the thirteenth century, in a hugely popular verse. Written by the Telugu poet ‘Baddena’  or Bhadra Bhupala in Neeti Saara, his treatise on morals, it says:  “Karyeshu dasi, karaneshu mantri, bhojeshu mata, shayaneshu Rambha, roopeshu Lakshmi, kshamayeshu Dharitri, shat dharmayukta kuladharmapatni,” meaning “Like a servant in doing the household chores, like a minister in giving her husband intelligent advice, serving him food as lovingly as a mother feeds her son, as seductive and pleasing in bed as the celestial nymph Rambha, as beautiful as Mahalakshmi and as forbearing as Mother Earth: the woman who has these six qualities is the ideal married lady of the house.” This verse hold up an ideal that is very much around in South Indian families even today. Intriguingly, though, there is not one verse in the entire corpus of classical Indian literature that details the virtues and qualities required of a mortal husband.  The author verified this in 2008 with the renowned Sanskrit scholar Sundararama Dikshithar of Kumbakonam, a ninth century temple town and seat of learning in the Kaveri Delta.

This ‘pragmatic’ attitude towards women sprang from the old Hindu belief that only a son could save a man from the hell called ‘put’: hence the term ‘putra’ for son – the ‘deliverer from put’. A wife was the socially endorsed conduit for this outcome, of no earthly use unless she produced a fine, healthy son and fulfilled her ritual duties as a griharani, the ‘queen of the house’. Indian patriarchs in general did not see wives as precious individuals; any eligible woman from the caste-allotted gene pool would do to keep their lives going.

Of course, there were rebels and breakaways but this was the holding pattern that prevailed across society for millennia and holds even today in both deeply conservative and superficially modern swathes. This entrenched attitude still plays out in millions of ordinary Indian lives notwithstanding the many exceptions resulting from over a century of Hindu reform in the growing number of educated women in many spheres of national life. The author may also claim to be a legatee and beneficiary of Hindu reform in several ways and owes her present freedoms to the courage and conviction of preceding generations of enlightened Hindus who changed society for the better.

It is in the context of taking that positive, inclusive change further that it becomes necessary to review the entrenched nature of the patriarchal attitude that colours everyday life in twenty-first century India for Hindu women. To do so, it may be worth our while to look at stories rather than statistics, since culture comes from ‘a way of life’. But first, what is the way of life of ‘Hinduism’ or rather, Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Law? What are its components? We may call it the Pancha Darshana or five aspects.

First, the foundational books in Sanskrit – Sruti-Smruti-Itihasa-Purana, which are:

l  The four Vedas (Rik, Yajur, Sama and Atharva)

l  Vedanta (16 principal Upanishads)

l  The two epics (the Ramayana and Mahabharata) and

l  The 18 major Puranas.

Second, there is a strong tradition of philosophers who have successively replenished the heritage. Three principal views of the abstract human-Divine connect are the philosophies of Advaita, Visishta-Advaitava and Dvaita. Third, there is a strong living oral tradition of Katha (religious discourse) and Naam Sankirtan or Bhajana Sampradaya (religious songs) by saint-composers across Indian languages, which have kept this heritage alive in popular culture across India.

While philosophy is the intellectual articulation of a world view, the oral traditions of Katha and Naam Sankirtan are its popular expression, conveying those ideas to the layman through the medium of the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata Purana. Katha and Naam Sankirtan are easily accessible on TV, on YouTube and in live discourses/satsang. Though Katha and Naam Sankirtan are expressed in the mother tongues, they often include quotations from and references to the Sanskrit texts, the source that feeds them and unites them.

They also rely heavily on the Bhakta Vijaya, the eighteenth century Marathi book which retold the lives of 108 important saints from the preceding five centuries. Its special focus is on saints between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries from the ‘Varkari’ tradition, centred on Krishna as the deity Vitthala in Pandharpur.  Its author, Mahipati, was a scribe turned hagiographer. His book was translated into several Indian languages in the last 250 years and into English in the 1920s. Its tone and content uphold the patriarchal status quo which is often repeated, un-updated, in twenty-first century religious discourses.

Fourth, the components above, from across time and space, are held together by the ancient Hindu concept of the sub-continent’s sacred geography, ‘AaSetu Himalaya’, from the tip of the Indian Peninsula to the Himalayas – from the southernmost shores to the northernmost mountains. This sacred geography is underpinned by innumerable living temples and by pilgrim circuits like the Char Dham, the Dvadasha Jyotirlinga, the fifty one Shakti Peeth, the Devi circuit in Himachal Pradesh, the Aaru Padai Veedu or Six Holy Places of Kartikeya in Tamil Nadu, the sacred rivers and lakes (tirtha) and the sacred landmarks (kshetra) across the length and breadth of India. The seven mokshapuri or ‘salvation cities’ also play their part in holding this grid of sacred geography together.  They are Kashi, Ujjain, Mathura, Haridwar, Ayodhya, Dwaraka and Kanchipuram.

You can find the hand of sacred geography in the waters, too. First of all, take the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east. These are recent names. The old Indian names for these two great seas are ‘Ratnakara’ for the western sea and ‘Mahodadhi’ for the eastern sea.

Now take the rivers. There are seven sacred rivers of note: Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri.  Most Indian rivers flow eastwards. They are called ‘nadi’. A few rivers flow west like the Sharavati in Karnataka of Jog Falls fame, the Narmada and the Tapti. Technically, they should be called ‘nadah’, not ‘nadi’. However, since most of our rivers flow east, the common word for river is ‘nadi’.

It is well-known that the Ganga is India’s holiest river. The Mekong in South-east Asia is named after her. Mekong means ‘Ma Ganga’, Mother Ganga. Of all the towns on the Ganga’s banks, it is Kashi or Varanasi which has made Ganga pre-eminent. Kashi itself is made great by Lord Shiva. He is worshipped in Kashi as Vishvanath, Lord of the World. Every believing Hindu is supposed to make a pilgrimage to Kashi at least once. There are boys in places very far away named ‘Kashi Vishvanath’ because they were born after the momentous family pilgrimage to Kashi. In the old days, when people from other parts of India set out to Kashi, they said their final goodbyes at home because it was so far away and the journey to and fro was so dangerous and difficult. But go they did. Everyone was so emotionally invested in Kashi that they risked their lives for millennia to get to ‘Hindu Central’. So, in actual fact, what makes Kashi great is the living river of believers.

The flora of India is also deeply entwined in the country’s culture, in its epics, its temple architecture, its prayers, pujas and daily rituals, in every region of Sanatana Dharma. This concept is active from the notion of the ancient tapovan or sacred forest to the tulsi in each Hindu home, the sthalavriksh or sacred tree of every temple, the bilva leaves offered to Shiva, the presence of Sri Hanuman believed to grace the coral-jasmine tree (parijatatarumoolavasinam), the pipal, sacred to Vishnu, the banyan under which Shiva meditates as Adi Guru Dakshinamurti, and the lotus which is both the seat of the gods and their hand-held attribute, and also the philosophical metaphor for the seat of the gods in the human heart (hridaykamal).

Fifth, the panchang or Hindu lunar calendar of personal and public rituals, fasts, feasts and festivals serves to guide, affirm and keep all of the above alive in the daily life of the majority of Indian people despite the differences in region, language and local culture. The panchang, with some regional variations, is based on the vast Hindu cyclical concept of time. This Hindu concept of time informs and directs the above four components. The city of Ujjain is the prime meridian of the Hindu universe of discourse since ancient times.

The Pancha Darshana, as the author calls this scheme of things, is all-pervasive and deeply rooted across Hindu society for millennia. Within such a strong, vibrant culture that has been thought through to the last detail, it requires great courage for a Hindu woman to claim an individual identity. Her identity is usually subsumed in her husband’s and society is noticeably wary of widows, divorcees, single women and women who have to live alone. It is frequently as uncharitable to wives who do not bear healthy sons.

Regrettably, in this vivid, dynamic culture that marries a land to its people with both poetry and precision, besides the respectably married mother of sons, only two other kinds of women are accorded dignity – old women and celibate renunciates. Traditionally, therefore, the only escape route for Hindu women from the narrowly judgmental side of patriarchal culture was through religion. They could leave home only to become women saints.

The common link between the women saints is that they all wished to escape oppression or heartbreak at home. All except for the girl-saint, Andal, in the eighth century, who was in love with Lord Vishnu. She is believed to have disappeared into Vishnu’s image at the temple of Srirangam in Tamil Nadu. Her collected poems to Krishna, the Tiruppavai and Nachiar Tirumozhi, are acknowledged as a major influence on Sri Ramanuja, the tenth century founder of the Srivaishnava movement, which swept like wildfire over India. Sant Ramanand was Sri Ramanuja’s follower; Sant Kabir was Ramanand’s disciple and so on. The tradition includes deeply influential poets like Jayadeva in the twelfth century and Tulsidas in the sixteenth. This means that little Andal was a person of great influence in Indian history. However, our textbooks do not tell us that a girl child inspired a great and lasting religious and social reform movement.

Meanwhile, Karaikal Ammayar, ‘the old lady of Karaikal’, is the earliest woman saint known to us. Her real name was Punitavati. She lived in the port city of Karaikal in the sixth century, in the old Chola country. She is one of the sixty-three ancient Tamil Shaiva saints, collectively called the Nayanmar, whose statues are found in every major Shaiva temple in Tamil Nadu. The legend goes that Punitavati was a young woman devotee of Shiva who received a magic mango from him one day as a mark of his favour. Her husband, the merchant Paramadattan, refused to believe it and so she begged for another mango from Mahadev to convince her husband that she spoke the truth. When the second magic mango appeared, her husband could no longer think of Punitavati as his wife for she now seemed like a goddess to him. He moved to another town and married another woman. Punitavati was devastated. She begged Mahadev to turn her at once into an ugly old woman. She then went all the way north to the Himalayas and climbed Mount Kailash upside down on her head and hands, for she did not want to disrespectfully put her feet on holy Kailash. The positive interpretation of this story is very Shaiva, that she was liberated from a lifetime of worldly ties and went off to God sooner rather than later.

Besides Karaikal Ammayar, the most famous old lady saint of the Tamil country is Avvai, a composite of two personas. The legend goes that when her parents fixed her marriage, young Avvai begged her favourite deity, Ganesha, to turn her into an old woman so that she could escape having to be married and waste her human birth as a bond-slave of domesticity.

At this stage, let us look into the historicity of Avvai. ‘Avvaiyar’, meaning ‘Respectable Woman’, was the title of more than one poet in different periods of Tamil literature. The first Avvaiyar is said to have lived during the Sangam period, c. 3rd century BCE and was greatly respected by the Tamil chieftains VelPaari and Athiyaman. She wrote 59 of the poems in the anthology called Purananuru. The second Avvaiyar reportedly lived during the time of Kambar, of Tamil Ramayana fame, in the reign of the Cholas, c. ninth-tenth century CE. She is imagined as an old and intelligent lady. Her poems remain very popular even today. Her aphorisms in the Aatichoodi contain a list of dos and don’ts for daily life. Avvai’s sayings, even after a millennium, are among the very first texts taught to children in Tamil Nadu.

After Karaikal Ammayar and Avvai, we have Akka Mahadevi of Karnataka in the twelfth century and Lal Ded or Lalleshwari of Kashmir in the mid-fourteenth century. They became ‘women saints’ after they were severely ill-treated by their in-laws. They left their families and actually wandered about naked in utter rejection of everything that their societies stood for. Akka was ten when she was married and Lalla was twelve. The Kashmiri language is reportedly full of Lalla’s sayings. Lalla had to eat last, alone in the kitchen, after everybody else. Her mother-in-law used to put a big stone on her plate and cover it with a layer of rice to make it look like a large helping. Her husband was of no support at all.

Why was the mother-in-law so unkind to a little girl? We do not know. Perhaps she was unkind because she had the culturally sanctioned power to be so. But it is too easy to sneer that ‘women are women’s worst enemies’. If that is so, is it not because their softer natures have been perverted over a long time by the social pressure to produce sons and quietly put up with bad behaviour as their duty? In this discouraging scenario, both Akka and Lalla transferred all their love to Shiva. They wrote poems to Mahadev that people still recite.

And then, in the 16th century, we have the most famous woman saint of north India, Meera Bai, who suffered extreme persecution from her in-laws because of her unswerving love for Krishna. Meera left home too, to take her chances alone in pursuit of Krishna, although she was a royal Rajput widow of only thirty-eight years.

Medieval Marathi women saints like Jana Bai, who loved Krishna as Vitthala Pandurang at Pandharipur, did not have an easy time, either. Jana Bai was left as a child at the temple by her starving parents. Sant Namdev rescued her and took her home. She spent her whole life as a servant to his family. Such examples suggest a consistent pattern that women saints sublimated their suffering and individuality into God-love.

To return to Akka Mahadevi in more detail, ‘Akka’, means ‘elder sister’ in Kannada, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil. She was called that later in life. The name she was given at birth was ‘Mahadevi’, meaning ‘Goddess Parvati’. Akka was born to a rich Hindu family in Udutadi village, in present-day Shimoga district in Karnataka. She was married off at the age of ten to a man named Kausika, who was a Jain chieftan. The Jains, then as now, were a prosperous community and Akka was expected to live the life of a medieval ‘corporate wife’ – to dress well, bear her husband sons and fulfil her prescribed biological, domestic, social and ritual duties. Instead, Akka ran away. Moreover, she cast off her clothes, possibly influenced by the Digambara or ‘sky-clad’ sect of naked Jain ascetics, and wore her long hair as her only covering.

What made a young, gently-bred girl reject her prescribed life and wander bravely alone into the aggressive, jeering world of the male gaze? We cannot begin to imagine what she must have endured, or the strength of mind and conviction she had to make and keep this terrifying choice. We can understand why Punitavati and Avvai wanted to be turned at once into old women.

Akka loved Shiva as ‘Mallikarjuna’, her ‘Lord, white as jasmine’, the way Andal and Meera loved Krishna. This love poured out in about 350 vachana or sayings in Kannada. After wandering around alone for some time Akka wished to join a ‘soul family’ of Shaivas. The Veerashaivas were a new and radically democratic group of Hindus in the region. She made her way to their camp at a place called Kalyana and asked to be one of them. Scandal had preceded her and she must have presented an unsettling sight; young, staunch and unclad. Allama Prabhu, the Veerashaiva leader, was caught between his heartfelt Shaiva empathy with all creatures and this severe test of his belief. Did ‘all creatures’ include a woman who broke so many male rules? Despite his great saintliness and impeccable credentials as a spiritual democrat, this democracy did not automatically include single, socially free young women.

Instead we see the overpowering need of the male mind to build a social context for Akka’s ‘wildness’, to fit her into society as ‘God’s wife’ if not man’s. This is how tradition reports the encounter. Allama Prabhu asked Akka, “Who is your husband?” Akka answered, “I am married forever to Mallikarjuna.” Allama Prabhu said: “Why do you roam around naked as though illusion can be peeled off by mere gestures? And yet you wear a sari of hair? If the heart is free and pure, why do you need it?” Akka said, with absolute honesty: “Until the fruit is ripe inside, the skin will not fall off”. By ‘fruit’ she meant that her mind was not ready yet.

Melted by her sincerity, Allama Prabhu accepted Akka into the Veerashaiva fold. But after some years, while merely in her twenties, Akka left to look for Mallikarjuna. Not one person supported her. The tale goes that she went to the holy peak of Srisailam, an ancient Shaiva temple in Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh.  Adi Shankara, the founder of Advaita philosophy, is believed to have meditated under an ancient banyan tree at Srisailam and composed the Shivananda Leheri there.

It is possible that Akka was eaten by a tiger in the jungles around Srisailam. Her body was never found. Alas, there are many in our land even today who bear witness to Akka and the company of Hindu women saints. Nine hundred years after Akka, in the twenty-first century, little girls are still being married off early in India despite the modern law that forbids it. Although the present law of the land is on the side of Hindu women, society has yet to catch up with the law in many areas, for it is mentally held back by its old cultural reflexes as indicatively sketched above. It will take a collective and detailed effort across Hindu society to upgrade its attitude to its women while keeping much that it holds dear from its deep and vast tradition.

There is that vital, inexorable difference though between the past and the present to speed Hindu society along the margdarshan or path marked out by our Constitution. Today, a Hindu girl is legally empowered by Hindu reform to ‘get a life’ as the colloquialism goes without having to renounce normal human ties as her saintly predecessors were compelled to. In the eyes of Indian law, the Hindu woman is a free, equal citizen.

In sum, our society is a work in progress with regard to women in Hindu culture and the task calls for encouragement at every level to fulfil India’s human potential.

 

(Renuka Narayanan writes on religion and culture. Formerly an editor and a diplomat, her published books include The Book of Prayer, Faith: Filling the God-sized Hole,The Little Book of Indian Wisdom (Penguin),
A Madrasi Memoir (Academic Foundation), The Path of Light – Inspiring Tales from Upanishads, Jatakas and Indic Lore (Penguin Random House India) and Hindu Fables (Juggernaut). She has just completed a book on Lord Shiva for Penguin and is presently working on a life of Adi Sankara for Speaking Tiger Books.)

(This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

Anger and women

As I sit down to write this, the world (of news and otherwise) has erupted over Serena Williams and her actions at the US Open final against Haitian-Japanese player Naomi Osaka. Post after post on my social media timeline since Sunday, September 9, has been about her fit of anger after an umpire gave her a code violation. It soon went on to be called “the mother of all meltdowns” by at least one leading US media house.

The coverage when I woke up on Sunday morning Indian Standard Time was skewed, at least from what I could immediately get my hands on. Initial reports made it out to be this: Williams was handed a code violation after she was coached from the side, she then lost a penalty point for breaking her racquet in frustration over this, and then a game penalty when she called umpire Carlos Ramos, a “thief” and “liar” and became very angry with him. Williams was nowhere close to winning the match, and she then lost and allowed the audience to boo 19-year-old Osaka, Japan’s first Grand Slam singles champion. The teenager, who idolises Williams, cried during her prize ceremony and apologised for winning. Following that, Williams accused the umpire of sexism at a press conference.

Why has this become such a huge deal? Williams is a woman, and black. Most people — men and women — think she is “using the gender card”, and not just that but the “colour card” too. Some even think the poor umpire “did not stand a chance” against her rage. Many opinion pieces and posts on this that I have seen use these words or strongly imply that that’s what the 36-year-old did — fight unfair because she was angry. And at a time when feminism is back under a spotlight, and especially when men feel threatened, it is no wonder this is garnering so much attention. When questions of colour, race, women, immigrants, being woke, being liberal surround us, did one of the most successful black women in the world actually have the audacity to claim someone was being sexist (or racist) towards her because she was losing a match and angry?

One cannot assume to know what Williams was trying to do or what went through her mind, but from the videos I watched later, it did not seem as simple as the reports made it out to be — sure, she lost her temper, she shouted at the umpire which led to her losing a match, but she also attempted to make up for the disaster of an evening by telling a crowd of booing people to let Osaka have her moment. Later, at a press conference, she brought up sexism, which seems to be “convenient” to people. But sexism has never been convenient for women. Some weeks ago, Williams wasn’t allowed to wear a black catsuit — which she had worn to prevent life-threatening blood clots — and I was surprised that she did not say a word though women on the internet rallied around her. But that night at the US Open final, she did speak up. And she seems to be paying the price.

I have heard many arguments and complaints against her now. Some would say she is a global figure, an idol for women, black or otherwise, and that she needs to act the part, she cannot go around accusing people of racism and sexism whenever convenient, or much less shout about it. But some people do not seem to realise this — women have tempers, they are not perfect, they cannot keep quiet while fighting their battles all the time. Whether there was sexism from Ramos or not, we should probably just allow Williams her anger. She has earned it after years of being two of the things that people vilify most — black, and woman. Williams has probably lost thousands of battles in her lifetime just because of her gender and race, and is perfectly human if she loses her temper when she feels an umpire is being unfair. Who would not?

Some would argue then, that the point is they are not judging her because she got angry but because she dragged gender and discrimination and even her daughter into it. And that she has done this before. But let us return to just the anger for now.

A lot of people did not appreciate the way she handled herself that night, women included, of course. But it simply seems to reinforce that women have to constantly behave themselves in order to be taken seriously. By other women as well. I am not sure that because Williams lost her temper she is less of an idol or sportsperson. It seems most people would have preferred her to remain silent, behave appropriately, because in sports, losing a point or game is all part of the package and one has to be prepared for it.

There are those who would also say she lost it because Osaka was a better player, and that Williams owed it to Osaka to win gracefully. There are thousands of “arguments” against what Williams did. But how many of these people have thought about what it is like to be a black woman for a day, forget a lifetime? And why cannot they just allow her her anger, even her accusations? But everyone is always worried about accusations harming a man’s reputation, hurting his feelings or whatever it is, whether it is to do with sexism or assault or any such thing. Very few people give the accusers the benefit of the doubt, and if they do, they are viewed as crazy feminists.

Dr Salamishah Tillet, co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a non-profit to end violence against women, wrote in an op-ed: Studies show that black women are less likely than other groups to express anger in situations in which they are being treated unfairly. Tillet also wrote that her sister was afraid for the tennis player because “she knew too well how easily black women’s expressions of rage could be turned against them.”

“Do not bring gender into it when it’s all about behaviour,” a cartoonist said, defending his now-famous caricature of Williams in The Herald Sun. But, how do you separate the two when all your life’s experiences provide the context?

The male coverage: ‘The sport that made her a multi-millionaire’

But what really angered me, considering I do not play tennis and cannot judge how an umpire and sportsperson should act in the game, was the coverage of Williams and later, opinion or “analytical” pieces. The media reports on what happened at the match all blended into one for me. From local Indian reports to AFP and the like, they all used words such as “tantrum”, “meltdown”, “fit” etc to describe how Williams behaved. It made me wonder how many of the editors were women, let alone women of colour, or even just people thinking about the language they were using.

The same pictures were used too — Williams pointing at the umpire angrily, or her weeping at the podium. Pictures can be used very effectively in copy. It is often the first thing a reader catches, and one of the most important.

In the first day or two after the incident, I saw one news outlet, just one, had used an image of Williams hugging Osaka during the prize ceremony.

The tendency for the media is to play up what they think readers will like. In this case, as in most others, it was negative emotions. But it would have done no harm whatsoever to use an image of Williams crying with Osaka (which some did do later, but very few), or trying to grin and bear the pain together. It is just (terrible) instinct to hone in on the negative emotion here.

Several media houses that I follow, both print and web, carried similar copies too. They printed the initial news (with headlines similar to the ones mentioned above), and then what she said at her press conference. A leading English Indian newspaper’s website posted a piece from AFP titled “After US Open meltdown, Serena Williams says she is ‘not a cheat’, accuses tennis of sexism”. The image used was a close-up of her crying. “Serena Williams insisted she was not cheating in the US Open final on Saturday before accusing the sport which has made her a global icon and multi-millionaire of sexism.” This is how the piece opened. I won’t elaborate on how it continued.

The implications? Since she is an icon and millionaire, she has no right to call out sexism in the sport, especially since some people think it is fake. So, if journalism or writing make me wealthy and I am luckier than a lot of other disenfranchised women, I cannot complain about sexism in journalism? Ah. I see.

Anger and other feelings at work

I have worked at multiple organisations now, almost all in the media in India. One of the reasons I have been able to empathise with women like Williams is because she is human. Her fights are public, and her emotions are real.

Thinking about it after I read a piece in ‘The Cut’, I find I cannot be openly angry in the workplace either. I have never thought about it much since I have not had time to, but the truth is, I have not been allowed to be. Most women have to be pleasant, affable, preferably smiling, no matter how much work they do, and how little they are paid. And God, forbid they ever speak of inequality at work — they become outcasts then.

Most organisations would like to believe they treat men and women equally. They do not. In my view, very few, if any of them do. Even if, say, one’s argument is that half the top positions at these companies are filled by women, who says women are not sexist? They have been raised in the same society that teaches men they can behave differently from women.

At work how does one explain to men that they take up more space than women do, that they speak louder, have more confidence because they have been allowed to do so since they were young, and that this is usually much harder for women to do? When women shout or  strongly put forth their opinions, especially if it is to disagree with someone else (usually a man?), how seriously are they treated? These are even smaller instances of sexism though. From what stories women in Indian media share with me, it seems difficult to even occupy a space at the top, or somewhere near there in some media outfits, unless the woman is a “features person”, let alone be there and be able to express strong opinions, or anger. This is not to say that there are not Indian media houses with women at the top, but this certainly is not the norm, and not all the women have as much power as it seems they do.

From personal experience, men are given promotions quicker than women. Men speak up during meetings more, and even if they do not always contribute something new and fresh, they speak with confidence — something a lot of women do not always have. And if we disagree with someone, especially if it is to do with gender policy or something related, we are labeled difficult, unfriendly, “that feminist”, or something else. I have never had to hear what men at work say about me when I am not around, but there has been one instance when a junior photographer told me that women like me “take this mansplaining thing too far”, because I asked him not to coach me on how to edit a copy.

In this instance, I did not even get angry, since it was not the first time a younger man was telling me how to do a job he had never had.

Now I realise, I have never seen a woman really lose her temper at the workplace. I am sure there are companies with fuming, screaming women bosses, but I have not had one. The closest I had was a loud, female colleague who often told me what to do, which annoyed me. I realise now, her behaviour was unnatural for her gender, which is why I disapproved. I have had plenty of men behave the same way with me, but they did not evoke the same anger till a couple of years ago.

Now, when I find myself losing my temper more often than not, I have to bite my tongue. It’s impossible to fight the system, keep your job, and your cool, and impossible to do it day in and day out. (Which is why one would think Serena Williams just lost her temper one day. It happens. We get tired of having to fight.) To many the media seems an open, less gendered, more “liberal” field, but it just comes with its own forms of sexism. Once you are viewed as “that feminist”, even the seemingly gender norms defying, cool bro boss (be it male or female) will be wary of you. And I am not even getting into unequal pay, mostly since salaries are kept private and whatever one hears is based on rumours.

I also realised that men have fragile egos or feelings. Half the reason women cannot yell back, point out errors or be assertive is because men just have not been trained to handle it and end up taking it badly. Simply put — we cannot behave like men. At least, we cannot behave like them and expect there not to be any ramifications. For instance, a female colleague of mine once had to tell a male editor that she used to play cricket, and hence, she could write up a match report. He had told her he would be away that evening, but could still write it up, before he launched into why the match was important, and so on. Once she told him she was perfectly capable of writing up one, and hey, she used to play the game too, he looked shocked and, briefly, even hurt. Although it was only for a few seconds, she and I saw it. Then he grew embarrassed. Since then, he avoided her as much as someone working at the same company possibly could. We later learnt he had given the resident editor a negative report about her work (he was higher up than her in the hierarchy), though there was no proof to connect the two incidents.

Women at work

When I was younger, I would often wonder why so few women occupied senior posts at the organisation where I worked. I noticed that even if any topmost positions were filled by women, they tended to be single women. Of course all of these are not meant to be sweeping generalisations, but in the course of my career, these have been my personal observations.

Some years ago when a colleague worked until almost her due date, and came back to work a few days before her three months of maternity leave were over, I asked her why. She said something to the effect of, she could not presume her job would just be there waiting for her when she returned. Since then, many of my friends and colleagues have become mothers. Most have given up their jobs, or had to choose between staying late at work or returning home to their children, ie, between a promotion and their child(ren).

Since the above incident, the law has changed in India. Maternity leave is now six months, not three. But, instead of helping women heave a sigh of relief, I have heard from some that they fear their bosses could do them more harm now, since they were entitled to twice the amount of paid leave. Of course, people could argue these fears are unfounded, baseless. But then why do so many more women choose to freelance?

But even for women who do not have to split their time between children and work, rising to the top is hard. The numbers speak for themselves.

According to a UNESCO report on women in the media, in the Asia-Pacific region, women hold only a fifth of governance positions, and less than ten per cent of top management jobs. The numbers are highest in Eastern Europe — 33% and 43% in the top management and governance — and in Nordic Europe — 36% and 37%.

A look at the gender discrepancies on Page 1 bylines shows a disparity, ranging from 49.5% and 40.9% of articles written by women to 16% at another English newspaper in 2017. Not surprisingly, sports had the lowest representation of women, at 9.1% at one newspaper. As the report I am quoting points out, editorials and op-eds by women are slightly higher (24.5% by women), but this in no way means there is diversity among the women.

“In our conversations with female journalists currently or previously employed at print newspapers, many people noted that there are many female reporters on staff, but there are few in leadership roles,” the report said.

Aside from the people who write the news, the people in the news are also more likely to be men. From stock images used, the subjects of news reports, and people or experts whose quotes are gotten for stories, the majority are likely to be men. “Only 22 percent of the people heard or read about in the news in India was female; the corresponding figures for Malaysia and Nepal were the same: 15 percent… Women were found to comprise only 23 percent of the news subjects in stories from the total of 84 news websites included in the survey,” UNESCO says. The report covers a lot more — safety of women, the pay gap, and sexual harassment.

Onto the H-word

Harassment? What is that? Most people do not seem to know what harassment constitutes exactly. And yet, I have not worked at a single media organisation where there has been a clear sexual harassment policy or a workshop held, or anything concrete done to let people know that these problems are real and can be tackled at the workplace. Not one.

Forty percent of the women respondents to the UNESCO report said they “witnessed sexual harassment” at the workplace, versus the 25% of men. I am guessing there were also some who did not know that they were being harassed.

While a sexual harassment complaints committee, commonly known as the Vishakha committee, has been made compulsory at the workplace in India, only one company I have worked at made it clear that they had one. Mostly, the women I know who have been harassed chose not to say anything, for reasons ranging from, “It is too much effort”, “Nobody will believe me”, or “I do not want to get into trouble”, to “I was not sure it was proper harassment since he did not touch me”.

Most of the cases I have heard as stories. “Someone said Rahul said this about married women, because Ananya is not doing her work properly”, or a (often drunk) man coming on to a woman at a party (happened at multiple organisations), to a senior editor sending inappropriate text messages to staffers or commenting on clothing. There are hundreds of examples. Yet, nobody cares to spell them out as harassment. No woman wants to be the one insisting such trainings or meetings or workshops are held either. Even if they are, they often just end up crying themselves hoarse.

(This article has been written under pseudo name for personal reasons.)

(This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

Introduction

Armed conflict, insurgency, civil war and ethnic rivalry all have devastating effects on the entire community, however, it is the women and children who are particularly affected due to their vulnerable social status in society. This is predominantly evident in patriarchal societies in which women have relatively smaller roles in social and political decision making. According to the estimates of UN, systematic abuse of women, sexual slavery, rape, forced sterilisation and murder are often used in conflict situations as ‘effective’ strategies of war (Bushra & Lopez, 2004). Similarly, conflict and insurgency leads to loss of family support when their husbands and other earning male members are killed and the social stigma attached to being a single woman in a male dominated society becomes exponentially higher. Their safety as well as recovery from untoward incidents is also compromised by their lack of exposure and understanding of established government aid machineries.

Against the broader social political landscape of the expanding participation of women and their increased vulnerabilities in situations of armed conflict, this article attempts to analyse the effects of insurgency on women in India’s Northeast region. The Northeast has witnessed insurgency as well as the longest running armed conflict in the country. This has resulted in huge casualties including women and children. Therefore, this article makes a modest attempt to understand the dynamics of insurgency and its effect on women in the region.

Conflict, Insurgency and Women:  An Overview

Insurgency, conflict and war affects society depending upon the nature and magnitude of the conflict.  Sometimes, it affects the life of the people, entire economy, livelihood and social fabric of the community (Walsh, 2000). The state machinery is often paralysed and the life of common people is devastated by the collapse of health and transport systems. The case of Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Darfur etc. are classic examples of such conflicts. Some conflicts are less pervasive and the impacts are limited to partial failure of economy and infrastructure. The specific impact of conflict on men and women also depends on the social role of women and their positions in family prior to the conflict (Walsh, 2000).

With the emergence of insurgent groups within the national territory demanding secession, there have been significant changes that have affected women. In the case of these conflicts, the traditional warfare with military is often replaced by the use of new actors including women soldiers, child soldiers and suicide bombers (ADA, 2009). Women also take part in ethnic violence either voluntarily or as a result of forced abduction into the group. Women and girls are abducted and forced to marry leaders of rebel groups or captured as slaves. In many contexts, rape and physical violence are used as the strategies to exhibit power, authority and control over the opponents (ADA, 2009).

There are three ways in which women are affected by conflict. One is in the personal sphere as individuals, in which women face threat of their life from landmines, bullets, bombs etc. Here, unlike men, women may not be able to escape quickly due to their physical health, pregnancy or general restrictions in mobility (Bushra & Lopez, 2004). Thus, they are at a higher risk than men while directly confronting militants. Also, they are vulnerable to rape and sexual violence. The fear of personal danger and chances of rape force women to restrict their mobility. This reduces their participation in work, food aid, relief programs and even their effort to get fire wood for cooking (Carrillo, 2000). The restricted mobility as a consequence of fear of personal danger has deeply affected their livelihood and survival during the phase of armed conflict effecting their mental as well as physical well being. Lack of communication, transport and medical services also restrict the availability of medicines further effecting their health and safety. In traditional communities in which men control power, male members of the family get preferential rights over food items. Thus, in many conflict-affected communities, women eat last and are forced to suffer from starvation and famine. Hence, it is evident that social context and gender relations also play a key role in determining the impact of insurgency over women.

The second dimension is the private sphere.Insurgency and conflict affects the survival of the family, which is the principal arena of a women’s responsibility. Often, women have to take responsibility of the household when their father or husband loses his life. This increases their economic, social and psychological burden on one hand and drastically reduces their support system on the other (Bushra & Lopez, 2004). For example, when the earning male member of the family is killed, they have to shoulder the responsibilities of farming or trading in which they have no previous experience. Apart from that, conflict forces women to migrate to other places in search of jobs and income. In many contexts, women are also forced to take to commercial sex work as a livelihood option (Bushra & Lopez, 2004).

Third dimension is the public spherein which the policies and social rules alienate and oppress the human rights of women. In many post-conflict reconstruction phases, women are denied participation and their social role is restricted to the household level. Women hardly get support from community structures that are built on the premise of patriarchal values (Bushra & Lopez, 2004). For example, in Nagaland, where entire state is affected by the longest running insurgency in the country, there was a strong objection to women’s participation in the political sphere. The Naga Hoho – the apex body of all the hill tribes in the state strongly opposed the initiative of 33% reservation for women in urban local body elections stating that it would infringe upon Naga customary laws and traditions. This kind of opposition not only puts social pressure on women candidates but also prevents them from taking necessary steps towards public participation.

Insurgency and Armed Conflict in Northeast

Since independence, almost all the states in the Northeast have witnessed insurgent movements and armed struggle in one form or another. The reasons for the emergence of insurgent movements include ethnic rivalries, cultural supremacy of one tribe over the other, migration and religious identity amongst various other factors. While some movements demand separate statehood or autonomous territory within the region, others demand secession from the country.  The armed conflicts in the region and terrorist activities have ultimately resulted in mass killings, breakdown of administration and collapse of the democratic edifice of the region. Terrorist groups run various parallel administrations in their strongholds and have disintegrated the public distribution system (Sachdeva, 2006).

While observing the magnitude of militancy in the Northeast, it is visible that the majority of the insurgent groups have transformed themselves into terrorist and extortion based entities, regardless of their primary objectives and ideology. In the case of ULFA in Assam, one of the many factors why insurgency emerged was due to unabated Bangladeshi migration into the state. But, later, the leadership found shelter in Bangladesh and rejected their earlier anti-Bangladeshi position (Menon, 2008). Similarly, insurgent groups in Tripura, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the All Tripura Tiger Force, was based on the premise that there was a need to uphold the cause of tribal population in the state. However, it was this very tribal population that NLFT represented that suffered due to conflict and was forced to support the organisation. While these organisations today, get small arms from neighboring countries, capabilities of even relatively smaller groups to challenge peace in these regions is high. As a result, insurgent groups have successfully transformed themselves into huge abduction and extortion rackets collecting regular contributions from the public, government servants and business houses as is the example of Government of Peoples Republic of Nagaland/Nagalim (GPRN). When people have had to live under the fear of a parallel government collecting taxes, they have often found it convenient to bribe militant groups for peace and safety rather than risk death and abduction.

Effect of Insurgency on Women in the Northeast

While we consider the indicators of women’s status and social position in society, the Northeast is relatively better than the rest of India. Recent evidence shows that except in Arunachal Pradesh, literacy rate among women is much higher in the region compared to other states in India (Das, 2013). While Mizoram ranks second in female literacy rate, Tripura enjoys fourth and Nagaland occupies eighth position (GoI, 2011).  Similarly, in terms of female work participation, Northeast is far ahead of other Indian states. Apart from that, there is a relatively low gender disparity in work participation (GoI, 2011). However, this is mainly because of the existence of community based subsistence agriculture that utilises more female labor. Though higher literacy rates and education amongst women also leads to increased participation of women in the workforce, this is still limited to a greater degree because of the conflict in the region resulting in a slower economy and limited industrialisation. The positive trend is visible in terms of sex ratio which is higher than the national average in almost all Northeastern states (Das, 2013).

However, in spite of their higher participation in the work force, and the high level of literacy amongst women, their role in the decision making process is minimal. Even though there are high social indicators, women in the Northeast face serious problems that affect their life and livelihood. The prolonged conflict and insurgency as well as the emotional toll of living in an oppressive environment has devastated their support systems and restricted their social mobility. The destructive effect of insurgency is deeper amongst women and there is relatively little documented evidence on the physical and psychological impact of conflict in the Northeast. This does not necessarily mean that the impact was less compared to other conflict areas but that scholarship and data collection is limited.

Due to the remoteness of the region as well as the economic backwardness caused by decades of conflict this situation of extreme poverty and social exclusion in the region is often exploited by the human trafficking mafia. Both girls and young boys were trafficked for child labor and sex trade. Reports state that young girls and women from majority of the insurgent affected regions were trafficked to Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia (Hayes, 2012).

In Assam, missing girls were reported from Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Nalbari, Kamrup and Guwahati (Goswami et al., 2005). These are insurgency affected areas which suffer from rampant poverty and lack of livelihood. Most of the girls were lured by agents on the pretext of getting jobs but could never be traced again. This alarming situation is prevalent in other parts of the region as well. Reports state that acute unemployment, prolonged conflict and loss of livelihood forced many women to take up the sex trade as a livelihood. In addition, there are also case studies that show the plight of women in the Northeast selling liquor and drugs to support their family (Das J. , 2012).

Sexual violence and rape are common in the region. But due to social taboos and cultural dignity, many women suppress and hide the incidents. Hence, the documentary evidence on the magnitude of rape is ambiguous in the case of the Northeast. Therefore, intervention and provision of post-trauma care is very difficult in several contexts (Goswami et al., 2005). Also, due to fear of repercussions by insurgents who have informers and supporters embedded in civil society and even in government posts, a large number of incidents and crimes against women are not reported.

Although, it is known that in most of the states in the region, there has been a large displacement of population due to insurgent activity, the effects of displacement have been harsher on women than men. For example, many women from the Chakma community in Mizoram lost their homes and savings when the entire village was burnt down by insurgents. They had to escape into dense forests and live for weeks without food and shelter. Pregnant women died without any medical intervention and children suffered. Subsequently they moved to makeshift refugee camps in Southern Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh amongst other states. There were accounts of rape and sexual assault against the women in the camps and many refugees sent their children away to orphanages in order to give them a safer environment. This is not an isolated account many women even today under the physical and mental strain of living in conflict areas send their children to far away boarding schools run by NGOs or even orphanages.

In the case of one of the women interviewed by me in Manipur (Case Study 1); her husband a truck driver refused to pay the tax that was collected by insurgents operating in his area. He was shot dead leaving Case Study 1 without any means to support herself. Her husband’s family refused to help her and abandoned her shortly after the incident. With three daughters under the age of ten to raise in addition to navigating through government procedures to claim benefits, she was not sure if she could continue and became psychologically unstable. Fortunately for her she came across an NGO that helped her to get back on her feet. She relied on her knowledge of weaving common amongst women in the region for her income. The NGO also helped her access the government pension allotted to widows, a small sum of Rupees three hundred per month. Though it was not much, she said that she appreciated it greatly in her time of need. She also sent two of her daughters away to a boarding school in Noida, UP with the aid of the NGO. Case Study 1 also recognised that most of the women in this situation are not as lucky, she only sent her children when she was completely satisfied that they would be safe and taken care of.

The second victim I interviewed in Manipur (Case Study 2) also lost her husband to conflict. Similarly to Case Study 1, she had no means to supplement his income and was left with five children to take care of. She also had no knowledge of how to pursue her case in order to get justice for her husband. She used to cut and sell betel nut and weave to supplement the income that was lost with her husband. She not only fought the social stigma involved with being a widow but as in the situation with Case Study 1, her husband’s family also abandoned her.

In both cases, the women had to live under suspicion, constant vigilance and fear in addition to the unimaginable emotional strain and pressure of finding ways of looking after themselves as well as their children. Situations like these are worsened by the limited rights women have over property and land ownership. Tribal councils too do not favour giving any representation and participation to women. These biased and patriarchal social norms make life for women extremely difficult.

In Nagaland as well, women living in conflict areas are often victims of patriarchal norms. Young widows are forced to work and look after their families, although the patriarchal system does not allow them to claim property rights. Not only do they have to suffer from structural and social backwardness, but also have to face the emotional repercussions of armed conflict as well.

The role of women as members of insurgent groups is also a dimension that needs exploration. However, with the limited research that has been undertaken on the subject it is apparent that they too are victims of not only their situation but also oppressive patriarchy. In an interview with former women members of ULFA, it was understood that they were trained in arms and at the forefront of underground movements. However, they were not part of any decision making or negotiations in the post-conflict period. Besides, having experienced physical, mental and social violence on a continuous basis their identity as women militants was never recognised by their male counterparts (Deka, 2018). Similarly, their suggestions and demands were never articulated or represented in the post-conflict peace building process.

The Way Forward

While analysing the impact of insurgency in Northeast India, it is evident that gender dimensions have been completely neglected. Considering the impact of insurgency on women in the region, the issue requires specialist mitigation during peace talks and agreements by the government agencies. Even so called ethno nationalists have never taken into consideration the gender dimension in any of their demands, completely forgoing the alleviation of women’s status in their narrative.

Women have been forced to not only to be an active part of the conflict but also unwilling victims. In short, the place of women has never been defined in ethnic nationalistic discourse although women have been forced to suffer the aftermath of ethnic violence across the region (Hmingthanzual & Pande, 2017). This reality makes the situation extremely complex for the women survivors and victims of insurgency in Northeast.

Similarly, there is lack of a common platform for women on which they can discuss the impact of insurgency in order to not only create a support group for themselves but also to create knowledge and scholarship on the same. There is a need for accountability from government bodies that have been set up to aid women in difficult situations like these, for instance, the State Legal Services Authority that should have dispensed free legal aid to victims but failed to do so in the case of the two case studies from Manipur.

The lack of awareness also plays a considerable role in preventing the right intervention and support for women. In the case of grants and pensions, it is necessary (and the responsibility of the government) to intervene. Awareness programs need to be set up to ensure that every woman is aware of the monetary support that she is liable to receive. Often women are also at a loss on how to navigate the government machinery in order to find the right form of assistance. The government must recognise the emotional toll borne by victims and set up free effective treatment centers/help centers for counseling and psychiatric evaluation based on their specific needs. Alongside primary intervention, the importance of their rehabilitation must not be overlooked through women specific skill centers and employment initiatives. The implementation of these initiatives must also be evaluated annually to ensure that funds and services meant for victims are not held back or diverted as often happens.

It is evident that insurgency has seriously eroded the social, economic and political structure of the region and thereby creating a culture of violence, oppression, mistrust and mutual destruction.  Insurgent movements and armed conflicts have destroyed the life and livelihood of women in the region through systematic rape, killing, physical assault, displacement, trafficking and many other factors. Since women have added responsibilities in the household, the economic and social burden over women is more intense.

A modern day civilised society must be judged by the way they treat their vulnerable groups. As we move towards peace and security in the region, it is necessary for the government to take concrete steps in recognising the impact of this long emotional process women have had to bear by living in a conflict region.

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(Rami Desai is the Director of iSTRAT CA, a company that deals in research,
communication and data management and skill development. Views expressed are personal.)

(This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

India had become one of the most popular global destinations for commercial surrogacy by the year 2015, providing standardised in-vitro fertilisation technology and English-speaking doctors for cheaper rate especially to couples seeking surrogacy from abroad. Surrogacy agents linking clinics in India with prospective parents abroad had mushroomed all over the world. However, it was only during my field work in 2009-10 that it became evident to me that intended parents from abroad were coming to India mainly because surrogate mothers had lesser rights over the child and over their own bodies as compared to Canada, USA and UK and also because of the unregulated manner in which surrogacy was practiced. I conducted my research in two clinics in India, one in a smaller town in Gujarat with three surrogate homes and one without a surrogate home in Ahmedabad between 2009 – 10. I interviewed five intended parents, 13 surrogate mothers, and five medical practitioners. Among these, I closely followed five surrogate mothers throughout their pregnancy (from embryo transfer to post relinquishment) and five intended parents using participant observation method and hence could interact intensively also with their spouses and family members.

Most women in my study were living on the edge of poverty wanting to provide for their children’s education, to pay for a dowry, marriage or sickness in the family, to buy a house and to avoid slipping further into poverty, while others were involved as surrogate mothers to provide their family with immediate basic human needs and adequate food. One important ethical concern of this practice is the development of biomarkets, in which certain bodies become more bioavailable within the existing global ornational structural inequalities. As Nepal, India, Thailand, Mexico1 and Cambodia limited or proposed a prohibition on commercial surrogacy, the practice has moved to Laos, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Argentina and Guatemala. This pattern of globally moving markets that is based on exploitative capitalisation and the control over human reproductive biomaterial2 by the rich using global inequalities and vulnerabilities is a form of recolonisation of women’s bodies and labour. It also raises globally relevant questions of geneticisation, alienation of the gestational role, human and child rights violations, trafficking and reproductive injustice. These markets raise ethical questions of exploiting the needs of the poor particularly where disadvantaged participants enter into unjust contracts, its relevance to informed consent, unequal distribution of health resource, unfair distribution of benefits, violation of good medical practices, and commodification of women and children. Such concerns are evident not only in the transnational movement for surrogacy but also in similar biomarkets such as gamete donation, organ donation, trafficking and prostitution. Along with the booming surrogacy market in India was a growing impetus for illegal activities and the nexus of trafficking young girls into this business. It has been noted that the same well-established nexus that has been used for trafficking young girls from poorer regions in India into domestic work and sex labour feeding into urban centers was also being used for surrogacy. The Government of India proposed prohibition of commercial surrogacy in Sept 2016, because of the deaths of surrogate mothers and egg donors, custody battles for children, abandonment of (disabled) children, exploitation of poor women and trafficking of women and teenaged girls for surrogacy. However, there are some continued concerns and loopholes in the new Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016. This article raises some of these concerns with the present regulation of altruistic surrogacy in India. Theoretically, altruistic surrogacy means that the surrogate mother provides all the services as in commercial surrogacy, but without a remuneration. However, in practice there is evidence of several forms of money transfers.  In a TV debate in India, Dr. Nayna Patel noted “nobody would be ready to do surrogacy for someone else without money, among the 1120 babies born in my clinic through surrogacy, only 25 were within the family and they were not for free” (Time 2015). Presently India is following the British system in allowing altruistic surrogacy. While the entire globe should follow Sweden towards a complete prevention of surrogacy on the grounds of violation of women’s bodily integrity, human rights violation and non-conformance with reproductive justice. The altruistic surrogacy continues to be based on the necessitation of surrogacy as a need to solve infertility and naturalises genetic ties as the most desired form of child bearing and rearing. The surrogacy practice hence promotes deeply embedded pronatalist, patriarchal, racial and ableist hegemony.

The Global Indian Surrogacy Industry

Many intended parents poured into India seeking surrogacy even from countries where surrogacy was permitted or altruistic surrogacy was allowed such as Canada and UK. It is estimated that 60 – 80% of all surrogacy pregnancies in India were commissioned by foreigners (Bhalla and Thapliyal 2013). According to Dr. Sudhir Ajja from a Mumbai-based fertility bank that has produced 295 surrogate babies, he catered to 90% overseas clients and 40% same-sex couples, since it opened in 2007 (Bhalla and Thapliyal 2013). Dr. Nayna Patel boasted of 500 babies born until 2013 through surrogacy, two-thirds of whom were for foreigners and people of Indian origin living in over 30 countries abroad (Bhalla and Thapiyal 2013). Hence, surrogacy practice, just like the garment industry, is a specific form of classist and racist exploitation of reproductive labour directed at the vulnerabilities of women primarily from the Global South catering to demands in the Global North.

Intended parents were coming to India primarily because the surrogate mothers had minimal rights over their body or the baby, these women are also willing to abide by all the rules imposed by the clinic and the intended parents in their desperation to bring their families out of poverty. The clinics in India were drawing on this steady supply of socio-economically disadvantaged women willing to become surrogate mothers. Typically, the surrogate mothers have lesser employment opportunities with lower educational qualifications and were employed in the informal sector such as: domestic work or garment factory workers with no form of employment security or allowances. This situation meant that they had lesser bargaining power to fight for their rights within the surrogacy process as well. Surrogate mothers in India had to sign off all rights over the child in the contract. Surrogacy was practiced in a manner in which women had to sign off all rights over their bodies during the surrogacy process. Hence the surrogate mother could not question any medical intervention on her body such as selective abortions and caesarean sections but also social interference such as mandatory rules to stay in dormitories. Moreover, the women were also vulnerable due their substandard health status making them susceptible to maternal mortality and morbidity. There were violations of good medical ethics, clinics were also involved in several illegal activities trying to take advantage of the loopholes and ambiguity in the law. Women were detained in dormitories for almost one year, from the embryo transfer to the delivery and also post-delivery to breastfeed and provide nanny care according to the requirements of the intended parents or the clinic. In these dormitories, they were kept under strict conditions restricting their movement and meeting with their family members and children, rules on food intake in order to increase their weight and limits on the kind of music they could listen to and additionally were made to breastfeed the children and provide nanny care after birth. The surrogate mothers were paid according to their weight gain during pregnancy and their final payment depended on the birth weight of the child or preferred sex of the child. It is a concern and challenge how the present Bill will be able to monitor these known illegal practices within the surrogacy industry in India.

There were severe violations of good medical practices in the clinic in Gujarat. Although legally only 3 embryos were allowed to be transferred into the surrogate mother’s womb, up to 5 embryos were being transferred and in-utero selective abortions were conducted if more than two embryos progressed into successful pregnancies. Invariably all the deliveries were forced cesarean sections; even if the surrogate mothers developed labor pains they were rushed to the operation theatre for emergency cesareans. After several months of nanny care and breastfeeding, the surrogate mothers were suddenly separated from the children causing severe psychological harm. While for the intended parents, this was a justified move as they felt an ownership right over the child(ren) based on their genetic link or as commissioners of the surrogacy contract, the surrogate mothers perceived themselves as a mother based on the cultural context and the child as a sibling to their existing child(ren). The baby was also on sale with the payment based on the weight or sex of the child, every extra child in twins or triplets were priced extra, not double or triple but on a concessional rate. In essence, as I have mentioned in my book titled ‘A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India’, surrogacy in India had turned into a “bazaar where everything about women’s reproductive capacity and the children born has been marketed and priced; the woman’s body parts, her breast-milk, her labour as a nanny, the number of child(ren) born, the weight of the babies, the gender/(dis)abilities of the child and even the surrogate mother’s caste, body weight or religion was priced” (Saravanan 2018: pg. 6).

Childlessness is socially constructed as a malady, arising from patriarchal hegemony of social norms pressurising, especially women, to use ARTs. Women in different cultures face a diminished sense of identity and social standing in the community on experiencing infertility and are pressurised into using IVF technologies as a solution (Donchin 1996). This myopic social and medical focus on women’s body to solve infertility and the perpetuation of objectification and commodification of women’s bodies is to fulfil patriarchal and commercial ends (Raymond 1993; Corea 1985; Harding 1991). Infertility is socially stigmatised and reinforces pronatalist and heteronormative identities resulting in pressures to conform with it. Genetic selection identifies the gene as being central to human personhood, identity, and social relationships. When most court cases hand over the custody of the children to intended parents, based on the genetic determination of parenthood, despite a request of custody by the surrogate mother, it reiterates geneticisation. The significance given to geneticisation and genetic essentialism, the meanings given to genetic links through the ownership over the gametes and gestation, the gestating body, and the babies born, and such naturalisations of filiality, bring us face-to-face with the memories of nineteenth-century raciological biology that haunts rhizomic theories of hybridity. Geneticisation reinforces the concepts of race and ableism encouraging social differences and domination. During the surrogacy pregnancy geneticisation plays an important role in controlling the surrogate mother’s body and after the child is born, in prioritising the parenthood of intended parents while downplaying the gestational role of the surrogate mothers. I have suggested possible inclusions in the Bill that gives optional guardianship to surrogate mothers.

Ethical Concerns on Altruistic Surrogacy

Allowing altruistic surrogacy continues to raise ethical questions on altruistic surrogacy, extra-territoriality, selective prohibition and the possible ease in which NRIs and affluent people in India will be able to continue choosing surrogacy as an option both in India and abroad for fulfilling their childbearing desires. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 permits altruistic surrogacy in India if the surrogate mother is a close relative. Altruistic surrogacy has been considered a better approach to reduce commercialisation. However, altruistic contracts raise ethical questions of agency especially within families in India. It also has elements of structural inequalities and previous experience from other countries, like the UK, reveals that considerable amounts are transferred in the name of medical bills in this process. Other scholars have noted that affluent families can coerce or compel their poorer relatives or maids to engage in altruistic surrogacy for them which can deepen exploitation (Rao 2015). Ranjeeta Lal, a heart patient was forced into surrogacy by her in-laws for her elder sister-in-law to compensate for the less dowry she had brought into the family (Jaipuriar 2014). A woman in my study became a surrogate mother to be able to pay off dowry for her husband’s sister. Altruistic surrogacy that allows surrogacy within close family members glorifies family reinforcing inequalities. I have also heard direct reports of people bringing their domestic maids or any other poor acquaintance for surrogacy claiming that they are their close relatives. Regarding consent, although the bill restricts coercion of women into surrogacy, it would be difficult for women to prove it legally especially after signing the consent form. Altruistic surrogacycan exploit women who may be dependent on other family members such as the first famous surrogacy case of mother dependent on her daughter and carried her baby in Anand to become the first grandmother-mother to the grandchild. It is well known worldwide that most forms of abuse take place within close families and friend circle. It is known that women in India tend to put other’s need and priorities before their own, which was evident among surrogate mothers in India who wanted to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the family (Saravanan 2013). Feminists criticise altruistic surrogacy as a ‘compassion trap’ that glorifies the surrogate as a generous-loving woman offering a gift of love to lonely-childless couples.

Moreover, altruistic surrogacy also involves money transfers. Evidence from other countries, like the UK, reveals that considerable amounts are transferred in the name of medical bills in this process. UK was one of the main source countries in the surrogacy markets of India because the surrogate mothers in India have lesser rights over the child. Moreover, it has also been observed in countries that allow altruistic surrogacy that affluent citizens tend to move to other countries for accessing surrogacy. Extra-territoriality is another important ethical concern. These laws have been implemented in some countries imposing strict rules on citizens who travel abroad for fertility treatments not permitted in the source countries. The law in the source country decides about the citizenship to children born through surrogacy outside their jurisdictions and the parentage of the individuals who have travelled abroad to have these children. The countries which do not have clear extra-territoriality laws have been criticised for protecting their own citizens while allowing vulnerable citizens from other countries to be exploited.The global pattern of surrogacy that is moving to Africa and South America after many Asian countries banned commercial surrogacy is a clear indication that global inequalities play a major role in this biomarket. India hence needs to tighten their extra-territorial laws to ensure that there is no scope for affluent couples to move out of India for surrogacy and return with children.

Corea (1985) strongly objected to surrogate motherhood as it creates divisions among women referring to this phenomenon as “segmented reproduction” that divides women into child-begetters, child-bearers, and child-rearers. She critiques this segmentation as if it were a mode of production of genetically superior women begetting embryos, strong-bodied women bearing the babies to term, and sweet-tempered women rearing the infants to adulthood. Colen’s (1995) concept on stratified reproduction is similar to Corea’s reference as it examines reproductive labour of bearing, rearing, and socialising children that may be differentially experienced, valued, and rewarded according to inequalities of access to material and social resources structured by hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, gender, place, and migration status differences, aspects of which promote or interfere with socio-economic and political status. Surrogate motherhood is not a technique in itself, but a practice that technology exploits within the already existing hierarchies and hegemonic systems. The technologies that were used earlier on one’s own body is now used on another person’s body violating their freedom, dignity and integrity. It is likely to put another woman (the surrogate mother) through social stigma, psychological challenges, violation of her bodily integrity, and also put the surrogate mother’s health, freedom, liberty and even life at stake. Hence, surrogacy cannot be considered a socially justified practice and certainly should not be considered a constitutional right. Reproductive justice aims to reduce inequalities and not to use one person’s vulnerability to fulfil another person’s reproductive liberty.

The Surrogacy Bill 2016, Human Rights and Reproductive Justice

Despite the above-mentioned points, if India continues to follow the British system instead of the Swedish pattern, I would suggest some possible changes in the present Bill. The primary reason for the proposed ban of surrogacy in India was because there was exploitation and commodification of women and children. It is commendable that India is proposing to prohibit commercial surrogacy and the Bill has several aspects that aim at reducing exploitative elements in the practice. However, because surrogacy itself is inherently an exploitative practice the Bill needs to aim at reducing the ease at which surrogacy becomes an option to intended parents. Since surrogacy and other IVF possibilities are now easily available to the affluent in India, the adoption rates are declining rapidly (CARA 2018). The intended couples should be able to provide proof of: their inability to conceive, to have tried IVF on themselves wherever applicable and proof of having tried adoption as an option before they can choose surrogacy. Even medical clinics are meant to assess the reproductive capacity of the couple, suggest IVF wherever possible followed by suggesting adoption before the intended parents can choose surrogacy as an option. In my study, there were couples completely able to conceive and yet had opted for surrogacy. To some extent, this may also address the ease at which NRIs are coming to India for a short while and returning with children born through surrogacy. Hence, a detailed review of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 reveals that it has left some ambiguities and omitted certain other important elements. It is very important that these ambiguities and omissions are addressed before the practice takes over some of the existing loopholes.

A great deal of attention needs to be paid to the conditions of the surrogacy contract and to address the questions of exploitation once the contract has been made. The rights of the surrogate mother during the surrogacy; her right to eat and perform all her normal day-to-day activities, her right to remain free from any form of detainment or conditions by the doctors or the intended parents unless required for medical reasons and her right to choose the kind of contract. The surrogate mother should not be restricted from engaging in her non-reproductive aspirations during the pregnancy. The insurance support should extend into post-partum as it is known that most maternal complications occur during this phase. It is known that widowed and deserted women were getting involved as surrogate mothers, there is no clarity in the Bill on this.

Within the regulation, there should be a possibility of choosing an open or closed contract. An open contract is one in which both the surrogate mother and the intended parents desire to continue their relationship after the birth of the child. In case of the close relatives it would more often than not that the surrogate mothers will be known to the intended parents and would like to have an open contract for a continuous relationship. While the closed contract is one in which both the intended parents and the surrogate mothers are not obliged to engage in any further contact. Until now in India, the surrogate mothers were never asked their consent and a closed contract was enforced on them. The present Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2016 also follows the same pattern. Chapter I, 2 (zb) says, “Surrogacy means a practice whereby one woman bears and gives birth to a child for an intending couple with the intention of handing over such child to the intending couple after the birth” (Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Bill No. 257 of 2016:3). The Bill should include a clause that the surrogate mother can become a legal guardian of the child if she desired to. Even if the custody of the child is handed over completely to the intended parents it should be done after the birth of the child and with full consent of the surrogate mother. Even if she signs a contract of closed surrogacy, she should be allowed to revert into an open surrogacy after the child is born. Requiring a surrogate mother to decide even before pregnancy about her parenthood expressions, during and after birth, represses any feelings that may possibly emerge towards the child during pregnancy or childbirth, and also giving others the power to hold her guilty if she diverges is ‘alienation’ (Pateman1988). As questioned by Anderson, “What if, despite her initial intentions, she finds herself coming to love her own child?”  (Anderson 2000: 27).

International Coalition for Abolition of Surrogate motherhood supported by hundreds of organisations calls for recognising surrogacy as a human rights violation on the grounds of: gender equality, emancipation and autonomy of women; legal access to abortion and contraception; equality between heterosexual and homosexual sexualities. This charter and coalition was formed after several conferences and events were held all over Europe starting from 2011. Apart from this, there is an important consideration of the human rights of children. The only right mentioned in the bill is the right of the child to be considered equivalent to the biological child of the intended parents. However, there is a surrogate mother who carried the child, hence the child should have the rights to know the surrogate mother. Surrogacy consciously creates a state of abandonment by denying the rights of the child to know his/her origin and the rights of the surrogate mother over the child, to know about his/her well-being and maintain a long-standing relationship. There have been children who have suffered as a result of not knowing their personal history.3 The Rome Petition asked for a procedure to be set up for the recognition of the new-born, which shall be consistent with the rules on the rights of the child, especially with Article 7 (1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognises the right of the child to know his or her mother and, as far as possible, to be cared for by her (The Rome Petition 2017). Hence, keeping the child rights in view, surrogacy not only violates the human rights of women’s bodies but also of children.

In the garb of reproductive liberty, the surrogacy practice promotes deeply embedded pronatalist, patriarchal, racial and ableist hegemony. The reproductive liberty argument is limited to individual level and is hence inadequate in analysing the complete complexity of global inequalities. Applying the reproductive justice framework, I argue that surrogacy is likely to put the surrogate mother through multiple forms of indignity and injustice along with life risk and hence cannot be considered the intended parent’s reproductive right. Any form of individual liberty that seriously impinges another’s health and freedom, violates another person’s dignity, integrity or economic needs does not conform to the reproductive justice framework.

References:

Anderson, Elizabeth S. 2000. Why commercial surrogate motherhood unethically commodifieswomen and children: Reply to McLachlan and Swales. Health Care Analysis 8: 19–26.

BBC News, Thailand bans commercial surrogacy for foreigners, Feb. 20, 2015,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-31546717.

Bhalla, Nita, and Mansi Thapiyal. 2013. Foreigners are flocking to India to rent wombs and grow surrogate babies. Reuters, Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/india-surrogate-mother-industry-2013-9?IR=T

CARA 2018. Adoption Statistics.Central Adoption Resource Authorities, New Delhi.Ehttp://cara.nic.in/resource/adoption_Stattistics.html. Accessed on 13th October 2018.

Colen, S. 1995. Like a mother to them: Stratified reproduction and West Indian childcare workers and employers in New York. In Conceiving the new world order: The global politics of reproduction, ed. F. Ginsburg and R. Rapp, 78–102. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Corea, Gena. 1985. The mother machine: Reproductive technologies from artificial insemination to artificial wombs. New York: Harper and Row.

Donchin, Anne. 1996. Feminist critiques of new fertility technologies: implications for social policy. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 21 (5): 475–498.

Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science/whose knowledge? Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

International Coalition for the Abolition of surrogate Motherhood 2018. http://abolition-ms.org/en/home/

Jaipuriar, V. 2014 ‘Dowry cry in surrogacy death – Woman’s brother files FIR, accuses in-laws of conspiracy’. 2nd October, The Telegraph, Jharkhand. https://www.telegraphindia.com/states/jharkhand/dowry-cry-in-surrogacy-death-woman-s-brother-files-fir-accuses-in-laws-of-conspiracy/cid/320485. . Accessed 14 Oct 2018.

Meta, Kong. 2017. ‘Cambodian Surrogacy Law due in 2018. The Phnom Penh Post, Phnom Penh, 11th August 2017, Cambodia.

MoHFW 2016.The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016.Ministry of Health and Family welfare, Government of India.

Pateman, C. 1988. The sexual contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Photopoulos, Julianna. 2015. US couple ‘trapped’ in Mexico following surrogacy law change, BIONEWS, May 11. http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_522610.asp. Accessed on 19th October  2018.

Raymond, Janice G. 1993. Women as wombs: Reproductive technologies and the battle over women’s freedom. San Francisco: Harper.

Saravanan, S. (2013).An ethnomethodological approach to examine exploitation in the context of capacity, trust and experience of commercial surrogacy in India, Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 8:10.

Saravanan, S. (2018) ‘A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India’. Singapore:  Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Time. 2015. Outsourcing surrogacy. Red Border Films.YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9FPiNc6-dI. Accessed  on 14th Aug 2017.

The Himalayan. ‘SC turns down petition seeking to allow surrogacy’, Kathmandu 6th January 2018. https://thehimalayantimes.com/kathmandu/sc-turns-petition-seeking-allow-surrogacy/

The Rome Petition. 2017. 2nd NGO European meeting on the abolition of surrogacy. 27th February. European Women’s Lobby: piazza di Monte Citorio, Rome.

 

1 Mexico prohibited surrogacy in Tabasco state (Photopoulos, 2015). In Nepal, The Supreme Court (SC) of Nepal has issued an interim order to immediately halt the surrogacy (The Himalayan 2018). Thailand banned commercial surrogacy for foreigners (BBC 2015). India has proposed a ban on commercial surrogacy since Sept 2016 with the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill (MoHFW 2016).Cambodia has proposed a ban on commercial surrogacy (Meta 2017)

2 Human biomaterial refers to the child making industry that is based on biological material such as oocyte, sperms, stem cell, tissues, breast milk and the surrogate mother’s womb.

3  European Court of Human Rights 2017; http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/FS_Childrens_ENG.pdf

(Dr. Sheela Saravanan is a Research Associate at South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
She is the author of the book ‘A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India.’)

(This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

Abstract

Much has been said, written and proselytised about the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the now renowned Vishaka vs. The State of Rajastan1 judgment of the Supreme Court. While the de-criminalisation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code may be in the news, it is important to examine welfare laws such as this which paved the way for our current legal amelioration.

This article seeks to examine this crucial legislation from a positive, objective perspective. However it is also important to note that law needs to be understood as a discursive process, both emancipatory and oppressive.

Introduction

Our country has affirmed its commitment to women’s rights at local, national and international platforms on several occasions. Towards this goal, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 received the assent of the President of India on April 22, 2013. It came into force on December 9, 2013.

However it is no secret that India is a complex and diverse democracy; and that despite its insistent advancement towards globalisation, many of its populace suffer from the historical and the pervasive malignance of the caste system, religion, the colonial legacy of ‘class’, skin tone and especially the subordination of women.

At present, life in our country is still a study of paradoxes. The juxtaposition of urban and rural areas is scripted by paradoxes relating to economic as well as societal position and gender. It is pertinent to discuss this as these paradoxes often impede the enforcement of this law.

It is also relevant to know that the current application and enforcement of the Act is preceded by cases of harassment prosecuted under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code punishing crimes committed ‘with the intent to outrage the modesty of a woman’ and the landmark judgement on the issue – “Vishaka and others vs. the State of Rajasthan”. Vishaka was the first judgement to define SHW in India, after which “Medha Kotwal Lele & Ors. v Union of India & Ors.”2 analysed the implementation of the Supreme Court Directives set out in Vishaka. The Bill for the current Act was enacted a month before the Apex Court’s decision in this case.  In a similar vein, it was the Justice Verma Committee Report following the unspeakable crimes against Nirbhaya that served as the final catalyst for the passing of this legislation on sexual harassment of women at work in India.

The Act

The Act, a significant legislation for a plethora of reasons, also requires amendments to strengthen its vigour and application.

Summary of the Salient Provisions

l  At the heart of the Act is the intent to afford protection to all women in India from sexual harassment at workplace (SHW) and to encourage their participation in work and their social and economic empowerment.

l  The Act extends to the whole of India and seeks to address the sexual harassment of women alone. It is pertinent to note however that the aggrieved woman as envisaged under the Act is not required to be an employee at the workplace where she may be subjugated to harassment.  Apart from the lack of gender neutrality with respect to the complainant, the application of the Act is intentionally wide and this can be inferred foremost from the definitions of ‘employee’, ‘employer’ and ‘workplace’. The Act applies to the organised sector as well as the unorganised sector. In view of the wide definition of ‘workplace’, the statute, also applies to government bodies, private and public sector organisations, factories, non-governmental organisations, organisations carrying on commercial, vocational, educational, entertainment, industrial, financial activities, hospitals and nursing homes, educational institutes, sports institutions and stadiums used for training individuals, among others. In accordance with the provisions of the Act, a workplace also covers within its scope, places visited by employees during the course of employment or for reasons arising out of employment – including transportation provided by the employer for the purpose of commuting to and from the place of employment. Additionally prominent cases of sexual harassment (both admitted in court and otherwise) reveal the broad spectrum of workplaces that have been construed by various redressal forums across the country.

The Act focuses on prevention, prohibition and redressal of sexual harassment of women at the workplace in India; and the rights and duties are invested in

(a) the employer (section 2{g}),

(b) The employee (section 2{f}),

(c) the aggrieved woman (section 2{a}),

(d) the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC)/ Internal Committee (IC) or the Local Complaints Committee (LCC)/Local Committee (LC) as the case may be,

(e) the appropriate Government (section 2{b}),

(f) the District Officer (section 5),

(g) the designated nodal officer (as under section 6{2} of the Act ), and

(h) the Appellate Authority (in accordance with section 18 of the Act).

Rights and Duties of the Employer

PROHIBITION: The Act expressly invests in every employer the duty to provide women employees with a safe working environment and a workplace devoid of sexual harassment. Additionally, Section 19 of the Act mandates that the employer regard SHW as misconduct under the service rules (of such workplace) and take action for such misconduct.

Prevention : Section 3 of the Act
expressly prohibits SHW of women

The primary responsibility of every employer that employs more than 10 employees working at the specific workplace is to:

1. Organise workshops, awareness programmes and capacity building programmes for both the employees and the internal complaints committee (ICC) members at regular intervals, disseminate the internal policy for prohibition, prevention and redressal of SHW including the contact details of the ICC members.
2. Another important function imposed on employers is the duty to institute an Internal Complaints Committee in accordance with the provisions of the Act (Chapter II; Section 4 {1}) to hear and address the complaint and to make a recommendation in every matter. This includes the payment of fees for the Committee members (Rule 3). It bears note that there is no specific penalty imposed by the Act on employers who do not accept or act according to the ICC’s recommendations.
3. Provide the necessary facilities to the committees to conduct the inquiries. This includes providing assistance to the respondent and necessary witnesses, making available such information as may be required for the inquiry etc.
4. The employer must also assist the aggrieved woman if she so wishes to proceed with filing a complaint under the IPC or any other relevant law.
5. Section 19 (j) read with sections 21 and 22 invest in every employer the duties to include certain information and statistics regarding the number of sexual harassment cases at the respective workplace in the annual report of company and in the annual report of the ICC every year.
6. Penalty: Section 26 of the Act provides for a fine of upto Rs.50, 000/- on the employer in the event of non-compliance with the provisions of the Act relating to constitution of the ICC, inquiry and the annual report.

Rights and Duties of the Committee (ICC/LCC) Members

Prohibition and Prevention : Section 4 to Section 16 enumerates the duties of the Internal Complaints Committee and Local Complaints Committee members.

l   The Presiding Officer or any Member of the Committee is invested with the duty to assist the aggrieved party when she wishes to make the complaint (Section 9).

l   The Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) must be setup as per the guidelines prescribed in Section 4. As per the current law, there should be an ICC formed at every branch of the company in the country, where there are more than 10 employees.  The District Officer is required to constitute a Local Complaints Committee (LCC) in each district, and if required at the block (Taluk) level (Sections 5, 6 and 7).

l   The Act mandates for the LCC to be set up to address complaints in the event an establishment has less than 10 workers or if the complaint is against the employer himself. The appropriate Government notifies a District Officer to discharge the functions of this Act.  The Act deems that the Chairperson of the LCC shall be a woman. A minimum of four persons are to constitute the LCC, and at least half of the members are to be women. The ICC/LCC should be equipped to investigate all complaints thoroughly (seeking the assistance of the employer when required) and recommend actions to be taken.

l   The inquiry process should involve the respondent, witnesses and the examination of evidentiary documents etc., if any.

l   The recommendations can include the transfer of the woman aggrieved or a grant of a leave of absence during the course of the inquiry.

l   Statutory reporting of the cases filed and action taken should be reported and filed in the company’s annual report.

l   The inquiry must be conducted within 90 days from the submission of the complaint.

Additionally, the Act also invests the protagonists with the task of monitoring and reporting with the specific objective of prevention. Of relevance are the following provisions.

l   The employer shall monitor the timely submission of reports by the Internal Complaints Committee.

l   Penalty for violation of confidentiality: If any person violates the provisions of Section 16 (confidentiality), the Employer is vested with the power to recover a sum of Rs. 5,000/- as penalty from such person.

l   The ICC or the LCC, as the case may be, shall prepare an annual report and submit the same to the Employer and the District Officer.

l   The District Officer is duty bound to forward a brief report on the annual reports received to the State Government and monitor the timely submission of reports furnished by the Local Complaints Committee.

l   The Appropriate Government shall monitor the implementation of the Act and maintain data on the number of cases filed and disposed of in respect of all cases of sexual harassment of women at the workplace.

Rights and Duties of the Employee

The definition of ‘employee’ in section 2(f) of the Act is wide and covers regular, temporary, ad hoc employees, ‘individuals engaged on daily wage basis, either directly or through an agent, contract labour, co-workers, probationers, trainees, and apprentices, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer, whether for remuneration or not, working on a voluntary basis or otherwise, whether the terms of employment are express or implied’.

The primary duties of the employee albeit not expressly mentioned anywhere in the Act would be to abstain from committing sexual harassment at the workplace, complain in a timely manner, cooperate with the Employer/ICC/LCC as the case may be and participate in gender sensitisation initiatives. There is also a general duty/right imposed by the Act on any person having knowledge of any incident of SHW to report it (Rule 6{b} read with section 9{2}).

Penalty: It bears note that the Act prescribes no specific penalty on those persons found to be perpetrators of SHW by the ICC/LC or through any other redressal mechanism preferred. The provisions of the Act as under section 13, section 15 read with Rule 9 enumerates that the ICC/LCC can impose penalties on those employees found guilty of SHW. The punishments that the ICC/LC can prescribe range from verbal censure or reprimand, warning letter, community service, counselling, withholding pay or promotion or termination. There is a penalty for violation of confidentiality of the proceedings or relating to any information of an incident of SHW as envisaged by the Act.

Redressal

Complaint Procedure: The Act prescribes that the aggrieved woman is required to make a written complaint of the same to the ICC or LCC within three months from the date of incident and when there are series of incidence then three months from the last incident. If the woman is unable to make a complaint in writing then proper assistance can be given by the Presiding Officer or any member of ICC or by the Chairperson or any member of the LCC. According to the Rules of the said Act if a woman is unable to make a complaint due to her physical incapacity then the complaint can be made by her friend or her co-worker or any Officer of the National Commission for Women, or the appropriate State Women’s Commission or any person having the knowledge of the incident, with the prior written permission of the aggrieved woman.

Redressal under the Indian Penal Code: Sexual harassment of women at the workplace is a criminal offence as per the amendments made to the Indian Penal Code in 2013 (refer to Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013). Under section 354(A) of the IPC a person who is found guilty of the offence of sexual harassment may be punished with imprisonment for upto 3 years and/or a fine. Hence a victim can raise a criminal complaint as well as a case with the ICC; both can run simultaneously.

Conciliation:The Act (section 10) also allows female employees to request for conciliation in order to settle the matter. The terms of the conciliation are to be recorded in writing in order to avoid any ambiguity.

Critical Evaluation

An overview of the Act is necessary to understand the scope and extent of its application and the potential challenges to its enforcement. The very existence of this legislation is progressive and has had a positive impact in both the economic and social (welfare) facets of working in the organised sector in India, but there are gaps which need to be clarified in order to extend its benefits to the millions of women who are working in our agriculture, small-scale and cottage industries, among other unorganised sectors.

SHW is a recurring issue across workplaces in India today (both in the organised and unorganised sectors). Although the Vishaka Directives and the Act defines ‘sexual harassment’, a clear comprehension of SHW is limited. Perceptions and understanding of what constitutes SHW is vague and varies within the many cross-sections of Indian society and this affects the application of the Act. This is also one of the reasons why inconclusive complaints are filed i.e. complaints that cannot be deemed as false as per the Act, but complaints that prima facie do not amount to SHW.

The most common form of SHW in India is verbal harassment. This includes unwelcome verbal comments, comments with a sexual connotation or of a sexual nature, unwelcome flirtation and invitations (for sexual contact of all kinds), comments on the victims’ appearance or attire, singing of ‘Bollywood’ (or regional movie) songs and catcalls (whistling). Other common forms of harassment include physical touching and lewd text messages, phone calls or emails. The research also revealed that since the passage of the Act perpetrators are becoming smarter and make certain not to leave a forensic footprint i.e. perpetrators of SHW ensure that there are no witnesses, that the harassment is not in writing or via text message, email or phone call. This makes the SHW/harassment harder to prove.

Also pervasive in India is retaliation against complainants and witnesses: (a) Complainants are often deterred from complaining by the employer for various reasons.  Failure to comply with the employer’s demands by the complainant could result in punishments that either target her/his social status (reputation – which is of great normative value) or job security. Retaliatory acts by the employer include intimidation (especially during the pendency of an inquiry), a reduction in the complainant’s wage or role in the organisation, bad work appraisals negating the complainant’s chances of a pay-hike and promotion, job transfers, retrenchment or termination. (b) Both complainants and witnesses often express fear of retaliation from the alleged perpetrator outside of the workplace. This remains a crucial challenge and one which the legislators have sought to address with the amendment of the IPC. Although employers may not be held legally accountable for an employee’s safety after work hours and outside of the premises, threats on the complainant’s life and to her/his safety is of great concern. At present, there is no provision in the Act to punish wrong-doers who exact revenge against complainants, so the victim’s only recourse is under the IPC.

While those affected by SHW belong to various industries across the country, it is women who predominantly face this abuse. Whilst men and those belonging to other genders (those who identify themselves as transgender and transperson) do face this abuse, the number of complaints received is far less. SHW is also seen as a power issue; where the aggrieved women are often subordinate to their male harassers. At present women constitute only 1% of senior management in India, 4% of middle management and 14-18% at the lower level. Another consequence of this is that women that face harassment are often between the ages of 15-40 years. Those women that are at the highest risk of SHW are women in lower-level jobs with little or no education.

The most positive trend reported was awareness of the Act and of the prohibition of SHW. As a direct corollary of this most of the participants reported a significant increase in the constitution of ICCs by organisations. Also, it was reported that men express fear of being charged with sexual harassment and that younger women are more vocal with respect to reporting SHW. As for younger men it was observed that they too seemed proactive and ready to engage with SHW law; and grasp the nuances of consensual and unwanted sexual acts better.

It was also reported that large multi-national corporations, with numerous branch offices, located across the country were the fore-runners with respect to the effective implementation of the Act. This was attributed to several reasons including conformance to organisational global anti-harassment policies, sufficient monetary resources to create and implement internal complaints’ mechanism as well as awareness training, lack of fear of reporting among aggrieved persons (perpetrators were often transferred to other branches) and the consequent lack of retaliation against complainants.

While the Act does not mandate the transfer of the complainant and/or the alleged culprit during the inquiry, it was reported that women employees felt comfortable sharing details of SHW at larger companies where there was scope for transfer. ICC members and in-house counsel adduced that they often recommended both the complainants and the alleged culprit either work-from-home or go on a leave of absence prior to and during the pendency of an inquiry. This recommendation is of great practical significance: firstly, it ensures that both parties do not seek to unjustly influence the ICC or potential witnesses in any manner. It also ensures that the alleged culprit does not malign or intimidate the complainant at the workplace into withdrawing the complaint. Any such retaliatory acts prior to or during the inquiry can also be reported to the ICC members

It was observed that the effective application of the Act in mid-level and small-scale organisations (with employees ranging from 500-100) as well as in the unorganised sector (this includes agricultural and construction workers, migrant labourers etc.) was and continues to be a challenge. With poor rates of education, lack of access to healthcare and other fundamentals, lack of awareness on what constitutes SHW, inherent sexism in the job and extreme poverty dictating the difficult lives of women in the unorganised sector. One of the biggest challenges to the effective implementation of the Act is the lack of reporting (under-reporting) of SHW incidents. The reasons for silence are many: Fear of loss of job, family pressure to leave the job, suspicion of husband about the woman having an affair, other male colleagues taking advantage of vulnerability, sense of shame and not wanting to be seen as a ‘bad’ woman etc. Others reasons cited by experts include the cumbersome ICC process, the lack of awareness about which body to approach to complain and the lack of encouragement from managers/HR regarding receipt/acceptance of the complaint(s) as deterrent factors.

Another challenge, which has eluded the architecture of the Act, is the lack of liability in the event of non-adherence of the employer to the recommendations of the ICC/LCCs. Section 13 of the Act enumerates that the ICC/LCC provide a report of its findings to the employer/District Officer within a period of ten days from the completion of the inquiry. Furthermore, the employer has an obligation to submit an annual report with the number of cases filed, if any, and their disposal under the Act (section 22). However, there is no monitoring provision governing a violation of section 13 or section 22.

The most prominent challenge to the Act’s implementation however appears to be the lack of stringent punishment on the employer. At present, as laudable a legislation as it is, the Act fails because of the lack of clarity on definitions of the LCC, the District Officer, ‘Service Rules’ and so can cause great confusion whilst implementation. The Act invests a great deal of responsibility in the employer – but there remains no recommended structure for the ICC process (however the courts have attempted to step in here), no guidance on information required for the Annual Report, a lack of clarity on the appellate process of the ICC, no strictures relating to failure to comply with non-retaliation requests of the ICC and so on. These ambiguities need to be remedied by the lawmakers.

(Shivakami Kumaramangalam is a trained lawyer and a practicing legal consultant. She studied law at the prestigious ILS Law College, Pune, India and later graduated with a Masters in Law from the internationally acclaimed University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Her thesis, submitted in
September, 2006 evaluated the crucial Vishaka vs. The State of Rajastan on sexual harassment law.
She continues to work in the field of workplace discrimination.)

(This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

Media is the sensitive litmus test that represents the dichotomy of tradition and transformation in society. The coming of media institutions in India announced a culture of revolutionary inclusiveness and its further ballooning caused the collapse of conventional pecking orders. Having said that, the media never disregarded the policy of reproduction and reaffirmation of social inequalities that suited the popular culture. Perhaps, the internalisation of gender discrimination in media flows and media effects was classically convenient to the model of media capitalism given that women have always been sanctioned as the second sex in society. Sonia Bathla, the author of Women, Democracy and the Media, writes on this phenomena, “The silence of the media on women’s issues and the movement hints at the insignificance attached to women as citizens and to their participation in the public sphere.”

Praise the lord for the bravery of men who never came to the rescue of women in media. Only when the men in the journalism tribe in their infinite wisdom decided to misreport and marginalise women, women were stimulated to stake claim in the media machinery. In a field peopled by men in 1942, the relentless activist Vidya Munshi became the first mainstream woman journalist in India. The acute awareness of being a woman is what made her overwhelmingly responsible to her community and the profession. Then in 1965, Pratima Puri charmed the audiences to become the ‘First Lady of Indian Television’. In times when women on celluloid were deemed infamous, she overcame the binary of vamp-virgin representations to be recognised as a professional newsreader on Doordarshan.

“I travelled across Delhi on a bicycle, wearing a saree, with two huge sling bags across my shoulders that held cameras and equipments. I would get strange looks from people on the street,” discussing her sepia memories with India Today, the first woman photojournalist of India, Homai Vyarawalla had consuming anecdotes of covering the World War II for the Indian station of British Information Service. She evolved into an uncompromising personality in the mediascape because of the enduring realisation that she was working in a man’s profession in a man’s world. Regardless of the Vyarawalla example, the Indian media could not receive women war journalists because apparently valour and vulnerability could not coexist in society. Hence, Prabha Dutt had to secretly cover the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War since she was not permitted to undertake the assignment by her paper. Barkha Dutt in her interview to the Firstpost recalled her mother’s contribution to the protestation, that women sought no preferential protection on the frontlines. Prabha Dutt was reserved to report a local flower show in town when she demanded to be assigned to cover the border conflict. The response from the editor was a categorical ‘No’, so she made her own way to Khem Karan and started sending back dispatches that her newspaper eventually published. Alas, licensing deprivation of equal opportunities to people of equivalent skills is still a norm in the media houses. This tendency is quite noticeable in the unprofessional and unethical practice of gender based stereotyping of news beats.

Reading the gender representation in newsrooms, Ammu Joseph from the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) observes, “Many female journalists still experience slow and limited progress, if not stagnation, in their careers.” In the fall of 2017 Newslaundry conducted a noteworthy research, reviewing the bylines and articles of prominent newspapers, to understand the gender ratio in the state of reportage. The papers examined were – The Times of India, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph and The Indian Express, the most widely circulated newspapers in India according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The numbers revealed that of the 7,372 articles screened in the study only 32 per cent were written by women, which means twice the number of bylines were attributed to men in the workforce. The inference drawn from the research appropriately said, “Together the five papers set the agenda for national discourse and even as they dissect other establishments on issues of gender equality, our research shows that they don’t quite pass the test themselves.” Correspondingly this statistic discrimination conserves momentum through the process of mediamorphosis and is tangible in the livewares of cinema, broadcast and new media. This tends to further escalate in media organisations where women are denied power positions confirming to the glass ceiling theory that keeps women from ascending the editorial hierarchy. This elephant in the Indian newsrooms significantly influences the construction of feminine images and information.

The absence of women in policy and production stages is painfully, and sometimes embarrassingly, realised in all media cultures – films, television and advertisements that seem to be in a stereotype consolidation race. Filmmaker Bishakha Dutt describes how the narrative in cinema has travelled from femme fatale to women being dangerously punished for moral transgression in the negotiations of the so-called heroine centric films. Shoma Munshi in her book – Remote Control, explores the eccentric sexist imaging on small screen. The soap operas on Indian television do not sell the embodiment of women’s sexuality but rather romanticises an obsessive fidelity to family, irrespective of reciprocity or exploitation. The advertising industry in India has manufactured its own cult of patriarchy, a world where women are doomed with the traditional roles of washing clothes and serving food. The contemporary bargain to represent a working woman in the advertisement comes with her prepossession to the power of fair and lovely skin. The media ecosystem shows no sign of role reversal or egalitarian power relations, and this gender bias media output is primarily driven by the gender bias media input. The home truth in the matter is that women cannot be well represented on reel when they are underrepresented in real.  Even the liberating technological domains of new media remain male dominated in the post truth, post human, post gendered mediums of communication. The new media is institutionalised on the models of Alternative Journalism and Citizen Journalism, yet even this supposedly participatory media is coloured with the hegemony of men.

India is the second largest market of smart phones and internet consumers but this technological penetration is skewed towards men, excluding women form the digital progress. Reporting on the Gender Digital Divide, Livemint in the article ‘She is Offline’ demonstrated how India accounts for nearly half the digital gender gap worldwide – “The world today has 3.58 billion internet users. Roughly 2 billion (56%) are men and 1.57 billion (44%) are women, of that shortfall of 430 million users, 42% comes from India.” An evaluation released by the LIRNEasia, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) think tank, published that India has the most meagre number of women online, and the maximum gender gap in mobile phone ownership among 18 similar countries. According to the study, only 43 per cent women in India use mobile phones as opposed to 80 per cent men, surpassing the gender digital divide ratios of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda and other countries. With less than one-third of India’s internet users being females, women are endangered to further marginalisation if they continue to remain digitally unlettered, more particularly in the backdrop of the country making a push towards a digital economy. The impediment in working towards a gender equitable digital India is the alarm against women using mobile phones to access the new media in the broader context of patriarchal restrictions on women’s autonomy and right to information.

The International Federation of Journalists published a text on women in media in South-Asia – The Stories that Women Journalists Tell. The Indian Roundtable oriented the discourse on how the media explosion in the country did not impel the recruitment of women journalists in smaller cities and rural quarters more specifically, because of the poor pay and poorer working conditions. “Increasing criminalisation and militarisation also affects women and limits their opportunities. Safety and security becomes a major issue and specialised training is needed to help women in media.” The participants recommended the establishment of stronger networks and support groups, so that women can encourage and empower each other in the media industry, transcending regional boundaries. In this frame of reference, the Khabar Lahariya model of journalism is worth mentioning. Khabar Lahariya is a pioneering rural news network run by 24 women reporters in eight off-the-map districts of North India. The documentary ‘Writing with Fire’ filmed the revolutionary organisation of Khabar Lahariya where women assume absolute responsibility of running the newspaper by reporting, editing, designing, publishing, and distributing on their own immunity. Back in 2002 when the first edition was launched from Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, a woman travelled to Allahabad each week to print the newspaper copies and came back to sell Khabar Lahariya to each household in the village. Today the circulation of the newspaper records 3 hundred thousand copies every month in a variety of rural dialects and vernacular languages. What makes this experiment all the more groundbreaking is when women from the tribal and backward communities, women from unschooled and untrained sections, outrival the gender relations, caste dynamics, literacy divides to come together and contribute a feminist voice to the news waves of the country.

To engender gender equality in the society, it is imperative that media promotes and protects this gender equality in its own backyard. Gender equity in media houses is central to any discussion about a competent representation of women in popular culture. Journalism can essentially practice gender sensitive reporting only when its own ecosystem inculcates that sensibility. Hence all journalists, regardless of the gender determinant, should have the right to certain fundamental principles in media. The three elementary entitlements are recruitment subject to professional dexterity, equal pay for equal work and opportunity for promotion sans discrimination. Further the media environment, whether public or private, must encourage the participation of women in their workforce by committing to the following tenets – training women to operate new technologies, removal of gender assignment segregation, insurance for women journalists, introduction of anti-discrimination charters and most significantly implementing the laws that deal with sexual harassment at workplace. The South-Asia Media Solidarity Network nominated a multi-pronged approach to address the concern of sexual harassment at media organisations by mapping the incidences and prevalence of predatory behaviours, execution of existing laws that prohibit sexual harassment and setting up an Internal Complaints Committee to put in place the redressal mechanisms. For a still greater inclusion of women, media houses must address to the special needs of journalists as parents since the onus of childcare often falls upon women in the country. To support the participation of mothers in media, the organisation can make provisions of accommodative working hours, fair allowances in maternity leaves and availability of child care services to advocate the crèche culture.

If as John Stuart Mill suggested, we tend to accept whatever is as natural, this is just as true in the realm of media organisations as it is in our social arrangements. The whole purpose of journalism says, natural assumptions must be interrogated and the mythic constructions must be questioned so that the objective truth can live in light. It is here when the very position of women as acknowledged outsiders in the media, the maverick ‘she’ instead of the neutral journalist, defeats the whole purpose of journalism and media in contemporary India.

 

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 (Srishti Singh is a student of Journalism at the University of Delhi and

is currently interning with India Foundation.)

 (This article is carried in the print edition of November-December 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)