ISSUE 392 =12-03-2021

36 12/03/2021 NEWS LITERATURE POLITICS FASHION ART & CULTURE KIDS RELIGION FILMS
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Marking International Women’s Day and
Savitri Bai Phule’s Death Anniversary
Day 3 of the Feminist Week of
Resistance and Reflections is dedicated
to social and ecological justice. It is also
the day we commemorate Savitribai
Phule’s 124th death anniversary, and
draw strength from her commitment to
social reform, including through her
pioneering work in education and her
emphasis on the struggle for women’s
rights. We also remember Annai
Maniammai, a revolutionary leader of
the Dravidian movement, fiery thinker,
anti-caste and social justice leader.
Even more than 7 decades post-independence,
Dalit, Bahujan, Vimukta,
Adivasi and minority women continue
to face caste-based sexual violence,
atrocities and backlash for every
demand for justice. The number of Dalit
and Adivasi women facing sexual violence
has only increased during the period
of the pandemic. While Hathras,
Kathua, Unnao are glaring examples,
the scale of gendered violence has been
soaring, but often unreported. Social
activists belonging to these communities
are persecuted by the state and dominant
castes, suffer violence in police
custody; redressal mechanisms against
injustice are notoriously slow, if they
work at all. The recent arrests of dalit
trade union activist Nodeep Kaur and
adivasi acitivist Hidme Markam in
Chhattisgarh speak to this reality.
Braving the caste dominance and state
repression, dalit and adivasi women
from Una to Bastar and elsewhere stand
before us as stellar symbols of resistance.
In the past decade, in particular, we
have also witnessed a steep erosion in
constitutional values and rights and a
steady rise in regressive views centred
around the Manusmriti. This has only
complicated further the struggles for
annihilation of caste and patriarchy, as
the Hindu Rashtra deems all women to
be controlled by a misogynistic and
paternalistic pattern of protection and
violence.
Women, trans* persons and other
people marginalized on grounds of gender
and sexuality face persecution and
severe forms of state violence. Many
persons within the transgender community
fought hard to retain the spirit of
the relatively progressive NALSA
judgement through the multiple iterations
leading up to the Transgender
Law, 2019 and Rules, 2020; but the
Modi Govt only made matters worse by
striking a blow to the right of gender
self-identification, infantilizing trans
people, denying reservations, compromising
on anti-discrimination and welfare
measures and bringing in a
National Council which many within
the community feel reflects the ideological
leanings of the Govt. Amidst all
this, the community self-organized during
the lockdown, despite minimal support
from the State and ensured trans*
people did not have to go hungry.
The criminalization of NT-DNT
communities and neglect of their socioeconomic
conditions continues as ever.
Lack of access to resources and constitutionally
guaranteed rights increasingly
places them as well as adivasi and
indigenous peoples in precarious conditions
of living. They continue to be discriminated
against and targeted by
Feminist Week of Resistance and Reflections (7th to 14th March)
Day 3 | 10th March: Struggles for Social and Ecological Justice:
Fighting Gendered Discrimination and Marginalization All Along
police.
Sex workers as well have been facing
criminalization and backlash and they
continue to unionize against many odds,
braving the pandemic losses. Their
demands for recognition as informal
workers are under attack from both state
and non-state actors. The State and vested
interests continue to deny their
agency as well as their contribution,
under the guise of ‘rescue and rehabilitation’
and in the process fail to prevent
actual instances of trafficking, which
sex workers themselves are keen to
address.
Thousands of sanitation workers,
almost entirely from the Valmiki community,
including women are forced to
work in precarious and often lethal conditions,
in violation of their fundamental
rights and protections as per the
Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act,
1993. The institutional oppression of
students from marginalized backgrounds
has never stopped. It has in fact
increased with the brazen privatization
and centralization of education, and the
rise of the BJP-RSS 2014, affecting
especially students who are assertive or
politically articulate. This has been both
a cause of extreme concern and fierce
resistance. From Rohith Vemula to Dr.
Payal Tadvi to Dr. Anitha to Najeeb and
beyond, the institutional murders or disappearance
of each of these students has
given rise to a social justice movement,
led by leaders like Radhika Vemula,
Fathima Nafees, Abida Tadvi etc.
It is inspiring to witness a growing
movement of the nature-worshipping
adivasis in the country asking for implementation
of the Sarna Code and independent
recognition within the census,
rather than being clubbed as ‘Hindus’, a
demand supported by the CM,
Jharkhand as well. However, there
remains a huge concern about the wellknit
and decades old violent project of
the RSS to ‘Hinduize’ adivasis. Fighting
for their jal-jangal-zameen on the one
hand and leading self-rule movements
like Pathalgadi, adivasi women are also
at the forefront of asserting their
autonomous identity, beyond multiple
attempts to proselytize them.
There is also a multi-pronged attack
on and denial of reservations, as a matter
of constitutional right and justice. On
the one hand, the relentless privatization
across sectors and higher education has
meant reduced employment opportunities
as well as financial and institutional
support to SC, ST and OBC students.
The dubious ‘merit’ agenda is always
brought up to deny reservations to students
from historically oppressed backgrounds.
At a very different level, even
70 years after independence, dalits who
convert into Islam and Christianity are
denied reservations, due to the
‘Presidential Order of 1950’, thereby
arbitrarily erasing the societal caste discrimination
they face even post-conversion
and also imposing an unconstitutional
rider on their fundamental right to
profess and practice any religion of their
choice.
The institutionalization of hate, discrimination
and islamophobia is now
happening in the most brazen manner,
as we witness in the multiple ‘anti-conversion’
ordinances as well in the selective
criminalization of muslim men in
the Triple Talaq law. Between 2014 and
2021, numerous muslims and at places
Christians and adivasis were attacked,
many brutally lynched for cow-related
incidents or in the garb of ‘hurting
Hindu sentiments’. Consensual relationships,
both inter-caste and inter-religious
continue to face severe threats
from the right-wing and regressive
forces, and in each such instance,
women and gender non-conforming
persons face particular vulnerabilities.
While the situation on the social
front presents a grim picture, the reality
on the ecological side is not promising
either, what with the State playing second
fiddle to mega corporates who are
eyeing natural resources and cheap
labour and pushing for tweaking environmental
legislations with an intent to
further weaken state regulation. It is
pertinent to note here that ecological
injustice is deeply interlinked with
social justice and it is the women at the
frontlines, from working class,
oppressed, indigenous, forest, coastal
and other marginalised communities
that face most of the adverse consequences.
‘Development’ planning and financial
allocations only address these gaps
in name, catering in fact to corporate
interests, at the cost of the marginalized
and of environmental sustainability. The
past many years present before us a pattern
where both for the social and ecological
sectors, budgetary allocations
have been abysmal and deliberately fail
to account for the needs of the marginalized
millions as well as safeguard the
environment.
Regressive legislative changes (such
as Draft EIA 2020) seek to further dilute
the already watered down enviro-legal
frameworks, at the behest of corporate
interests. The impunity guaranteed to
state agencies and all those who clamp
down on the working class, marginalized
community people’s dissent and
protests are geared towards further
social injustice.
In 2020, we have also seen industrial
accidents, oil blowouts, massive coal
block allocations in the central Indian
forested states and attempts to further
weaken the NGT. On one hand, public
participation is minimized when it
comes to “development” projects that
grab their land, natural resources and
erase their culture; on the other hand is
the constant silencing of the activists
that raise their voice against this injustice.
Not only the people who are directly
affected by these issues, the state has
gone after other activists who stand in
solidarity too. The takedown of websites
that mobilised voices to withdraw
the draft EIA Notification 2020, the
arrest and demonizing of young environmental
activists, many women, only
goes to show that if people raise their
voice in an intersectional way, the state
will not tolerate it.
At many other places, women and
GNC people have been at the forefront
of these struggles and have also borne
the brunt of state excesses. From Bhopal
to Thoothukudi to Singhu – Tikri, we
salute all women for their heroic struggles
to hold corporates accountable,
even at great cost to their lives and safety.
We also acknowledge the foresight
that thousands of women farmers are
bringing into the ongoing movement
resisting agri-businesses
See Page 37