PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2008 ID-4556
.
'.
Braving Roadblocks, Defeating Cynicism, .
27 .04.08.
'' ThG Quest For A Socially-Inclusive JNU Is Bound To March OnII.
I .
\ education in ·· ·.
of more thar ·' ---~~.
over the past two weeks, we have seen a determined struggle for a socially just campus, for democratisation ofnictr,.tive neutrality. The relay hunger strike, that lasted 11 days and saw the participation.
was howeve · · .. -·-"""" 4 ""tn manv of JNUSU'skey demands.There .
by now. SFI . ._ admitted, a Recall Savltrlbal Phule, who in late 19th centuryMaharashtra, defended couples who had married acroaa.
students· ...it is impossible to draw the masses into politics without also caste, struggled for the right of widows to study and remarry,Union, as drawing in the women; for under capitalism, the female half ofthe.
human race suffers under adouble yoke. The working woman and and started a school for girls. She was pelted with stonesJNUSU ha peasant woman are oppressed by capital; but in addition to that, and cow-dung by angry people who accused her of corrupt-representa even In the most democratic ofbourgeois Republics, they are, firstly, ing their daughters.nothing bt .
in an Inferior position because the law denies them equality with Salute Rakhmabal, a 20-year-old woman in the 1880s,SFl's ' men, and secondly, and this is most important, they are "In domestic who said she wouldn't live with the man to whom she hadpressure slavery, they are ndomestlc slaves", crushed by the most petty, most been married at the age of 11 , because she wanted to bethough it mental, most arduous, and most stultifying work ofthe kitchen, and free to study medicine! The law said such women who re-...~... "' by isolated domestic, family economy in general."-V1Lenin fused to cohabit with their husbands must be jailed, and theWhat does 'Women's Day' mean? courts gave her a prison sentence. Great and powerful men.
like Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote editorials attacking her for.
The ads tell us it's a day when husbands are supposed being 'singed with the flame of knowledge' -a thirst for edu-.
to buy women washing machines and kitchen gadgets, when cation was 'unnatural' and 'unbecoming' for women, they said..
boyfriends are supposed to buy them flowers. Radio Mirchi, But Rakhmabai, displaying incredible courage, wrote letters.
for instance, invited male listeners to send messages to their in newspapers, asserting, "Because you cannot enter ourgirl friends and wives "to make them feel special". Is Women's feelings do notthink we aresatisfiedwith the life ofdrudg-.
Martyrs Ne Day just another 'Day' demarcated by corporates, to con-ery that we live, and that we have no taste for, and aspi-.
ration after, a higher life... " She did eventually study medi-.
Says Joe sume more and more? Or is it a day to remember the dis-cine and become a doctor..
never kill criminations and violence that women face 365 days a year?.
A day to look back at women whose struggles are the basis The many reincarnations of patriarchy.
went on too of this celebration of women's rights?.
went on too "A pedestal is as much a prison" From the legacy of these struggles, independent India.
has framed a history of contradictions. Today, women in.
From SanDi our country appear more free to study and work, andPatriarchal society is famous for its doublespeak. Onin every mint the one hand, society will place women on a pedestal and yet deeply entrenched anti-women patriarchal valueswhere worki claim to worship them. Our culture is fond of saying, "Janani are continually reinvented and reincarnated in manydifferent forms. When fees for education are hiked, women.
their rights, Janmabhoomi Swargadapi Gariyasi"(Mother and Motherland are the first casualties, since it is deemed more necessary.
are dearer than heaven), or "Yatra Narishcha pujyante, that their brothers should study. Girls are not allowed to be.
it's there you .
it's there you ramante tatra devta' (Where women are worshipped, gods born-not just in poor households, but more so in elite homesreside there). But, as Gloria Steinem observed '" pedestal even in the capital city where we live. Women are the worst.
-Joe Hill was is as much a prison as any other small place." The revolu-.
tionary Hindi poet Gorakh Pandey, too, reminds us of the hit by joblessness, since they continue to work often belowleader and rae m!nimum -.vages cr.d their work is deemed 'unskilled1in Utah, USA v prison walls that our society builds, of the way in which Whare.
.
on false charge women are burnt to death or forced to suicide in the very there is violence ---whether the violence of the corporates,by firing squa, home in which she is worshipped as 'ghar ki lakshmi': communal or casteist violence, and the violences of the stateprior to his ext There are walls in every house I Shut windows in every wall, I ---it is always women who are the first to be affected, thewritten to 8 Banging against closed windows, her head/Bloody, she lies fallen.! first to be made the targets of attack. The possession of.
women as commodities and the link that is made betweenanother comt .
In every home there are burning ghats,/ln every home, there are the body of the woman and the prestige of the community or"Don't waste. gallows,linevery home there are walls/Bangingagainst the walls nation reiterates itself in the public domain. Modes of patriar-ourmng. Orga .
she falls, !Halfthe world falls,!AI/ humanity falls ..." chal violence in society are manifested in its most brutal.
form in the political arena. We see this in AFSPA, a lawSd/-Aw The first blows to the walls ofpatriarchy which the Indian army has used to brutally rape women inWomen's Day reminds us ofthe long struggle that women the North-East, in the state-sponsored communal genocide.
launched to break down the prison walls of patriarchy. It re-in Gujarat, where saffron Hindutva brigade raped pregnant.
minds us of the thousands of socialist and communist work-women and massacred those young and old or in Singur anding women, who knew that when women would be truly free .
Nandigram where sexual violence was used as a strategy byonly when they broke down all the prison walls; they knew the CPI(M) cadres to quell the protests of people being dis-.
that the liberation of women was linked to a struggle for thelong.
I .
placed from their land. While claims for women's empower-.
abst .
liberation of the whole of humanity. Masses of working ment are reiterated by successive governments at the stateresc women struck work In Chicago on 8 March In 1910,resi same governments not only engage in the forms of patriar-.
sparking off a huge movement for the right to vote, and central level, these are but empty claims for these self-.
this .
equal wages and an 8-hour working day. The German chal violence, and also turn a blind eye to the suffering andYFI Socialist leader Clara Zetkin, at an international Con-struggles of women. The present UPA government has made.
l ference of Socialist women, proposed that this day beYFI .
observed as International Women's Day. tall claims of a gender-sensitive budget. But their policiesCP make the prices soar and women go hungry; they relegate JN\l.
For us, Women's Day must be an occasion to pay trib-women to the most casual and contractualised jobs; and of.
COt .
course they, like the BJP-NDA before them, shy away fromute to the personal and political struggles of our foremothers..
who dealt the first blows to the prison walls of our society. even tabling the Women's Reservation Bill!Remember Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain and On March 8, It Is a time for the women's movement.
Rassundari Debl in the 19th century, who taught themselves to renew Its resolve to take on the ruling classes, rip off.
r the masks of 'women's e,mpowerment' and declare, In.
to read and write secretly, in dark kitchens after everyone in.
r the house was asleep! the words of Helen Reddy's song, "/ am woman, heart Sucheta De, Gen.Secy., AISA, JNU me roar/In numbers too big tO Ignore.".
Vlsmay Basu, Jt. Secy, AISA, Jr4tJ .
committed to reserv""'" ..,..-·-. .
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2008 ID-4556
.
'.
Braving Roadblocks, Defeating Cynicism, .
27 .04.08.
'' ThG Quest For A Socially-Inclusive JNU Is Bound To March OnII.
I .
\ education in ·· ·.
of more thar ·' ---~~.
over the past two weeks, we have seen a determined struggle for a socially just campus, for democratisation ofnictr,.tive neutrality. The relay hunger strike, that lasted 11 days and saw the participation.
was howeve · · .. -·-"""" 4 ""tn manv of JNUSU'skey demands.There .
by now. SFI . ._ admitted, a Recall Savltrlbal Phule, who in late 19th centuryMaharashtra, defended couples who had married acroaa.
students· ...it is impossible to draw the masses into politics without also caste, struggled for the right of widows to study and remarry,Union, as drawing in the women; for under capitalism, the female half ofthe.
human race suffers under adouble yoke. The working woman and and started a school for girls. She was pelted with stonesJNUSU ha peasant woman are oppressed by capital; but in addition to that, and cow-dung by angry people who accused her of corrupt-representa even In the most democratic ofbourgeois Republics, they are, firstly, ing their daughters.nothing bt .
in an Inferior position because the law denies them equality with Salute Rakhmabal, a 20-year-old woman in the 1880s,SFl's ' men, and secondly, and this is most important, they are "In domestic who said she wouldn't live with the man to whom she hadpressure slavery, they are ndomestlc slaves", crushed by the most petty, most been married at the age of 11 , because she wanted to bethough it mental, most arduous, and most stultifying work ofthe kitchen, and free to study medicine! The law said such women who re-...~... "' by isolated domestic, family economy in general."-V1Lenin fused to cohabit with their husbands must be jailed, and theWhat does 'Women's Day' mean? courts gave her a prison sentence. Great and powerful men.
like Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote editorials attacking her for.
The ads tell us it's a day when husbands are supposed being 'singed with the flame of knowledge' -a thirst for edu-.
to buy women washing machines and kitchen gadgets, when cation was 'unnatural' and 'unbecoming' for women, they said..
boyfriends are supposed to buy them flowers. Radio Mirchi, But Rakhmabai, displaying incredible courage, wrote letters.
for instance, invited male listeners to send messages to their in newspapers, asserting, "Because you cannot enter ourgirl friends and wives "to make them feel special". Is Women's feelings do notthink we aresatisfiedwith the life ofdrudg-.
Martyrs Ne Day just another 'Day' demarcated by corporates, to con-ery that we live, and that we have no taste for, and aspi-.
ration after, a higher life... " She did eventually study medi-.
Says Joe sume more and more? Or is it a day to remember the dis-cine and become a doctor..
never kill criminations and violence that women face 365 days a year?.
A day to look back at women whose struggles are the basis The many reincarnations of patriarchy.
went on too of this celebration of women's rights?.
went on too "A pedestal is as much a prison" From the legacy of these struggles, independent India.
has framed a history of contradictions. Today, women in.
From SanDi our country appear more free to study and work, andPatriarchal society is famous for its doublespeak. Onin every mint the one hand, society will place women on a pedestal and yet deeply entrenched anti-women patriarchal valueswhere worki claim to worship them. Our culture is fond of saying, "Janani are continually reinvented and reincarnated in manydifferent forms. When fees for education are hiked, women.
their rights, Janmabhoomi Swargadapi Gariyasi"(Mother and Motherland are the first casualties, since it is deemed more necessary.
are dearer than heaven), or "Yatra Narishcha pujyante, that their brothers should study. Girls are not allowed to be.
it's there you .
it's there you ramante tatra devta' (Where women are worshipped, gods born-not just in poor households, but more so in elite homesreside there). But, as Gloria Steinem observed '" pedestal even in the capital city where we live. Women are the worst.
-Joe Hill was is as much a prison as any other small place." The revolu-.
tionary Hindi poet Gorakh Pandey, too, reminds us of the hit by joblessness, since they continue to work often belowleader and rae m!nimum -.vages cr.d their work is deemed 'unskilled1in Utah, USA v prison walls that our society builds, of the way in which Whare.
.
on false charge women are burnt to death or forced to suicide in the very there is violence ---whether the violence of the corporates,by firing squa, home in which she is worshipped as 'ghar ki lakshmi': communal or casteist violence, and the violences of the stateprior to his ext There are walls in every house I Shut windows in every wall, I ---it is always women who are the first to be affected, thewritten to 8 Banging against closed windows, her head/Bloody, she lies fallen.! first to be made the targets of attack. The possession of.
women as commodities and the link that is made betweenanother comt .
In every home there are burning ghats,/ln every home, there are the body of the woman and the prestige of the community or"Don't waste. gallows,linevery home there are walls/Bangingagainst the walls nation reiterates itself in the public domain. Modes of patriar-ourmng. Orga .
she falls, !Halfthe world falls,!AI/ humanity falls ..." chal violence in society are manifested in its most brutal.
form in the political arena. We see this in AFSPA, a lawSd/-Aw The first blows to the walls ofpatriarchy which the Indian army has used to brutally rape women inWomen's Day reminds us ofthe long struggle that women the North-East, in the state-sponsored communal genocide.
launched to break down the prison walls of patriarchy. It re-in Gujarat, where saffron Hindutva brigade raped pregnant.
minds us of the thousands of socialist and communist work-women and massacred those young and old or in Singur anding women, who knew that when women would be truly free .
Nandigram where sexual violence was used as a strategy byonly when they broke down all the prison walls; they knew the CPI(M) cadres to quell the protests of people being dis-.
that the liberation of women was linked to a struggle for thelong.
I .
placed from their land. While claims for women's empower-.
abst .
liberation of the whole of humanity. Masses of working ment are reiterated by successive governments at the stateresc women struck work In Chicago on 8 March In 1910,resi same governments not only engage in the forms of patriar-.
sparking off a huge movement for the right to vote, and central level, these are but empty claims for these self-.
this .
equal wages and an 8-hour working day. The German chal violence, and also turn a blind eye to the suffering andYFI Socialist leader Clara Zetkin, at an international Con-struggles of women. The present UPA government has made.
l ference of Socialist women, proposed that this day beYFI .
observed as International Women's Day. tall claims of a gender-sensitive budget. But their policiesCP make the prices soar and women go hungry; they relegate JN\l.
For us, Women's Day must be an occasion to pay trib-women to the most casual and contractualised jobs; and of.
COt .
course they, like the BJP-NDA before them, shy away fromute to the personal and political struggles of our foremothers..
who dealt the first blows to the prison walls of our society. even tabling the Women's Reservation Bill!Remember Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain and On March 8, It Is a time for the women's movement.
Rassundari Debl in the 19th century, who taught themselves to renew Its resolve to take on the ruling classes, rip off.
r the masks of 'women's e,mpowerment' and declare, In.
to read and write secretly, in dark kitchens after everyone in.
r the house was asleep! the words of Helen Reddy's song, "/ am woman, heart Sucheta De, Gen.Secy., AISA, JNU me roar/In numbers too big tO Ignore.".
Vlsmay Basu, Jt. Secy, AISA, Jr4tJ .
committed to reserv""'" ..,..-·-. .
.