PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2008 ID-5045
.
Recall Savitribal Phule, who in late 19th century ~e-~On lnternat1onal Women's Day 2008 Maharashtra, defended couples who had married across .
... it is impossible to draw the masses into politics without also drawina in the women; for under capitalism, the female half of the human-race suffers under a double yoke. The working woman and oeasant woman are oppressed by capital; but in addition to that. dven in the most democratic ofbourgeots Republics, they are, firstly, m an mferior position because the law denies them equality with men, and secondly, and this is most important, they are "in domestic slavery, they are "domestic slaves , crushed by the most petty, most mental, most arduous. and most stultifying work ofthe kitchen, and by tsolatod domestic, family economy in general. -VI Lenin .
What does 'Women's Day' mean? .
The ads tell us it's a day when husbands are supposed to buy women washing machines and kitchen gadgets, when boyfriends are supposed to buy them flowers. Radio Mirchi, fof instanca, invited male listeners to send ITiessages to their girl friends and wives "to make tht:m feel special". Is Women's Day just another 'Day' demarcated by corporates, to con-sume more and more? Or is it a day to remember the dls-cnminations and violence that women face 365 days a year? A day to look back at women whose struggles are the basis .
of this celebration of women's rights? .
.
"A pedestal is as much a prison" .
Patriarchal society is famous for its doublespeak. On the one hand, society will place women on a pedestal and claim to worship them. Our culture is fond of saying, "Janani Janmabhoomi Swargadapi Gariyasi"(Mother and Motherland are dearer than heaven), or "Yatra Narishcha pujyante, ramante tatra devta' (Where women are worshipped, gods reside there). But, as Gloria Steinem observed "A pedestal is as much a prison as any other small place." The revolu-tionary Hindi poet Gorakh Pandey, too, reminds us of the prison walls that our society builds, of the way in which women are burnt to death or forced to suicide In the very home in which she is worshipped as 'ghar kl lakshmi': .
There are walls in every house I Shut windows in every wall, I Banging against closed windows, her head/Bloody, she lies fallen./ In every home 'here are burning ghats,lln every home, there are gallows,lln every home there are walls/Banging against the walls she fa/ls,IHalfthe world falls,!A/I humanity falls ... .
The first blows to the walls of patriarchy .
Women's Day reminds us of the long struggle that women launched to break down the pnson walls of patriarchy. It re-minds us of the thousands of socialist and communist work-ing women, who knew that when women would be truly free only when they broke down all the prison walls; they knew that the liberation of women was linked to a struggle for the liberation of the whole of humanity. Masses of working women struck work In Chicago on 8 March in 1910, sparking off a huge movement for the right to vote, equal wages and an 8-hour working day. The German Socialist leader Clara Zetkln, at an International Con-ference of Socialist women, proposed that this day be observed as International Women's Day. .
For us, Women's Day must be an occasion to pay trib-ute to the personal and political struggles of our foremothers, who dealt the first blows to the prison walls of our society. .
Remember Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain and Rassundarl Debi in the 19th century, who taught themselves to read and write secretly, in dark kitchens after everyone in the house was asleep! .
Sucheta De, Gen.Secy., AISA, JNU caste. struggled for the right of widows to study and remarry, and started a school for girls. She was pelted with stones and cow-dung by angry people who accused her of corrupt-ing their daughters. .
Salute Rakhmabal, a 20-year-old woman 1n the 1880s, who sa1d she wouldn't live with the man to whom she had been married at the age of 11, because she wanted to be free to study medicine! The law said such women who re-fused to cohabit with their husbands must be Jailed, and the courts gave her a prison sentence. Great and powerful men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote editorials attacking her for being 'singed with the flame of knowledge' -a thirst for edu-cation was 'unnatural' and 'unbecoming' for women. they said. But Rakhmabai. displaying incredible courage, wrote letters in newspapers, asserting, "Because you cannot enter our .
feelings do not think we are satisfied with the life CJf drudg-ery that we live, and that we have no taste for, and aspi-ration after, a higher life ... " She did eventually study medi-.
cine and become a doctor. .
The many reincarnations of patriarchy .
From the legacy of these struggles, Independent India has framed a history of contradictions. Today, women in our country appear more free to study and work, and yet deeply entrenched anti-women patriarchal values .
are continually reinvented and reincarnated in many different forms. When fees for education are hiked, wornen are the first casualties, since it is deemed more necessary that their brothers should study. Girls are not allowed to be born-not just in poor households, but more so in b . te homes even 1n the capital city where we live. Women are the worst hit by joblessness, since they continue to work often below minimum wages and their work is deemed 'unskilled'. Where there is violence ---whether the violence of the corporates, communal or casteist violence, and the violences of the state ---it is always women who are the first to be affected, the first to be made the targets of attack. The possession of women as commodities and the link that IS made between the body of the woman and the prestige of the community or nation reiterates itself in the public domain. Modes of patriar-chal violence in society are manifested 1n 1ts most brutal form in the political arena. We see this in AFSPA, a law which the Indian army has used to brutally rape women in the North-East, in the state-sponsored communal genocide in Gujarat, where saffron Hindutva bngade raped pregnant women and massacred those young and old or in Singur and Nandigram where sexual violence was used as a strategy by the CPI(M) cadres to quell the protests of people bemg dis-placed from their land. While cla1ms for women's empower-ment are reiterated by successive governments at the state and central level, these are but empty claims for these self-same governments not only engage in the forms of patriar-chal violence, and also turn a blind eye to the suffenng and struggles of women. The present UPA government has made tall claims of a gender-sensitive budget. But their policies make the prices soar and women go hungry; they relegate women to the most casual and contractualised jobs; and of course they, like the BJP-NDA before them, shy away from .
even tabling the Women's Reservation Bill! .
On March 8, It Is a time for the women's movement to renew Its resolve to take on the ruling classes, rip off the masks of 'women's empowerment' and declare, in the words of Helen Reddy's song, "/ am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore... " .
Vismay Basu, Jt. Secy, AISA, JNU .
.
.
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 2008 ID-5045
.
Recall Savitribal Phule, who in late 19th century ~e-~On lnternat1onal Women's Day 2008 Maharashtra, defended couples who had married across .
... it is impossible to draw the masses into politics without also drawina in the women; for under capitalism, the female half of the human-race suffers under a double yoke. The working woman and oeasant woman are oppressed by capital; but in addition to that. dven in the most democratic ofbourgeots Republics, they are, firstly, m an mferior position because the law denies them equality with men, and secondly, and this is most important, they are "in domestic slavery, they are "domestic slaves , crushed by the most petty, most mental, most arduous. and most stultifying work ofthe kitchen, and by tsolatod domestic, family economy in general. -VI Lenin .
What does 'Women's Day' mean? .
The ads tell us it's a day when husbands are supposed to buy women washing machines and kitchen gadgets, when boyfriends are supposed to buy them flowers. Radio Mirchi, fof instanca, invited male listeners to send ITiessages to their girl friends and wives "to make tht:m feel special". Is Women's Day just another 'Day' demarcated by corporates, to con-sume more and more? Or is it a day to remember the dls-cnminations and violence that women face 365 days a year? A day to look back at women whose struggles are the basis .
of this celebration of women's rights? .
.
"A pedestal is as much a prison" .
Patriarchal society is famous for its doublespeak. On the one hand, society will place women on a pedestal and claim to worship them. Our culture is fond of saying, "Janani Janmabhoomi Swargadapi Gariyasi"(Mother and Motherland are dearer than heaven), or "Yatra Narishcha pujyante, ramante tatra devta' (Where women are worshipped, gods reside there). But, as Gloria Steinem observed "A pedestal is as much a prison as any other small place." The revolu-tionary Hindi poet Gorakh Pandey, too, reminds us of the prison walls that our society builds, of the way in which women are burnt to death or forced to suicide In the very home in which she is worshipped as 'ghar kl lakshmi': .
There are walls in every house I Shut windows in every wall, I Banging against closed windows, her head/Bloody, she lies fallen./ In every home 'here are burning ghats,lln every home, there are gallows,lln every home there are walls/Banging against the walls she fa/ls,IHalfthe world falls,!A/I humanity falls ... .
The first blows to the walls of patriarchy .
Women's Day reminds us of the long struggle that women launched to break down the pnson walls of patriarchy. It re-minds us of the thousands of socialist and communist work-ing women, who knew that when women would be truly free only when they broke down all the prison walls; they knew that the liberation of women was linked to a struggle for the liberation of the whole of humanity. Masses of working women struck work In Chicago on 8 March in 1910, sparking off a huge movement for the right to vote, equal wages and an 8-hour working day. The German Socialist leader Clara Zetkln, at an International Con-ference of Socialist women, proposed that this day be observed as International Women's Day. .
For us, Women's Day must be an occasion to pay trib-ute to the personal and political struggles of our foremothers, who dealt the first blows to the prison walls of our society. .
Remember Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain and Rassundarl Debi in the 19th century, who taught themselves to read and write secretly, in dark kitchens after everyone in the house was asleep! .
Sucheta De, Gen.Secy., AISA, JNU caste. struggled for the right of widows to study and remarry, and started a school for girls. She was pelted with stones and cow-dung by angry people who accused her of corrupt-ing their daughters. .
Salute Rakhmabal, a 20-year-old woman 1n the 1880s, who sa1d she wouldn't live with the man to whom she had been married at the age of 11, because she wanted to be free to study medicine! The law said such women who re-fused to cohabit with their husbands must be Jailed, and the courts gave her a prison sentence. Great and powerful men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote editorials attacking her for being 'singed with the flame of knowledge' -a thirst for edu-cation was 'unnatural' and 'unbecoming' for women. they said. But Rakhmabai. displaying incredible courage, wrote letters in newspapers, asserting, "Because you cannot enter our .
feelings do not think we are satisfied with the life CJf drudg-ery that we live, and that we have no taste for, and aspi-ration after, a higher life ... " She did eventually study medi-.
cine and become a doctor. .
The many reincarnations of patriarchy .
From the legacy of these struggles, Independent India has framed a history of contradictions. Today, women in our country appear more free to study and work, and yet deeply entrenched anti-women patriarchal values .
are continually reinvented and reincarnated in many different forms. When fees for education are hiked, wornen are the first casualties, since it is deemed more necessary that their brothers should study. Girls are not allowed to be born-not just in poor households, but more so in b . te homes even 1n the capital city where we live. Women are the worst hit by joblessness, since they continue to work often below minimum wages and their work is deemed 'unskilled'. Where there is violence ---whether the violence of the corporates, communal or casteist violence, and the violences of the state ---it is always women who are the first to be affected, the first to be made the targets of attack. The possession of women as commodities and the link that IS made between the body of the woman and the prestige of the community or nation reiterates itself in the public domain. Modes of patriar-chal violence in society are manifested 1n 1ts most brutal form in the political arena. We see this in AFSPA, a law which the Indian army has used to brutally rape women in the North-East, in the state-sponsored communal genocide in Gujarat, where saffron Hindutva bngade raped pregnant women and massacred those young and old or in Singur and Nandigram where sexual violence was used as a strategy by the CPI(M) cadres to quell the protests of people bemg dis-placed from their land. While cla1ms for women's empower-ment are reiterated by successive governments at the state and central level, these are but empty claims for these self-same governments not only engage in the forms of patriar-chal violence, and also turn a blind eye to the suffenng and struggles of women. The present UPA government has made tall claims of a gender-sensitive budget. But their policies make the prices soar and women go hungry; they relegate women to the most casual and contractualised jobs; and of course they, like the BJP-NDA before them, shy away from .
even tabling the Women's Reservation Bill! .
On March 8, It Is a time for the women's movement to renew Its resolve to take on the ruling classes, rip off the masks of 'women's empowerment' and declare, in the words of Helen Reddy's song, "/ am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore... " .
Vismay Basu, Jt. Secy, AISA, JNU .
.
.
.