Jagori asks the most important question; why are some treated differently from others?

Can we start a thought with a metaphor? Say, there lies a bed in a house. Its four legs are of different heights. Would the bed stand steady? If not, how does one make the bed, steady? That was the question posed before women in one of the monthly meets of Jagori—a non-government organisation working to raise awareness on gender and empowerment among women and men from diverse constituencies in India and its neighbouring countries. There were several options proffered; cut down the longer legs (but would the bed not lose its purpose?), add wood to the smaller ones (it would still wobble when you move it elsewhere). No, the answer lay elsewhere and it came from a quiet, Dalit woman who offered a unique solution. Let’s make the bed again. This one is no longer useful, let’s make a new one. This story best grasps what Jagori tries to do everyday. What it has tried to do all these years. Jagori (literally meaning ‘awaken’) raises the basic question; ‘why me?’ Why was I chosen to not go to school, why was I chosen to eat less, why was I chosen to get married off before the legal age? Why can't I be allowed to work, when others can? Why are my wages less than others? For Jagori, the dichotomy is easy to understand; this is a fight of difference, between the have and the have not. Only that the ‘have nots’ seem to be more women than men, and most of those women hailing from underprivileged backgrounds. It takes a small flicker to start a fire. It also takes small sessions (on basic perspectivebuilding on gender inequality and empowerment of women and thematic workshops on violence against women, their health, education, legal rights and livelihoods) to start a feminist dialogue on why some may have more and some, none at all. Jagori started when seven women, all volunteers at Saheli—a New-Delhi based crisis centre—felt the need to take the feminist consciousness to the rural areas. “We believed that NGOs working in the rural areas were headed by men, and as such subscribed to the male narrative especially when it came to issues such as property laws, division of labour, equal pay, etc. They were often patriarchal and hierarchical themselves,” says Abha Bhaiya, who founded Jagori in 1984. The rest of the team comprised Kamla Bhasin, Runu Chakravarty, Gauri Choudhury, Sheba Chhacchi, Manjari Dingwaney and Joginder Panghaal, with an aim to create a space for women to express themselves, and spread feminist ideology to women in small towns and rural areas. But that was just one of the impetus—the second issue which made the seven uncomfortable was that none of the literature that existed on feminist issues spoke to people who had no literacy levels. So the team wanted to create a medium that would talk to rural women which was not verbose, and was multimedia communication. To clearly develop and see the possibility of a language that was culturally appropriate. And Kamla Bhasin came forward to do this, without any prior planning. She wrote songs based on folk music and turned the thoughts into feministic ideology. The tunes, however, remained simple and identifiable—at least in the Hindi speaking belt where the seven had decided to work, because they were fluent in the language themselves. “Kamla and I, had previously been associated with government schools in the Hindi belt. We believed that we should keep in mind the cultural norms, traits, festivals of the states we were working with. So, we started creating what we called Notebooks for neo-literate women. By then Kamla had a repository of hundreds of songs that she had penned. You can still hear those songs in the buses that play through remote villages. I believe that the songs touched a chord because women, rural women especially, have always used music to express their emotions. And Kamla's creations were written in simple, poignant words,” says Abha Bhaiya. Music became important to Jagori's endeavours. Soon, the team began to make cassettes—words penned by Kamla Bhasin and familiar notes and tunes which the audience grew up with—sold off at a nominal price. That was also the organisation's best economic activity. The cassettes were followed by posters, campaigns, street theatre sessions and feminist training methodology (that the team had evolved) which they began to teach women in institutes and centres set up by them. Till date, Jagori has trained some 2,000 across villages that they have been involved in. “I got very closely involved in the Gramin Mahila programme. That programme gave us the opportunity to go up in scale. The UP part of the programme was handed over to Jagori to train, supervise and to develop material,” says Abha Bhaiya. But how easy was it to convince women that life, their life, was worth a change? For Abha Bhaiya, the process was not that complicated. “When you talk to women about their lives, and go deeper into it, and ask them the question why is their lives the way it is—it starts a conversation. We made a small request to them—start asking aisa kyun? Eya hamare saath hi kyun hotha hain? Mujhe khana kyun kam diya? Mujhe padne kyun nahin diya? Mujhe baag mein kyun jaane nahin detey? Mujhe kisise baat karne kyun nahin detey? “When 40 women start asking similar questions and narrating similar experiences—I was abused by an uncle, I was molested by my father’s friend—then a common bond is formed. “The more they shared, the women also started to realise that it was all a part of a shared world, that they had experienced. A shared perspective. The question then was how is it that women go through the same experience irrespective of their bacgrounds? Aisa kyun?” asks Abha Bhaiya. The Jagori team posed yet another question; why was it, that every woman had a story to share—was it some deep conspiracy behind it all? That could not possibly be an answer. Introspection revealed a system— call it hierarchy or patriarchy—which condoned all the opressive behaviours. One that ensured women’s woes, their stories were almost universal. Jagori gave women an opportunity to perceive that they were not alone—that they had all, at some point of their lives or other, heard sugarcoated words which fed this systemic dis-empowerment through sentiments such as duty, responsibility and honour. The team asked the women, why was it that they, only they, were the ones chosen to uphold the duty / responsibility / honour alone. Why was it not the prerogative of the others? Why were they the second sex? Aisa kyun? It was during these training sessions that some fire flickered first—and the trainees began to question their status quo. Realised that they could have been oppressed, exploited. That often, their basic human rights were being denied. Slowly more questions formed themselves; who gets to decide whether I should be educated? Why do they get to decide on my behalf? Another important thought emerged—why do I let others decide for me? And a dialogue was being built, one session after the other.The Jagori team expected this—the rise of the suppressed voice—after all it was in their nomenclature. And its basic objective was to awaken the human capacity for thought, reason and logic. After all as someone joked, feminism is that ‘bizarre and radical idea’ that women, too, have rights. The sessions yielded one of the most magical and heart warming results. As Abha Bhaiya shares, a woman undergoing training came to her one day to say, “Apne toh hame challi pakradi.” (You gave me a sieve—meaning she could now seive out the unwanted.) “I always fond women in the rural areas more politically sensible. They just required a push. I remember once after a training sessions of the sahelis (as the volunteers are called, literally meaning girlfriends), we went back to the trainees’ villages, and stayed overnight across several households. “One of the sakhi (singularly sahelis were called sakhi) shared a dilemma; that if she tried to stay true to her sakhi, she could lose her family. If she stayed true to her family, she could lose her sakhi. The conflict was between feministic ideals and traditional norms. On one hand were the sahelis standing for feminism and human rights. On the other, stood the family—normative, sociocultural ideas of women’s role. The choice, she admitted, was never easy. “Women, I believe, are aware of feminism and feel it in their bones. Some manage to break down structural obstacles and move on, while some can not,” says Abha Bhaiya. If you pester her enough, she will tell you that the courage is not derived from formal education alone. Awareness and education sometimes go hand in hand. “I have witnessed underprivileged women leaving abusive husbands. I have seen financially strong and educated women asking themselves twice, thrice, if they can make it. Courage is not the result of economic stability or education, alone. Courage is also a matter of inner strength,” she admits. In 1984, when Jagori worked closely with Sikh women who lost their husbands in the Riots— a new agenda emerged when the team witnessed that the widows of the riots were being forced to marry their brothers-in-law to keep property (mainly) within the family. It became clear that there was another core point which needed to be addressed—the fact that few women enjoyed financial freedom. That few had property rights. And that their labour was never recognised. “We say a farmer on his field. It is always on his field. A woman also spends as much time on field as a man does, but it is hardly ever her field or her holding. We realised that Indian women had few labour laws supporting them,” adds Kamla Bhasin. Thus began the legal campaigns to make the world sit up and notice. Whether a Hindu, Muslim or a Sikh woman—Jagori sees no difference between them. What matters is whether that woman is heard. And if not, Jagori’s there to give her the microphone.