Kamla Bhasin

Bhasin, speaking in 2012

Kamla Bhasin (born 24 April 1946) is an Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist. Bhasin's work, that spans across 35 years, focuses on gender, education, human development and the media.^[1] She lives in New Delhi, India.^[2] She is best known for her NGO, Sangat, which is a South Asian network of feminists, and her poem "Kyunki main ladki hoon, mujhe padhna hai" .^[3] In 1995, she recited a refurbished, feminist version of the popular poem Azadi (Freedom) in a conference in @ She is also the South Asia coordinator of One Billion Rising.

She left her job as a UN representative in 2002, to work on the network of South Asian feminists, that she built from the ground up.^[4] She believes in a form of advocacy that combines feminist theory and community action. She has worked with underprivileged women from farming, working or tribal communities, often using posters, plays and other non literary methods to get through to communities with low literacy rates. She has always mantained that in order to usher effective change, sloganeering must be accompanied by community mobilization.^[4][5]

Early and personal life

She calls herself 'The Midnight Generation'. A reference to the generation of Indians born around the time of independence, 'at the stroke of the midnight hour..'.^[2] She was the eldest among five siblings and was born to a doctor.^[2][6] She grew up around villages in India and it helped her form an understanding about women's issues in villages in India. This experience would be instrumental in her life and future career. She went to a government university for her bachelor's and masters'. She later said that she found the experience uninspiring and graduated with second division.^[4]

She met her (now ex) husband in Rajasthan while working for Seva Mandir. She has later recounted that her husband was an incredibly feminist man and espoused progressive ideas. Her husband suggested that their children take both their surnames and was supportive when Bhasin's 70-year old mother moved in with them. However things turned sour after incidents of domestic abuse and infidelity by him.^[2][6]

She considers her greatest loss to be the death of her adult daughter who was really important to her. She has a son who became disabled after a vaccine reacted badly.^[2]

Education and career

Beginning of politicization

Bhasin earned a M.A. from Rajasthan University and then went on to study Sociology of Development at Muenster University in West Germany with a fellowship. Afterward, she taught at the Orientation Centre of the German Foundation for Developing Countries in Bad Honnef for around year.^[2][5] Shen then wanted to return to India, and implement what she learned there. Hence, she started working for Seva Mandir, which works primarily in natural resource sustainability. There she learnt about how caste is endemic in Indian society, and how discrimination manifests itself even in governance. That was manifest in the fact that Brahmin's wells would never go dry as they received state funds to drill every year. This was when she realized that caste and feminism were intersectional.^[2]

Work at UN and subsequent founding of Sangat

After that, she started working with the Food and Agriculture Organization, and was assigned to identify innovative development work in Asian countries and create

Kamla Bhasin and Sunila share a light moment.

networks between people –across countries.^[2][4] She lamented later that at that time, in the 70s when the subcontinent was gripped in mutual animosity and war, it was difficult to create networks and come together as South Asians. She thus, moved to Bangladesh in 1976 and worked with Gonoshashtya Kendra, a rural public health organization.^[7] It was where she met Zafrullah Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi public health worker and activist, who changed her perspective about a lot of things. She later described him as one of the few men who thought 'out of the box' in South Asia.^[4]

She quit her job at the UN in 2002, to work full time on her feminist network, Sangat which she had been working on for a while. She has, since, in association with Sangat, organized workshops on understanding feminist theory and develop a feminist awakening. The organization has organized the "Sangat Month Long Course" since 1984, helping more than 650 women in South Asia develop a better understanding of gender, poverty, social justice, sustainable development, peace, democracy and human rights.^[7] “The method of our capacity building course is multi-dimensional and participatory. For one month, the participants try and understand what patriarchy is." she says.^[2]

Writings and other works

She has also written booklets about understanding patriarchy and gender, that has been translated into 25-30 languages. These are now used by many NGOs to help people understand gender issues. Her book, Laughing Matters, that she co-authored with Bindia Thapar, first published in 2005 was republished in 2013 and now has a Hindi version (Hasna Toh Sangharsho Mein Bhi Zaroori Hai). In her writings and politics, she envisions a feminist movement that transcends class, borders and other binary social divisions.^[4] She has been an integral part of the One Billion Rising movement in South Asia. She recently went to Nepal to flag off the 2017 edition of the movement in Kathmandu, Nepal.^[8] At a 2013 One Billion Rising event in New Delhi, she recited her famous Azadi poem to much acclaim and public participation.

Points of View and Advocacy

Capitalist Patriarchy

She has spoken out against capitalism as an agent of the patriarchy, for objectifying women's bodies. However her revulsion of capitalism emerges from a much deeper political stand. She argues that the nature of the modern family is based in the concept of ownership. "This all started when private property came into existence. People wanted to pass on their legacy, but men did not know who their children were, only women were known as mothers because there were no families. That is when patriarchy came.", she says.^[6]

Moreover she argues that modern neoliberal capitalism, and its obscene digits like the pornography industry and the cosmetics industry, both billion dollar industries, reduces women to their bodies. Moreover, these industries promote a form of dehumanization of women, that contributes to a culture of violence and abuse. "So once you are a body – what's the harm in raping you or groping you?” Kamla asks.^[4] She derides capitalism as a system when everything is saleable and profits matter more than people.^[4][9]

Cultural Change

"India needs a cultural revolution", says Bhasin. She resents that South Asia's women are shackled by a myriad of social customs and beliefs that embrace and straddle the patriarchy. “Often religion is used as a shield to justify patriarchy. When you question something, you are told, ‘yeh toh hamara sanskar hai, riwaaj hai (This is our culture, our traditions)'. And when this is done, it means logic has ended, belief has come in.", she told The Hindu in a 2013 interview.^[2]

She has challenged patriarchal ideas in language, and questioned the validity and history of everyday words. The Hindi word swami, that is often used for a partner, for instance, implies 'lord' or 'owner', as does the word 'husband', which originates from animal husbandry.^[4] She adjudges all these customs against the constitution of India that offers every woman the right to equality and the promise of a dignified life.

Views on feminist theory

Bhasin rejects the notion that feminism is a western concept, She stresses that Indian feminism has its roots in its own struggles and tribulations. She says that she didn't become a feminist by reading other feminists, she became one as a part of a larger natural evolution from merely a development worker, to a feminist development worker. She says that it is the story of many others.^[4]

When asked what she had to say on the premise that the term feminism antagonizes a lot of people, she said, "People are not happy with feminism, and even if I call it XYZ, they will still be against. It is because they mind the fact that we want freedom, we want equality, and there are lots of people, customs, and traditions who don’t want to give women freedom.”^[6]

While she agrees that theory and action have to go hand in hand for change to come, she does believe that feminist theory is important. Her workshops routinely consult with and work with social scientists, feminists and academics. They can be described as a marriage between action and theory.^[4]

She maintains that feminism is not a war between men and women. She says it is a fight between two ideologies. One that elevates men and gives them power, and the other, that advocates for equality.^[4]

References