Listen:

Justice for Women—Dignity for All
Rupa Kumar, India

Respected chairperson and dear friends:

I greet you all and sincerely appreciate you for choosing this topic on behalf of the women of the world. I also am thankful to God and the organizers of the Peace Colloquy for giving me this opportunity to share with you what I see from my part of the world and feel from my perspective.

I know I am not good at speaking in public. My strength lies in talking to people one on one. I also know that most of us are like me. But that cannot be an excuse. People like us who are conscious of what is going on around us have the responsibility of acting on behalf of the women before it is too late. I thank all of us who are here and all those who share our concerns across the globe.

The women out there do not even know what is happening to them or why. But they suffer from womb to tomb. It sounds comforting, and we may think that have the right to feel elated because we are not like the ordinary people. We are intellectuals, we are doing good things. See, we are talking about the need for justice for women leading to dignity for all.

After three days of being together, we will print out a bunch of papers, put them in a three-ring binder, keep it safe as a souvenir of the kind of meetings we have attended, and decorate the shelf, because the title is impressive. And we will continue the same life as it was yesterday.

How many conferences has the world has seen so far? Where do we stand now?

Where is justice for women? Whither dignity?

I am here to tell you something serious. I am going to read from scripture. In my reading, whenever I use the word you, I am addressing the whole world, not only you sitting here. When you hear my name, try to put your own names in place of mine and listen to this verse from Luke:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me (Rupa), because he has anointed (Rupa), to bring good news to the poor (women, the  physically poor, mentally poor, socially poor, culturally poor, educationally poor, and economically poor).  He has sent (Rupa) to proclaim freedom for the prisoners (the women at home and in society) and recovery of sight for the blind (the women educated and uneducated, rich and poor, elite and the alienated), to release the oppressed (women, from the cruelty of their parents, brothers, husbands, sons, bosses, colleagues,  subordinates, friends, strangers, priests, courts, politicians, allies, and aliens) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (expecting you men and women  to utilize the last opportunity to change your attitude toward women and save the earth, save humanity, save yourself  from annihilation).

 The Lord’s favor is still there.

Act now lest you end up in a world without women, leading to frustration, lack of love, lack of sacrifice, lack of meaning in life, and lack of procreation, resulting in the end of the world. Not because of the curse of God, but because of your own foolish behavior toward women, your mother, sister, wife, daughter, friend, neighbor, and child.

The wisdom of God calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares.

Well, what I have said just now is not a word of wisdom. It is something like a warning announced on BBC, CNN, and like an emergency announcement in the news channels of your own towns and cities, expecting you to act immediately to save yourself from the impending disaster.

Why this urgency?

We’ve talked about this subject for generations. During exercises like this Peace Colloquy we try to find ways of putting into practice our values—love, joy, hope, and peace. Our scriptures talk about sexual equality and have hailed women throughout history. Most often we find that what is written and what is practiced are two different things.

In all the religious practices of the world women are being suppressed, used, and thrown away without dignity. We are now living in a world that is being torn apart by religious extremism.

We no longer can afford to keep and maintain any religion that survives mostly upon hatred, exclusion, and disdain. Before we condemn the positions of other religions, we must make sincere attempts to identify the impacts of patriarchy and heal the prejudice against women that has damaged the value…of our own religion, in my case Christianity.

The text of the Bible was born in cultures and contexts that were patriarchal. Androcentric passages tell stories and construct social worlds that eclipse women, marginalizing their historical presence and contribution to salvation history.

Some biblical texts are interpreted so that they nullify women’s contribution to mainstream religion. These texts are seen to foster a negative image of woman, judging her as evil and unclean and casting her in the role of temptress! Hence, women experience difficulty in appropriating to themselves the liberating vision of God’s word in the scriptures.

The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with and reinforce traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant, and damaging examples of human-rights abuses.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to dominate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices.

It is time we had the courage to challenge these views. Because these are in clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 2), which reads, “Everyone is entitled to all rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.…” Also, in the scriptures, Apostle Paul in Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Dignity and justice for all of us are reinforced in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a commitment. It is not a luxury or a wish list. The inherent human dignity, non-discrimination, equality, fairness, and universality found in its core values apply to everyone, everywhere, and always.

The Universal Declaration says in its preamble that “recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”

Many countries have committed to this and have made them into law. In theory at least, it belongs to all of us, men and women. No matter where you live, rich or poor, educated or not, it is meant for all of us.

I read an article by Soma Wadhwa in an Indian weekly magazine, Outlook. There was a movie made with Indian and French collaboration called “Mathru Bhoomi,” meaning motherland. An Indian writer-director, Manish Jha—an award winner in the Cannes Festival for his earlier film—extrapolates from our current reality to imagine an Indian village where—due to the routine killing of female newborns, continuous bride burning, group clashes, communal wars, and rape— women have been wiped out.

With frustration, fury, and fanaticism this gender-skewed village without women—crass and crude—remains confused. The sex-starved men hanker for release…The director helps us see the horrible potential of self-destruction when a single girl is spied, bought for a price from her father, and made available for five brothers who torture her day and night.

She becomes pregnant, and the question of paternity arises. She is beaten and harassed more by everyone, including her father-in-law. When she runs away for life, a low-caste guy finds her, offers rescue and protection. That sparks communal hatred and starts violent clashes and a wide range of destruction.

Under the guise of taking revenge…people in both communities gang-rape her. Amid chaos she gives birth to a baby girl!

Even today, insulting the patriarchal property of the enemy—the women—is considered something to be proud of.

Where is justice for women? Whither dignity?

The violations the girl suffers in this film, though exaggerated, are still reflections of the actual fate of women in many civilized societies, even today. “Mathru Bhoomi,” showing women treated like patriarchal property to be bought and sold, raped, tortured in marriage, abused, battered during riots, used as reproductive tools, painfully blurs the present and the future.

I am not sure we are far from the situations of the film. Look at this newspaper report of what happened in the communal riots of Gujarat State in India, in 2002: “After the gang rape of all of us, irrespective of our age, they made us walk home naked. When our men saw us they took off the clothes they still had and gave them to us so that we could wrap something around us.” The word “us” includes mother, mother-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law, and girls younger than 13.

Where is justice for women? Whither dignity?

It is believed that one hundred million girls have been aborted as the Indian society seeks male heirs. They want boys at any cost—because they bring dowry. So they kill the female fetus and girl children. In Maharashtra state alone there were 945 girls for 1,000 boys in 1991; 927 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001; 913 girls per 1,000 boys in 2004; and the numbers have gone down by 50 in the last four years.

Where is justice for women? Whither dignity?

In the Hariyana and Bihar states in India, due to extreme poverty girls are being bought and sold—buy for personal use for some time and then throw out for public use for a cheaper price! Where are we going?

Loveleen Kaur, a Delhi-based human-rights activist, screams: “Female infanticide, fetus killing, abortions, and all such shameful acts done for want of sons are worse than assassinations and terrorist attacks that are carried out of frustration of a misguided group of people against those in power or for their difference in ideology. How can we justify the plight of the unborn girl who is being attacked and killed at the very place which is considered to be the safest: the mother’s womb or the mother’s bosom?

“How can we not afford the most unfortunate of the women…who is not even given a chance to open her eyes in this God-created beautiful world and to breathe the open air? Above all how can her own parents agree for this to be done to their daughter?”

Where is justice for women? Whither dignity?

In a country like India, where the political parties take pride for having selected a woman to become president, the crime records against women on rape, molestation, murder, wife abuse, kidnapping, and harassment are on the increase.

If this trend of female child killing and sexual abuse of women keeps on going, the day won’t be far away when people won’t be able to find girls to marry for their sons.

People in some places are already finding it hard. There will be more prostitution, leading to AIDS, social instability, wife buying, wife borrowing, and all kinds of unimaginable violence against women.

I can go on giving examples of women’s abuse in all spheres of life: physical, psychological, sociological, cultural, educational, economical, and political.

Democracy is said to be by the people, for the people, and of the people. But violence and torture on women also seem to have become by all the people, for all the people, and of all the people.

I have great respect for religion. I derive my lifestyle and values from my religion. But I also strongly believe that it is time we redefine religion. Let us go back to the intentions and contexts of the teaching, and let the interpretations be dependent on that, rather than keeping them vice versa.

Be prepared to look beyond the horizon and dare to take the first step toward the unknown. Think globally, act locally. Independence is declared and enjoyed—not applied for to be approved by the authorities and perpetrators of oppression. The longer women keep looking for freedom from outside sources the more they will lose sight of their focus.

Identification of the real issues and causes is important. We should have the clarity to grasp the problems and issues in their totality.

That does not mean we should understand everything in detail and act only then. No. There are occasions that require instant human response when a woman is in danger. I believe God is in charge and acts in all situations. God needs us also. God calls us to act locally.

Total obedience to the call—total dependence on God, total submissiveness before God—can help us to have clarity in our approach and focus in our response to the realities unearthed.

Do what needs to be done because there can be no change in the world unless I myself be the change that I want to see in the world. But in the process, we need to be steadfast and firm to finish what we have started, even if it costs our life. I cannot do it alone. But empowered by the Holy Spirit, I have the faith and power to do anything.

If I do, I can experience resurrection, and I can help others to experience the same resurrection. If I don’t do, I am letting others die and be forgotten. I will have to remember… invariably I will also die and be forgotten.

It is not a choice; it’s a must.

It is going to the people. Listen and learn from them, not just identify with them and be external stimuli for their emancipation. It is different. …Go and live with them. You will be experiencing resurrection if you are totally immersed in your calling and response. That is what Jesus did. That is exactly what today’s missionaries and religious leaders are expected to be doing.

I went to the slums. My husband took me there. I lived with them day and night. It was a cultural shock. But I was with them. I saw their miseries. Persecution—I felt the pain.

I continued to experience the dichotomy between my lower-middle-class background and the realities of the poorest of the poor women whom I could only empathize with and not experience fully, like Jesus experienced humanity. He was not empathizing. He became a man and became a model, paving the way for me to follow the same model in my given context.

I was there until I earned their confidence and acceptance, which was basic to my work among women. It was only then that I was able to organize them, to do what they wanted and the way they wanted.

I taught them to take charge. I stood behind them as they attempted to do so. They did it, they felt success. They continued with new innovations. They took the project and programs to be their own. They don’t need me always.

I am free to move to other areas. I never felt it was “my” project. It is a process involving interdependency between the “haves and have-nots,” even in terms of knowledge and experience.

The name of our NGO is Community Organization and Resource Development India (CORDI) Trust.  As the name states, we believe in organizing communities, helping them to identify their own resources, and enabling them to use them for their own development.

We started our work with the slum dwellers of Chennai city. Chennai is one of the four major metropolitan cities in India. One-third of the city population lives in slums. The living condition of the slum women was horrible, without sanitation and water facilities.

In certain areas they lived there for more than 100 years, but there were no civic amenities like toilets for women. They were ignored because they were unauthorized squatters.

We organized the Chennai Slum Dwellers Association. It grew into a state-level organization called Tamil Nadu Slum Dwellers Association. In a few years it grew into a national-level movement called the National Slum Dwellers Federation. Without financial help from anybody, we helped them organize and gave them all necessary skills based on social work principles.

Now they are independent, able to negotiate with the government and able to get what they want.

Through our interaction with the slum dwellers for several years, we realized there is a need for intervention on the issue of domestic violence. We started with counseling, and the shelter project for battered wives was started in 1992 in partnership with World Accord.

When most of the charitable institutions refused even to read our project proposal, World Accord saw the dire need and decided to become our partner. I take this opportunity to register our gratitude to World Accord, Tangible Love, and World Hunger programs of Community of Christ and the Canadian government.

Terry Fielder, the executive director of World Accord, deserves to be mentioned at this point. Without his understanding and support, the CORDI Women’s Project would have died in its infancy, and we would not have been here today.

When I faced serious threats to my life because of my refusal to compromise with the powers of the social system, Terry Fielder and World Accord played a crucial role to offer 24/7 communication and protection through sources unknown to us even today.

CORDI has been working with abused women in India for eighteen years. Our programs not only aim to address the symptoms of the problem by providing a shelter for abused women, but they attempt to address the solutions to this problem by raising community awareness and by helping women gain economic independence.

The CORDI Women’s Shelter and Training Center offers a haven for the abused women of India and their children. Counseling for the family and skills training are provided for the women to increase family income and empower a greater self-worth.

From birth, women in India face enormous social and cultural walls standing between them and the achievement of equality. As virtual second-class citizens, they are often unable to overcome barriers such as illiteracy, poverty, and lack of freedom.  The CORDI Women’s Shelter and Training Center was created to empower and enable women to become self-sufficient and avoid a life of subservience to men.

We operate a shelter for abused women, thus alleviating the worst symptoms of women’s powerlessness in our society by protecting them from verbal, physical, and sexual abuse and even death. Family counseling teaches both women and men that abuse of women is wrong as it’s not just the men who do the abusing.

The mother-in-law is often just as abusive. Vocational skills and job-placement programs offer women a degree of financial independence, thus improving their self-esteem and confidence whether they live separately or with their husbands. CORDI has developed a community-based, awareness-raising program that uses street theater and support groups to educate the public on topics involving women.

For about eighteen years, CORDI’s campaign for women’s rights has also included training sessions for the staffs of other Indian NGO’s to encourage them to develop programs aimed at enabling and empowering women.

Case Studies

While CORDI offered training to many women, some have picked up very well and are doing good service to women. One of the former trainees of the CORDI Project has started an NGO called Cigaram Trust. (Cigaram in Tamil means peak).

Poor women—mainly from the tsunami-affected areas, fisherwomen families, physically challenged persons, widows, and battered women—have been formed into groups of twenty each to analyze their own specific needs and to address all the relevant issues.

With the active support of CORDI they started to grow in quality and quantity. Amazingly there are 1,013 self-reliant and sustainable self-help groups as of today under Cigaram Trust. Financial integrity and keeping the promise of punctuality in repayment of the loans received through micro-credit schemes were very successful.

The financial transaction came close to 7.5 million Indian rupees with the active participation of about 22,000 women in two districts.

Meenakshi and Her Children

This woman was on her way to commit suicide … after a quarrel with her husband, who had beaten her up to the extent that she felt half-dead. All because of his insatiable need for money to drink more.

After years of discontentment, Meenakshi lost all her hope and decided to end her life, along with those of her two children, on the railway track. Her son saw a sign for CORDI at the train station. He begged his mother to see if CORDI could help them.

For a moment she was distracted from her suicidal impulse and gave way to common sense. She knocked on the doors of CORDI about 2:00 a.m. Today, this young boy—not a boy anymore—is a proud college student, planning to become a lawyer to fight for the rights of women in India. The mother has a vegetable shop to support her family and lead a safer and happier life.

Sudha

Many volunteers and some of the staff of CORDI are former clients. They have been so positively affected by the services offered at CORDI that they often return to offer help, support, and hope to others. Their testimony about the transforming power of faith, self-confidence, hard work, and perseverance is in fact more pragmatic and powerful when offered with the collective support of the local women.

Here is a woman who appeared in the documentary, “Skeptics Journey,” fifteen years ago. She was a victim of dowry harassment. When she arrived at the shelter, she was beating her own daughter, out of shame for her own situation. She now owns her own successful business (flower and craft shop and a beauty parlor).

She offers training and mentoring to other women who wish to start their own businesses. One of her daughters is in high school. The other one has finished her schooling and is waiting to enter college.

The source of my strength and commitment is my Jesus Christ. All my actions are my response to his calling. Then how can I not bear witness of him? So in my context I am proclaiming Jesus Christ as son of God, not by preaching but by doing what Jesus would be doing in my street in my context. This is the secret of our success in all our programs.

Justice for women is not in the hands of the few women of the educated upper class, or upper-middle class, or some professional book writers, and social analysts.

It is in our hands, men and women, rich and poor, educated or uneducated, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jain. It is in the hands of the conscious humanity.

Justice for women is not an application to be sent to somebody for their consideration. It is part and parcel of the basic requirement and conditions for the continuation of the life cycle in this planet, let alone the dignity for all. It is a question of survival.

You don’t need to give a woman anything; that kind of thought itself is arrogance. Just leave it to her. Take your leg off the woman’s head. She will sprout out of the earth where you have buried her so far and grow into a big banyan tree, where everyone, including you, can find shelter and solace.

I have not concluded. I cannot. I want us to continue…because it is the business of the collective humanity, not just one or two women. When justice for women is experienced, dignity for all is enjoyed.