एक छोटे देहात में मेरा जन्म हुआ | मैं किसान परिवार से हूँ | मेरे पिताजी ने कृषी विश्वविद्यालय से शिक्षा प्राप्त की थी, अपनी विद्यार्थीदशा में गांधीजी के आंदोलन में वे शामील भी हुए थे | उनपर गांधी तथा नेहरूजी के विचारों का प्रभाव था | विशेष तौर से गांधीजी का इसलिये अपनी उंची […]
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My first job was with a women’s research organization in Delhi. I had just returned from my studies in England, where my involvement in activism was supporting the anti-apartheid struggle. As part of a training programme, I heard Dr Sharda Jain speak about her work with the Women’s Development Programme in Rajasthan. The way Shardaji […]
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The Way We Were: Building and re-building feminist health activism My involvement with the women’s movement began in 1989. The campaign against population control policies, anti-fertility vaccines and unethical clinical trials of hormonal contraceptives in the late 1980s and 1990s marked a watershed. Being associated with strong feminist organizations, I could actively participate in these […]
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When I was 16 years of age I had many questions running in my mind so a took a step forward to find the answer for those questions related to human rights especially women’s rights, dalits, minorities and the marginalized. I started by singing revolutionary songs and giving speeches at gate meetings, rallies, sit-ins, protests […]
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Having had over three decades of experience of researching, teaching, writing and editing on gender issues, and having curated a visual documentary on women between 1875 and 1947, in this brief note I will only focus on my initial research that radically changed my middle-class perceptions. In 1975, it was not destiny that brought me […]
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Looking back, I can see that my getting involved with the Women’s Movement was kind of inevitable. Growing up in Delhi in the 1970s was not easy. The city can be rough for a young woman moving out of her home. It was an everyday struggle just to keep my physical integrity, and yet be […]
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My Journey with the Women’s Movement My involvement with the women’s movement began at the National Conference of Autonomous Women’s Groups in Calicut, in 1991. It was a massive culture shock to get so much of the movement in one go! But it gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with a range of issues, […]
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Too long a period to recollect from, more than thirty years in the movement. Our young enthusiasm started us on trying to be different from the big leaders and looking for means to communicate our ideas through pictures, songs, plays, stories exhibitions etc., suited me very well because I was never a great orator. I […]
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My involvement in the women’s movement began in the latter half of the 70s, coinciding with my first ‘fieldwork’ amongst rural women in a few remote villages of Andhra Pradesh as well as the tumultuous years preceding and following the Emergency. The phrase ‘personal is political’ held true then as the trajectory of my own […]
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Women Empowering Media: Some Memories and Reflections First a little bit about me and my engagement with development and feminist activism. I was born in 1946 in a small village in Punjab, now in Pakistan. My mother had gone there for a wedding. I often wonder if this chance birth in Pakistan has anything to […]
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Do I remember when exactly I became conscious about feminism, or the women’s movement in India? Not really. In fact, in hindsight, I think it was almost accidental. As if a stray news item or a chance meeting had awaken me to the stirrings within the ranks of women like me across India. What I […]
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The late seventies and the subsequent decade of the eighties were some of the most exciting and turbulent years for the women’s movement across the country,and Maharashtra was no exception. Studying for my graduation at Fergusson College in Pune, I found myself in the company of a group of Marxist friends, who introduced me to […]
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I was born in a large joint family of more than a hundred members, with illiterate parents, who were marginal farmers. Like many women in the early fifties, I faced hurdles in my life, and completed High School, majoring in Sanskrit. I used to walk about 10 km a day to go to school. I […]
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Coming from a family with one foot in old Delhi and another in a UP town ruled, till independence, by a small princely family, I had exposure to contradictory influences in my growing up years. Schooling in a Convent school drilled a strong set of dos and don’ts, while the feudal connection brought exposure to […]
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How I came to be involved. It was in 1972 that I started writing on the women’s question. I had translated Evelyn Reed’s book, Problems of Women’s Liberation from English into Gujarati and was active in a student’s group, Study and Struggle Alliance, and a trade union of textile workers in Vadodara. I became active […]
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It was the early-1970s—time of global turmoil. There was the black movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the workers’ and students’ movements in Europe, and so on. Back home, there was the very severe drought in Maharashtra and other parts of the country. An atmosphere of dissent and a lot of activism was building around all […]
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Struggles of the Single and Widowed Women in Sangli District My association with the women’s movement in Maharashtra has largely been as a part-time activist and continues to be so even today. Straddling the worlds of both the NGO and the women’s movement has been a rather daunting task, which is also one of the […]
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As I climbed up the hill to the women’s movement conference being held at St. Andrew’s College in Calicut in 1991, echoes of “Shit problem, don’t stay here!” rang out all around. An older woman with a knee problem came limping down the hill and firmly took my suitcase with a welcoming smile: “I’m taking […]
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One morning in June 1994, Delhi-ites opened their newspapers to photographs of women – saris hitched up and dupattas flowing – scaling the walls of a building in Lajpat Nagar. I identified my ample posterior in one. So did many others. This was the historic “break-in” of the secretive launch of Depo Provera, the injectable […]
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