Table Of ContentC H OF ANSWERS
Indian Women's Voices From Manushi
a selection from the first five years ofM anushi
edited by
Madhu Kishwar
Ruth Vanita
HORIZON INDIA BOOKS
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7.
In Setuch of Answers was first published by bd Books Ltd.,
Londo~ in 1984
Second revised edition published by Horizon India Books,
New Delhi, 1991.
C The Manushi Trust, Cl/202.Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi-110024
Telephone: 6839158
ISBN 81-8.5487-00-6
'
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or
, . utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
or retrieval system without pernussion in writing from the
publisher.
Published by Mamta Saran for Horizon India Books, P.O. Box
.., 3224, New Delhi-110013 (telephone 697589). Phototypeset by
· Phoenix Computer Centre and printed at Chaman Offset Printets,
Delhi.
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PREFACE
This second revised edition of In Search of Answers is in response to a
continuing demand for the book, both in India and abroad, despite its
being out of print for several years. The contents remain substantially
the same as the first edition though there are some deletions and
alterations of an editorial nature.
We realise that many of the events would perhaps be viewed
differently by us today, and many articles might tum out subStantially
different if they were rewritten now. We have deliberately decided not
to alter what was written then, for it reflects the mood and perce~ons
of the early days when a new ferment around women's issues had just
begun.
We hope to follow this volume with more such selections from
M11nushi, reflecting different facets of women's lives, struggles and
aspirations.
The love, concern, generosity and hard work of so many people has
kept Mllnushi alive and growing over these years that we could fill pages
just listing their names. We take this occasion to express our thanks for
their continuing support. The help has come in many ways-in day to
day work like mailing, subscriptions, cataloguing, proof reading,
translation, in the contribution of artwork and photographs, in enrolling
of subsaiptions and publidsing the n,.agazine, in providing free legal ·
aid and ad vice, as well as in many more ways than can be listed here.
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CONTENTS
.
1. INTRODUCTION
Indian Women-The Continuing Struggle
1
MAOHU KISHW AR
2. WOMEN'S LIVES
Family Life of Agricultural Labourers and 50
Small Farmers in Punjab
BERNY HOROWITZ, MAOHU KISHWAR
Drought - Women the Worst Victims 80
MANUSHI EDITORIAL
Women and Water Shortage in Tamil Nadu 94
PRABHA RANI
Porter Women in Pune
104
SULABHA BRAHME
Coal Mine Womer} Workers in Bihar 115
A SURVEY REPORT
3. WOMEN'S STRUGGLES
Women in the Bodhgaya Land Struggle
121
MANIMALA
The Chipko Movement
Part I - Women's Non-Violent Power 149
SUNOERLAL BAHUGUNA
Part II - Community Opposes Activists 153
GOPA JOSHI
Organising Landless Women in Maharashtra 158
MIRA SA VARA, SUJA THA GOfHOSKAR
4. FAMILY VIOLENCE
Letters Written at Death's Door 173
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All For Love - Of Money 176
TAV LEFN SINGH
Women Against Dowry 178
A MANUSHI REPORT
Is it a Husband's Right to Kill? 184
ALFIE
'1t's Only a Family Affair!'' 186
KIRANSINGH
Denial of Fundamental Rights to Women 191
MAOHU KISHWAR
5. CASTE, CLASS AND POUCE VIOLENCE
Caste-Hindus Attack Dalits in Maharashtra 204
VIBHUTI PA'l'EL
Mass Rape in Bihar by Police 206
DARRYL D'MONTE
A Case of Police Harassment 208
VIMLA FAROOQI
Sangharsh Vahini's Struggle in Agra 211
REPORT BY AGRA JAN SANGHARSH SAHYOG SAMJTI
Three Brave Women of Tamil Nadu 216
K. MANOHARAN
Why Can't We Report to Each Other? 219
MANUSHI EDl'IORIAL
6. L'b'l"l'EltS TO MANUSHI 227
7. ABOUT MANUSHI
An Introduction 240
We Shall Re examine Everything 246
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To all those women of Indui,
some known, but mostly unknown,
whose lives have been devoted
to the struggle for freedom and dignity
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1. INTRODUCTION
Indian Women-The Continuing Struggle
A very large part of the thinking, writing and efforts to change the
conditions of life of Indian women is confined to a narrow stratum of
urban, educated middle class women. In Mtinushi, we have made a
concerted effort to look at more than this small group of women, not
because their struggles and achievements are unimportant in themselves,
but because their struggles and achievements have dominated social and
political thinking while the reality of the lives of the vast majority of
Indian women has been largely ignored.
Despite the fragmentary efforts made during the last few years, the
task of collecting information about the life conditions of poor women,
especially those living in villages, has hardly begun. M1111ushi is only a
small part of that effort.
Vast differences distinguish the lives of women in different parts of
the country and within different caste, clas.c. 11.:ligious and ethnic groups.
It is therefore very difficult to makP. generalisations and put together
comprehensive descriptions of the life and struggles of Indian women.
This collection of articles from Mtinushi can offer no more than glimpses
of the vast, complex and unplumbed reality of the day-to-day struggles
of millions of ordinary women in India, as well as of some of the few
intense moments of organised struggle that managed to get known
outside the local area·a ffected.
An overwhelming number of people in India, about 80%, live in rural
areas. Most of India's women are from small peasant and landless
clgricultural labourer households. Therefore, if we wish to talk of the
continuing struggle of Indian women, we have to pay attention to the
everyday life of these women.
Their most basic struggle revolves around trying to get enough to
eat for their families and for themselves, and procuring the most basic
necessities of life such as food, fuel and water. Hovering precipitously
on the brink of survival, the struggle is made even more grim because,
as women, they have very little control over the conditions and products
of their labour. They also have little say in deciding who gets how much
of the family's meagre resources.
The Nature of Household Work
One common element in the life of rural women throughout the country
is that the responsibility of running the household and caring for the
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children falls almost exclusively on her shoulders, whether she is the
. main eamer in the family or plays a supportive role. She usually has
to take on sole responsibility for the drudgery of household labour and
care of the children, even when she works long hours in the family fields
as part of a small subsistence landholding household, or performs
backbreaking agricultural work as a landless labourer, or, as a bibal
peasant woman, looks after most of the cultivating operations as weil
anq
as the gathering marketing activities. · .
Household work/ in rural India involves hours and hours of toil in
· order to accomplish tlte barest minimum without the work ever reaching
an end. Very inadeqµate ineans are av~ilable for the woman to prepare
and process food, to 'dean and maintain the living quarters, and care for.
the children. First of all, the vast majority of the hundreds of thou~ds
of Indian villages have no source of clean, potable water. In inany villages
in large areas of India, whatever quality of water may be available, it
always requires long hours of arduous work for the woman to bring it
to her house. Often she can manage to carry only very inadequate
quantities-walking miles to a stra1m, well or pond for a few pots of
polluted water. This job is seldom, if ever, performed by men. ·
The
inadequate quantity and the unhygienic quality of water adds
another burden on the family's struggle for survival. It is estimated that
80% of all ilnesM?S in third world countries are linked to the oonsumption
of polluted water. The infant mortality rate in India is among the highest
in the world. In at least 80% of these infant deaths, diarrhoea plays a
major contributory role. Diarrhoea, which is frequently fatal to those
children already weakened by malnutrition, is chiefly caused by using
contaminated water. The tragedy of the high child mortality rate that
haunts these oppressed families results in a much heavier burden of
childbearing for the women, because if it is expected that several children
will die in their early years, then women mu~t bP.ar mc1ny more in order
to ensure that at least a couple of them sul"Vive. The frequent illnesses
of children and adults also add enormously to the woman's family
responsibilities; she herself is frequently ill but cannot get the necessary
health care. The maternal mortality rate in India is also among the highest
in the world. Pregnant women are forced to keep working often up to
thP. moment of childbirth, because survival tasks have to.be carried on
without a day's break.
Fuel gathering is another task that consumes a great deal of the
strength of rural women, and one in which men hardly ever participate.
For example, in the hill regions of Uttar,khand, wfiich have witnessed
mindless deforestation in recent decades by government and by private
contractors, a woman often has to spend eight or ten hours climbing rocky
mountains in search of dry shrubs and scrub wood to use as fuel which
is becoming more and more scarce. A recent study in Gujarat shows how
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