This is a full transcript of the speech Kavita Krishnan (Secretary of the All-India Progressive Women's Association) delivered at our public meeting on Thursday 3
October, 7.00pm at SOAS.
Amrit Wilson: Kavita has been
centrally involved in the anti rape movement in India. Apart from being a
feminist she is also a revolutionary left activist. She is the secretary of the
All India Progressive Women’s Association which organises women workers, rural
women agricultural labourers and has a record of fighting both feudal violence
as well as state repression. She is also the editor of Liberation which is the
magazine of the CPI ML (Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist).
Before I
hand you over to Kavita, I’d like to say a few words about Freedom Without Fear Platform. As an organisation we have been
associated with AIPWA (All India Progressive Women’s Association) and
particularly with Kavita. As many of you know, Delhi witnessed both a horrific
gang rape in December last year as well as one of the most prolonged and
powerful protests against rape and sexual violence. These led to solidarity
actions in London including a packed meeting at the London School of Economics
where a number of us who were involved in the Black women’s struggle in this
country spoke out about our experiences and we also had Kavita speaking to us
on Skype. After that very inspiring meeting we decided to set up the Freedom
Without Fear Platform. I would just like to emphasise some of the things which
we are highlighting in this country as well as across the world.
Firstly we
are highlighting the effects of the government’s spending cuts on services and
organisations combating domestic violence and violence against women in this
country which is a huge issue. Secondly we are exposing the racism in the
media, its coverage and state policies relating to violence against women
particularly on issues such as grooming, honour based violence and FGM. We are
also protesting against the British government’s promotion of racist population
control policies which violate the reproductive rights of women in Asia,
Africa, Latin America and also BME women in Britain. Also we are supporting the
campaign in India and the diaspora to stop someone who is an avowed fascist, an
admirer of Hitler- Narendra Modi, from becoming the next Prime Minister of
India and we are demanding justice for the victims and survivors of genocidal
rapes and murders of Muslim minority women, children and men, which Modi
orchestrated in Gujarat, 2002. We are opposing David Cameron’s re-establishment
of diplomatic links with Modi.
Today's
event is the third major event which we have organised. Firstly, we had a very
successful meeting about grooming, both as an issue of violence against women
as well as the racist way in which it has been portrayed. Secondly, we organised
a protest against an invitation to Narendra Modi to this country, which also
was pretty successful. Narendra Modi decided that he wouldn’t be visiting,
partly at least as a result of what we did.
Now let me
hand you over to Kavita which is what we are all waiting for, so please welcome
Kavita Krishnan.
Kavita Krishnan: Thank you Amrit, thank
you all for being here.
One of the first things I was thinking about when I knew there was a
chance to speak about the anti rape movement and to reflect on some of the
strategies and experiences and the ways in which we are thinking of taking it
forward, is the questions we faced especially from the media from Britain, US, France
and so on. There were questions from friends and their parents too who lived in
these countries, who would ask with great concern: ‘we are concerned about you
because you live in such an unsafe place, how bad is it in India, it must be
terrible in Delhi’ etc. When I would tell them that rape culture and the kinds
of things we were raising show up in different forms in different countries,
then there would be this response, ‘yes but, it’s worse in India isn’t it?, it
must be worse there’.
