Watch these powerful and moving contributions from speakers on the Gender and Hindu Right panel

Kalpana Wilson

Nishrin Jafri Hussain

Angana P. Chatterji

Meena Kandasamy

This meeting was filmed and produced by Fourman Films

Speakers indict Narendra Modi for orchestrating gender violence and serious violations of women's human rights

PRESS RELEASE

Photographs of those murdered. The gaps are those for whom no photos exist.

A packed meeting at the London School of Economics organised by the LSE Gender Institute in collaboration with the Freedom Without Fear Platform and South Asia Solidarity Group on 3rd March, discussed the rise of Hindu fascism and its impact on gender and called for Narendra Modi to be brought to justice.

Outlining the context of the meeting, Kalpana Wilson of the LSE Gender Institute emphasised that the targeting of minority women for appalling violence is not a side effect but absolutely central to the project of the Hindu right and how it operates. Linked to this, she said was the intensification of surveillance and control over women, the rise of ‘moral policing’ targeting students and other young people, and the invocation of the "protection" of Hindu women as a justification for violence against religious minorities and Dalits, including rape of women.


She also noted that Hindu right supporters here in Britain have been promoting the completely unfounded myth of 'love jihad' in British universities by students and this fits in with the agenda of the British state and its Islamophobia. While these groups are promoting the image of a so-called 'Gujarat model' of development the position of women in Gujarat where Modi has been Chief Minister since 2001 is abysmal - demonstrated by the sex ratio (2011 census) of 918 women per 1,000 men (below the already scandalous national average of 940), that hints at the magnitude of female infanticide, and the very high gender imbalance in school enrolments compared to all-India levels. Very high rates of domestic violence against women are accompanied by very low conviction rates in the state. 

Nishrin Jafri Hussain, in a powerful and moving contribution spoke of the unimaginable brutality perpetrated on the bodies of Muslim women in the villages around Ahmedabad. Speaking in London for the first time Nishrin, whose father, the MP Ahsan Jafri, was brutally murdered in the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat state, and whose family is waging an ongoing legal battle to bring Narendra Modi, who presided over the violence as Chief Minister of Gujarat, to justice showed a series of photographs of those who had been murdered, with many gaps for those of whom no photos exist. She told the meeting that the numbers of rapes were far more than those reported because these experiences were not only deeply traumatising and humiliating but that it was a taboo speaking about them.

Nishrin and her father

She said that in the Gulbarg society where she grew up and the area around it every Muslim house had been burnt down and every family had lost loved ones - deep scars of these losses remain. She told the meeting that her father had been against the ghettoisation of Muslims and committed to living in a mixed Hindu and Muslim area even after the riots of 1969.

When his house where nearly 200 people were sheltering was attacked, and was surrounded by armed Hindu mobs, he had called for help to the central government to no avail. When he phoned Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister replied ' You are on your own Jafri, save yourself'. 

Many in the audience had tears in their eyes as Nishrin reaffirmed her family's commitment to bringing Narendra Modi to justice.

Angana Chatterji an anthropologist and leading human rights specialist, who convened a people's tribunal in Odisha in 2005 spoke about her work documenting the experiences of sexual violence in Odisha, noting that ideologies of conservative patriarchy had been taken over and intensified by the Hindu Right across India in a series of attacks on women in minority communities Christian, Muslim, Adivasi and Dalit over the years.

Meena Kandasamy a Dalit feminist and writer spoke about the way the language and discourse of Hindutva is conveniently utilised by fanatical Hindu upper caste groups like the Pattali Makkal Katchi, in Tamil Nadu or other caste organisations to construct Dalit men as the “Other” and create a myth similar to that of 'love Jihad' that they deceive Hindu upper caste girls by “making” them fall in love. The idea that once such a formula of love-jihad is deployed it can serve to function to contain, and threaten, women’s independence.

The meeting was as one student who attended it described it, 'both deeply disturbing and a call to action' and the organisers announced that the campaign internationally to bring Modi to justice would continue.

Gender and the Hindu Right in India

A Public Meeting With Nishrin Jafri Hussain, Dr Angana P. Chatterji and Meena Kandasamy

Chaired by Kalpana Wilson

Monday 3rd March 2014
6:30-8:30pm
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE
Freedom Without Fear Platform in collaboration with the LSE Gender Institute and South Asia Solidarity Group are hosting a panel discussion on Gender and the Hindu Right in India. In the context of the forthcoming Indian elections in which the current Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, a panel of human rights campaigners and academics will discuss questions including: 

• What are the implications of the rise of the Hindu Right for gendered violence in India - and what would a possible victory for Narendra Modi at a national level mean? 
• What are the experiences of those seeking justice for the victims and survivors of organised violence against minority communities in Gujarat and Odisha? What has been the role of the state in the violence and its aftermath in each case? 
• How does the Hindu right mobilise gendered discourses of religion and caste? 
• How have practices of 'moral policing' and fabrications such as 'love jihad' impacted on gender relations, and how are they are being resisted? 
• What is the relationship of the British and US governments, transnational corporations and diaspora communities with the Hindu right in India? 

Join us for this panel discussion and subsequent Q+A session with the following speakers:

Nishrin Jafri Hussain is a campaigner for justice for the victims and survivors of the horrific violence against minority communities which took place in Gujarat in 2002. Her father, Ahsan Jafri MP, was brutally murdered during the violence and her family continues to fight for Narendra Modi to be brought to justice.

Dr Angana P. Chatterji is a cultural anthropologist and human rights specialist. In 2005, she convened a people's tribunal in Odisha, calling attention to the impending violence against minorities and religionised oppression. In 2009, her collaborative work through a people's tribunal she co-convened in Jammu & Kashmir called attention to the issue of unknown graves and the need for accountability to families of the disappeared, and subsequently received corroboration from the State Human Rights Commission of Jammu & Kashmir. Her publications include: Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa (Three Essays Collective, 2009); a co-edited volume, Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia; Notes on the Postcolonial Present (Zubaan, 2012); and the reports, BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir (2009), Communalism in Orissa (2006), and Without Land or Livelihood (2004)

Meena Kandasamy is a writer, activist and political columnist. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms.Militancy. Her first novel, The Gypsy Goddess, revisits the 1968 Kilvenmani massacre where feudal landlords in Tanjore killed 44 Dalit peasants striking for higher wages. Her work is centered on caste annihilation, the Tamil national question and feminism in contemporary India.

Feminism then and now

Camille Kumar delivered this talk on 21st January 2013 at the LSE Gender Institute's event Feminism Then and Now.

I am an anti-violence practitioner and campaigner; I provided direct support for women experiencing violence for 10 years in various settings in Australia, Bangladesh and the UK, and have been active in the ending VAWG movement, amongst related campaigning with black feminists and other groups. I was invited today as a member of Freedom without Fear Platform. 

The FWFP formed to express and foster UK based solidarity with the anti-rape movements in India and globally and to give platform to BME women in the UK to lead discussions around VAWG issues; to make the connections between anti-VAWG struggles around the globe; to counter the imperialist racist discourse that UK mainstream media continuously bombard us with and; to highlight the cynical co-opting of VAWG issues by various groups in the UK who are seeking to further their own racist/ anti-immigration/ Islamaphobic agendas. Freedom Without Fear Platform seeks to practice and develop a feminism that is working on the principle that until all are free, none are free.  

Violence against women and girls was for me on a personal/political/ professional level the starting point for my journey with feminism so it is with this that I will start, and I would like to share a story. 

Eki  is a young woman I supported five years ago. Eki is a trafficking survivor and had insecure immigration status. Eki had multiple symptoms of ill health and was referred to us by the psychiatric nurse at a nearby walk in health centre. Eki moved into our refuge, and we worked together towards Eki’s needs and goals. Eki was registered with the local GP. Eki did not feel comfortable or safe to report to the authorities, due to experiences of state perpetrated abuse in her country of origin; her decision not to report was respected. Eki was referred to one of our partner legal firm advisers and received free legal advice to begin the process of regularising her immigration status. Eki was seen by one of our in house counsellors who was able to offer Eki a space she had not had before, to heal, to learn to trust again and to begin to rebuild her future. Eki accessed ESOL at the local college and pursued her ambition to become a nurse. When Eki’s immigration status was regularised, she was supported into social housing. Eki received legal aid to begin the process of bringing her two small children to the UK. Eki’s determination, resilience, and ambition, combined with specialist support she received enabled Eki to navigate this complex array of services to heal, recover and create a future for herself and her children. 

What would happen to Eki now? 

One year on - Statement by Freedom Without Fear Platform

It is one year since the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi, which was followed by the emergence of an unprecedented mass movement against rape and sexual violence in India. This movement had an enormous impact all over the world and here in Britain inspired us to form the Freedom Without Fear Platform. Today we would like to rededicate ourselves to the aims we started with, while expanding them to take on new challenges.

Here in Britain we are facing a racist and increasingly repressive state, which hypocritically claims concern about violence against women while ruthlessly cutting away what few resources still exist for women's struggles against gender violence, and attempting to destroy the possibilities for women to autonomously and collectively organise against violence. Doing away with preventative measures or escape routes for women facing life -threatening situations, the British state now disempowers women completely, literally silencing them as their cases are handed over to a racist and increasingly privatised criminal justice system run by corporates like G4S and Serco, well-known for their own violence against women from Britain to Palestine. This combination of repression and corporate profits which are at the centre of Britain’s current gender violence policies is inherent in neoliberal capitalism.

In 2014 we will face an attempt to criminalise Forced Marriage in the face of massive opposition from the vast majority of BME women's organisations and feminist groups. 

In continuing to build resistance to these attacks, and to strengthen solidarity with movements like the ongoing anti-rape movement in India, we are also committing ourselves to making visible

•   the resistance to rape and violence against women in India and elsewhere - against a tide of racist representations which seeks to erase these struggles and portrays women outside the West and women of colour in the West as victims waiting to be saved.
•   the endemic nature of gender violence in Britain, including that of the state, and the struggles against it - against victim-blaming and demonising of 'culture'.
•  the historical and ongoing effects of imperialism and global capital accumulation which underpin, reinforce and intensify gendered violence and injustice - against the normalisation of war, occupation, incarceration and neoliberal plunder.

As Kavita Krishnan points out in her reflections a year on from the eruption of the movement in India, 'The only useful movement against sexual violence can be one that brings the problem home, right into the comfort zone, that challenges rather than reassures patriarchy, that exposes the violence found in the ‘normal’ rather than locating violence in the far-away and exotic. For people in the US or Europe, it might be reassuring to imagine that sexual violence and gender discrimination happens ‘out there’ in India, rather than to look around and question the violence embedded in the ‘normal’ around them. The questions to ask would be: how does the politics of ‘protecting’ women, and of propaganda about ‘good and bad women’ play out in advanced capitalist societies? In what ways are countries like the US and UK complicit in the violence and discrimination that women face in India or Bangladesh?'

http://kafila.org/2013/12/15/the-anti-rape-movement-the-political-vision-of-naari-muktisabki-mukti-kavita-krishnan/

India's anti-rape movement - experiences, reflection and strategies for the future

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’. 

Kavita Krishnan discusses India's anti-rape movement - experiences, reflections and strategies for the future

An open meeting and discussion with Kavita Krishnan
(Secretary of the All-India Progressive Women's Association)

On Thursday 3rd October Freedom Without Fear Platform are hosting an open meeting with Kavita Krishnan focusing on the following discussion points:

•What does the anti-rape movement which arose from the protests of December 2012 mean for struggles against sexual and gender violence across India?

•What are the implications of the rise of Narendra Modi and the activities of the Hindu Right for violence against women in India?

•How does the UK's current relationship with India affect gender violence?

•What are the possibilities of international solidarity against gender violence? 

Kavita Krishnan is a feminist and revolutionary left activist who has been centrally involved in the anti-rape movement in India which began in December 2012. She is the Secretary of the All-India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) which is active among women workers, agricultural labourers, and other sections of poor labouring women in rural and urban India and has a record of resisting feudal violence and state repression against women. Kavita is also editor of Liberation, the monthly publication of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). 

The meeting will take place at 7pm, 3rd Oct at DLT Lecture Theatre (Room G2) SOAS,University of London,Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG