Some Thoughts on International Women’s Day | Sagari Chhabra

I first met Krishna Thapar in Chandigarh. She was a diminutive woman dressed in a white salwar kameez and dupatta, with a face that was wrought with exquisite lines as she had witnessed the most excruciating pain. Her father Achint Ram Thapar had raised her cousin, Sukhdev, whose father Ram Lal Thapar died when he was only three. Sukhdev had been hanged by the British along with Bhagat Singh and Rajguru. However, little or nothing is known about the women who supported Sukhdev. Krishna ji told me how Sukhdev’s mother, Ralli Devi, supported, fed and gave refuge to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru as they always came surreptitiously in the wee hours, under the cover of darkness. It was Ralli Devi who warned Sukhdev that the police had come and as the British police broke down the door to get him, Krishna Thapar records, ‘when Sukhdev was caught, he had a list. Tai ji (Ralli Devi) did not know what was written in that list but it had many names on it. If that list had been caught, many youngsters would have been hanged, Sukhdev did not give that list to the British, he struggled. Infact, he put it in his mouth and swallowed it. Many lives were saved’.

She hands me a photo of Ralli Devi -– which hangs in my bedroom along with Sukhdev — in a khadar kurta with dark eyes -– pools of sacrifice – but sadly she had died earlier and no one thought if fit to record her, get her invaluable testimony for the coming generations. However, gentle reader, is Ralli Devi not an unsung heroine of the freedom struggle and should her contribution not be recorded for the benefit of coming generations?

Krishna Thapar told me how the women had to make do with so little as the men were in prison and how her nani (grandmother) too supported Sukhdev and went to jail to meet him. Sukhdev bade them, ‘do not cry when you see me or all this work will go waste’. He kept reading a book while the trial was on to show his lack of concern at the verdict – death by hanging!

Krishna Thapar’s work with the women who were victims of South Asia’s Holocaust -– Partition - was selfless and full of compassion. She talks about the Recovery programme, ‘girls or women went through a lot. Which ever nation they were living in they were chucked out of that land on the basis of their religion, whether they wanted it or not. …. the Muslim women were taken out to be sent to Pakistan. They were married to Hindu Punjabi boys. they agitated but no one listened to them.’

I listened horrified as she described different cases of women being sent away forcibly and how the same thing happened to Hindu women in Pakistan. No one cared to listen to what the woman herself wanted. Woman’s agency, her own free will, just did not seem to matter, even though some were happily married here and across the border. Krishna Thapar’s work in the Gandhi Vanita ashram was monumental: she fed, educated and married off many women, choosing to remain single herself as she said, ‘I had no time to think of marriage and going to a sasural (in-laws). I noticed however, that two beautiful children kissed her, ‘Bye dadi ji’ they said as they left for school and a young woman who was affectionate to her. I later talked to a Sardarji, the man of the house. He explained, ‘I told her, if you call me putar (son) come and stay in my house, now my wife is her bahu, my kids her grandkids.’ I blessed him inwardly. Indians still survive on the goodwill of people because the powers that be, never think of women.

In the recording in 1997 at Chandigarh, Krishna Thapar said, ‘I have already told you my name, Miss Krishna Thapar. I have spent my entire life for my countrymen and my country.’ The euphoria of freedom also had the bloodbath of Partition when over a million were displaced and there were killings and rapes on both sides. Krishna Thapar’s life was intertwined with the birth of the nation and Partition, for her phenomenal contribution, she deserves to be remembered with respect on International Women’s Day.
The next generation, set about building the India of their dreams.

It was the ‘Towards Equality’ report of the Committee of the Status of Women 1975, chaired by Phulrenu Guha – herself a freedom fighter - formerly a revolutionary and later a Congresswoman along with Vina Majumdar and Latika Sarkar that revealed the terrible condition Indian women were in free India. India’s women were illiterate, anemic and unpaid. It noted an increase in the marginalization of women, declining sex ratio, disparities in life expectancy and death rates between men and women and women’s lack of access to literacy, education and employment opportunities. Clearly after a valiant participation in the freedom struggle the fruits of development had gone elsewhere.

However, several women started working in the voluntary sector and non-governmental organisations that worked for the cause of women also came up. That was the spirit of the times.

Ela Bhatt’s life was intertwined with newly independent India. She founded, SEWA—Self Employed Women’s Association in 1972, organizing women who were in the informal sector: rag pickers, seamstresses, vegetable vendors, cart pushers and those who did not have a formal employer. It was a trade union that gave a dignified name – self-employed – to these women and it has now crossed a membership of 2 million women. While much is spoken about the formal sector, Elaben who was softspoken, short-statured but with a vision that spanned borders and boundaries - always spoke about the women who are in the informal sector where 90 per cent of our labour force still works, with no social security and low wages. She lived simply in a small home called ‘Toy House’ with her husband Ramesh Bhatt – who tragically died young, and two children Mihir and Ami. The ‘Toy House’ is a place that has received both the powerful and the poor and it symbolized Ela ben’s belief of simple living and the idea of trusteeship. She wrote, ‘We Are Poor But So Many’ and the ‘Idea of Work’ trying to get the powers that be to acknowledge women’s informal work and bring it into the policy framework. Above all, in my interactions with her I noticed she always exuded love, humility and a concept of sewa – service - travelling in a black autorickshaw till the end, embodying Gandhi’s values of simplicity.

In her last interview to me in 2021 I asked her for a message and she said, ‘Vaishnav vajante tenhe kahiye, peer paraye jaane re’- understand the pain of the other. This was Bapu’s favourite hymn. She died in 2022 but her legacy of recognizing the value and worth of women’s lives, lives on.

Aruna Roy’s life is intertwined with an era when protest was a matter of right, which is fast fading now. That was a time when the Boat Club and then the Jantar Mantar were packed with demonstrations and slogans. There was so much freedom of expression, anyone could say what they wanted without the threat of an income tax notice, a raid by the E.D or being arrested under the draconian UAPA.

Aruna Roy gave up her job in the Indian Administrative Service and launched the campaign for the Right to Information and I witnessed a jan sunvai in the Bolangir district of Orissa, where the villagers shouted the slogan, ‘Hamaara paisa, Hamaara hisaab’ – it’s our money, our accounts, exposing a road and a check dam that had never been built, except on paper! This campaign led to the Right to Information Act impacting so many lives as earlier everything was ‘official’ and therefore, ‘top secret’.

She also conceived the Right to Food campaign that led to the Right to Food Act, enabling the MNREGA that gives 150 days employment to able-bodied people in rural areas and enabling millions and millions of children across the country to get their midday meals as a matter of right and not as a paltry handout. She brought this Act to fruition with excruciating labour and the help of fellow satyagrahis.

All these women place service above self, humility above self-preening and high living. They practice values of simplicity and getting people together for a cause; never dividing them.

There are new challenges today, with rising inequality, the fusion of religion and politics and increasing privatization deconstructing earlier institutions and a welfare state. There remains no social security or pension.

I remember my shame at going inside several homes in Chitoorgarh district in Rajasthan and witnessing empty cupboards with no food and being told, ‘hamaare paas kaam nahin, par machine chalti hein’ – we have no work but they use the machine, instead. Today we have the spectre of Artificial Intelligence that will throw millions out of work by making them redundant. However, with the Right to Education more and more girls are being educated, but the old patriarchal values remain, the dual burden of caring and earning is something women are staggering under and violence against women inside the home, on the way to work and sexual harassment at work are all real issues. On International Women’s Day we want men to understand and partner us as only a just, equal and compassionate society can be a sustainable future.

The orange in our flag signifies sacrifice not of any particular ideology and India has a way of throwing up people that understand the spirit of the age and are willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Only 25 per cent of women are part of a paid labour force and it is important to remember that there is a substratum of violence underpinning the inequality. Every woman you see is toiling with the dual burden of running a home, raising children and trying to earn a livelihood. Let men join hands in the liberation of women and see each of us women as equal human beings. Give us our dignity and our rightful place under the sun and never ever try to silence us!

Greetings on International Women’s Day!

(Author: Sagari Chhabra is an award-winning author & film-maker and director of the Hamaara Itihaas Freedom archives)