Inspiring feminist futures: Homage to Kamla Bhasin's lifelong work, passion

Across the majorities of our world, women and indeed men remain trapped in the prison of patriarchy. Together we exist within a social logic where discrimination, oppression and exploitation colour the bonds of care, love and respect between individuals, collectives and communities. Patriarchy extends from within the most intimate reaches of the home to streets and workplaces, across the country and the world. Consciously and subconsciously, we remain conditioned and fragmented, and our creativity tainted by these insidious biases. Thus, continuously challenging these exclusionary ideologies and histories, and building advances to realise a new humanity becomes urgent and vital. Kamla Bhasin’s was one such booming voice that announced the possibilities of a better world.

The resistance to patriarchy is not limited to any one culture, geography or time. There is much evidence to suggest the contrary. In India, historians are teasing out the hidden stories of women warriors, rulers, saints and philosophers, and throwing more light on private and public domains and the interplay of hierarchies of class, caste, gender and political power. Incomplete and subverted social revolutions that betrayed the hopes for freedom and equality to women and men are no cause for pessimism and despair. On the contrary, they hold out many lessons for humanity. We need to recognise the victories they fruited, the tasks that still await and the dangers of subversions that happen. An excavation of feminist pasts is very much a part of building feminist futures.

The feminist movement and response in the last century ensured women had the right to vote, a somewhat better place in the world of work, a formulation of an ideology of liberation. Collective action, movements, legislation and policies have created significant milestones in the path to gender justice and equality. However, many unfinished tasks remain; and in this time, new regressions have also occurred. Political representation remains limited, the commodification of women has increased, and sustained crusades of political religion pose new threats across borders. The broken promises, dispersed hopes and fragmented struggles leave deep scars and contribute to the collective shame of humankind.

Shabana Azmi

Left to their own, these scars that de-motivate can become permanent debilitations. Therefore, the vitality of the progressive sentiment needs to be sustained and renewed through emancipatory hope. Ensuring the spirit of solidarity, creating generative spaces, sharing the wisdom of experience, building conviction through practice, spreading methods of grounding and sustaining change, taking concrete steps to sustain and channel the aspirations of billions of women as locally, nationally and internationally organised sisterhoods and solidarities are all much-needed efforts. Kamla Bhasin’s life and engagements represent the spirit of undefeated optimism that we all need.

For Kamla, spreading the spirit of liberation to break bonds of subjugation was her purpose in life. Subjugation, she would say, should have no living future. Through her stories, songs, slogans, speeches and training sessions, she sought to build and strengthen the paths to solidarity and change. Kamla’s method of messaging ran on simple common sense and logic, but one leading to deep insight. She reached out to wider circles – children, young people, girls, women and men. Kamla said to men, you are equally enslaved and de-humanised under patriarchy. Feminism is not against men but stood for justice and equality for all!

Sandeep Chachra

Kamla died as she lived, resisting, constructing, writing, singing and participating. The people who could gather to bid her farewell chose to do so by raising slogans, singing her songs and reciting poetry just as she would have liked. She was like a magnet that drew people to her. She spoke her mind without fearing the consequences. And yet, she was liked and respected by even those she opposed, perhaps because she was so transparent. Her life was an open book: her daughter’s suicide, her unsuccessful marriage, the joys of parenting her son Chotu and her fears for him after her death. Kamla hid nothing from the world; her life journey was one of being and becoming.

Kamla’s involvement in Jagori, Sangat and the One Billion Rising global mass action to end gender-based violence is now well-known.  Apart from several of these associations, Kamla was also an active member of the governing board of ActionAid Association.

At ActionAid Association, we have benefited from her friendship and her critical review of our work. Her spirited, clear and thoughtful ideas helped ensure that we focused on the issues and the communities we serve and remain faithful to the feminist principles we espoused. She was instrumental in laying out the framework of one of ActionAid Association’s ongoing campaigns, “Women’s Right to Property” – launched in 2017, as a multi-organisation campaign. For a while, the hashtag #PropertyForHer trended nationally on social media in India. We have since instituted the campaign as a plan where many synergies of engagements occur in ActionAid Association. Initiatives include a campaign for homestead land women from nomadic communities, the inclusion of property with the rights of “single women”, a category that includes widows and unmarried women, those branded as witches, and indeed a campaign for property rights of all women.

We will miss Kamla’s review of our work, but we will continue to draw strength from the elixir for constructive vitality, that is Kamla Bhasin. We salute her life, work, and inspiration that will remain not just for us but also for the feminist futures.

Shabana Azmi is a national award-winning actor, activist and Chairperson, ActionAid Association. Sandeep Chachra is an anthropologist, co-chair of the World Urban Campaign and Executive Director, ActionAid Association.

With contribution from Joseph Mathai, head of communications, ActionAid Association