RITA
BANERJI
- Guest Activist -
G'day guys,
Rita Banerji is an author, excellent photographer and gender activist. Her book Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies was released by Penguin Books in 2008 (Penguin Global, 2009). She is also the founder and chief administrator of The 50 Million Missing, an online, global campaign working to stop the ongoing female genocide in India.
Welcome Rita ... tell us more about your work ...
WHAT’S YOUR CURRENT JOB?
I am a free-lance writer and photographer, and an author at Penguin
Books, India. My book Sex and
Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies, is a historical study of
the relationship between sexual norms, gender and power in India. I am also the founder and director of The 50
Million Missing Campaign, an online campaign that’s fighting to end
female genocide in India. But I don’t
get paid for this, and I don’t really consider it a job. It’s more like my life’s mission!
WHY DID YOU FOUND THE 50 MILLION MISSING
CAMPAIGN? WAS IT ONE PARTICULAR INCIDENT?
The 50 Million Missing Campaign activities are geared toward two primary goals:
1) to continue
to raise global awareness about the ongoing female genocide in India through
news, information and discussions via our blog and various social networking
sites like Facebook, Twitter
and Causes.
There’s also a campaign newspaper log where we keep tab on the
latest media reports on incidents of violence on girls and women in India. We
have a flickr site that’s supported by more than 2400 photographers. It has a photo pool of over 17000 photos of Indian girls and women,
which we use to create online photo exhibitions on specific
topics. We’ve done periodic surveys for
public feedback, which gives us an idea of how the campaign is progressing, and
where we need work.
2) Build a
strong, grassroots public lobby around a global
petition that demands official accountability and action, from the
government and international human rights bodies. We want zero tolerance for violence on women
and strict implementation of existent laws.
This petition is available in English and 11 other Indian
and European languages.
WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS?
They are fundamental rights that each individual is universally guaranteed
from the time they are born, the rights to life and safety being among the most
important. And they are rights that are
non-negotiable and unconditional, and which absolutely no one, not even your
family can violate. In the case of the
female genocide in India, the standpoint of the campaign is that it meets the
definition of genocide under the 1948 U.N. Act on genocide, and it is
imperative that the international community recognizes that. I argue that in this
video I presented at the U.N. symposium on Femicide in Vienna in November
2012.
DO YOU DO ‘PRO-BONO’ CASES?
We are a fund-free campaign, so we
do not raise funds, and are not set up to give aid or shelter. We do use our vast grassroots lobby to rally
public support for justice and action on cases like for instance the Suryanelli
gang rape case. But if we are approached for medical, legal and other help,
we contact NGO's, organizations or experts to facilitate assistance. If no one responds, and help is urgently
needed, then we may request our campaign supporters to directly aid the person
in need. This is what happened during Roopa’s case. She’s a young woman whose
husband and in-laws tried to murder her for dowry by forcing her to drink
acid. She was dying and urgently needed
surgery. Her parents are very poor, and had taken her to a small hospital, but
couldn’t afford the specialized surgery and care she needed. We were desperate
because no NGO or organization was willing to help her. So the campaign
supporters donated directly to her family, and though it seemed uncertain if
she’d survive at first, fortunately she did!
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES
IN THE WORLD AS YOU SEE THEM?
I think the violation of human rights anywhere in the world should be of
concern to all of us. But in context of human rights, what I find particularly
concerning is that when race or religion, are the reasons for killings the
world sees it as a human rights issue.
However, when gender is the basis of killings, the world does not see it
as a human rights issue! But what is
strange is that even women often don’t see the deadly violence inflicted on
them as a human rights issue! It’s seen as a ‘domestic’ issue or a ‘cultural’
issue! But not a human rights issue. Which shows that societies everywhere, and
even women have internalized gender based violence. At some level we’ve all
somehow ‘normalized’ it. That is one
of the things our campaign has been pushing – that the killing of girls and
women because of gender must be recognized as an international human rights
crime, which cannot be allowed any excuses of culture, religion or
economics. The same as would be true for
the killing of people because of race or religion. This second factor has actually been the
bigger challenge for our campaign in changing public mind-set.
What is also interesting to me though
personally, I find far more men (both in India and outside) accepting this view
than women! And I’m not sure why. Why do
women want to provide societies with excuses for killing them? Why is it not an absolute, non-negotiable
human right that they are entitled to?
Roopa.
HOW CAN WRITERS AND AUTHORS HELP?
By engaging with the issues independently and courageously. Media
can be directly controlled by the government in how it puts out information,
and very often because media is funded by corporations, that may have certain
vested interests, they can indirectly influence how media communicates
issues. I think that is one of the
biggest problems with how the western media
presents India’s female genocide
to the public. The western media went ballistic
about the young Afghan girl who got her nose cut off. But there is that and far worse in
India. India is the fourth most
dangerous country for women today, after Afganistan, Congo and Pakistan. These first three countries are in a state
of civil war, but India is a ‘peaceful’ democracy! There are 106,000 women who were burnt to
death in one year, most of them simply because their in-laws were greedy for
more dowry.
The rate at which girls
under 5 years are killed, either starved or battered to death, is 75% higher
than boys that age. They are killed
simply because they are girls. And it causes no outrage because the western
media either doesn’t talk about it, or presents it as a nominal issue that
Indians should be nicely told not to do – the way children are told not to be
naughty. And the reason is vested
interest. Western governments view India
as a massive source of cheap capital labor and big markets. And the corporations that fund western media
houses see it the same way. Hence it
skews the way the western media presents it.
But writers and authors have the freedom and choice to write with more
integrity. And they must use it to
uphold human rights.
DO YOU BECOME FRUSTRATED BY THE LACK OF
POLITICAL WILL REGARDING HUMAN RIGHTS?
I don’t see it as a lack of political will. I think there is plenty of political will and
plenty of political power. Rather it is
a question of where and how the political establishment chooses to exercise
that political will and power. And it
is used in self-interest, for political careers, for hobnobbing with
capitalists who lobby with their purses to influence laws and government
decision making etc. Yes, I find this
very frustrating to work with.
HOW CAN ORDINARY PEOPLE HELP, OR BECOME
INVOLVED?
I think the public needs to understand and exercise its power in
leading their government by forcing it to become accountable for human rights
issues within their own country and how they respond to human rights issues in
other countries. This has been done
before. Take for e.g. the apartheid government in South Africa. The apartheid government was supported by
most western governments, including the U.S. and U.K., because it was
ultimately about capitalism and business for them.
South Africa was one of the top 10 richest
countries but that wealth was the privilege of a very tiny, privileged white
section of its society. But the
majority, the black South Africans lived under conditions of legal
slavery! It suited western governments
to continue to support the apartheid government. But it was the public uproar in western
countries that forced their corporations and governments to either back off
their support and/or stop doing business.
And that’s really what toppled the apartheid government eventually.
I think in Australia some of this is coming into effect in context of
India. For e.g. in Australia there has
already been a call in the Australian Parliament to
recognize the targeted attacks on Sikhs in India in 1984 as a genocide. This was government aided revenge on the Sikh
community for the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and hundreds
were killed and women were gang raped.
Many of these politicians who participated in and incited these crimes are
still serving in government in India loyal to the Gandhi family! Not a single case
has been tried. No government puts a ban
on Sonia Gandhi who continues to protect these politicians in her party.
The same sort of targeted killing and rape of
women of the Muslim community in Gujarat happened in 2002, with the state
government’s sanction. The chief
minister, Modi, was banned by many western countries. But barely a couple of case have been
tried. Most have been scuttled, the
witnesses and survivors bullied and persecuted.
Modi himself was never tried as indeed Hitler would be! But it seems Modi will be ‘forgiven’ now,
because Gujarat is one of the biggest destinations for multinationals and their
businesses! The EU and German
governments are all ready to embrace Modi.
I think, like with South Africa, the public in western countries must
pressurize their governments to push the Indian government to be accountable
for human rights violation, whether it is the female genocide or the massacre
and rape of targeted minority communities.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST VICTORY?
Saving Roopa’s life which I talked about earlier was
a wonderful moment for all of us at the campaign. In another case, that of Anshu Singh, a young
woman who was murdered for dowry by her husband and in-laws barely six weeks
after her wedding, it felt great when after more than a year of battling in
court her parents finally were able to get her husband and in-laws arrested and
imprisoned. The case is still pending
and we continue to lobby public support for Anshu’s parents who are fighting
for justice for their daughter.
In context of the goals of
the campaign, there are more than half a million people supporting us
worldwide. On twitter, we’ve got the
support of globally prominent human rights activists and feminists like Nelson
Mandela, Diana Russell, Taslima Nasreen, and Jean Sassoon.
But perhaps the biggest
victories are that we’ve finally unsilenced this genocide, and raised the
public conscience about recognizing it as a global human rights issue. Six years ago we did a survey where we found
most people did not know about the genocide and many didn’t believe us! But in 2012 we did a public poll in which only 14% responded
with ‘disbelief.’ Another poll we did
recently asking people if wealthy, glamorous successful women like Indian model
Pooja Chopra whose well-to-do middle-class father wanted her killed 20 days
after her birth because she was a girl, should be used as incentive to tell
Indian parents not to kill their baby girls, or if the message should that no
parent has the right to kill a child. More
than 70% of people chose the latter. So more and more people recognize that
girls and women are human and their life is non-negotiable. Whether a girl or
woman is rich or poor, educated or uneducated, no one has the right to take
their life. That’s a basic human right. What is also interesting about the
female genocide is that the more power a social strata has in terms of wealth
and education, the greater its ability to inflict systematic violence on women
whether getting away with dowry murders or forcing multiple female fetal
abortions on women.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE SADDEST MOMENT IN YOUR
WORK?
I think working with children and not being able to defend them is
always the hardest to deal with. There
was the case of a little girl Karishma, who we
were unable to remove from the house where numerous attempts had been made to
kill her. The family wouldn’t allow, not
even the mother, and there is no law in India that authorizes the removal of
children from homes which are unsafe for them.
Recently there was another case where we were unable to
intervene to prevent the ‘marriage’ of a 14 year old girl to an adult man. Child marriage is illegal under the law but
the girl is Muslim, the state government prevented authorities to act because
it did not want to displease the Muslim community whose votes it wants during
elections. So it is the politics of
votes versus the human rights of a child.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT SOME GOOD THINGS ARE
BEING ACHIEVED IN HUMAN RIGHTS?
I think that sometimes people list things – like they say, we’ve ended
colonialism and slavery, and so the world can pat itself on its back! But have
we really? I think we’ve not changed the
mentality, so we are seeing the same institutions that violated human rights in
new forms. But the scary part of it is
that we don’t recognize these forms for what they are. There is massive sex-trafficking of women and
children, and increasing by the day, within countries, across continents. In
the U.S. the top 1% owns 40% of the
wealth and the bottom 80% owns 15% of the wealth. The same is true for most countries that call
themselves democracies! Is this not
slavery? Maybe it is worse today. Because earlier we knew who is what, but now
human societies are deluded into believing they are living in free and just
societies!
IF YOU HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS ALL
WORLD LEADERS, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?
I would ask them to list one human rights violation they’ve turned a
blind eye to in their country or elsewhere, which doesn’t let them sleep at
night, and I’d like to see how each of them responds to that.
WHAT’S YOUR GREATEST DREAM?
To see women’s rights universally recognized as human rights and to see
a real feminist revolution in India. The
protest march after the Delhi gang rape was probably the first emergence of a
real feminist revolution. But for it to
take root and grow, women, even women leading the women’s movement in India
need to view themselves as human within the constitutional framework, with
rights that are inherent and non-negotiable regardless of culture and
religion. I think that will still take a
long time to happen!
DESCRIBE YOUR PERFECT DAY?
A quiet space, and time spent reading or writing. Hard to find in India which tends to be
rather noisy and intrusive no matter where you go!
There are two things that people can do to support the campaign:
1) Support the petition. Here is the link.
2) Be a voice for the campaign by sharing a video - link to the video
Clancy's comment: there are many injustices in the world, especially today, and I admire those who find an issue and passionately run with it. Rita Banerji is such a person. It's been a pleasure, Rita. Keep going. Love ya work! - CT.
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