Kamla Bhasin is an Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author, and social scientist. Bhasin’s work, that began in 1970, focuses on gender, education, human development and the media. She lives in New Delhi, India.
Kamla Bhasin – India 2019 Transcript
April 6, 2019
New Delhi, India
Maitri Project – Mount Madonna School
Kamla Bhasin: So tell me, what is this group?
Priyanka Bhargavan: We’re the 12th grade class of Mount Madonna school, and so this is our last day in India, we’ve come for two weeks, we’ve been traveling all around. We’ve interviewed a lot of really interesting people: Rinchen Khando, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Metre. We’ve learned a lot, it’s been a really exciting trip.
Kamla Bhasin: Ok. Wonderful. I spend three to four months every year five kilometers away from Dharamshala. We have an NGO there in a very beautiful semi-Ashram kind of an institute, where we do trainings for our own people and we also rent the place out to other partners, NGOs, etc., students.
Shannon Kelly: It’s a lovely area.
Kamla Bhasin: Lovely area, but now getting totally urbanized in an unplanned manner and the urban-rich are going and taking over and the local farmers are selling because they’re getting good money and very little else for them to do now. And most young people don’t want to go into agriculture. Hard work. Ok, Sadanand, ready?
Ward Mailliard: Well, they know why they’re here.
Kamla Bhasin: Good for you!
Ward Mailliard: Because I- Kranti and I met you, my friend Shefali was the one that pointed you out to me and instantly I contacted you and said ‘I want to come see you,.’ And you were very kind, you gave me the best cup of tea that I’ve had in India. So we have some questions for you Kamla Ji, but if there’s anything you want to say by way of introduction we can, or we can jump into questions. I mean we’re here to learn more about who you are and what you do.
Kamla Bhasin: You jump, and then if I have to say something, I’ll say it. Because your questions will tell me what is of more interest to you. And you are the focus today, not me.
Imogen Cockrum: Ok, I’m Imogen. In an interview with The Daily Star, you said, “I don’t think you need to know the word feminism to be a feminist, all you need to know is that you are a human and have freedom and the right to mobility and self-respect.” Can you talk more about self-love and self-respect and how they are important principles of feminism?
Kamla Bhasin: I mean the first thing really is to believe that I’m human and to remember that in 1948, most governments of the world got together and perhaps for the first time as an international family they said ‘all human beings are born equal and free with dignity and rights.’ Free, equal, dignity, and rights. And since I’m a human being, and a woman, I deserve all these four. If I deserve these four, then I have to respect myself, and I have to love myself. And any system, any government, ay person who denies my humanity, I need to respond and protect myself and if I’m human, then every other human being in the world is human. So as a feminist, I also need to see that I am not attacking these four things in others. Freedom, equality, dignity, and rights. And I think this is the basis of all liberation struggles and movements all over the world whether it’s the blacks in your country, or it is the Dalits in my country, or minorities in my country, or women in your country and my country and all over the world.
Samith Lakka: Hi, Samith again. And in an article I read, you talked about how you have worked for 48 years in the field of women’s rights. During that time, you must have seen a lot. I’m curious to know how the concepts, practices, and acceptance of feminism has evolved over this time.
Kamla Bhasin: Yeah. Now first of all, I think I’m linking it to Imogen’s question. When I became a feminist, I had never heard the word feminism. And that’s what I meant, you don’t need to know the word, you only need to feel that you are being insulted. That you are not being treated equally by someone, whether it’s your mother, your father, your boyfriend, or your teacher. And I was born in 1946 before the Indian independence. And there was very little literacy for women, very few rights for women, the British had exploited India because they didn’t come here to love us. They went here for the same reason as they went to the USA and took other peoples’ lands by killing millions. And they went to Australia, and they went to New Zealand, they went to South Africa, as if the whole world belonged to them and with their guns said ‘we are coming.’ So that was the condition.
And between then and now, a lot has changed. We have much higher rate of literacy, and education. We now know what the Human Rights Declaration says, many of us now know what our own constitution says. We have much, much better laws. We have had women at the top in politics. We’ve had women in every profession, not enough, not many, but we have at least proved that as women, we can be in any profession. Today, if I’m beaten by my partner, I know it is wrong, I may not be able to do anything, but then, I didn’t think it was wrong. My mother didn’t think it was wrong, she thought if she is a woman, then to be beaten by the partner is natural. So I believe a lot has changed. And it hasn’t changed because our government gave it to us on a platter and said ‘come on ladies, enjoy yourselves.’ For every achievement, we had to struggle, we had to fight. Even for the Human Rights Declaration- I mean don’t think that the UN gave it to us. The UN had no way not to give it because the world was asking. The black people had to fight and our continuing to fight for their rights. So it is the people who have fought for us.
And I’m happy that we have come so far, but I’m also unhappy that there are other forces which are pushing us back. And that’s why rape continues, Delhi has been I think wrongly called ‘the rape capital of the world’ because we had the most horrible rape case in 2012. Many of American- sorry, not American, USA Universities- because America doesn’t mean USA, it can be Canada, it can be South America, so I need to correct myself constantly. Anyway, there, it has been said there is a rape epidemic on campus. America is the oldest democracy of the world, India is the largest democracy of the world, why does rape continue? Should have disappeared, how come we elect leaders like your country elected a leader who says the most horrible things about women and gets away with it. We have elected leaders who are Fascists. And they say stupid things about men. After a rape case one of our leaders said ‘boys will be boys.’ Sir, do you mean to say all boys are rapists? They are not, all boys are not rapists, all men are not violent. So don’t you insult men and say ‘boys are boys so don’t talk about rape.’
What is pushing us back? So one phenomenon which I call ‘capitalist patriarchy.’ We have had religious patriarchy, all religions have been patriarchal according to my understanding, so that was bad enough. Cultural patriarchy; bad enough. Now we have modern patriarchy in partnership with a very powerful force: capitalism. Big corporations, they are pushing us back. And I’ll just give you five examples of- big examples of capitalist patriarchy. Pornography is a billion dollar industry. Child pornography is a billion dollar industry. And basically, pornography turns women into objects of sex. And we are as if edible bodies, eat us up. And the power of this is that in India, they say about 80% of boys and men watch pornography, it is in their pockets in the smartphones.
Cosmetics are a billion dollar industry which keeps telling me that unless I look like this, I am not pretty. And all these beauty competitions. You know in India, in the ‘70s, the feminist movement had beauty competitions banned because we thought they were insulting to women. They were turning us into bodies; we show our boobs and we show our backs and we show our this, that, and the other, and it was always the rich women who became beauty queens, never saw a poor woman ever become a beauty queen. So that’s- it was banned. Then India opened its economy in the late ‘80s and the cosmetic industry came running into India. After that, three or four women became beauty queens in the world one after the other. So you could see that beauty business is nothing to do with beauty, it has to do with markets. Before that, India was not an open market, so there was no beauty queen from India. Now suddenly. And again I have read ways which show that these cosmetics and their advertisements make more than 80% of us women dissatisfied with the way we look. I mean honestly, if I’m not satisfied with the way I look, what am I going to do? How many surgeries will I do? And for what? For pleasing someone with this body which is in any case a changing, moving towards death body? In Hindi, we say (speaking in Hindi), this is going towards destruction. If I’m a Christian, I’ll be buried under the earth and all kinds of worms will come eat me up and hopefully they’ll help mother nature to be nice. If I’m a Hindu, this body will be burned in a few hours from dust to dust. Cosmetics makes this body of mine more important than my character, than what I do. And again, in India, I don’t know if you’ve heard, we have something called ‘fair and lovely.’ It’s a cream that makes us South Asian women fair. So now why should I, as an Indian, be fair? We’re lucky to have the sun here, so we’re nice and brown. But ‘fair and lovely’ is a million dollar industry.
Third is toy industry. Guns for boys, Superman, Spiderman, every strong man, and Barbie dolls for us women. Again, a huge industry. Hollywood and Bollywood, perpetuating in more than 95% of their films, perpetuating patriarchal thinking. Women; bodies, men; actors, heroes. 5% good films, but where is the comparison between 95% and 5%? Advertisements. So this capitalist patriarchy is pushing us back and there’s still rape and there’s still all kinds of sexual abuse. And you must have seen how many million women all over the world must have said ‘me too, it happened to me too.’
Another thing which is pushing us back is right wing conservative politics in your country and mine which again, celebrates manhood, masculinity. And the worst example, unfortunately, is Mr. Trump at the moment. And yet, the oldest democracy elected him. I mean I cannot believe it. We are told educate people, education is so much – education doesn’t do a damn thing if education is without values. If education means a degree for a job, then you and I can elect these right-wing governments. Because of the global economy, which is increasing in equality, there is religious fundamentalism of all kinds. Islamic, Christian, Hindu, even Buddhist in Myanmar, in Sri Lanka, Buddhist monks have been violent with the non-Buddhists. Killing, Buddhists, I mean that’s my favorite religion. If I were to ever be anything, I would be a Buddhist. But Buddhist monks killing Muslims in Myanmar. Buddhist monks killing Hindus in Sri Lanka. So this is another phenomenon which is constantly pushing us back. And in many countries our rights are being taken away like Mr. Trump did away with all programs for contraceptives, for abortion rights of women. I mean in 2016, ’17, ’18. We’re going backwards man.
So, long answer, but there are forces bringing up forward, there are forces bringing us back. And sometimes it seems I have spent 45 years of my life, but perhaps we haven’t moved very far. But I feel if we hadn’t done that work, we would perhaps would not be here where we stand, where we perhaps would’ve been much behind. So the struggle continues, except now we want to hand over the responsibility of creating an equal world to young people like you, like all of you. And equality not only between men and women. I am an intersectional feminist, and I believe unless there is racial equality, cast equality, class equality, there cannot be fender equality. So we need to remove all kinds of inequalities and create a more humane, loving world.
Kamla Bhasin: Too long, I’m sorry.
Students: No, no, no, no.
Ward Maillaird: No, that was a wonderful tour of the reality. The relationship between gender equality and racial equality, what I’ve observed in South Africa and in India and in other countries that are less industrialized, is when there’s racial inequality, there’s this trickle down of violence. So when we, as the colonials, do violence with inequality to other cultures within the culture, then the women suffer because the men have to take it out on somebody, the children suffer because the men have to take out- because their dignity has been taken away, their manhood has been taken away. And so the relationship between racial and class inequality seems to trickle down to the most vulnerable.
Kamla Bhasin: Absolutely, yeah. Basically, what we’re talking about is power. So if white people take away the power of the black men, but black man has power over black woman, so if he’s human, he will take it out on someone. And the woman might take it out on the children. And the children might take it out on the cat. And that’s how it goes. So that’s why I said, what we have to remove is this, what I call, ‘love of power.’ It is love of power which is behind all discrimination. ‘I love my power as India in South Asia,’ ‘I love my power as United States of America, and I will decide which country I want to bomb. And I’ll tell lies, I’ll say I’m coming there for democracy, actually I’m coming there for markets, and for petroleum, and for gas, and the whole world knows it.’ ‘I am a man, I love my power.’ ‘I am a rich woman, I love my power and treat all those people who will be soon serving us.’ So it’s not as though I am living a life of equality, unless we give up loving power and recognize the power of love which every spiritual tradition talks about. Which every religion talks about at least within the religion I mean.
And I’m so happy that a leader has shown what power of love can be like, is the woman Prime Minister of New Zealand. I mean that woman has been incredible. For that kind of killing, her response. Here also we are killing Muslims, but none of our leaders has had that response towards our terrorists. In your country every day guns are used, and your students, my God, the way young students in America have stood up against guns. But I mean the gun laws is nowhere near being thrown out. So their love of power, love of violence. We think we can put things right with violence. You can never do it. You cannot. Temporarily, maybe yes. But not in the long run.
So I think- and each one of us has power. I mean I am less powerful vis-a-vis my boss, but then there are people subordinate to me, I am more powerful there. And the same person behave like a little poodle- puddle? Poodle?- vis-a-vis with the boss and behaves like a lion vis a vis with a subordinate, the same person. In one turn. I’m talking to him, ‘yes sir, yes, very good.’ ‘What did you say?!’ Same person in one second, that’s how power works in each one of us. And I think the Buddha was the one man who worked on these emotions so beautifully for so many years.
Priyanka Bharghavan: Hi, I’m Priyanka.
Kamla Bhasin: Ji, Priyanka.
Priyanka Bharghavan: You are known for your many songs, slogans, poems, and even nursery rhymes, as a method for educating the public about gender inequality. What are the advantages of these unconventional forms of advocacy?
Kamla Bhasin: Why are you saying unconventional? This is how the world worked earlier, before we knew how to read and write, how did we talk to each other? How did we convey messages? Through songs. In every old tradition, there was singing. In every movement, in every religious community, there was singing. In every school there was singing. What are these tra- like songs, poems, rhymes, and slogans? Oral. Before the written word came, a few thousand years ago, there was the oral tradition. So when I started working in 1971-’72, in Rajasthan, 90% of the women and girls and rural men were not literate. So how would I communicate with them? First I will learn their songs, and I’ll take their own tunes and put some messages which I was keen to get to them about equality, etc. So that was the main reason, because oral tradition in Asia is still there. Face to face, rather than Facebook. Face to face.
Secondly, if we are singing, and if we are chanting slogans, the mind, the emotions, and the body have to come together. It’s not just a mental activity when I’m singing. And if I want to reach the emotions of people. So the three things merge in the oral tradition. And thirdly, if I’m giving a lecture, like I’m now doing, I’m talking, you’re listening. But if I sang a song now, which you also know, then we become one. We can feel each other’s power, we can feel a sense of solidarity, we can feel we are one with one goal, one purpose. So I started using this and I found it was so powerful and that I just continue. I mean almost every week I write at least a slogan. To every talk I go on a new subject, if I have not had a slogan on that. But I write these things only when I’m inspired by other people. I mean I’m not one of those poets who sits and says ‘ok, I will write a poem,’ no. I’m one of those, if there is a campaign going on in Delhi today, by the time I reach the venue, that whole theme will be joining in sight, and when I reach there, the slogan will be ready. So it comes from the energy of other people, it comes from the energy of that campaign, that movement. The mother of my songs, and poems, and slogan, I’m not the mother, the mother is the campaign. And what do I do when it is ready? I go and give it back to the campaign. Born of the campaign, dedicated to the campaign. I’m just a medium, and I’ve really enjoyed all this and I love it.
Anika Compoginis: Hi, my name is Anika. Anika. In an interview with ‘Feminism and India’.
Kamla Bhasin: God, you people have really done work. My goodness.
Anika Compoginis: You said, “peace, human rights, development, feminism, they’re not separate issues. They are different sides of the same dream.” Can you speak more about how all of these issues are related to one another?
Kamla Bhasin: Absolutely. Feminism wants equality. Peace, if I don’t trust the other person as equal, I won’t have peace, I’ll keep conflicts going, I’ll keep wars going. Human rights; all human beings are born equal and free. Even sustainable development, where everybody has enough to eat, everybody has enough education. Now all these values- secularism, where we say all religions needs to be respected. So these are all based on equality of human beings and they’re based on power of love. So I could be spending more time in the peace movement, you could be working on feminism, we can make alliances. So what is the normal peace movement? Peace between countries. What is feminism? Peace between gender and sexes. What is race- racial- antiracialism? Peace between races. And we can do this because all these systems of inequality have been artificially created by people who loved their power. Patriarchy is manmade, human made. Race is human made. Caste in India is human made. Countries are human made. If we have made inequality, we certainly can remove that inequality. It is true that nature made some people black, some people white, some people brown, some people yellowish. But did nature every say that the whites are superior? It is true that nature made female and male. But did nature ever say that men are superior? Nature made a tall man and a short man but did nature ever say the tall man is handsome, the short man is not? Or a rose is prettier than marigold? Nature creates diversity, difference, and based on that difference, power hungry people say ‘men are superior…white people are superior…U.S. citizens are superior…Hindu citizens are superior…Indians are superior to Pakistan.’ I mean total ‘BS’.
Anika Compoginis: Thank you.
Anisha: (speaking Hindi)
Kamla Bhasin: Ji. Anisha.
Anisha: So, like I think a lot of times, like just by the virtue of work that I’m doing, I feel really empowered outside and the people that I’ve talked to or I interact with, I always feel that with- like there are a lot of females around me that are feeling empowered, but back at home there is enough- what do you say- which brings you back to the same circle. So I feel what is- like how much empowerment do I carry with myself if there is one major part of my life which is not empowered. And sometimes I feel that maybe it’s my father, or my brother you know who really needs that sort of empowerment, not me, because I’m already feeling it. Like I might not know the word feminism, but I feel it. But for them it’s so natural and they don’t understand it. So how do we just deal with that, you know this balance of empowerment and not understanding it.
Kamla Bhasin: Anisha, how did we become empowered? By talking to people, by reading, by dialogue. That is the only way we can use, with the people who have not started that process. So if my father did not start that process, I don’t know any other way to deal with my father, except dialogue. Dialogue with respect. Some families would have said ‘Kamla, you really don’t know anything.’ And they were right, I learned. So maybe my father doesn’t know that I know and believe in. And the fact also is that the same father is allowing you to go and work in Youth Alliance. So he can’t be that bad, because majority of the fathers would not have allowed you to come this far and now sitting with all these foreigners and all that. So you know, how dissatisfied are we with people? And also, do we write them off? Say ‘this fellow of my father will never understand.’ I find you can’t write off people, fathers, mothers, everybody who disagrees. And since I don’t believe in violence, I can’t take a gun to my father, ‘father, you please believe in feminism.’ I don’t believe in it. I believe in love. So the only way to do is (a), keep questioning yourself, because we don’t become empowered for good, empowerment is an ongoing journey. Learning about gender is an ongoing journey. I go to conduct trainings and workshops, people say ‘Kamla is a gender expert.’ I say, ‘no, I’m not a gender expert, I’m a student of gender.’ Gender is not a subject that anyone can be a gender expert. Gender is a perspective on everything, and nobody in the world can know everything so I don’t think anyone can be a gender expert.
So, I need to constantly be changing and learning. And goodness me you know, I mean how much I’ve had to learn. 20 years ago I was not talking about transgender people. In my books, my books I wrote when people are born, they’re born male/female. I’ve had to revise my books and say no, we are not born male/female, we are also born intersex. There are people who are born neither male nor female. Why did I not write it 20 years ago? Because I did not know about it. Why do I know today? Because I’ve become clever? No, because they are asking for their human rights. I didn’t talk about transgender, why? I didn’t know. Why do I know today? They are saying, ‘where are my rights? I’m here to stay. I’m human.’ So maybe I have no other way to say but, for you and me it is an ongoing journey, and there are other people who have not worked on this theme. And if we want them to, then we need to just talk to them. Show them that we are not these proud feminists that know better than all of us because that is the biggest problem with feminists sometimes, the superiority: ‘I know and they don’t know.’ Big deal man, woman. So if they don’t, share with them, talk to them, show them the video you liked, show them the book you loved, and talk and they’ll come along. If they don’t, doesn’t matter, disagree and continue to love.
John Dias: Hi, I’m John.
Kamla Bhasin: John.
John Dias: In an article from IDR Interviews, you said, “you may go into a village with an idea and with a plan, but only if you’re willing to learn and be educated by the people you’re there to serve will you make progress. When you’re willing to listen to them, you begin to see the reality. How caste and class operate, and how inequitable society is.” Will you say more about listening as a key to sustainable change?
Kamla Bhasin: You know if- this is actually based on what happened to me. I was studying in Germany, I lectured there for one year, and in 1972, I was 26 years old, and you know how it is when you’re in grade 12, we know it all, but I had done masters so I knew it all, you know better than everyone. So I resigned from Germany, saying I’ll go back to the villages where I grew up and try and do something there. That was the idea that doing something for others. Today I don’t say I’m doing anything for others. I think all my life, I’ve done everything for myself. I love doing what I’m doing, so no favor to anyone else. I would be working for others if I didn’t believe in what I’m doing. So I- this kind of business of me going and- no, because I feel like I have grown much more than maybe other people have. So, John, I come to this village and go with the agenda my organization has set. I don’t know why they set that agenda but I came there and they told me ‘Kamla, we’re doing a literacy program. So you go to that village and make them literate.’ A,B,C,D… so I come there and I give the usual lecture, what my NGO had given me; ‘literacy’s very important, you can write letters, you can pay bills, you can read bills, people will not fool you, the money lender will not fool you.’ All that kind of what I had learned, I gave. ‘Yes bahanji, yes bahanji, yes sister, yes sister.’ So we need a room for the literacy class. ‘Yah bahanji, yah bahanji.’ So they say ‘yah bahanji’ and I can’t see how honest that ‘yah’ is and so blind with my ego, so blind with believing that I know the answers and they just need to follow.
So I write a project proposal, I get some money from an organization called Oxfam, and the money comes, and I go and tell them, ‘alright, from tomorrow you people will come, donate your labor, and we will start making a room for literacy class.’ And this is like six months. On that day they made me sit down. They said, ‘sister, you don’t look blind, but are you blind?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Are you blind and you really believe that the first thing this village needs is your bloody literacy? Did we tell you we need literacy?’ I said, ‘no, but everyone needs kind of literacy.’ ‘No, couldn’t you see that this is the worst drought in our area in the last 100 years. There’s a bloody water shortage and women and men, mainly women, are walking for kilometers with some water on their head from some- and for six months you’re coming and wasting our time.’ So I said, ‘then why didn’t you tell me this six months ago? Why did you go on with me?’ He says, ‘we went on with you because women like you, upper class, in clean clothes, we don’t know who your father or mother is, and if we insulted you, you’d probably get us arrested, you’d probably do this to us because this is what you rich people do to us. And the other thing we know is people will come with their notebooks as interns and they’ve got their agenda right and they’ll disappear. So we were hoping that you’d disappear in three or four months. But you did not bloody disappear, you keep coming.’ So I said, ‘then what should we do?’ ‘We don’t need to go up making a room, we need to go down making a well.’
So I came to the organization and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I will not be doing your literacy.’ ‘What?!’ I said, ‘no, I won’t. I heard them for the first time, I learned from them, they know their situation better than you sitting here in the city.’ So they agreed and I wrote to Oxfam that those 10,000 rupees, instead of making a literacy center, can I use that money to make well go down? They agreed. And a whole new project started for water development in that area. And this is true for every project you want to do with a community. How can we as outsiders know better than those people? And if we really believe we are helping them, then shouldn’t we listen to them? Shouldn’t we respect them enough to know they are human beings and they have lived there and they know their situation much better than I will ever know as an outsider.
So John, I mean without listening to anyone, I mean like you have come here. I mean the first thing I should do is find out who you are, listen to you, why are you here, if I want to create a dialogue. You know, Mahatma Gandhi once said about leadership, he said, “there go my people, and I should follow them because I’m their leader.” A leader- who’s a good leader? Someone who is sensitive enough to find out what the people want and need, and then does that. Who is a good parent? Someone who finds out what the children want. So I feel listening before talking, and listening and talking is absolutely important, otherwise it is not democracy, it is not friendship, it is not love.
Noah Kaplan: Hi, I’m Noah.
Kamla Bhasin: I like your kurta pajama. Love it. I’ve been thinking I have to go get a white one. Where did you get this from?
Noah Kaplan: I got loaned it from her brother.
Kamla Bhasin: From there? From America?
Student: Yep.
Kamla Bhasin: Oh wow, don’t give it back. It’s looking very nice on him, tell your brother to get some more.
Noah Kaplan: So can you talk about the strength and strategies of women that allow them to bear inequities, trials, and even tragedies of life that are associated with gender?
Kamla Bhasin: No strength Noah. Helplessness. No human being should have strength to live with inequalities. If I had a choice, I would not live with inequality. If I live with inequality it is because I’ve no choice, and it’s pathetic that we have to live like that. And if I’m living in a situation which is difficult, any human being gets that strength for survival. The blacks have had that strength, not just the women. The Dalits in India have that strength, the way we so-called upper castes have treated them. So the strength comes. Like if you stay on for another two, three weeks in this heat of Delhi, you’ll realize that you didn’t realize that that strength was there somewhere. It was hidden somewhere. Human beings are very resilient. So women, like people, are resilient. But I really don’t say ‘oh, women are great because they’re’- No, no, no. Nobody needs to be that resilient. Neither the blacks, nor the poor, nor the Dalits, nor the women. But when we need to live with it, we pretty much live with it.
And all of us don’t survive, and all of us are not victorious. In India, because of love for sons, we have killed, or not allowed women to survive, more than 16 million women and girls are missing. Meaning they should have been born, they were not allowed to be born, they were killed in the womb. By whom? Their own parents. With whose help? Rich doctors, and rich technicians, who have high class technology to find out whether the fetus is male or female. And then we say, ‘education will liberate us.’ All these fellows are educated. The doctors who kill are educated. The leaders who deny us abortion are educated. The leaders who want walls to be put up between neighbors are educated. So not everybody, every woman, has survived. So I think we learned resilience and strength from our adversities, but I don’t glorify it, I feel very sad. But I like your kurta pajama.
Ward Mailliard: Well your reputation is in education for us and I guess I’m curious about the resiliency in your own life for the things that you should not ever have to bear. And I think for all of us, that there are some things that happen in life that you just have to bear, but not everybody bears them equally.
Kamla Bhasin: Absolutely, that is true. He is referring to my son, who’s 38 years old, and if he comes out for lunch you can see him. When he was seven months old we gave him the usual vaccination, DPT, Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus. He had a reaction to that. I took him to London after I felt we were not able to understand what that was. After one month in the best hospital in London they sent us back saying ‘we don’t know what it is.’ But those doctors wouldn’t link it to that vaccination whereas we knew it was that vaccination. So he- his brain got damaged. He- today he’s less capable then he was when he was seven months old. When he was seven months old, before the vaccination, he had had control. He could look here, he could look there, he could- He could gobble, talk, do much more at seven months. He had motor function, he could move his legs and hands and head, everything. Today he can’t. So we’ve been looking after him, he’s 38, and he’s alive, and well, and that’s because we have resources to look after him. And that’s why I have a team of four people who look after him. And in turn, I try to look after them with as many resources and love as I’m capable.
Worse than this, is the story of my daughter there, Meeto. Meeto was the first child, our daughter, and a lovely child, and now I will be this proud mother who believes there is nobody in the world like Meeto. Dancer, she learned (can’t understand) for many years. Historian, she went to an absolutely amazing school started by an Indian philosopher, spiritualist called J. Krishna Murthi, and they have schools and one of their schools is also in the USA. So there’s a school in a rural area of Andhra Prudish called Rishi Valley School. She went there. You know it?
Samith Lakka: My father went there.
Kamla Bhasin: No. Wow, how lovely. So Meeto went to Rishi valley and loved it. And my God, Rishi Valley made her flower, made her human, made her compassionate, give love, give human rights, give everything. Then she got into St. Stephens College, one of the top college in India. Did history, applied for a fellowship and got into Oxford. Did a masters in history, came back, worked for three years on human rights in South Asia. Now applied for PHD in Columbia, in New York, Cambridge, Oxford. The first university to accept her with a full fellowship for seven years was Columbia, then it was Cambridge, then it was Oxford. All three said ‘come.’ So very difficult. Everybody said- everybody who knew where history research takes place. I knew nothing. So she was talking to everyone. They said ‘professionally, Columbia is the best.’ But she decided not to go to Columbia. She said (a), I’m not a big city girl, New York is too big. (b), Mr. Bush was in power and she said ‘I’m not going to Bush country.’
You know she was not an extrovert, so she decided to go back to Oxford. She knew that place and there was a very nice Roman Professor she wanted to work with. And she decided to do her PHD on Muslims. One Muslim community called the Ahmadis who are being persecuted in Pakistan and in Bangladesh. Killed, their mosques being destroyed. She was passionate about harmony between groups. Because when she was six, this city killed six thousand Sikhs, because two Sikhs had killed Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister. And people who believed they loved Indira Gandhi, in three nights they called 6,006 who had nothing to do with the murder. It’s like one idiot goes and destroys your two buildings in New York and your president comes and destroys the whole civilization of Afghanistan. The whole of Afghanistan. Did Afghanistan bring down those towers? And your tax money has destroyed the whole of Afghanistan? I’ve been to Afghanistan, what a country, what a culture. Finished. Young men like you, little older like you, Americans, sitting there killing.
So this woman was passionate about it, she says ‘I’ll do my PHD on this group.’ She had developed by then clinical depression. And in her first attempt she succeeded in committing suicide. 27. She was not only my future, she was her brother’s future because brother was going to be looked after someone after I die, and my partner at that time. She was gone. Now what choice did I have? I had two choices. One to keep crying the rest of my life. Or, to keep that pain which will be life long, to keep that pain in control, look after my son, continue with my work and with her work of peace, of love, or harmony. One year after she left her body, I went to Iran, a country I love and a country which your government wants to destroy. And a friend of mine gave me this couplet by one of the most amazing Sufi poets, Maulana Hafiz. So this a couplet in Farsi and it says, (speaking Farsi). She gave it to me because of my losing, physically losing my daughter Meeto. And it says, ‘you have to go under the sword of separation,’- because she’s gone, I have no choice, so I have to go under the sword of separation- ‘You might as well go dancing. I can go on my knees, I can go on dancing.’ Not easy to do it, but if there are people who help you, if there are people who love you, I can go on dancing. Doesn’t mean I don’t cry, doesn’t mean I’m not in pain. But pain and joy are two parts of life, like day and night are.
So I started in her memory something called Celebrating Social Change, Meeto Memoriam Award for Young South Asians. So for the last 10 years we give an award to a person younger than 35 who’s working for human rights, equality, peace, the issues Meeto was interested in.
So before – Sadanand, before it happened to me, I didn’t know I had that resilience. So in that sense you know, we in India say, sometimes you get an opportunity to be purified, the more you keep gold in fire, so one has to look at all these adversities as a way of purifying yourself as a way of strengthening yourself. I could have become bitter, so I had to work on that. And Mr. Buddha helped me a lot. Mr. Buddha is a good man. Yeah, he’s very good.
Kaili Sullens: Hi, I’m Kaili. You’ve talked about the phenomenon of money given to the poor, eventually returning to the rich. What can be done to stop this cycle?
Kamla Bhasin: To make projects which actually help the poor. Before we give them anything, to change the structures of inequality. If the structures of inequality continue- like if there is a hole- I have a pot, and into that pot you will be putting some money, resources, but the pot has a hole, and from that hole there is a channel going into a rich man’s house. So like you give me 5,000 rupees loan- and these are real stories from my life when I worked. So I give a loan to a poor man to do agriculture, and the man’s land was terrible, dry, because there was no water. So he deepens his well and actually water emerges from the well. And suddenly his land is green and prosperous. Now that man had taken a loan from a moneylender and the moneylender knew he can’t take money back because the fellow is a (can’t understand), he doesn’t have anything. With my loan, that (can’t understand) became better. He now had money, and that moneylender came and ‘hey, this paper, you owe me this much money.’ So only when I stay on with that farmer, help him legally, ‘what was the loan like?’ etc., otherwise- and today I would say the opposite, there are these huge corporates who first make so much money, like Bill Gates and their foundation- they first make so much money and then one person, two percent, ten percent, of that they give. My first question would be from where did you make the money? How much money did you make from India, take there, and then you give us ten percent of that. So what I meant by that sentence really is that the present economic thinking and paradigm has increased inequality so much that in your country, you people gave us the slogan ‘one percent versus the 99 percent.’ It was the U.S. activists who like equality who said in the U.S.A, one percent people own more than 50-60% of the U.S.A. India is similar. And inequality, it goes on increasing because the system is such. So unless you fight the structures, unless they really change the structures, inequality will keep increasing. That’s what I meant.
But my goodness, you chaps have gone back and- I mean how many days did you make them work?
Ward Mailliard: I’m a slave driver.
Kamla Bhasin: I can see that, your slaves are performing very well.
Ward Mailliard: They’re their questions, and their research, and what they’re interested in.
Kamla Bhasin: Amazing. And you’re only in 12th grade. Goodness me, I’ll be afraid of you after five years.
Lillian Wayne: Hi, I’m Lillian. How can organizations that do offer humanitarian aid, improve their abilities to help people solve problems?
Kamla Bhasin: First of all, these humanitarian bodies need to decide are they there for charity, welfare, or are they there for empowerment? Many humanitarian organizations are there for charity. And for me, that doesn’t work. Empowerment. And if I’m there for that, empowerment and believe in those four things: equality, freedom, dignity, and rights. If I’m there to ensure that the people that I’m going to get these, then my approach will have to be totally different. I cannot sit in the U.S.A or in Delhi and decide what they need. So first thing is to know why you’re doing this. Is it to go heaven? I mean some missionaries think that they’ll go to heaven if they help someone. And along with that, if they convert someone, they’ll go faster to heaven. And secondly, there was this old saying ‘don’t give anyone fish, teach them how to fish.’ But as vegetarians, maybe we don’t like saying that you know. So don’t give vegetables to anyone, teach them how to make vegetables. So treating them, the other people, as equal, not has beneficiaries. If this humanitarian organization considers them as beneficiaries, then the givers are benefactors, God, no. If it is empowerment, then they’re participants. They, and maybe you, should take decisions.
And that process starts on day one, not on day two. On day one you don’t go ‘I thought about you and I have come here with these and these plans for you.’ Doesn’t work. ‘I wanted to do something exciting, so I have come to you, to learn from you. I cannot imagine how you live in these circumstances, I can’t do it sitting in this Delhi in this flat, so will you teach me how you survive in these horrible conditions?’ And together, we can think: I have some extra money… I have some information about your rights which you may not know…I have some contacts. But I have only these three things. You have the local knowledge, you have the strength of people, and you are survivors. If you had not survived, I won’t be here. So really, partnership, respect, love, dialogue, democracy; we both talk. I mean just that approach, ‘I’ve come to learn, I’ve come to be a partner, not a benefactor.’
Lillian Wayne: Thank you.
Kamla Bhasin: Yeah.
Ward Mailliard: We’ve got two more here. Go ahead, Mara.
Mara Peruzzi: Hi, I’m Mara.
Kamla Bhasin: Mara. Yes, Mara.
Mara Peruzzi: In an interview with The Indian Express, you state, “why is it that sexual violence against women is a women’s issue and not a men’s issue? Me Too in India is a unique opportunity for men here to take a stand on behalf of women.’ How do you think men and boys in India can be encouraged, inspired, or even pushed to be more involved to combat violence against women?
Kamla Bhasin: No, I mean first of all, I mean how can violence against women be a women’s issue? Who does the violence? So I mean, why is it the issue of the victim and not of the victimizer? And if my son is the violator, my issue too because that son was not born a rapist, that son was not born an offender. I must have done something in my family to turn him into this. Or my community must have done something, or my media must have done something, or my pornography must have done something to make my son into a molester. So I believe violence of any kind is a social issue. Violence in the US against the blacks is not the issue of the blacks, it is the issue of that society which continues after so many hundred years. And really, more change needs to come in those who violate, who do the violence, and they’re- I’ve been talking for the last many, many years. You know I don’t believe in pointing fingers at the government and saying ‘government, what are you doing?’ I don’t say ‘hey Gods, what are you doing?’ All of them must do. But my question is, from where do these offenders come? They come from our families and our communities. So my first question is to we, the people, not always you the government, you the police, you the lawyer, you the judges, we, the people. We are the ones who are doing it, and we are the ones who need to change it. And I find, because all men are not rapists, all rapists are men. All men are not rapists, all men do not violate women. So I mean they start working with them first, they’re our partners. There have been so many men who’ve been part of feminism in India. We founded Jagori, a feminist organization in 1981-82, we were seven people and one of them was a man. So I believe that this struggle for gender equality is not a fight between men and women at all, that’s the wrong notion, the fight is between two ideologies, two ways of thinking. One way of thinking says ‘patriarchy’s better, men are superior, boys will be boys.’ The other ideology says ‘no, equality’s better, men are not superior, men and women are equal.’ And friends, on both sides, there have been men and women. There are women who are patriarchal, there are women who believe in patriarchy and they perpetuate patriarchy in terms of the way they dress, in terms of pornography they do, in terms of the films they do.
And there have been men, like the Buddha, he had big debates 2,550 years ago with women who came to him and said ‘Mr. Buddha, we also want to join your Sangha.’ And the Buddha said no first, this is a true story, 2,500 years old. Those women didn’t leave. 500 of them had walked there, ‘we want to join your Sangha.’ They had big arguments and the women said ‘what do you think, we can’t get liberation? We can’t get enlightenment? We are the ones who produced you Mr. Buddha.’ And you know who the leader of that group was? His aunt; mother’s sisters. Because his mother died in childbirth, when Gautam was born, she died. So mother’s sister looked after Gautam, and then the father, Gautam’s father married the sister. So she was the one who said ‘oh, my son has achieved liberation.’ Do you all know where the word ‘Buddha’ comes from? No? It comes from the word ‘bodh’ and ‘bodh’ means enlightenment. So anyone who is enlightened is the Buddha. So it’s a title more or less, it’s the Buddha who’s got enlightened. But his name was Gautam. So when these women refused to go back with a ‘no’ from him, the Buddha called a meeting with all the senior monks and said, ‘these women are saying this, 500 of them, I wasn’t sure whether we can handle this,’ because you know imagine the women from all the rich families coming in and giving up their families and all, what will their husbands do? They’ll fight Buddha and throw him out. So he was a realist, but then 2,500 years ago, they decided that women will be allowed into the Sangha. So in my opinion, Buddha was an ok man, I mean he needed some convincing, but he was convinced in one dialogue. I think Mr. Jesus Christ was a good man. My God some of the things which he did with women, a sex worker who became the first disciple of the Buddha. What was her name? Magdalene.
So anyone who is enlightened believes in equality. So I believe Jesus was an enlightened man, he was a Buddha. I believe prophet Mohammad was an enlightened man, and I believe the people who wrote the Human Rights Declaration in Geneva, and said ‘all human beings are born equal and free,’ must have been enlightened. And the 90% men and 10% women who made our constitution and said ‘all Indians are equal,’ must’ve been enlightened. So again, just as we worked with women, like in your country, the feminists started groups, they were called ‘consciousness raising groups’ in the ‘60s and ‘70s. So the boys have to now start consciousness raising groups. Say ‘why do boys do this? Are we born like this?’ And if you boys will talk about it, and if you boys will stop other boys, I believe things will go faster. I believe men will be very offended if women go to them and say ‘don’t do this.’ But if you, five of you, know a friend of yours who has this tendency of calling women names, calling them pussy or this or that, take him on and say ‘hey, I don’t like this language you know, I don’t enjoy these kinds of comments about women.’ And I’m very happy that globally, men and boys are waking up, a bit late but they’re waking up.
And Canada was the first country where they started a big campaign called the White Ribbon campaign. Men against violence against women, that was that. And today, there is a global network called Men Engage. It’s a global network working in more than 70-80 countries already where thousands of men and boys are working together. And the headquarter of Men Engage is in the U.S. In 2014, five years ago, December, we had the second world conference of Men Engage in Delhi. So this is happening, Mara, we just need to continue and in schools like yours, one can find out and see, can there be a small branch of Men Engage in Mount Madonna? And you become the change agents and it can happen.
Ward Mailliard: Last question.
Sage Turner: Hi, I’m Sage and as we all prepare to enter into our adult lives, given the journey you’ve taken so far, do you have any advice for us to try and find meaning and purpose in our lives?
Kamla Bhasin: What do you think, I’ve been talking for one hour, there was no advice for you there? I think everybody- everything I said is what I believe in, and I think all that is really what leads to happiness. And I’ll go back to another Buddha called Shanti Deva, he was a Buddhist. And Shanti Deva, after 60-70 years of experience and life and blah blah, he concluded-and at 73, I agree with Mr. Shanti Deva. Mr. Shanti Deva said ‘all the unhappiness in the world comes from wanting happiness just for yourself, and all the happiness comes from wanting happiness for everyone.’ You know, if I spend my entire life looking after two children, big deal. Cats and dogs look after 20, 30, 40 children. Much better than us. So what’s the big deal if my son and my daughter become big deals? And if that had been my motto, happiness for me, property for my son and my daughter. Daughters gone, son totally handicapped, what would my life have been if that was the purpose of my life? Happiness for my two children, and the two children are gone. And this is because that was not for which I lived. I don’t think my life has been a waste. In fact now, I share much more. If my daughter and son were there, maybe I would have said ‘ok, I’ll buy another flat for her.’ I could’ve been more selfish, ‘one villa for him, one big flat for her.’ It might have continued. But now I feel, let me share it with many others, which could also be a way of thinking if I look after other people, maybe other people will then look after my son. That’s what happens. You give something to others, and then you suddenly realize my God how many other people have given it to you?
And I also feel you know in some of my workshops, I ask people ‘share something where you really felt good about yourself.’ And in the last course, November, I asked this question to 35 women. ‘Share something where you really felt good about yourself.’ Each one of them said where she had done something for others and how much happiness. None of them said ‘I felt good about myself when I got first grade.’ Or ‘I went for that expensive holiday to Bali.’ We really feel good about ourselves when we are good to others. And we feel rotten about ourselves if we’ve been terrible to others. Think about it you know, what makes you feel good? That’s what makes us feel good. So I have no advice, everything I say is advice. I am a Buddha.
Ward Mailliard: That was worth the question though. You took the bullet for all us, but thank you very much. Before we quit, let’s just hear what has struck you from what she’s said. One thing that struck you.
Student: I was really interested in what you said about the capitalist patriarchy. I’ve always kind of been interested in economics and kind of in general just the market structure of the world, and I thought it was very interesting to hear how this sort of current economic system directly can effect inequality. Like very directly. Your examples- I thought your examples were like- I really got them and they resonated with me, so thank you.
Kamla Bhasin: Nice, nice, thank you.
Kaili Sullens: I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say that I was really impressed by your vulnerability to talk about yourself and your experiences, I think that that was very just strong and courageous of you and I think that it really helps us get an in-depth perspective of you as a human and what you’ve gone through and how you can relate it back to your life and your experiences. So thank you.
John Dias: I really liked what you said about how all forms of oppression are man-made and that if we can make them we can undo them. So I like that because I think I find that statement empowering. And I like what you just finished with that you felt like you could share more with the world by dedicating your efforts outwards instead of what you personally hope to gain. So I think that is a really great theme that we’ve been seeing throughout this whole trip. It’s really nice hearing the same things over and over again from different people.
Sage Turner: What you said about the power of singing and you know, the orality of everything, how before the world of words it was all oral. As a person who’s really passionate about singing-
Kamla Bhasin: You all will sing for me, you know, before you get your tea.
Ward Mailliard: Make them sing for their tea.
Kamla Bhasin: Yeah, yeah, lovely.
Sage Turner: But yeah, it’s a good way to get out your emotions and heal the mind and how when you sing along with each other it’s such a great form of connection and the power of one, you know, literally harmony. That really resonated with me.
Kamla Bhasin: Thank you.
Priyanka Bharghavan: I really liked what you said, ‘you can’t write off people who disagree with you.’ It’s so easy to just keep falling into- we’ve talked a lot about this in Values in World Thought with Shannon this year. The positive feedback loop, you just keep wanting to hear- and it’s so easy to do that. But it’s really important to listen to other people because they’re part of the system too and that’s how things change.
Noah Kaplan: Alright well what I liked was when you said love of power is behind all discrimination because I think if you can understand the root cause of something, that’s really the first step for finding a way to change it, and I’ve never heard it described that simply for what’s behind discrimination.
Kamla Bhasin: So may I give you the bag?
Noah Kaplan: I will take the bag, thank you.
Kamla Bhasin: And you’ll just show us the other side of the bag.
Anika Compoginis: I really enjoyed when you say that other feminists have told you that you don’t know anything and you just said ‘they were right, I learned.’ That is absolutely the energy I’m trying to hold onto for myself and just accept that when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and learn from that and grow from that. I think that was amazing.
Shannon Kelly: I liked how you brought in the term intersectionality, because I think it is really important to see the connection. And we have talked a little bit- I mean one of my things that I’m passionate about in the United States in education is actually facing our history and race issues. Because I feel like we travel to South Africa and we see with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how much work has been done and we’ve never really reconciled in the same way. And so I think it is really important to see that you can be- I think there’s a lot of power in white feminism in the United States and that there is a need to see how all of these things are connected and the intersectionality of all of the issue in any inequality. So thank you.
Kamla Bhasin: Wonderful. I want to say two things. I want to say two things. One was, very rarely that I have seen a group so well prepared to go meet someone. I felt so highly respected and loved and taken seriously. And also, I loved the way you asked them in the end. So I was thinking can I come and do some internship with you somewhere? Is that possible to come to Mount Madonna and sit at your feet and learn this? I’m just saying this now but even on day one when he was talking about his work and he shared with me some things which I have not had the time at all to look at, but I will and I’m requesting you that whenever you write something, which is not too difficult to understand. So that is one, and really, it’s been wonderful and I have whatever books I had at home, which I have written for children, for adults, all these, I mean I’d like to offer it to all of you and your school.
Ward Mailliard: Oh wow. That will be a prize for us.
Kamla Bhasin: Along with another bag.